After a long period of a drought where we were mostly only given low-quality, movie-tie-in slop, we seem to finally be entering a renaissance of proper Marvel video games. Since 2018 saw the official start of Insomniac’s Spider-Man series, a slew of released and upcoming Marvel projects of different scales have hit the scene. The Nintendo-published followup to the Ultimate Alliance series came to Switch in 2019. 2020 birthed Marvel’s Avengers, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Iron Man VR. And between 2021 and 2024, Guardians of the Galaxy, Midnight Suns, Marvel Snap, and Marvel Rivals each got some time in the spotlight. Aside from the notable failure of Marvel’s Avengers and the financial underperformance of Square Enix’s Guardians of the Galaxy (despite its positive reception), the releases have been more hit than miss. The success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films was definitely a huge contributor to the success of some of these games, considering how much legwork it did to bring the more obscure characters into the mainstream zeitgeist. Say what you will about the MCU’s current state, but its accomplishments—specifically up until 2019’s Avengers: Endgame—are nothing to scoff at. For better and for worse, the wide-reaching success of these films changed the landscape of the film industry. While standards have steadily dropped since then—likely due in part to an oversaturation of half-baked projects with no clear direction—the Infinity Saga in particular will always stand out as an amazing achievement that took over a decade of careful planning and competent execution. This makes it all the stranger that Marvel as a company has not seen the value in applying this level of planning and dedication to the video game space. Why have we not seen a Marvel Interactive Universe, or something similar? Would this theoretical MIU even be a viable option?
A very noticeable thing about all of these games is that each one is in its own little walled garden within the Marvel multiverse. The majority of these games are definitively set in separate universes from each other. While Yuri Lowenthal performs as Spider-Man in both Insomniac’s games and Marvel’s Midnight Suns, these are different takes on the character with different narrative histories. Likewise, the individuals that make up the Avengers lineup in Marvel’s Avengers are more than likely completely unrelated to the as-of-now unseen Avengers who own the Avengers Tower in Marvel’s Spider-Man. The only possible connection I can find between any of these games are some unilateral, vague references to the events of Insomniac’s Spider-Man in Camouflaj’s Iron Man VR, along with some similarity in the logos for Oscorp and AIM. But this is far from a concrete connection, and who knows whether Tony Stark would bear any resemblance to Josh Keaton’s take on the character should Insomniac ever incorporate him into one of their games. The point is that there is currently no structure or planning in place to facilitate a shared video game universe, if it could even be done at all. There are a number of video game-specific challenges that could prevent it from ever materializing.
Video Games are Not Films
The process of creating video games is very, very different from making a film or TV show. There is some overlap, for sure, but games come with a whole host of complications on top of the regular storytelling challenges like writing scripts and casting and working with actors. The accomplishments of the MCU are impressive, considering the logistics and planning needed to pull it off. In a comic book, the only requirements to create a character crossover event are the artists and writers who can render them on a page. For a film, you have to have actors sign multi-movie contracts and schedule shoots around their availability, sometimes years in advance. Each actor may also come with their own creative input, contractual stipulations, or image management concerns that need to be negotiated. You need coordinated costume and set design that keeps visual continuity in check across multiple directors and production teams. Visual effects must be carefully planned and budgeted to maintain consistency in how a character's powers look and behave from one movie to the next. Some characters even have musical leitmotifs tied to them. Studio politics, franchise management, and release windows all factor into the equation. A shared video game universe aiming for AAA quality would face all of those same challenges—narrative cohesion, performance continuity, visual consistency—on top of the already present difficulties of video game production, including complex technical pipelines, engine limitations, interactivity design, and the coordination of multiple development studios.
Video games are also fundamentally different in their priorities than other visual media. In a game, the interactivity is the primary point; making the game fun to play is generally and rightfully the main focus. For most developers, all other considerations come second, including the narrative. This alone makes it difficult to tell cohesive, overarching stories with meaningful crossovers. Movies are not simple to make by any means, but they are more straightforward in comparison to games. While movies usually have a finished script before anyone ever steps in front of a camera, video game stories may see constant changes and adjustments as the gameplay takes shape, and the two elements inform and evolve each other over the course of the process; story elements might be introduced to justify or facilitate a fun gameplay mechanic, and gameplay or level design might be altered to accommodate story beats that need to be hit. As a whole, the game development process is more fluid and out-of-order than the slightly more straightforward process of making a movie. The initial pitch that started a project may evolve into something entirely different if the new direction facilitates a better overall game. This would probably make it very difficult to maintain a consistent overarching narrative across games if multiple studios were working on separate but connected projects simultaneously.
Video games, in general, also take much more time to develop from start to finish than a movie. To get a reasonable release schedule going, Marvel would inevitably need to tap multiple studios simultaneously to develop games within the shared universe. One studio alone couldn’t handle the output of a full universe. More feasibly, each studio would likely focus on one or two specific characters or branches of the Marvel universe. We kind of already see that, but not in the inter-connected way I’m talking about. The amount of coordination between these studios—if they were all trying to adhere to an overarching plan—would be logistically complex and would risk stifling creativity if one studio wanted to do something that conflicted with what another studio was doing.
