Insomniac Games: Are we ready for another Hulk game?

5. Marvel to maintain some creative control…

Now by creative control, I mean providing the creative team behind game design, production and art enough resources to develop the game; not a third-party whose main concern is quality control and merchandising – it should not be a case where the game developer is the servant and Marvel is the taskmaster and vice-versa.

The main solution towards adapting popular IP, be it an action figure, video game, or novel, is to consult with the sole creator(s)/owner(s) of that property and, first of all, being in agreement as to what kind of game you are going to make from day one. The more transparent and mutable the partnership, the more solid the foundation of the process of making a game will turn out. However, there are things of note to take heed of. The process of making a Marvel game is unlike producing an MCU film. If you speak to any game producer/developer out there, they would describe producing game as similar to figuring out a jigsaw puzzle or building a huge Lego set.

When questioned by Fandom about whether Insomniac Games will be involved and open to make a follow-up to Spider–Man PS4, the game company’s community director, James Stevenson, responded with a feasible “Sure,” before treading into the “experience.” Stevenson then added:

"“Working with Marvel probably drove us to be better than we can be when we’re working on our own thing.”"

He then went on:

"“Marvel wasn’t putting up roadblocks or anything like that, it was more from the perspective of wanting to help us make a great Spider–Man game.”"

As you can see, the collaboration between Insomniac Games and Marvel was at a constant, both entertainment companies had an understanding of what kind of property they wanted to make. But in this case, Marvel let Insomniac steer the ship while they provided them with necessary resources. The level of collaboration should be a strategic alliance where the nature of the partnership is the pursuit of a common goal while strictly acting as both independent entities in business and adopting complimentary strategies as opposed to a co-funding strategy.

So therefore, Marvel should work towards using a reasonable amount of powers in creative control to assist Insomniac with their abilities and policy together in order to create a better Hulk game. It seems Marvel appears to be taking a more hands on approach with Crystal Dynamics with their up and coming Avengers game slated for May 15, 2020.