NetEase aims to make Marvel Rivals that big unattainable for video games; a title that can appeal to everyone.
As reported by PC Gamer, Marvel Rivals director Guangyun Chen said this in a new interview:
“We’ve actually been thinking about this on a broader scale, looking at the picture as a whole. We really hope that when we do the competitive modes or tournaments, they will co-exist with our quick play.
That’s because we’ve been seeing a lot of other successful titles being able to pull off a competitive environment and a quick play environment both healthily at the same time. We’ll be taking a lot of references from them to ultimately let both player pools thrive.”
While the obvious comparison here would be to Overwatch, we don’t need to remind you that Overwatch 2’s popularity and playerbase is a shadow of its former (figurative and literal) self. We think Chen didn’t name Blizzard’s game because they didn’t endeavor to make an Overwatch clone.
If we’re talking about games that have remained successful in retaining a competitive and a casual player base, that list is much smaller than a few years ago. While some gamers scoff at the idea of Fortnite being competitive, we suspect NetEase looks to it more than to Overwatch for inspiration nowadays.
And while Marvel Rivals still looks a lot like Overwatch, we suspect that it won’t stay that way for very long. NetEase recently revealed that they plan to bring a new character to the game every three months, and that simply doesn’t sound sustainable if you’re still trying to copy Overwatch.
But it could still make sense if NetEase was looking more towards a Fortnite model, which thrives nowadays in giving their loyal player base new thrills with new characters. NetEase has a good few hundred characters to plumb from the Marvel universe to provide a similar thrill to dedicated Marvel fans.
Another potential big budget success NetEase is looking at is Cognosphere’s Genshin Impact, which has a third completely different game design. We can’t say for sure if NetEase will shift towards making Marvel Rivals a completely different game in the end, but we could see them turning it into a game platform, like Fortnite, where their fanbase can experience playing Marvel characters in different games.
We also admit that this doesn’t entirely account for how NetEase would keep competitive players happy, but NetEase seems sufficiently flexible that they would find what works best, and try to act on it rapidly. At the end of 2025, we may be talking about how NetEase is setting the bar for other live service games to follow.
