Marvel Rivals reaches millions at launch, what’s the key factor behind its success?

Marvel Rivals featuring mighty heroes of the Marvel universe is a free-to-play new hero shooter by NetEase.The title has been a success and the director credits it to the unique and powerful nature of the characters.

The game is available for free on Steam, Xbox Series and PS5. According to the stats of Steamdb, it had hit an all-time peak of more than 480k players online with 77% of positive reviews. Moreover, Gamalytic shows about 6.3M downloads at the time of this writing within a week after its launch.

Speaking with VideoGamer, game director Thaddeus Sasser revealed that one of their biggest aims was to get every character to feel truly strong and distinctive.

Marvel Rivals’ team had more ambitious goals than just simple changes to future updates

Sasser explained that feeling as powerful as Iron Man or Jeff the Land Shark is way more than just yielding tons of damage. Instead, you have to go through several rounds of adjusting animations, visuals, and a lot more to make you think you’re controlling a real-life superhero or a dangerous supervillain.

Sasser’s work on Call of Duty and Battlefield for powerful guns helped in the character designs of Rivals. He knew long ago how to make guns seem dynamic and memorable.

“It sounds kinda cheesy, but the reality of it is that you’re trying to create that immersion, that engagement, right?” he said. His focus was on making the guns feel powerful when you hear a sniper rifle go off with a specific sound and see the smoke and debris. 

According to Sasser, the same idea translates into superheroes as well. For example, Iron Man needs a cool suit, rapid flight, and blazing repulsor blasts as “that’s pretty key to his identity” to show he’s a mighty hero.

It’s all about delivering “on the key emotion”, Sasser added. A mutant of immense strength named Magneto should make the player feel powerful. Venom should give players the feeling of heaviness. Moreover, Jeff the Land Shark is a fun and lighthearted support character should also feel easy and cheerful.

Sasser said, among his core fantasies of being a superhero is the one to “wreck the world”

According to the director of Marvel Rivals, it initially had the characters with “two square bullets shooting at each other.” Although the game’s overall feeling of power and intensity was there, as the team got proficient with the abilities and came up with awesome destruction effects, it all seemed to finally come together. Over time, layer after layer, the final product feels and looks like a real, engaging experience.

Sasser’s background with Battlefield games played a role in Marvel Rivals’ destruction tech. However, the latter is more interactive.

He joked that he always liked the notion of heroes leaving such a mess that they’d have to have a cleanup team following after them, like in old comics like Damage Control. He adds this type of destruction feels that one actually matters and that the character even has the power to change the environment.

From Zero to Web3 Pro: Your 90-Day Career Launch Plan