I wonder if he knows about US....

[Marine X]

I wonder if he knows we're here, and available? He does post to PC Gamer after all.

 

More than a decade after the MCU conquered cinema, why haven't superheroes taken over games? | PC Gamer

[Snarky]

He may play on Homecoming.

 

Certainly, any knowledge of US is not going to change the question ROFLMAO

[Scarlet Shocker]

Interesting article but he also failed to mention the successor projects - and Ship of Heroes is about to launch on Steam so it's probably the most viable of those.

 

I believe that one of the strengths of our beloved game is that it has no pre-existing Lore for fans to measure it against - but both Marvel and DC have decades of lore that constrains their games. If you play Batman or Iron Man you can only do the things that Batman or Iron Man do, but in City of Heroes you can do what YOU want to do, making it a much more powerful experience. That's also true of Champions Online but that game's fault is that it suffers from terminal developer apathy - when they could have cashed in at the decline of CoH and attracted the very unhappy player base into their universe. That they failed to do so rests entirely on the game's publishers and management.

[Techwright]

I'd always assumed that a main reason more games like CoH and Champions didn't appear in the wake of the MCU's creation was because the MCU is deemed as a great experiment.  No one else had ever interlinked various projects in similar fashion, and at least for the first 5 years, it was often seen as a euphoria that would quickly die and be forgotten.  Why then sink 7 years and tens of millions of dollars into developing something that would be obsolete upon launch?

 

We're now seeing with MCU phase 4 and 5 such a problem.  Whether it is due to bad design/handling or just audience fatigue, there's a chink in the armor, and that's going to likely keep game houses hesitant at development.

 

I really think if the comic phenomena is going to continue in both movies and TV/internet shows, eventually convincing games to take a chance, someone is going to have to branch out into quality material beyond Marvel and DC.  It's much riskier, but the payout might be a stable genre for the future as there are more foundations for it.  I've said for a while one place to start might be Turok; Dinosaur Hunter, an old Gold Key comic (if I recall correctly) that I first encountered when Valiant comics rebooted it in the 1990s.  It became a popular video game, and memory of it might still be around.  Besides, it can tap into both the comics and the dinosaur/kaiju movies, like the Jurassic Park/World phenomena. 

[SteelRat70]

I do think there is some superhero fatigue in play.  I remember reading a quote from Steven Spielberg that he expected superhero obsession in film and TV to go the same way that westerns did in the 60s and I believe we're starting to see that now, largely (imo) due to the political messages that are regularly the central focus of superhero media, especially coming from Disney.

Marvel has had multiple opportunities to use its IP in the video game space and each one has been an abject failure, and now that fatigue with the genre has begun to set in, any push by either of the big two to make a big splash in that space would likely be too little too late.

[Xiddo]

15 minutes ago, SteelRat70 said:

 I believe we're starting to see that now, largely (imo) due to the political messages that are regularly the central focus of superhero media, especially coming from Disney.

 

Comics and superhero media have always had political messages. It isn't new and it isn't just Disney.

 

 

 

17 hours ago, Marine X said:

I wonder if he knows we're here, and available? He does post to PC Gamer after all.

 

More than a decade after the MCU conquered cinema, why haven't superheroes taken over games? | PC Gamer

 

Sadly he's not on Twitter anymore so can't send him the link 😢 

[Scarlet Shocker]

There is a periodic change in fashion - Westerns in the 50s & 60s, Spies & secret Agents in the 60s & 70s and action movies & horror in the 80s & 90s are good examples. Marvel-derived content has spawned roughly 40 movies this century alone let alone the stuff DC and other studios have put out - perhaps we will see a change - perhaps we'll notice Marvel wake up and stop making the lazy crap it has since the terminus of the Avengers arc.

 

It's a fair point that we people want and express a desire for change in movies as in other consumable habits.

 

But I suspect the real reason that nobody else made a viable superhero game is they all want to make blockbusters. City of Heroes when live was highly viable, for an indy studio with limited dev team and limited budget and would have made a small team a big profit. But it wasn't bringing in enough to satisfy a huge (and greedy) corporation. That's the same for The Secret World and Champions Online - they tick over and make a bit of profit, but they don't really cover their development costs or warrant expansion - so they lie fallow and stagnant. I'd even level the same at DCUO which also withers on the vine.

