"Marvel Gaming Universe Idea Flopped Due to Lack of Funding"

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has revolutionized entertainment by weaving a tapestry of interconnected films and TV shows into a single, compelling narrative. However, Marvel video games do not follow this model; each game tells its own separate story. For instance, Insomniac's Marvel's Spider-Man series stands apart from Eidos-Montreal's Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Similarly, upcoming titles like Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, Marvel's Wolverine, and Marvel's Blade are not interconnected.

Yet, there was once a vision at Disney to craft a Marvel Gaming Universe (MGU) that would mirror the success of the MCU. So, what led to the demise of this ambitious project?

On The Fourth Curtain podcast, host Alexander Seropian and guest Alex Irvine, both involved in the MGU concept, shed light on its fate. Seropian, known for co-founding Bungie and working on Halo and Destiny, later managed Disney's video game division until 2012. Irvine, a veteran Marvel game writer, contributed to the world-building and narratives of games like Marvel Rivals.

Irvine reminisced about the early days of working on Marvel games and the initial plan for 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 stated. "It never really happened."

Seropian confirmed that the MGU was his brainchild, but it failed to secure funding from Disney's higher-ups. "When I was at Disney, that was my initiative, 'Hey, let's tie these games together.' It was pre-MCU," Seropian noted. "But it didn't get funded."

Irvine, who had previously worked on the innovative Halo alternate reality game (ARG) I Love Bees, elaborated on the MGU's potential mechanics. "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 launch can be attributed to 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 ponder what could have been if the MGU had received the necessary backing. 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-like event.

Looking forward, fans are curious about whether Insomniac's Marvel's Wolverine will share a universe with Marvel's Spider-Man. Could characters from the Spider-Man games make an appearance in Wolverine?

Sadly, the MGU remains a missed opportunity, another in a long list of unfulfilled video game projects. Yet, in some alternate reality, it might just be thriving...