One of the most common mistakes in certain branches of entertainment is thinking that “any kind of person in a certain role can jump into another field and do the same thing.” That’s not how things work; veterans will let you know that. After all, did you hear that Disney thought they could just have movie people run their Disney+ MCU shows, and everything would be fine? Hint: it didn’t, and now they regret doing that. With video games, that kind of problem can happen with certain roles, but the upcoming Iron Man game by EA Motive seems to be avoiding that pitfall in a good way.
There have been plenty of superhero video games in the past, but if you look closely at who made them, you’ll notice that the best games were the ones that had actual comic book writers helping craft the stories. As we now know, the Iron Man title will not just have a Marvel Comics writer on the writing team, but Ryan North is someone who has written the Armored Avenger in the past:
As you can see, he’s rather hyped for the title, and, unsurprisingly, he’s glad to have this honor attached to him. He did make it clear that he’s not the ONLY person writing for the game, which is standard for video game titles, but the fact that he’s on the team is important.
Don’t believe us? The OTHER Marvel game that everyone has been discussing, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, and its predecessors from Insomniac Games, were also written in part by a comic book writer in Christos Gage. He happily talked about working with the game and plugged the game constantly. For the first game, they also brought in legendary comic book writer Dan Slott, who had one of the most definitive runs of Spider-Man ever.
Or if you go over to DC Comics, the first two games in the Rocksteady Batman Arkham Trilogy were written by Paul Dini. But when the third game was made, Rocksteady let their writers do the work while occasionally getting assistance from Geoff Johns. As everyone will tell you, the results weren’t the best, while the first two titles are hailed as some of the best comic book video game adaptations ever.
So, as you can see, there’s a REASON you bring in comic book writers to help make comic book video games. They know how to make a story that “feels right” more times than not.