The legal and licensing side of things also puts a damper on the fun. While all of the mainline MCU movies are creatively controlled and owned by one company (in general, at least. There are some complications and cross-studio deals, but I won’t get into those right now), video game rights are sold piecemeal to different publishers who have very little incentive to cooperate with each other on huge projects like this. Right now, there is an Iron Man game in development at Electronic Arts, a World War II-set Captain America/Black Panther game under Skydance Media, a Bethesda-backed Blade game, and a Wolverine game being made by Sony-owned Insomniac. Each of the publishers handling these games has little-to-no incentive to potentially compromise their autonomy and creative control by agreeing to play nice and coordinate with other competing studios. I don’t see how it could work without a figurehead filling a Kevin Feige-like role, coming up with a long-term plan and negotiating cooperative deals with several studios all at once. As it stands now, it’s more like the earlier days of Marvel movies, with different companies snatching up the rights to different characters and focusing on their own little disparate universes. The rights issues are not as egregious as they were back then; as far as I know, the rights that publishers purchase to use a character in a video game are not exclusive. For instance, Iron Man and Spider-Man can still appear in crossover games like Marvel Rivals while also appearing in solo games from other publishers. But still, starting a video game universe would require starting from scratch or picking just one of the existing universes to build off of. The rest would likely be pushed to the side and kept as their own multiversal pockets since there is no clean method or incentive to combine them.
If one already established universe were to branch out and become the “de facto MIU,” I would probably peg Insomniac’s world as the way to go, given the popularity and quality of the Spider-Man games and the groundwork that’s already been laid; their version of New York is already chock-full of landmarks related to other characters, including the aforementioned Avengers Tower, the Sanctum Sanctorum, and the Baxter Building. If Insomniac wanted to and was given the opportunity to take up such a role, they could act as the stewards of the game universe, consulting with other studios as they develop spin-offs based around Doctor Strange, Fantastic Four, or others. The big, big hurdle there is the PlayStation exclusivity. I doubt Marvel would want to limit such an ambitious undertaking to one platform, and Sony would never let go of such a lucrative golden goose without a fight. Despite the narrative potential, capitalism once again kicks our prospects at fun in the balls.
The Problem of Game Feel
The other big issue with crossing over characters between games by different developers is that games aren’t just visual—you can feel them, in a manner of speaking. The films in the MCU work hard to maintain a consistent general style and tone. There is definitely leeway in the specific genre and tone of each individual project, but all of the films need to at least feel like they fit within the same world and don’t appear so drastically different that the character crossovers feel out of place. This is a challenge in a strictly visual medium, and it’s exponentially harder in an interactive setting. It’s one thing for Spider-Man to look and act like himself in a crossover film. It’s another thing entirely for him to play like himself in a crossover game. Not only does the character need to feel like the same individual in their presentation and performance, but the authenticity could be compromised if you take control of them and the gameplay feels foreign or unfamiliar.
There are ways around that, of course. For example, you could limit crossovers to strictly narrative events. Insomniac’s upcoming Wolverine is one of the few Marvel games that definitively shares a universe with an existing game (it’s set in the same universe as their previous Spider-Man games), and no one expects Spider-Man to be a playable character, if he even appears or is directly referenced at all. I’d say that’s definitely the right approach for standalone titles—keep each branch of the shared universe unique and lean into realizing the potential of each character’s special traits and supporting cast. If other game-headlining characters appear, it would be best to keep them contained as NPCs.
The big problem is that if they did want these hypothetical connected games to culminate in some big, Avengers-level crossover events that brings all of the characters together in a playable format, it would be very, very difficult to get them all to play like they do in their solo game series. Different developers rely on different tools, engines, and coding styles. Mechanics are holistically designed around what makes sense in the context of this character and this world. Faithfully combining the established gameplay of each hero into one game would be an insurmountable challenge, in my view.
On top of mechanical inconsistency, there's also the issue of tonal mismatch and moral dissonance. Take Spider-Man, for instance: his entire character revolves around saving lives, pulling punches, and going out of his way not to kill. He spares even his most dangerous enemies because he does not see himself as having the authority of a judge, jury, and executioner. Dropping him into a game alongside heroes like Black Widow, Winter Soldier, or the Punisher who casually mow down human enemies with guns, creates an uncomfortable disconnect. It might technically work in gameplay, but narratively and philosophically, it undermines the integrity of who Spider-Man is. This kind of ludonarrative dissonance is easier to overlook when designing ensemble games—especially for ones where heroes mostly fight each other and "death" is highly gamified and abstracted—but it becomes glaring for players who know and care about these characters when done in the context of an overarching narrative. It might seem pedantic, but this actually did stick out to me when Spider-Man was added to Marvel's Avengers.
