14 DAY TRIAL // Despite having a past littered with movie tie-ins, it seems that video game publisher SEGA does not feature prominently in the future plans of Marvel, the comic book company that is now owned by Disney.
T.Q. Jefferson, who is the vice president of games production at Marvel, has stated, “There are no current plans for additional Marvel games to be published by Sega.”
The executive has not said whether the current lack of titles is linked to the quality of previous offerings from SEGA or whether Marvel is simply trying to see what other companies can do with its very popular characters.
Jefferson believes that most of the movie tie-ins video games fail in the marketplace and critically because they lack the resources and the development time needed to create compelling narratives and to offer something more than simply a retelling of the filmed events.
He added, “The former is easy to understand – less development time means less time to design, produce and polish the game, resulting in a poor or lesser-quality experience. The latter is a little more subtle, but I can sum it up thusly:
“If a development team were to follow a film’s plot line to the letter, then you would have a two-hour experience with a bunch of thugs and one boss fight. That’s simply not how we define ‘movie licensed console game,’ now or ever.”
Marvel understands that more content is needed to make movie-based games interesting, and a test of the new concept will be the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man, which is being developed by Beenox and will be published by Activision Blizzard.
The game will be launched at the same time as the reboot of the movie series, during the summer, and will allow players to face off against The Rhino, one of the most recognizable villains of the Spider-Man universe.
Marvel also has plans for an MMO based upon its extensive character catalog.