Despite what it might feel like at times, it’s not easy to make a video game. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things to do, depending on the scale. After all, you can make a game on your own, but if you intend to do something on a large scale, you’ll need help. Or, if you’re attempting to bring in well-known characters for a unique romp of a title, you need to ensure that it “fits the characters,” is fun to play, and will be enjoyed by many. In the case of Marvel’s Midnight Suns, they did part of that, but fans weren’t thrilled about other elements.
In the game, you play as some of the more “brutal” and “supernatural” characters of the Marvel Comics universe. You play an original character tied to the game’s villain and must team with the Marvel legends to beat them. The team at Firaxis wanted to blend the superhero genre with the turn-based strategy games they were known for. The result was a deck-based fighting system that had you pick three characters and see how well you could use the cards to win each battle.
It was a clever way to get around certain superpowered problems. However, the game heavily underperformed, and many weren’t fans of the card-based system.
In an interview with Rock Paper Shotgun, director Jake Solomon talked about that criticism and whether it affected him too much:
“I genuinely believe that the card design was the best tactical design that we could come up with for that game, and the theme of the heroes.”
He even noted he was worried more about his co-workers than his personal feelings:
“I always worry more about the team having to see that stuff, because me? I’m always like, it’s fine. I don’t begrudge anybody saying that. I think it’s totally fair for people to say that.”
One of the reasons he felt the negative reaction happened as it did was because people were used to a certain other strategy/tactics game that Firaxis made and were thinking this would be the “Marvel version of that.” Except, Firaxis was clear before the game’s launch that wasn’t the case. But if you didn’t hear that, and suddenly you’re dealing with cards, it can throw you off.
He felt sympathetic to those who expected one thing but got another. However, it’s also fair to say that if they had gone that route, Marvel’s Midnight Suns might have gotten critiqued for other reasons. We’ll never know.