 

The reason we don't see a good superhero game is as much about economics as it is about quality of source material. Marvel/Disney wanted to bring out blockbusters relying on their IPs to bring in the punters and milking it for short term gains.

 

I wonder if CoH's competitiors stayed alive in part because they looked at the fan reaction and PR disaster closure of CoH turned out to be for its parent company and thought "fuck that, so long as our games make money let's not anger our own fans."

[InvaderStych]

1 hour ago, Xiddo said:

Comics and superhero media have always had political messages. It isn't new and it isn't just Disney.

 

This. So. Much. This.

 

Just because MarvelMouse (and its imitators) hires lazy writers, producers, and directors who understand neither subtext nor the adage "Don't talk about it, show it" doesn't mean that a "message" is anything new in Sci-Fi or Fantasy fiction.

 

Where's that "It Always Has Been" meme again? 🤣

[Luminara]

17 hours ago, Techwright said:

We're now seeing with MCU phase 4 and 5 such a problem.  Whether it is due to bad design/handling or just audience fatigue, there's a chink in the armor,

 

No Squirrel Girl.  That's the problem.

[SteelRat70]

2 hours ago, Xiddo said:

Comics and superhero media have always had political messages. It isn't new and it isn't just Disney.

Up to a point that's true.  It's far more gratuitous since Disneys take over than before it and Disney do it at every opportunity regardless of whether it has any relevance to the story or not.

[SteelRat70]

51 minutes ago, InvaderStych said:

 

Just because MarvelMouse (and its imitators) hires lazy writers, producers, and directors who understand neither subtext nor the adage "Don't talk about it, show it" doesn't mean that a "message" is anything new in Sci-Fi or Fantasy fiction.

of course it's nothing new, it's just never been this much of an up to 11, stomach churning onslaught as it is now.

[Hedgefund]

Just a reminder, this is a rogue, dare I say, illegitimate server.  Probably not something a professional journalist wants to admit to publicly.

[Astralock]

3 hours ago, SteelRat70 said:

I do think there is some superhero fatigue in play.  I remember reading a quote from Steven Spielberg that he expected superhero obsession in film and TV to go the same way that westerns did in the 60s and I believe we're starting to see that now, largely (imo) due to the political messages that are regularly the central focus of superhero media, especially coming from Disney.

Marvel has had multiple opportunities to use its IP in the video game space and each one has been an abject failure, and now that fatigue with the genre has begun to set in, any push by either of the big two to make a big splash in that space would likely be too little too late.

 

I agree with the former point, but disagree with the latter.  The two Marvel's Spider-Man video games by Sony are fantastic, as is Marvel's Midnight Suns by Firaxis.

[ZemX]

29 minutes ago, SteelRat70 said:

Up to a point that's true.  It's far more gratuitous since Disneys take over than before it and Disney do it at every opportunity regardless of whether it has any relevance to the story or not.

 

Do what?

[Scarlet Shocker]

37 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

No Squirrel Girl.  That's the problem.

That's because there's no Dr Doom in the MCU yet.

[Crysis]

20 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

Interesting article but he also failed to mention the successor projects - and Ship of Heroes is about to launch on Steam so it's probably the most viable of those.

 

I believe that one of the strengths of our beloved game is that it has no pre-existing Lore for fans to measure it against - but both Marvel and DC have decades of lore that constrains their games. If you play Batman or Iron Man you can only do the things that Batman or Iron Man do, but in City of Heroes you can do what YOU want to do, making it a much more powerful experience. That's also true of Champions Online but that game's fault is that it suffers from terminal developer apathy - when they could have cashed in at the decline of CoH and attracted the very unhappy player base into their universe. That they failed to do so rests entirely on the game's publishers and management.

I’ve no formal knowledge but often wondered if part of CO’s “apathy” was in fact legal challenges trying to ensure they didn’t exactly clone COH and/or run afoul of Marvel/DC litigation threats?

 

The reason many startups are so successful at innovation is that they have almost nothing to lose and everything to win.  But the second startup often faces challenges because the founder -now- has something to lose…..mainly the wealth created by their first success.  So they don’t swing for the fences quite as hard and often fail to achieve successive wins due to lack of courage to risk it all like they did the first time.

 

Just conjecture…..but many of the players were the same between COH and CO yes?

[Mr. Vee]

I guess i'm the only one who doesn't want them ruining squirrel girl with an mcu version.

