Editorial | May 12, 2014 9:20 pm
What with the recent lack of official articles being published, I decided I'd try my hand at a bit of an Op-Ed sort of piece and see if anyone finds this sort of writing worthwhile.
I just came home from going to see Amazing Spider-Man 2 (it was fantastic, go out and see it) and it got me thinking. What with the recent pulling of all Activision-Marvel titles from Steam, PSN, and XBL, there has been a lot of rumor, speculation, and even mention from Marvel executives as to why this might be the case.
Marvel and Activision have long had a history of teaming up, and back in ’05, they struck a deal giving Activision exclusive rights to video games based on the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises, which since have been by far the most successful and active video game franchises for Marvel. The deal was meant to last up through 2017, however, in January of this year that deal was terminated. Why though? Well, that’s up for debate, and the main argument is that Marvel is looking to literally “go big” and start putting out more in depth, interconnected games in a shared Marvel Video Game Universe.
Here is why this worries me and should worry you as fans of video games or comics:
1) Marvel Already Has Its Hands VERY Full
Right now, Marvel and comic books as a whole are in a renaissance. That is for sure. With three multi-billion dollar franchises at current, Fox’s X-Men, Sony’s Spider-Man, and Marvel Studio’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, (not to mention Christopher Nolan’s recently completed and majorly successful Batman Trilogy) its suddenly cool agains to be into comic books. I’m even guilty of this a bit myself, although I will say I was into comic books before I was into the movies. Aside from Marvel movies galore, they also have themselves knee deep in 3 on-going cartoon series on Disney XD (check them out they’re actually pretty fun), two live-action spy shows slated for this coming fall on ABC, a the most expensive Broadway production in history, and not to mention the whole actual comic book part of their business which is busy as ever.
2) Not Every Game Needs To Be Deep, Plot Driven, and Super Complicated
Why is this having their hands so full bad though? I think its simply too much franchising. As much as it is that very franchising that makes me admire and love Marvel so much, I simply do not find video games to be the appropriate platform for that right now. The thing that makes Marvel’s video games so great is the fact that they are simple, fun, and to the point. Games like LEGO Marvel, Marvel vs Capcom, Ultimate Alliance, even most of the Spider-Man games are great stand alone games that while they have pretty decent stories, that isn’t the reason we play them. This leads to my second point though.
3) That Is Just Way Too Much Money To Spend
If Marvel released 2 new video games a year as part of an ongoing continuity, that would be $120 a year for what would likely be 5 hours of cutscene and 40 hours of gameplay each. And unless the stories were just so incredibly engaging, I doubt there would be a whole lot of replay value. Maybe this is just me, but I don’t tend to replay my favorite story-based games to re-experience the story the same way I replay my favorite action-based games pre-experience the action or gameplay type. Whereas with ongoing series in movies, TV, and comic books, for the consumer, they are pretty cheap forms of entertainment.
Plus, there are two types of video game series. Theres the CoDs of the world that release a new rehash title every year, and there’s the Mass Effects that take their time and really work to improve on previous titles before new releases. Since I doubt Marvel would go and make rehashes every year, they will be opting to attempt a hybrid of the two where they pump out new games while still trying to keep things fresh. It could potentially be successful of course, but that is just an extremely expensive process with no guarantee of success and the likelihood that games will be rushed in order to make deadlines (always a huge danger in the video game industry, as we all know).
Feel free to completely disagree, but I simply would hate to see such a currently successful company try to move into yet another consumer market and completely fail. Feel free to share your own thoughts and opinions!
(Source: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-01-02-expired-licences-signal-end-of-production-for-actis-marvel-games)
Keywords: Marvel, Activision