In 2008, Marvel officially kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with the release of "Iron Man." However, before that ever happened, a proposal was made to Disney to create a similar Marvel Game Universe (MGU)—a plan the company ultimately decided to pass on.
On "The Fourth Curtain Podcast," host Alexander Seropian and guest Alex Irvine recalled the process of pitching the ambitious project. The concept had the potential to become the video game equivalent of the MCU but failed to secure backing from Disney executives.
"When I first started working for Marvel Games, we had this idea that there would be a Marvel Game Universe, and it would exist in the same way that the MCU exists," said Irvine, who is now a senior writer at Marvel Games and recently worked on "Marvel Rivals." "And that didn't happen."
Alexander Seropian, a former VP of game development at Disney Interactive Studios, revealed that the MGU was his own initiative, but Disney leadership ultimately wouldn't provide the funding.
"That was my plan when I was at Disney, was, 'Hey, let’s connect these games,'" Seropian said. "This was pre-MCU, but it didn’t get funded."
The concept sounds incredibly exciting, and Irvine, who previously worked at Bungie on the "Halo" alternate reality game "I Love Bees," further elaborated on how the MGU would have functioned.
"It was really frustrating because we had so many cool ideas," he said. "I was just coming out of the ARG space, and I was like, 'How cool would it be if we could do an ARG element?' We could have a place where players could connect all the games, and they could go back and forth between them. We could even bring in comics and original content and tie it all together. But like Alex said, it just didn't get funded. So we just ended up making some games."
Irvine further noted that the concept might have been too complex for Disney executives, which could be why the plan was ultimately scrapped.
"Even then, we were thinking, 'If we're going to build this MGU, how is it different from the comics? How is it different from the movies? How do we make sure that the world-building is coherent?'" Irvine explained. "And I think those questions got so complicated that there were people inside Disney who just didn't want to deal with it."
via： GameFragger.com