Marvel + Cryptic + Microsoft = Marvel Universe MMO
Marvel is teaming up with City of Heroes developer Cryptic and Microsoft Game Studios to create a Marvel MMO for the PC and 360. Internal industry speculation pointed to this having happened quite a while back (meaning some of us have known about it for quite a while), but the most interesting part is that Marvel sued Cryptic Studios and NCSoft a couple years ago because players could make avatars look too similar to Marvel characters. [Found via Terra Nova | Zen of Design]
NCSoft issued a statement about the team-up, indicating that they’ll continue focusing on CoH/V and plan to keep working with Cryptic on it.
Marvel + Cryptic + Microsoft = Marvel Universe MMO
That strikes me as funny.
“Hey, those characters sure look a lot like our trademarks, so we’ll sue!”
…
“But hey… we like how they look. So, wanna get together and make something together? We promise we won’t sue…”
Well they say that immitation is the greatest form of flattery. I did play CoH and did see a whole lot of immitators out there, but not a lot of them had any background profiles attached to those characters.
Then again, I ran around as Commander Keen (I got a few tells from those who knew). Apogee/ID could have easily slapped a suit there, heh.
I think the funniest thing I saw in CoH was the Police Drone supergroup, they had a set image they had to use and they passed out macros for everyone to use as well.
It’s something that any MMO is going to run into, people want to play things that they are into. Unless they’re really into roleplaying, those people (self include) make up their own stories.
I kinda miss the ‘superhero’ genre, but what really makes a game, for the most part, is the people you play with, more than the game itself. I mean, we had a LAN party into CoH and all made Powerpuff Girls characters. That was a riot. We also had a template for a mutant that we all made and ran around as clones.
Content makes the game good, people make the game great.
I’ve rambled enough.
Powerpuff girls? Darn, thought we were being original.
Last Christmas, we made the “Isle of misfit toys” SG (Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer) and gave out rewards to the new players.
This Halloween, we’re considering a “Charlie Brown Gang”
We have planned an XP-debt themed team (character names like “Face Plant” “Max Debt” “Kissin’ Concrete” etc) and briefly has a villain group for the “sesame street gamg” (their neighborhood destroyed in the rikti war… they now roam the alleys of Mercy Isle… seeking revenge.) I was “the count” – a zombie mastermind that, of course, did his signature counting with each minion called (the zombies were named after sesame street characters that “didn’t make it.”
I never did join one that I encouraged on the boards. When we realized we could make pirates or ninjas, we knew we could combine the theme. Then we started seeking out how many elements we could have in one character: “space pirate amazon ninja catgirls” (SPANC) (steve jackson games gets due credit). That soon mutated to include “robot zombies” (SPANCRZ). Then Monkeys (Monkey SPANCRZ). After that, things got really weird.
Best thing about City of Heroes- the level of self expression, even if you’re not being entirely original.
I thought this was a 360 exclusive?
Kunikos: I think it was going to be XBox 360 exclusive when Sigil was lined up as the developer, since at the time they were making Vanguard: Saga of Heroes for Microsoft Game Studios using the XNA toolset on Unreal 2.x engine.
But I feel Microsoft pulled the plug on Sigil when they went back to Sony Online Entertainment for publishing and server hardware with Vanguard.