Marvel once planned a connected universe for its video games, just like the MCU. But according to former developers, those plans never came to life.
Marvel has been on a roll with video games in recent years. Insomniac’s Spider-Man series has been a massive hit, with Spider-Man 2 taking things to the next level. Guardians of the Galaxy also received acclaim from fans and critics alike.
And now, Marvel Rivals, the competitive PvP shooter from NetEase Games and Marvel Games, is the big Marvel project that’s been a huge hit, pulling in millions of players. But what if all these games were part of one big connected universe, just like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)? Turns out, that almost happened.
Details on the Scrapped Marvel Gaming Universe (MGU)
On a recent episode of The Fourth Curtain podcast, writer Alex Irvine and host Alex Seropian revealed that there were once plans to create a connected Marvel Gaming Universe (MGU). It would have tied multiple Marvel games together under one timeline, similar to what the MCU did for movies. The idea was exciting, but in the end, it never became a reality.
Irvine, who has worked on several Marvel projects, including Marvel Rivals, opened up about the early discussions of an MGU. He explained that Marvel wanted to link its games into a larger, ongoing story. (transcribed by The Game Post)
“When I first started working on Marvel games, there was this idea that they were going to create like a Marvel gaming universe that was going to exist in the same way that the MCU,” Irvine said on the podcast.
According to Seropian, who worked at Disney as SVP & GM of Core Games from 2009 to 2012, he was part of early efforts to make this idea happen. But there were major hurdles. “When I was at Disney, that was my initiative, ‘Hey, let’s tie these games together.’ It was pre-MCU,” Seropian explained. “But it didn’t get funded.”
Irvine backed up that claim, adding that the complexity of connecting all the games made Disney hesitant to invest in the idea. “That was so frustrating because we came up with all these great ideas about how to do it,” he said.
“And I was coming out of ARGs at that point and thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we had some ARG aspects?’ There would be a place where players could go that all the games touched, and we could move them back and forth from game to game. We could link in comics, we could loop in anything, we could do original stuff. And then, as Alex said, it didn’t get funded.”
So, despite the potential for an interconnected Marvel universe in video games, it was ultimately scrapped before it even got off the ground. According to Irvine and Seropian, it came down to a mix of logistical challenges and internal hesitation.
At the time, the MCU was still in its early stages, and the idea of a shared universe in video games wasn’t as mainstream as it is today. Marvel also had to decide how closely the games would follow the movies or the comics.
“Even back then, we were trying to figure out, ‘If there’s going to be this MGU, how is it different from the comics? How is it different from the movies? How are we going to decide if it stays consistent?’ And I think some of those questions got complex enough that there were people at Disney who didn’t really want to deal with them,” said Irvine.
“You have to decide: what relationship does this particular game universe have to the MCU or to the comics? Is it trying to incorporate elements of both? If so, what do you do when they’re contradictory? Which one do you choose?” Irvine explained. “And what if that breaks something else somewhere else in your story? It’s a real tap dance in some of these games, especially as they get big, kind of sprawly stories.”
That level of coordination would require a lot of effort, and more importantly, a lot of money. Apparently, Disney wasn’t willing to fund it at the time, and without that financial backing, the idea never moved forward.
Instead, Marvel chose to focus on standalone games, giving developers more creative freedom without worrying about tying into a larger universe, and that approach has led to some incredible games.
What do you think? Would you have liked to see a connected Marvel Gaming Universe? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