 

this article made me want to give midnight suns another chance but the first hour or so i played over its free weekend really annoyed the crap out of me. i was already bored by the repetitive flashy attacks in the tutorial and couldn't imagine playing a full campaign of that. but it did seem like there was quality to it, unlike gotham knights which felt like a job from the get-go.

[Scarlet Shocker]

18 minutes ago, Crysis said:

Just conjecture…..but many of the players were the same between COH and CO yes?

 

That would be surprising if it were otherwise.

 

Superheroes. Almost everyone who plays this game has some kind of interest in them (or at the very least has a friend who is very interested.) Of course they are going to check out the competition for a number of reasons; FOMO, curiosity, checking out functionality that isn't available in the current game they play etc etc - a myriad reasons.

 

When a new game launches that is pissing in a relatively small pool, it has to do MUCH better to be disruptive - it has to give people who play Game A a reason to dump existing relationships, characters they are bonded with, mechanics they understand and gameplay they enjoy - and persuade them to jump ship. Otherwise that new game is going to be a momentary curiosity. Its figures will spike at launch and then things will level out. But in order to do better than the old competition it has to play a blinder!

 

 

[Crysis]

1 minute ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

That would be surprising if it were otherwise.

 

Superheroes. Almost everyone who plays this game has some kind of interest in them (or at the very least has a friend who is very interested.) Of course they are going to check out the competition for a number of reasons; FOMO, curiosity, checking out functionality that isn't available in the current game they play etc etc - a myriad reasons.

 

When a new game launches that is pissing in a relatively small pool, it has to do MUCH better to be disruptive - it has to give people who play Game A a reason to dump existing relationships, characters they are bonded with, mechanics they understand and gameplay they enjoy - and persuade them to jump ship. Otherwise that new game is going to be a momentary curiosity. Its figures will spike at launch and then things will level out. But in order to do better than the old competition it has to play a blinder!

 

 

Sorry but by “players” I meant the development teams behind both COH and CO were the same.  Im referring to Cryptic Studios.

 

1) Develop and launch COH at a time when the entire MMO landscape was all fantasy based except for some scifi one-offs.

 

2) Signed on with Microsoft to take on a Marvel version of their game.  That got scrapped.

 

3) Go out on their own to build CO.  But since it was many of same team at Cryptic behind all three efforts, they likely had non-competed, non-solicitation and confidentiality clauses from prior efforts.  Their best ideas were already owned assets by other parties by this time.  Thus CO got watered down due to legal constraints.

 

I might be wrong but always felt that played a role in CO’s limitations.  The Cryptic dev team was limited and their new game reflected that.

[Snarky]

The underlying theme to me that Supers are not popular or enduring as the reason for no big houses running a MMORPG Super game seems iffy to me.

 

Yet there is not one... sooooo

 

But let's also examine the fact that almost all mmorpgs shrivel and die after a year.  WoW reinvents itself every couple years and everyone loves hates it but are soooo invested they just keep playing.  No one else is that dug in.

[Scarlet Shocker]

23 minutes ago, Crysis said:

Sorry but by “players” I meant the development teams behind both COH and CO were the same.  Im referring to Cryptic Studios.

 

1) Develop and launch COH at a time when the entire MMO landscape was all fantasy based except for some scifi one-offs.

 

2) Signed on with Microsoft to take on a Marvel version of their game.  That got scrapped.

 

3) Go out on their own to build CO.  But since it was many of same team at Cryptic behind all three efforts, they likely had non-competed, non-solicitation and confidentiality clauses from prior efforts.  Their best ideas were already owned assets by other parties by this time.  Thus CO got watered down due to legal constraints.

 

I might be wrong but always felt that played a role in CO’s limitations.  The Cryptic dev team was limited and their new game reflected that.

 

I seem to remember things differently so there's a mismatch in our recollections.

 

What I remember is that Cryptic agreed to develop a Marvel based MMO, but because of conflict of interest, as they already developed CoH they had to make a decision to either kill of CoH, stop developing the new game, or quit both. NCSoft took over the Dev team (sans Jack) to remove said conflict - then Marvel pulled out anyhow and so Cryptic had to buy the rights to a tabletop MMO because they felt they needed some kind of lore to go with the game they'd got half produced.

 

That was great for CoH in the shorter term - but in the longer term as we saw there was no independent developer to keep the City alive when NCSoft decided to kill it.

