Marvel Comics MMO in the works again

[jokerjester]

check out this link.

It's good to hear that Marvel comics is planning to restart it's MMORPG project just like what DC comics is currently doing with DC Universe Online....

This is a great news for us comic book and MMORPG fans!

... i really need to play something other than Atlantica Online (which is btw still a great game for me lol but i wish it had superheroes on it)

Updates:

Late on the evening of the 16th of March, the news broke across the web that the comic book giant was pairing up with little-known MMO company Gazillion Entertainment that has been operating since 2005, with the following mission statement:

Our team of world-class creative talent is comprised of leaders from the videogame, entertainment and technology industries who are focused on developing and supporting a new generation of superior quality, massively entertaining online properties.

The reports that have surfaced thus far have the company set to publish a number of online titles starting with a kid-oriented game called Super Hero Squad to deliver sometime in 2010 as well as a second incarnation of Marvel Universe currently in developent but without a projected release date.

This announcement comes just over a year after official confirmation that the Cryptic Studios / Microsoft / Marvel project Marvel Universe Online had been cancelled, ostensibly because World of Warcraft was the only MMO to have obtained the numbers that Microsoft was looking for. The MUO debacle, as we know now, resulted in Cryptic Studios’ development of Champions Online.

Also of interest here are reports that Gazillion Entertainment, which has been in operation since 2005, counts well-known MMO development studio NetDevil as one of its five current studios.


NetDevil, for those who might not be aware, is the company behind such upcoming (and hotly anticipated) MMO titles as LEGO Universe and the sci-fi space flight MMO Jumpgate Evolution an pre-existing titles Jumpgate (classic) and the now defunct post-apocalyptic car based MMO Auto Assault.

As mentioned above, the company is currently made up of five studios:

* Netdevil: As outlined earlier, a proven MMO company with two hotly anticipated titles in the works with LEGO Universe and Jumpgate Evolution.
* The Amazing Society: This is the studio working on the current Super Hero Squad MMO. Its focus, according to the company, is as a “Casual MMO development studio”/
* Gargantuan: Ironically the baby of the company, Gargantuan was founded in “early 2009” and is the studio that is developing the Marvel Universe MMO
* Slipgate Ironworks: Slipgate is said to be “led by a team of seasoned game industry professionals” and is working on an unannounced original IP game
* Smartycard: This is the company’s learn / earn / play company geared toward families. Their products aren’t so much MMOs, but are described as “Much like a virtual arcade, parents purchase points and kids unlock them as they complete a series of educational games, quizzes and lessons. Created by industry leaders in family entertainment, educational content and toys...”

There are some who would question the first use of the mighty Marvel franchise being a game not only marketed at kids, but based on a not-yet-debuted cartoon series as an odd way to go given the support and interest that had been built up around the first Mavel MMO title, but fans should rest assured that Gazillion has the option to create online games based on any of the vast number of Marvel universe stories and characters.

As of today, the new Gazillion Entertainment website it up and running, so if you're the kind of person who wants to know what careers are available, who the company's investors are or any other tidbit about the company as a whole, you can check it out at Gazillion Entertainment.

[jokerjester]

Updates:

GDC09: Joystiq interviews Gazillion VP about Marvel MMOs, Lego Universe and where the publisher came from

Gazillion. Up until a couple weeks ago, the word was representative of numerical hyperbole, and now it represents a publisher with massive venture capital backing and the MMO rights to major IPs like Marvel and Lego. We had a chance to interview the company's VP of Marketing Paul Baldwin -- with a fire drill intermission -- during GamesBeat 2009 last week. We asked him pretty much anything we could think of ... you know, considering we knew almost nothing about this new publisher.

Joystiq: We're here with Paul Baldwin, who is the vice president of marketing at the "newly founded" Gazillion Entertainment? What's the deal there?

Baldwin: Newly announced. The company was in stealth mode since 2005, so we've been around for a while, but we are "newly announced."

You guys just appeared on the scene and got the Marvel license. I can tell you, we spent hours the day we first heard of the company, just calling up several journos and PR asking, "Who are these guys?" So, who are you guys?

Good question, I have to first say that I was amazed myself that we were able to keep the company quiet since 2005, additionally when we acquired NetDevil in July of '08 and obviously we were very excited to get Jumpgate and of course Lego Universe, then we also acquired a company in Seattle, and we've been slowly building up the Marvel Universe studio, Gargantuan, in San Mateo, and throughout this period we were able to keep it quiet, which, once again, really surprised all of us. As I mentioned, the company started in 2005. At that point, we had kind of modest goals, frankly. We had an original IP, which is going to be a big client, high production quality -- World of Warcraft-like production quality -- coming out. That was the first product we had actually on tap.


