This semester I’m interning at Marvel Studios here in Manhattan Beach, California while I finish my graduate thesis at USC. As an intern, I review game builds & scripts internally to ensure that the Marvel brand is being treated respectfully, and is being represented in high quality products. I am not paid for this role, but I don’t mind – in my mind, there is already a great reward nested in the purpose that drives Marvel’s business.
Marvel, unlike most companies involved in the production of video games, has a primary focus of telling stories. Their business model revolves around creating fully realized characters, great worlds, and meaningful plots and then licensing or publishing content based on those creations. In the games industry, this focus is a breath of fresh air – too often games underestimate the importance of story and undervalue it in production, creating meaningless stories or characters that exist only to justify the mechanics of the game. In contrast, Marvel’s priorities ensure that in its games the story elements receive the due diligence they deserve.
Although Marvel has published a few misfires, they also lay claim to a heavy stack of video game successes from across all eras of games history from X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse on SNES to the more modern Marvel vs. Capcom 3. This portfolio of great products will only expand in the future: Marvel is well-placed, resource-wise, with its wealth of writers and artists, to have a leading impact on games in the modern era. They employ a wealth of relevant resources that few game companies have made serious investments in, at a time when consumers are beginning to demand shorter games that include more meaningful and mature content.
Beyond the field of games, Marvel’s history of storytelling has impacted American society as a whole since the ever-heightening popularity of superheroes began in the post WW2 boom. The mass of stories spread by Marvel Entertainment has fleshed out an American mythology on the same scale as any that have come before in history, from Ancient Greece’s mythology of Odyssian heroes and polytheistic gods to Norse/Germanic mythology that spurred such nationalistic epics as Wagner’s Gotterdammerung.
This mythology has given a framework of shared experience to Americans. It has provided a wide outlet for preaching the need for such moral values as Spiderman’s famous quote “with great power comes great responsibility.” And Spiderman is not alone in being centered around a key moral conflict: many, if not most, of Marvel’s iconic characters are personifications of moral conflict that teach the reader, viewer or player, valuable lessons about how to strive for better behavior in society: they define heroism and teach Americans how to strive toward a heroic ideal.
To me, working to elevate the experiences of games that focus on story in every way possible is a driving force – one that I find aligns itself well with the mission at Marvel. I think ensuring that Marvel publishes the highest quality games possible is a goal with great benefits not just for Marvel’s profits, or the game industry’s expectations on story quality, but for American society as a whole. I think these benefits will become more and more apparent as Marvel pivots from protecting their brand in games, to proactively expanding their incredible American mythology through games.
In my time at Marvel I hope to learn a great deal about their IP, improve my ability to integrate socially in an office environment, and add as much value to their products as possible. I hope that I can bring my integrity and creativity to Marvel games to enhance their products. I hope, as well, that my MFA background can provide credibility to in-house critiques, my English BA can aid in my research, writing and documentation, and that my design & production skills and experience in prototyping action, RPG, fighting and adventure games can be viewed as a potential future asset.
