Interview: Marvel Future Fight’s Third Anniversary, and How It Became a Success

As you might have seen from our previous news post, the mobile game Marvel Future Fight recently reached its third anniversary. The game, which is available for iOS and Android (via Google Play), has seen some incredibly statistics in that time frame, including 70 million players, along with Thanos being challenged and defeated over 11 million times.

Not only that, but we saw the introduction of some new characters in the Marvel Universe, including a female version of Captain America, Sharon Rogers.

Now the big question is — how did Marvel Future Fight get here? There are a lot of variables to consider, including events that tied in with Marvel films such as Thor Ragnarok and, most recently, Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War.

To get some further insight with the game’s development — as well as what could be coming next — we sat down with Danny Koo, who serves as Senior Producer for Marvel Future Fight for Marvel Games, to get some insight.

Marvel Future Fight’s Biggest Successes

When Marvel: Future Fight was first established, what was the primary goal for the game? Did you imagine it would get as big a community as this?

Marvel Future Fight was established to offer Marvel fans the best-in-class action-RPG game on mobile. We partnered up with Netmarble, who previously had plenty of success in creating fantastic action RPG games in South Korea. We had absolute confidence that this kind of game would resonate with the community and the results speaks for themselves. We always try to envision great success with our partners and we are happy that the community is enjoying this game.

What would you say is the biggest factor of success with Future Fight?

The biggest factor of success with Marvel Future Fight is the fact that we are all Marvel fans. The development team at Netmarble is passionate about everything they do, including bringing Marvel’s amazing characters to life with incredible animations and effects. They are agile and able to support new content monthly, while always gathering feedback from the community to provide great content! The game’s presentation is top notch and gameplay is awesome. So, it’s a great game with love and passion from the team.

Keeping Players Involved With Story

With Infinity War now in theaters, what is Future Fight doing to keep players more involved?

Marvel Future Fight just launched the first part of its content update inspired by Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War. Just to give you a sense of the event’s scope, each update usually comes with 2-3 new characters and 2-4 new uniforms. This time, the first part of the Infinity War content update consists of 10 new uniforms with a new event story mode inspired by Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War! Also, players will now be able to take Captain America all the way up to level 70  and Tier-3. This is a very significant update along with some game mode optimization and user interface streamlining. We are celebrating the third year anniversary of Marvel Future Fight, so players can expect fun rewards daily during this period to supplement their gameplay. For new players, you have three years’ worth of content to look forward to. For existing players, please look forward to the next big update for Infinity War! It is going to be just as epic as the first part.

What do you think is the most important aspect in how Future Fight works? Connecting to fans? Sticking to storylines? Introducing characters that fans are familiar with?

It is a careful balance between all of the things you have mentioned. The MARVEL Future Fight team cares a lot about the fans and always do their best to introduce characters that will excite the fans. Telling stories is part of our key strength at Marvel. We create fresh new content that tells new stories and introduce characters to fans who might or might not be familiar with them. We keep the character rosters diverse with great representation and inspiration from our comics, TV shows, and of course our big blockbuster films. This way, if you are a comic book fans, a TV show binger, or a movie watcher, there is something for you. Of course, we also introduced brand new, original characters such as Captain America Sharon Rogers and Luna Snow. Both characters have unique origin stories that the fans can relate to. With over 157 characters introduced in Marvel Future Fight, there is something for everyone!

Finding Success With New Content

Have the Marvel films and other projects helped catapult Future Fight’s success, you think? Or was it another factor, perhaps with the comic books?

Danny Koo: When we create any Marvel game, we want the game to be successful in its own right. We often have great synergy between other Marvel departments outside of games. I would like to think it as complementary experiences. You may read a comic book once a week, or binge watch a Marvel TV show in a day, or watch a great Marvel movie this month. However, you can play MARVEL Future Fight daily and you are exposed to our great cast of characters any time you want, on the go!

We’ve seen a bunch of new costumes added to the game. Any particular favorites that you think stand out?

My favorite costume is Captain America Sharon Rogers’ Starlight Armor costume. It looks modern and edgy, like she can operate out in space alongside Iron Man. Both her costumes also debuted in last year’s MARVEL Future Fight custom comics, where we tell the origin story of Sharon Rogers and how she is connected to Iron Man.

The Replay Factor

What do you think is the general appeal with something like Future Fight? What keeps players coming back for more?

MARVEL Future Fight is the best Super Hero action-RPG in the market right now. It has a great story content with incredible graphics. Once you play through all the story content, there is plenty more to do, such as new game modes, new challenges, new alliances battles, and new events that players can participate in. Best of all, we have a ton of characters for players to unlock and level up. It’s a pretty hefty amount of content. Every month, we have a themed update, so I hope players will continue to forward to those.

Who would you say was the most popular character you’ve seen over the run of the game thus far? Did any new additions managed to throw you off guard the first time?

We touched slightly on Captain America Sharon Rogers. When we created her for MARVEL Future Fight to celebrate Captain America’s 75th Anniversary, we knew that she going to turn out great. What caught us off guard was exactly how popular she would be – fan art started showing up immediately in the community! Her alternate costumes turned out to be hits as well. Luna Snow is another original MARVEL Future Fight character that resonated with players as well. I am well aware that K-Pop is not for everyone, but we started getting K-Pop fans to play Marvel Future Fight for the first time because she was relatable and popular with that community! Even prior to Luna Snow’s release, there was plenty of fan art of her popping up as well. Recently, we even saw the first fan cosplay of Luna Snow on social media! We would really like to thank the community for their outpour of support for Marvel Future Fight’s original content!

Marvel Future Fight is available now for iOS and Android (through Google Play).