The Marvel Cinematic Universe's success in creating a cohesive, interconnected narrative across films and TV shows stands in stark contrast to the fragmented landscape of Marvel video games. Insomniac's Spider-Man games, for example, exist entirely separately from Eidos-Montreal's Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, and upcoming titles like Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, Marvel's Wolverine, and Marvel's Blade maintain this independent trajectory.
However, a "Marvel Gaming Universe" (MGU) was once envisioned at Disney, mirroring the MCU's success. So, what derailed this ambitious plan?
### DC and Marvel Superheroes: What's The Best Recent Game?
New duel
1ST
2ND
3RDSee your ResultsFinish playing for your personal results or see the community’s!Continue playingSee results
According to Alexander Seropian (a founder of Bungie and former head of Disney's video game business) and Alex Irvine (a long-time Marvel games writer) on The Fourth Curtain podcast, the MGU, Seropian's initiative, lacked funding from Disney's upper management. Irvine elaborated on the MGU's potential, envisioning ARG elements, cross-game player interaction, and connections to comics and other Marvel media.
The MGU's failure to secure funding stemmed, in part, from the complexity of its design. The challenge of differentiating the MGU from existing Marvel comics and films, while maintaining consistency, proved daunting for Disney executives.
It's intriguing to speculate on an alternate reality where the MGU thrived, potentially uniting games like Insomniac's Spider-Man and Square Enix's Marvel's Avengers and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy in a shared universe. The future of Insomniac's Marvel's Wolverine remains uncertain, leaving open the question of its connection to the Spider-Man universe.
Ultimately, the MGU joins the ranks of countless scrapped video game concepts, a testament to the challenges of realizing ambitious cross-media projects.
