On Nov. 6 2024, Netease Games, in partnership with Marvel, released the third-person shooter game “Marvel Rivals.” Ever since the game’s release, it has taken the gaming and social platforms by storm.
Currently, the player base holds over 1.5 million active players and counting across all platforms. This benefits not only both Netease and Marvel Games in terms of monetary gratification, but fans of both the gaming and comic book genre.
Both forms of media tend to intertwine often considering the successes of the Playstation “Spider-Man” games and the modern-day classic “Batman: Arkham” game series. Avid video game fans can enjoy “Marvel Rivals” in terms of its fun and role-based hero selection. Each hero has their own move set and skills that fit their role (strategist, vanguard and duelist).
Fans of the comics can enjoy seeing their favorite characters in the game including underrated characters such as Magik and Squirrel Girl. On top of that, some of the skins (costumes) players can acquire come from certain comic book issues that the game notes along with the skin’s description. This is used not only for Easter egg reasons for comic fans but also to have players unfamiliar with the comics potentially begin their comic reading journey due to the notation.
The fanfare around this game has rekindled the argument of whether or not audiences have encountered “superhero fatigue.” The initial debate of this idea revolved around comic book/superhero movies particularly around the post-COVID era, in which Marvel began to pump out movies that, more or less, disappointed audiences. DC followed with that with box office flops such as “The Flash” and “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom”.
These films led people to believe that people are simply done engaging with superhero stories and superhero media. Their idea is that because of how poorly these movies were received, critically and financially, that people were sick of seeing superheroes in the media.
Although this side of the argument brings up a valid point of these specific films and their hit-or-miss quality, I believe that it is simply untrue that audiences are tired of superheroes. Audiences are tired of mediocre storytelling which is the fundamental backbone of any franchise and any media.
Disney and Warner Bros., who are the respective owners of Marvel and DC content, must realize that just having money and reinventing the wheel of previous box-office successes is not enough to win audiences.
This is a lesson that these studios must understand and what I believe is one that they are exemplifying most especially DC with their pivot to a mostly full-on reboot of their film franchise that began with the “Creature Commandos” animated show that began in December and the upcoming “Superman” film that releases on July 11.
How “Marvel Rivals” comes into play is that it takes beloved characters from the Marvel Universe and places them all in one big immersive world and lets the player interact with that world via the gameplay, the characters, etc.
“Marvel Rivals” has much more of an advantage over what the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) could do which mostly has to do with the medium of video games itself. What that advantage consists of is that the game is able to tell multiple stories at various times and supply all of these characters and more coming into the game, as Netease promises, every 45 days.
In addition, “Marvel Rivals” has another advantage in terms of aesthetic and world-building. The graphics of the game are stunning, from the character designs to the spacious and colorful maps that have several Easter eggs in them as well as various platforms.
Realistically, the MCU could not compete with those elements of the game simply because of the limitations film has compared to video games and animation.
However, that is not to say that the MCU has completely blanked from audience’s radars, there are still projects that fans are looking forward to such as “Daredevil: Born Again” releasing on March 4 on Disney+ and “Fantastic Four: First Steps” releasing on July 25.