Niantic, an augmented reality company with an initial focus on augmented reality games, announced a partnership with Marvel Entertainment to create an original real-world mobile game: MARVEL World of Heroes. The announcement was done at the Disney & Marvel GAMES SHOWCASE at Disney’s D23 Expo 2022. MARVEL World of Heroes is an AR mobile game that brings the iconic Marvel Universe into the real world and is scheduled to launch globally in 2023.
MARVEL World of Heroes is a first-of-its-kind game that will allow Marvel fans into the real-world metaverse. This is the first Marvel game where players become their own unique Marvel Super Hero, MARVEL World of Heroes breaks new ground by extending gameplay into the real world as only Niantic games can. The development team has been hard at work to deliver on the fantasy of becoming your own Marvel Super Hero in the real world.
“It has been a joy to work with this talented and passionate team in crafting a game that will let players get a taste of the Super Hero lifestyle right in their own neighbourhoods. It is my goal that this game instills in its players feelings of freedom, power, curiosity, and cooperation, and will inspire them to make the world a better place,” said lead game designer Neil Melville.
“The best part about being a producer on MARVEL World of Heroes is I get to experience first-hand all of the awesome work by the team through the lens of both a player and game developer. Some days my world revolves around team operations, and other days it’s partnering with our creative and technology leads on upcoming features,” said senior producer Lyza Faylona.
Talking about the most exciting experience that the players will have, Melville said, “I am very excited about the character avatar system in MARVEL World of Heroes, because it gives a lot of flexibility for players to express different body types, gender expressions, and outfit customization. I can’t wait to see what kind of characters the players will create on their journey to become famous local heroes.”
“I love MMORPGs, so I’m most excited about bringing that to the real world. To arrive at a location, view and interact with it through the lens of a Marvel Super Hero is what I’m really excited about. I can’t wait to see how players interact with these locations and form their own origin stories,” said Faylona.
Melville’s favorite Marvel character is Spider-Man because despite being a really smart guy with super strength and incredible agility, he never gives up being a friendly neighborhood hero who has to deal with normal problems in addition to crime bosses, robots, aliens, vampires, and robot alien vampire crime bosses. On the other hand, Faylona gravitates towards super villains.
“But if you ask me for my favorite MARVEL Super Hero it would be Ms. Marvel, a.k.a Kamala Khan. Her origin story really resonates with me – how she navigates through labels imposed on her and how she finds her identity by embracing her super power,” she said.
Melville further said, “We aren’t content with augmenting reality with a single version of the Marvel Universe, and will let you travel to multiple alternate realities in the Marvel Multiverse to engage with different characters and stories in the same location.”
“The Marvel Multiverse. There’s just so many stories to tell and MARVEL characters to interact with that we couldn’t limit ourselves to just one reality,” Faylona added.
