Are we going to get another Marvel vs. Cryptic?

I was browsing through the Champion's Online forums today and I stumbled on an interesting post that got me thinking.

•Cryptic studios announced their new game, "City of Heroes" in mid-2001. It is supposed to be released mid-2002.

California-based Cryptic Studios has announced its upcoming online role-playing game, City of Heroes. The comic-book-style game lets players assume the role of a superhero and fight a variety of villains in a 3D virtual world. City of Heroes is scheduled for release in mid-2002. more...

•Cryptic studios ships "City of Heroes" April 28th, 2004. Just pointing those extra 3 years as an example for people still thinking they can ship the next ultimate MMO in a fraction of the time it has taken to develop any other even semi-successful MMO.

NCsoft announced today that City of Heroes has reached gold master status in North America and will soon be on its way to retailers in the United States and Canada. The official launch date for City of Heroes is April 28th 2004. more...

•Marvel sues Cryptic and their Publisher, NC Soft, because you can make characters in "City of Heroes" that violate their trademark and look too much like Marvel characters.

Marvel Enterprises is suing two firms behind a computer superhero role-playing game it claims allows players to make virtual characters that are too similar to "The Hulk," "X-Men" and other heroes in the comic book company's stable. more...

•Marvel's Lawsuit against Cryptic and NC Soft is dropped.

AUSTIN, Texas, December 14, 2005—Marvel Entertainment, Inc., NCsoft® Corporation, NC Interactive, Inc. and Cryptic Studios™, Inc. are pleased to announce today that they have amicably settled all claims brought by Marvel and all claims brought by NCsoft, NC Interactive, Inc. and Cryptic Studios, Inc. more...

•Cryptic announces they are now making the "Marvel Universe MMO."

Microsoft Game Studios today announced at X06 that Cryptic Studios has been chosen to be the developer of Marvel Universe Online. This MMO based on the Marvel Universe will be exclusive to Xbox 360 and Windows Vista. more...

•Marvel Universe MMO canceled in 2008.

Marvel Universe Online (the heavily anticipated MMO based on the Marvel comic book universe) is officially dead, according to Shane Kim, the Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Game Studios.
According to Kim, the title was canceled due to commercial considerations and a general feeling that Microsoft and MMO developer Cryptic simply couldn’t compete in the subscription-based MMO market. more...

•Cryptic announces "Champions Online" a Super-Hero based MMO based on the pen and paper roll-playing game, "Champions."

LOS GATOS, CA – February 20, 2008 – Cryptic Studios™, one of the leading independent developers of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), announced today Champions Online™, their first ever self-developed and self-published MMORPG. Champions Online, based on the popular pen-and-paper Champions RPG, will give players the power of total customization of their hero experience while they explore a vast universe of richly detailed 3D environments. Champions Online is slated for release in Spring 2009. more...

•Players can make super-heroes that look even more like trademarked Marvel characters in "Champion Online." more...

I should admit here that I haven't gotten to play Champion's Online yet. I am signed up for the Head Start Weekend, even though the process of signing up for that doesn't tell me where to get the game client. I guess they are assuming I was involved with the beta and know to download it from Gamespy. I've asked in the forums and that seems to be the general consensus, judging from the one person who answered my post so far.

Cambria, the user who created all those X-Men and other character knock-offs in the beta says that she knows it is against the rules, but she just creates them, takes pictures of them, and then deletes the characters. There are also posts on the forums about people who have had characters in the beta that have had characters changed or deleted by Cryptic staff. So they do appear to trying to keep a lid on it to avoid more legal trouble. But names weren't the problem before, it was that the characters you could make in City of Heroes could look like Marvel's characters.

Looking through Terms of Service, Rule 10-A spells out the usual, character name limitations. The odd thing here is rule 10-A-XI "That incorporates titles, which include, without limitation, ‘rank’ titles (e.g., "GeneralJoe"), monarchistic or fantasy titles (e.g., "KingRichard")." That is odd, rank names fit into the super-hero genre and wouldn’t confuse people as to importance as it would in a fantasy game. In other words "General Chaos" would fit into a super-hero world without anybody thinking he really was a general, unlike "General Sentris" in a fantasy world where people might think I was actually a general in the game.

Sorry, moving on. What I haven’t found in their Terms of Service is any restrictions on "likeness." This combined with the vague wording of rule 10-A-V, "That is, contains, or is substantially similar to a trademark or service mark, whether registered or not, or may otherwise cause confusion." This means that I can make a big, green, muscle bound character with purple shorts and name him The Bulk. Okay, maybe rule 10-A-V would still get me on that one with its "may otherwise cause confusion." But what if I created an exact visual knockoff of Wolverine and just named him Badgerboy? or Fred?