 

But it meant that quickly after the Cryptic/Marvel announcement the dev teams were split so it was not an issue by then. All the dev team that counted moved with CoH.

 

I do remember Melissa saying they hoped CO would be a success because there was space in the ecosphere for a 2nd Super MMO (the diablo based Marvel game wasn't yet out) and they had many friends on the CO team so they wanted them to do well.

[Crysis]

24 minutes ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

I seem to remember things differently so there's a mismatch in our recollections.

 

What I remember is that Cryptic agreed to develop a Marvel based MMO, but because of conflict of interest, as they already developed CoH they had to make a decision to either kill of CoH, stop developing the new game, or quit both. NCSoft took over the Dev team (sans Jack) to remove said conflict - then Marvel pulled out anyhow and so Cryptic had to buy the rights to a tabletop MMO because they felt they needed some kind of lore to go with the game they'd got half produced.

 

That was great for CoH in the shorter term - but in the longer term as we saw there was no independent developer to keep the City alive when NCSoft decided to kill it.

 

But it meant that quickly after the Cryptic/Marvel announcement the dev teams were split so it was not an issue by then. All the dev team that counted moved with CoH.

 

I do remember Melissa saying they hoped CO would be a success because there was space in the ecosphere for a 2nd Super MMO (the diablo based Marvel game wasn't yet out) and they had many friends on the CO team so they wanted them to do well.

 

You probably have the right of it.  But I just saw the work effort produced by Cryptic with ST Online and thought “Hmmm, y’all were -capable- of much more with CO than you actually produced,” and always wondered if there were some restrictions holding back the CO design and dev teams because of their prior work with/exposure to IP now owned by others (NCSoft, Microsoft for the ill-fated MU Xbox game, etc).  

 

There’s a lot of IP that never gets fully exploited in the marketplace but not for lack of interest, more for lack of legal right to exploit it.

[Captain Fabulous]

Make a good superhero game and we'll play it. The problem is they're not being made. The PS Spider-Man games are OK but not great. Marvel Heroes was the last big RPG/MMO-style game that was really good. Suicide Squad looks awful, Midnight Suns looks about as exciting as watching paint dry. I won't touch anything Arkham because it's been done to death. Wonder Woman was announced over a year ago and we haven't heard a peep about it since. 🤷‍♀️

[Crysis]

41 minutes ago, Snarky said:

The underlying theme to me that Supers are not popular or enduring as the reason for no big houses running a MMORPG Super game seems iffy to me.

 

Yet there is not one... sooooo

 

But let's also examine the fact that almost all mmorpgs shrivel and die after a year.  WoW reinvents itself every couple years and everyone loves hates it but are soooo invested they just keep playing.  No one else is that dug in.

 

There was a time when I believed that state of the art really prevented superhero movies from being a “thing” since all the sfx would look campy.  MCU and others have proven we have the ability now to pretty much put anything on the screen we would like to see.  So that’s no longer a limitation in film or in games.  

 

So if the capabilities are all there to do it, but nobody does it, has to be some product marketing guru running around killing superhero games with tons of market demographics stating that the genre just won’t make money.  It’s the only obvious reason.

 

For me, I’ve come to the realization that MMO’s in general have “moved on” from PC gaming to consoles and, perhaps even moreso, to mobile gaming devices.  Free-to-play was a reaction to micro-transactions and those were all pushed by explosive growth in mobile gaming.  So, we are re-living “the good old days” simply because there are no other options.

[Snarky]

2 minutes ago, Crysis said:

 

There was a time when I believed that state of the art really prevented superhero movies from being a “thing” since all the sfx would look campy.  MCU and others have proven we have the ability now to pretty much put anything on the screen we would like to see.  So that’s no longer a limitation in film or in games.  

 

So if the capabilities are all there to do it, but nobody does it, has to be some product marketing guru running around killing superhero games with tons of market demographics stating that the genre just won’t make money.  It’s the only obvious reason.

 

For me, I’ve come to the realization that MMO’s in general have “moved on” from PC gaming to consoles and, perhaps even moreso, to mobile gaming devices.  Free-to-play was a reaction to micro-transactions and those were all pushed by explosive growth in mobile gaming.  So, we are re-living “the good old days” simply because there are no other options.

i would guess the only possible change is if we get some type of bio feedback "player one" mmorpgs that require more than a phone can do and offer more immersion.  then the gaming world will spin again.