It’s been a little over a year since NetEase released the hero shooter Marvel Rivals. Since then, the game has exploded in popularity and garnered a massive fan base. Recently, the team held a fan event at the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles, CA where they showcased new skins coming to the game and the new limited-time modes that’ll center around the MCU Avengers films in the lead-up to the release of Avengers Doomsday.
Yachen Bian, the publishing and marketing lead of NetEase Games, and Guangguang, the company’s creative director, sat down with Kotaku in a group interview to discuss the culture surrounding the community, the overall state of the game, and, of course, the gooner content.
If, like me, you’re someone who spends more time than they’d like to admit playing Marvel Rivals, it’s probably safe to assume you know that Guangguang has more or less become the face of the game, thanks to his iconic opening line “Hello everyone, Guangguang here,” that he says in all of the Dev Vision videos on the official Marvel Rivals YouTube Channel. Even though this is something fans have come to love, Guangguang becoming the face of the game was never part of the team’s plan.
“It was a happy accident,” Guangguang tells me. “The first time we did this, it was just me and Zhiyong (lead combat designer on Marvel Rivals) to show what the team had done for the community. All I said in the Dev Video was the result of [our team’s work]. Yeah, ‘Hello, Guangguang here’ has become a happy accident.”
Since its release, Marvel Rivals has been steadily growing. With a minimum of two playable heroes and one map dropping each season, it’s clear that a lot of work goes into planning out each year. In fact, to keep up the steady stream of content, Guangguang explained that the team often has to work a year ahead, which means that much of the 2027 roadmap is already done.
With new heroes joining the fray each season, a conspiracy theory has emerged within the community that NetEase sometimes deliberately makes some new characters better than others to increase playtime. But as you may have expected, that issue is more straightforward than some members of the community thought.
When asked about the notion that certain characters are overpowered on purpose in an effort to make them very popular with players, Bian explained, “We didn’t do that on purpose. It’s always an accident.” Guangguang echoed this, explaining that balancing the game can be a long process because adjusting one thing can create a domino effect that often leads to another issue the team never anticipated.
One way the team can experiment with the abilities it gives the game’s heroes is by introducing new limited-time modes. The Marvel Zombies mode was a great example of that, introducing a new way to play with characters like Blade and Jeff the Land Shark while staying true to their kits. The team is looking to do something similar with the Path To Doomsday events. In short, these modes will allow players to recreate iconic scenes from the Avengers films, kicking off in April with moments from the first Avengers. Although we don’t know much, Bian did reveal that the mode will have one person playing as Loki with a whole new set of skills, while six other players try to take him down.
It’s clear that Marvel Rivals has no plans to slow down any time soon. Currently the game has 47 playable heroes, but that number will go up again once a new season starts, and Guangguang doesn’t foresee the number of characters becoming a problem. After all, the community is constantly asking for new heroes to join the roster, and the team wants to ensure players can live out a true comic-book experience.
A steady stream of new content is vital for live-service games, and if it’s not up to the community’s liking, they can meet an untimely end. Although this may add some pressure to keep things exciting, the team doesn’t dwell on it too much.
“We just focus more on our audience, and what our community wants,” Bian says. “If you look at the market of gaming, you can always see the competition, especially if you’re doing a shooter game. It’s crowded, and it’s also a very big genre with great potential. For us, we’ve always concentrated on what our audience wants. I think it’s a good part [of what we’re doing] and allows us to have a close connection with the community.”
One could argue that another thing that allows them to have a close connection to the community is the games’ gooner skins. Characters like Emma Frost, Squirrel Girl, and Mantis, to name a few, all have skins that play up their sexual attractiveness and have inspired a lot of adult content. When asked about said inspiration, Bian joked, “You mean the gooner content, right?”
“We didn’t do that kind of content on purpose. We also didn’t want to let it become a technique for us to attract users. That is not the philosophy of the game. It is a fact that we have some audience for this kind of flavor. But [if you look at something like] the swimsuit collection, they were actually from the Marvel Universe itself. We concentrate on how we can bring the authentic Marvel experience to players. We did that and found out that some players like it, and some don’t. But we do feel like that is how we make the game, and we’ll just stick to that philosophy, and let the results be results.”
Gooner content aside, it’s also clear that fans are extremely passionate about the game. Sometimes this can be for the better, and sometimes it’s for the worse. A good example of this duality can be seen in the game’s latest controversy, sparked by a $40,000 content creator tournament. This was something I asked the team to comment on.
“People have a strong emotion for the game,” Bian tells me. “For ourselves, it’s not a bad thing. We don’t have a strong attitude from the outside of that. What we want is to serve all the players and do as much as we can. For some serious problems when people are not behaving themselves, of course, we’ll stop them because we want to keep the community we have healthy. But for those cases, it’s more like yeah, let them be what they are.”
Marvel Rivals has taken on a life of its own. The team at NetEase has found a good formula for releasing a steady stream of content that has gotten a lot of players, myself included, hooked on this game. If you’ve ever been curious about the game or wanted to jump back in after taking a break, now seems like a good time to do so, thanks to the MCU tie-in events. Marvel Rivals is a free-to-play game available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
