The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has transformed entertainment with its intricately connected series of films and TV shows, crafting a long-running and cohesive narrative. However, Marvel video games operate independently, with each title telling its own unique story. For instance, Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man series stands entirely separate from Eidos-Montreal's Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Upcoming titles like Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, Marvel's Wolverine, and Marvel's Blade also lack any shared universe elements.
Yet, there was once an ambitious plan at Disney to create a Marvel Gaming Universe (MGU) that would mirror the success of the MCU. So, what led to the demise of this concept?
On The Fourth Curtain podcast, host Alexander Seropian and guest Alex Irvine, who both contributed to the MGU idea, shared insights into its ultimate fate. Seropian, renowned for co-founding Bungie (the studio behind Halo and Destiny), led Disney's video game division until his departure in 2012. Irvine, a veteran Marvel game writer, recently worked on the world-building, dialogue, and character backstories for Marvel Rivals.
Irvine reflected on the initial vision for the MGU, stating, "When I first started working on Marvel games, there was this idea that they were going to create a Marvel gaming universe that was going to exist in the same way that the MCU did. It never really happened."
Seropian clarified that the MGU was his initiative, pitched before the MCU's rise to prominence. "When I was at Disney, that was my initiative, 'Hey, let’s tie these games together.' It was pre-MCU," he said. "But it didn’t get funded."
Irvine, who had experience with alternate reality games (ARGs) from his time working on I Love Bees for Halo at Bungie, elaborated on the MGU's proposed mechanics. "That was so frustrating because we came up with all these great ideas about how to do it," he shared. "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 we made a bunch of games."
The MGU's failure to secure funding stemmed from its complexity, which deterred some at Disney. Irvine explained, "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."
It's intriguing to speculate what might have been if the MGU had received the necessary support. Perhaps Insomniac's Spider-Man games could have shared a universe with Square Enix's Marvel's Avengers and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, featuring cross-title character cameos and culminating in a grand event akin to the MCU's Endgame.
Looking to the future, questions arise about Insomniac's Marvel's Wolverine game. Will it be set in the same universe as Marvel's Spider-Man? Could there be crossover appearances from Spider-Man or other characters?
Sadly, the MGU remains a fascinating "what if" in the realm of video games. Yet, in some alternate universe, perhaps it thrives as a reality.