Super Hero Squad is the name of the first Marvel game, and then there's Lego Universe. Neither of those are really adult games, so where are the games like World of Warcraft and Everquest?

Good question. We actually think that what makes us unique is that we're going for the mass market. Much like a Pixar film not only resonates with a six-year-old kid, but a 39 year-old guy like myself the whole way through. Much like Zelda works with eight-year-old kids and 35 year-old hardcore gamers in terms of the depth of gameplay. We want games that are easy to play, but have the depth of some of those IPs I mentioned in terms of Pixar and Nintendo products. We do, in fact, have several games that are targeting the hardcore. The first product we have launching with a partner Codemasters is from Net Devil and it's called Jumpgate: Evolution which is kind of "pick up and play" accessible.

Marvel Universe is an "adult game" of the "kids game?"

We'll say it's a "mass market" game, but you can probably call it the adult version. The kids' version, or our first product to market, is Marvel Super Hero Squad, which was a specific attempt by the folks at Marvel to reach all the young kids that love the Marvel characters.

A bunch of companies at this point have tried to make a Marvel MMO and failed. How are you going to succeed where other companies have constantly failed on this one IP?

Not to dodge the question, but I can't really comment on the products, or the attempts rather, that went before. We're going to assemble the best team we possibly can. We have some great team leaders that we're excited to talk about soon. So we're going to start with a team, and our passion for Marvel. One of the things that people don't talk about in MMO space -- maybe the hardcore gamers aren't aware of it -- but how hard it is to operate these games; the back end support. That may be a reason some of the other products failed. The game design may have been there, but the toughest part about actually making an MMO game -- and this is a ridiculous statement -- is not making the game, but actually operating it and doing all the customer support and the billing and actually just running the servers. It's extremely hard to do that worldwide and that's where most games fail. So, we're going to assemble the best team possible. We already have a fantastic infrastructure that we're going to be utilizing for all other products that we have and from that foundation, try our best to make the best game we possibly can.

Yeah, who are the developers?

NetDevil's been around for 10 years. They're arguably one of the first MMO companies ever in North America.

So, anyway, the developers on these games, who are they?

Our success of failure will ultimately ride on the quality of our development teams. We put a big emphasis on that. A perfect example of that is us working with the folks at NetDevil. ... Our team in San Mateo, for instance, Slipgate Ironworks, the entire team has worked on 16 MMOs. That's a tremendous wealth of talent there, and experience. I mean literally, of a team of about 80 guys, they've worked on 16 MMOs. Our guy who runs quality assurance, Ed Hocking, used to work at SOE. He's shipped five MMOs. And that's just an example.

Each one of our studios, the majority of people on the teams have worked on MMOs. So that is kind of a prerequisite. However, we don't only hire people who have done MMOs. One of our goals is to make games for the mass market, and so we have people from Pixar, from Disney. Certainly we have people from the console space, as well as folks from the MMO space, and the idea is this kind of unique group of people with talents from just outside the hardcore gaming community will make games that not only resonate with the hardcore, but also games like Marvel Super Hero Squad, Lego Universe, have also, can hopefully get MMO's beyond just the hardcore.

On the whole Marvel thing, do you have comic book people that are working there? How close will it be to what's going on currently in those worlds? Or, is it a new alternate realm?

With Marvel Super Hero Squad, it's a TV show. It's based upon action figures that have already come out for kids, but there's a TV show coming out later this year on Cartoon Network. We're pretty much closely tying that to the show and to the IP. So Marvel Super Hero Squad will follow that IP pretty closely, and we're excited about that because that TV series will be successful and will be on for several years, and so it's a great continual marketing option for us to be able to drive awareness for that title. Marvel Universe, frankly we're just kind of starting that one out, but each team working on a Marvel product has several people that are "Marvel lore" kind of historians, if you will, that know everything inside and out about the brand. So that's a core part of each team that we build upon.

Is there anything else you'd like to add that I wouldn't know to ask you?

I think people understandably were excited about our partnership with Lego and Marvel. Those are partnerships that we think are going to be kind of the foundations of the company, but we're also creating lots of original ideas as well, that we're excited to talk about in the coming months, and we'll be happy to talk to the folks at Joystiq about those as well.

Well, thank you very much for your time.

[jokrow]

cool man!!! i like to pick wolverine or spiderman for that.. hahaha.. ^_^