Chinese developer Neatease Games has announced Marvel Rivals, a team-based shooter that seems to borrow a lot from Overwatch. Marvel Games head Jay Ong calls it “one of our most ambitious game development projects” and it’s set for a May launch on PC.
Marvel Rivals, like Overwatch, places you and your friends as a team on an arena map, teleports in a rival group and lets you have at it until one side achieves victory. The game will include playable versions of Black Panther, Doctor Strange, Groot, Hulk, Iron Man, Loki, Luna Snow, Magik, Magneto, Mantis, Namor, Peni Parker, Rocket Raccoon, Scarlet Witch, Spider-Man, Storm, Star-Lord and The Punisher, plus possibly more in the future….assuming there is one.
NetEase could not have picked a more precarious time to launch a multiplayer game with a popular superhero brand. Several of them have been introduced in recent history and flopped. And the irony is, the idea to use the Marvel license in this game was likely viewed as a “safe bet.” The decision was made several years ago when Marvel movies made guaranteed money every time.
Grabbing a popular license and wearing its skin is one of the oldest video game tricks in the book, going back to the age of Atari. But it’s rarely ever the magic bullet business-types seem to think it is. Note how Helldivers II has no pre-existing, already popular characters in it, and it’s a huge hit, raking in the kind of cash Suicide Squad: Let’s Assassinate The Justice League A Lot could only dream of. The most important element is if the game is GOOD.
Is Marvel Rivals good? No one knows yet. But if it’s a free-to-play game, that usually means it’ll be walling off a lot of content and will constantly beg you to buy things, which diminishes the enjoyment you can get out of it. There’s also the fact that NetEase doesn’t have the best track record with quality games so far.
Odds are when Marvel Rivals launches in May, that’ll be the last you hear of it. Although there could possibly be a second news item in a year about the game shutting down.
