The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a huge hit, and has given us the Infinity Saga and the Multiverse Saga. But it turns out that it could have had a gaming counterpart – a Marvel Gaming Universe. Industry insiders say Disney had plans to create a cohesive universe connecting all the Marvel video games on a timeline, much like what the Marvel Cinematic Universe does for the films.
Even more intriguingly, the idea was to allow players to move between the games by linking them with alternate reality game (ARG) elements, possibly even connecting to Marvel comics (see our pick of the best game development software if you're working on your own project).
The revelation was discussed by Alex Irvine, writer of Marvel Rivals and Alexander Seropian, former SVP & GM of Core Games at Disney on The Fourth Curtain YouTube channel.
At just over seven minutes into the discussion, Irvine talks about working with Marvel and says: "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."
Irvine added: "We could link in comics, we could loop in anything, we could do original stuff."
Seropian goes on to say that it was his idea to connect the games together, but that the funding was forthcoming. Irvine then laments that the team "came up with all these great ideas about how to do it."
Some Marvel Games still made it, including NetEase's PVP shooter Marvel Rivals along with games linked to individual franchises like Eidos Montreal's Guardians of the Galaxy, but it's a shame we won't get to see what an interconnected Marvel Gaming Universe would have looked like.
For more gaming news, see the trailer for the Painkiller remake, our Atomfall PS5 review and the launch of the Mythica open-source platform for procedural game development.
