Marvel is currently riding on an entertainment industry high, what with all of the mega-blockbuster superhero films coming out and storming the theaters with high-quality tales of the super-powered. This kind of success is constantly translating over into the interactive entertainment medium with new games being announced all the time. The latest being one from former Hearthstone developers.
Over on the new Second Dinner YouTube channel, it's revealed that there's a brand new second office for the studio based out of Irving, California. The team jokes that the video is being filmed on the second day of the second office opening for Second Dinner. Anyway, by the minute mark it's revealed that the studio's first game will be a Marvel title. The studio has received ample funding for their very first project and will begin ramping up its staff in order to accommodate the idea that they have in mind.
It's revealed that the game has already been prototyped and has been in development for the last six months. So, what this likely means is that many of the core white box mechanics have already been completed. White box testing means that core functionality of a feature has been designed, and it works in accordance with the core design philosophy, but it still needs to be refined, gray box tested, and eventually finalized for implementation. We see this often with the updates published on the Star Citizen YouTube channel where the developers outline what's being worked on, what's being protoyped, and what's being implemented.
Since the small team have only finished the prototype, they are currently working on hiring in additional staff to flesh out the actual gameplay mechanics, this includes a Unity client engineer, and tech artists. The team only plans to ramp up staff by up to 10 to 15 people over the next few years, so the project won't be huge.
There are also some hints about what we can expect from the game given that we know it's running on the Unity 3D game engine and that it will be based on the AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud computing solution. This likely means that the upcoming Marvel title will be multiplayer focused.
If I had guess about what the game might, be based on the size of the team (under 25), the Unity game engine, and the AWS services, I would say that this is likely a mobile-based title or a smallish PC game, possibly a free-to-play card game.
Given that the developers have had experience with the collectible card game genre in Hearthstone, it wouldn't be surprising if they took that knowledge and applied it to a Marvel game. If designed and marketed properly, it's easy to see how a game like that could turn out to be big business, especially since Hearthstone has been making Blizzard Entertainment millions of dollars each month.
You can keep an eye on the progress of the game or apply for a job at Second Dinner by visiting the official website.
