The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has revolutionized the entertainment industry with its interconnected series of films and TV shows, crafting a long-running and cohesive narrative. However, Marvel video games operate independently, with each game telling its own unique story. For instance, Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man series has no connection to Eidos-Montreal's Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Similarly, upcoming titles such as Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, Marvel's Wolverine, and Marvel's Blade are standalone stories without any shared universe.
There was once a vision at Disney to create a Marvel Gaming Universe (MGU) that would mirror the success of the MCU. This ambitious project aimed to weave Marvel video games into a unified narrative, much like its cinematic counterpart. But what led to the abandonment of this idea?
On The Fourth Curtain podcast, host Alexander Seropian and guest Alex Irvine, who both worked on the MGU concept, shed light on its fate. Seropian, known for co-founding Bungie and developing Halo and Destiny, led Disney's video game division until his departure in 2012. Irvine, a veteran writer for Marvel games, contributed to the world-building and character development for Marvel Rivals.
Irvine reminisced about the early days of his involvement with Marvel games, mentioning the initial plan to establish an MGU. "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," he said. "It never really happened."
Seropian revealed that the MGU was his initiative, conceived before the MCU's rise. "When I was at Disney, that was my initiative, 'Hey, let's tie these games together.' It was pre-MCU," he explained. "But it didn't get funded."
Irvine, who had previously worked on the innovative Halo alternate reality game (ARG) I Love Bees, shared his vision for the MGU. "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 we made a bunch of games."
The MGU's failure to secure funding can be attributed to its complexity. Irvine noted that the project raised numerous questions about its differentiation from comics and movies, and maintaining consistency across the universe. "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," he explained.
It's intriguing to ponder what could have been if the MGU had received the necessary support. Perhaps Insomniac's Spider-Man games would have shared a universe with Square Enix's Marvel's Avengers and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, featuring cross-game cameos and culminating in a grand, Endgame-style event.
Looking forward, there's curiosity about Insomniac's upcoming Marvel's Wolverine game. Will it be set in the same universe as Marvel's Spider-Man? Could characters from the Spider-Man series make appearances in Wolverine?
Ultimately, the MGU remains a fascinating "what if" in the world of video games. In another universe, perhaps, it thrives as a reality.