The only viable alternative to wholesale translation that I can see would be some level of homogenization. You’d have to re-establish a baseline gameplay system and build each character’s kit to fit within those parameters. We’ve seen this done many times: Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Marvel Rivals, Marvel’s Avengers, and Marvel vs. Capcom all feature a variety of characters whose movesets are built around a shared mechanical framework.
The key difference from what I’m proposing is that none of these crossovers exist as the culmination of a shared universe—where the same incarnations of characters from solo titles meet in a single, unified game. These existing games are bespoke universes with brand new versions of their respective characters. The approach that would need to be taken for a shared-universe culmination would likely be the same kind of deal as Super Smash Bros.: Yes, you can play as Mario, Samus, Link, Sonic, etc., but none of them play exactly like they do in their source games. Their movesets reference and adapt aspects of their original mechanics, but they’re not 1:1 recreations.
There’s an inevitable level of abstraction and simplification required when combining characters with vastly different play styles and power scales. In addition to the problems with replicating game feel, you simply can’t fully realize any one character’s potential in the context of an ensemble cast—there’s too much to balance, and that leads to necessary compromise. If a character like Captain Marvel ever got her own game, its mechanics and challenge would naturally be scaled to her cosmic power level. But it would feel inauthentic if she went from blowing up spaceships in her solo game to getting smacked around by the same street-level goons that Spider-Man fights in a crossover. (Which is already a problem. Looking at you, Midnight Suns. Maybe just leave Captain Marvel out of it for now. She's got too many of the same problems that make Superman difficult to adapt.)
This is a broader technical hurdle that will probably always prevent a true, balanced crossover game that seeks to fully and faithfully replicate character movesets in one game from taking shape. It’d be too chaotic and imbalanced for the simple fact that the original games were specifically tailored for different goals and purposes, and there is just no room for all of the unique (and often conflicting) mechanics to share space in one game. The only example I can think of that’s ever even attempted such a thing is the fan-made web game Super Mario Crossover, which had faithful recreations of different retro video game heroes like Link, Simon Belmont, and Mega Man playing exactly how you would expect across levels from the original Super Mario Bros. That alone was a pretty amazing accomplishment, but it was basically just a fun experiment, not a full game. And it all becomes exponentially more complex when you’re dealing with modern, AAA-quality mechanics and design, not 2D games from the 80's and early 90's.
Homogenization is probably the only viable option for making a crossover function mechanically—but it inherently dulls the impact of a true cumulative crossover, in my opinion. Take Insomniac’s version of Miles Morales, for example. If he were to appear in a large-scale Avengers-style event game, it’s highly unlikely that his full moveset and traversal mechanics would carry over intact. The nuanced web-swinging physics that define his gameplay experience wouldn’t translate well to an environment designed to also accommodate characters like Thor, Captain America, or Doctor Strange, who traverse the world in completely different ways. Likewise, the hit-streak-based melee combat that makes Miles feel fluid and responsive might clash with playstyles of other characters built around ranged attacks or area-of-effect magic. Sure, some of his most iconic moves could be adapted, but it would still feel like a stripped-down version of the character—a surface-level imitation rather than a true continuation of his established gameplay identity. He's going to feel different to play as than he would in his home series. Unfortunately, I just don't see any way around that. You're inevitably going to lose at least a little bit of what makes each character special when they are all forced to fit into the same mechanical framework.
Will It Happen? Idk, but probs not, tbh
I think the idea of a shared Marvel Interactive Universe has potential. The optimal window may already have passed, especially if the MCU continues along its current path of decline. But as long as someone smart and dedicated is around to steward the development of this theoretical gaming universe and everyone involved is willing to make reasonable compromises, it could still be a viable option. As long as the games are good, it’s all likely a moot point anyway; in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter if these pretend events are officially connected to those pretend events. Would the amount of work required to pull it off even be worth the payoff? Would it even be fun? Or would it just be creatively suffocating to build a Marvel game universe governed by a single vision? I don’t know, and I don't currently see any indication that it will happen any time soon. But the potential is there, waiting to be properly tapped into.
James Gunn, that crazy bastard in the DC offices across the street, is actually trying to pull off something similar—he has made on-the-record statements that upcoming video games will be canon entries in his new DC Universe, right alongside the films and shows. That means the same characters, the same actors, and the same continuity across mediums. It’s an ambitious (some might say insane) idea, and while I’m skeptical it’ll pan out smoothly, it at least shows a willingness to treat games as something more than merchandising tie-ins. Marvel, on the other hand, seems content to let its games exist in isolated bubbles—high-quality ones, in some cases, but still bubbles. It’s ironic, considering how successful the MCU was in pioneering the idea of cinematic continuity, that they haven’t even attempted something similar in interactive media. Regardless of what happens, it will at least be very interesting to see how that plays out for DC. If it works, it might even prompt Marvel to take a similar risk. But for now, it seems that the MIU is MIA.