The Marvel Cinematic Universe has redefined entertainment with its interconnected series of films and TV shows, weaving them into a long-running, cohesive storyline. In contrast, Marvel video games exist in their own separate worlds, with stories that are entirely independent and unconnected. For example, Insomniac's Marvel’s Spider-Man series has no ties to Eidos-Montreal's Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Likewise, upcoming titles like Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, Marvel's Wolverine, and Marvel’s Blade are not linked by any narrative threads.
However, Disney once considered creating a Marvel Gaming Universe, aiming to replicate for video games what the MCU accomplished for films and television. So, what went wrong?
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On The Fourth Curtain podcast, host Alexander Seropian and guest Alex Irvine, who both contributed to the project, discussed this MGU concept and explained why it was eventually abandoned.
Seropian, widely recognized as a co-founder of Bungie, the studio behind Halo and Destiny, later led Disney's video game division before his departure in 2012. Irvine, a longtime writer for Marvel games, most recently contributed to the world-building, dialogue, and character backstories for the hit title Marvel Rivals.
Reflecting on his earlier Marvel projects, Irvine mentioned the shelved MGU plan.
"When I first began working on Marvel games, there was a vision to establish a Marvel gaming universe, similar to the MCU," Irvine recalled. "Unfortunately, it never came to fruition."
Seropian added that the MGU was his "brainchild," but it failed to secure funding from Disney's executives.
"During my time at Disney, I championed the idea of connecting these games. This was before the MCU took off," Seropian noted. "However, the project wasn't funded."
Irvine, who had experience with the acclaimed Halo alternate reality game I Love Bees during his tenure at Bungie, elaborated on how the MGU would have functioned.
"It was incredibly frustrating because we had developed so many exciting concepts for it," he said.
"Coming from an ARG background, I thought incorporating ARG elements would be fantastic. We envisioned a central hub where players could interact, connecting all the games. We could integrate comics, original content, and move players between different game worlds. But as Alex mentioned, without funding, we simply moved forward with individual game releases."
Why did the MGU fail to gain the internal support needed to proceed? Irvine speculated that the concept grew too intricate, ultimately deterring some decision-makers at Disney.
"Even then, we were grappling with questions like, 'How will the MGU differentiate itself from the comics and the films? How do we maintain consistency?' I believe the complexity of these issues made some at Disney hesitant to pursue the idea," Irvine explained.
It's intriguing to imagine what could have been if the MGU had received the necessary funding. Perhaps Insomniac's Spider-Man games would have shared a universe with Square Enix's now-discontinued Marvel's Avengers and Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, allowing for character crossovers and culminating in an epic, Endgame-like event.
Looking forward, questions remain about Insomniac's Marvel's Wolverine. Will it be set in the same universe as Marvel's Spider-Man? Could Spider-Man or other characters from those games make an appearance in Wolverine?
Ultimately, the MGU joins the long list of abandoned video game concepts. Although, in some alternate reality, it might already be a thriving universe…
