When Sony announced in 2016 that they had a game based on the Spider-Man license in the pipeline, and that Ratchet and Clank and Sunset Overdrive developers Insomniac Games would be the ones developing it, everyone was surprised at how perfect a fit it seemed. And it did turn out to be perfect- Spider-Man is an excellent game, true to the character’s identity, respectful of the property’s history, but with a strong identity of its own.
So would Insomniac be open to maybe working on another licensed game? Maybe even something else from Marvel? Well, according to Insomniac’s community director James Stevenson, that’s not out of the question. “Sure, we’d be open to another licensed game,” he said while speaking with Fandom. “I feel like the question hints to whether there are downsides to it. It’s different of course; you have other people involved who can tell you whether something is on-brand or off-brand, which is different for us than, say, working on a Ratchet & Clank.”
Stevenson went on to talk about working with Marvel in particular, how they didn’t really hinder Insomniac’s creative freedom, but at the same time drove them on to do better things. “But it’s not like we wanted to go too far away from what makes Spider-Man great,” he said. “It had to be an authentic experience, so in some ways, it’s helpful having extra people around who know the character so well and are pushing you to make things better. Working with Marvel probably drove us to be better than we can be when we’re working on our own thing.”
“Marvel wasn’t putting up roadblocks or anything like that,” Stevenson continued, “it was more from the perspective of wanting to help us make a great Spider-Man game,” he said at one point. “And later. Marvel basically said, ‘here are 50-plus years of comics, characters and stories. Look through all of it and pick what you want.’”
Here’s an idea- make an Iron Man game. Or, you know, maybe a Venom game. In all likeliness though, once they’re done with DLC for Spider-Man, they’re probably already going to be moving on to Spider-Man 2. Which- you know what? I’m perfectly fine with that.
Spider-Man is out now on PS4.