A somewhat related tangent: Marvel Comics got a little upset with David Sim when he had Wolveroach on the cover of three issues of Cerebus the Aardvark.The Cockroach was a character he used to parody other comic characters starting with Batman. He then morphed into various other characters, one being a parody of Wolverine. Marvel got irritated that he had several issues with Wolveroach on the cover where customers could easily be confused and think they were buying a Marvel comic about Wolverine.

The comic cover thing isn't quite the same thing unless they put some character's on the box that look like Marvel characters. But, I do wonder how Marvel is going to react to this ability to make characters that look even more like their characters than they did in City of Heroes, regardless of Cryptic's naming policy.

Another Shot at a Marvel Comics MMO

Gazillion Entertainment just announced they have signed a deal to do a Marvel super hero MMO. It looks like the plan is to do multiple games with the first product being a casual MMO for younger audiences based on Marvel's "Super Hero Squad Property." They say that they are also underway on a major new Marvel Universe PC and Console MMO that will introduce a number of breakthrough features. Gazillion says that as additional games are release that they will "share various levels of connection."

The last attempt to produce a Marvel Universe MMO was by Cryptic Studios, but it was announced in February of last year that the project was canceled. Cryptic created the other super hero MMO, City of Heroes and is currently working on two other MMO's: Star Trek Online and Champions Online. Champions is a table top, super hero role-playing game. Looking at that plate I can easily see why they would have canned the Marvel MMO. Star Trek is a bigger license and Champions is still a super hero game, its just not restricted by the Marvel license. The odd thing about all this is that Marvel was suing Cryptic over City of Heroes because it was too easy for people to make characters that looked exactly like Marvel characters, but the lawsuit was settled out of court with the result being that Cryptic was then going to make a Marvel MMO.

Looking at the Gazillion site they appear to be the parent corporation of The Amazing Society, Gargantuan, NetDevil, Slipgate Ironworks, and SmartyCard.

Net Devil published the failed MMO "Auto Assult" which at least they published so don't judge too harshly. Do you have any idea how many companies fail to even get their MMO to market much less find it to be successful? Anyway, they are also currently working on the Jumpgate Evolution MMO and Lego Universe MMO.

Slipgate Ironworks is John Romero's company that was founded in 2005 and has been working on some unannounced MMO since then. Further digging just found that John announced via Twitter that he is a co-founder of Gazillion.

SmartyCard appears to be a card you buy for your child aged 3 to 6. The kid then can then earn (unlock the value you paid for?) stuff by completing educational games and activities. The rewards are claimed to be subscriptions to their favorite virtual world or physical rewards such as books, video games, DVDs and toys. Though in the 2 minutes I looked over the site I wasn't able to find an actual listing of these rewards without signing up. Their FAQ answer to that question just has the same vague list.

The Amazing Society and Gargantuan are new companies I have never heard of. Gargantuan's website just has one page that says they are hiring and gives an email address for you to send your resume to. They do appear to be the company listed as doing the Marvel Universe MMO though.

What does all this mean for this new attempt at making a Marvel MMO? Not much since all we have is some new studio announcing a bunch of marking goobly gook. Only time will tell if anything comes of this true believer.

Personally, I can see how this is difficult because if I am going to buy a Marvel Universe MMO, I want to be Spider-man or Wolverine. I don't want to play some new super hero that gets to fight along side Spider-man and Wolverine. That later method is exactly what SOE is doing with DC Universe Online. Don't worry though, if it fails they can just have a Crisis event to rewrite history.

Marvel Universe Online Canceled

News went out recently that the Marvel Universe MMO game had been canceled. I finally got around to reading the interview with Shane Kim, head of Microsoft Games Studios where he talks about the reasons why. It all boils down to they didn't think a standard monthly subscription model would work and they had gone too far into development to change to another model. Smells more like they didn't know what they were doing and realized nobody would pay for what they were making.

I was really curious about how they were going to make the game work. If you are making a Marvel Universe MMO, you are really selling people on the idea of actually playing Marvel heroes such as Spider-man, Wolverine, and the Hulk. Nobody was going to be happy just being another nobody who suddenly found one day that he had super-powers and then you had to grind your way into being somebody. This is the lesson everybody else learned from Star Wars Galaxies. Nobody wants to be Uncle Owen, everybody wants to be light saber wielding Jedi's.

I really find it annoying that they blew this with so many of Marvel's properties doing so well right now. The Spider-man and X-Men movie franchises are doing great and I hear good things about the latest Hulk movie, still haven't been to see it myself.

Personally. I am going to just say they are idiots. They blew it. I am going to rest easy in this knowledge because I applied to be a designer on that project. I am a game designer with a plethora of published games under my belt, lots of experience with MMO's, and am a big Marvel comic book collecting zombie. I even won a "no prize!" They didn't even think I warranted a phone call. I simply can't understand why, when a resume like mine fell onto their desk, they didn't say, "Hey, lets at least talk to this guy and see what he's about." Now I know they are just idiots and thankfully I avoided that bullet.