Key conclusions
- The director of Marvel Rivals is confident in the game's success without worrying about a Concord-like failure.
- Chen highlights the Marvel IP's ability to create unique gameplay and access to a vast library of characters as something that will attract players.
- Player survey results show a high level of recommendation for Marvel Rivals and positive reviews.
Concord will forever go down as one of gaming's biggest failures. The toxic work environment reportedly caused the game to fail to attract an audience, leading to its closure after two weeks and its director leaving Firewalk Studios.
Relatives
Psylocke won't be the last Marvel Rivals character before release
TheGamer reported that more heroes will be added to the roster before launch.
With Marvel Rivals soon to enter a similar place in the gaming landscape, I spoke with the game's director Guangyun Chen at this year's Tokyo Game Show. During our conversation, we talked about everything from Marvel IP to comparisons to Concord.
Marvel Rivals will not be another Concord
When I asked Chen if he had any concerns about what happened with Concord, what was happening to his game, he simply said, “No. We are confident in our game.”
“Our design philosophy is to make it fun for people, for players,” Chen added, citing the Marvel brand as something that “allows us to have unique gameplay and really sets us apart from a shooter perspective.”
Our design ideology is to make it interesting for people and for players.
Chen reaffirmed that NetEase games have full access to Marvel's huge library of characters, including from the comics, MCU, and past video games, and he believes that alone is enough to attract players. “We want to show that this is our specialty. We have Marvel IP. We are under the Marvel plot. We have over 85 years of Marvel history and countless characters and cards,” he said.
NetEase's confidence in Marvel Rivals doesn't seem out of place either. According to Chen, a recent player survey released after one of the game's betas “received about 100,000 player responses.” The survey found that 70 percent of players would recommend the game to a friend, scoring an average of 4.5/5.
You can read our full Marvel Rivals interview on TheGamer right now.
Marvel Rivals is a 6v6 third-person shooter with teams made up of comic book heroes and villains. It features a number of devastating maps from across the Marvel Universe, with new content added periodically.
