Sega no longer publishing Marvel games
Marvel's TQ Jefferson talks about the difficulties in adapting movies into games
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel vice president of games production TQ Jefferson revealed that there are no plans for further Marvel games from Sega. Sega previously published the game adaptations of the Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America films.
"There are no current plans for additional Marvel games to be published by Sega," said Jefferson.
The next Marvel film is Joss Whedon's The Avengers, but currently no game adaptation has been announced. Jefferson said that would be changing in the coming weeks.
"We just launched Marvel: Avengers Alliance on Facebook; which is just the tip of the iceberg. This is the first in a much larger effort to support the Avengers franchise across not just one but multiple video game touch points. The Avengers are bigger than just one game, and we're planning to allow consumers to enjoy The Avengers regardless of their preference in gameplay style or platform. Look for more announcements in the weeks to come," he said.
Jefferson also explained that movie games tend be poor experiences because film plots do not lend themselves to how games are normally structured. Combined with a shortened development period, the titles never truly get room to breathe.
"In my opinion, the biggest afflictions affecting movie-licensed games is the amount of development time and a strict adherence to retelling the story of the film in the form of a game. The former is easy to understand -- less development time means less time to design, produce and polish the game, resulting in a poor or lesser-quality experience," Jefferson explained.
"The latter is a little more subtle, but I can sum it up thusly: If a development team were to follow a film's plot line to the letter, then you would have a two-hour experience with a bunch of thugs and one boss fight. That's simply not how we define 'movie licensed console game,' now or ever. In order to hit the expected amount of gameplay, you need to embellish, add additional characters, story, subplots and objectives to make a more robust and satisfying experience. That's where a lot of movie licenses fall down - lack of content."