Mobile fighting game Marvel Contest of Champions is celebrating its eight-year anniversary this week, and has released a new trailer about its wide array of heroes as part of the festivities. Over the years, Contest of Champions has given players a huge amount of fighters to choose from, with the game adding over 230 Marvel characters since it began. The title contains a large amount of strategical depth to it, containing quests, a versus mode, and special events for which players will assemble their teams.
Marvel Contest of Champions sees players assume the role of Summoner, who can assemble teams of Marvel heroes and villains for use in-game. Many in-game events mirror new Marvel releases - for example, MCOC integrated Black Panther heroes into the game's story and expanded its roster with Shuri to coincide with the release of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Through the immense amount of heroes it offers, Contest of Champions offers fans many ways to customize their fighting experience not just through the characters themselves, but the leveling players can choose to do and the synergies certain team create when together.
Lead Game Designer of Marvel Contest of Champions at Kabam, Simon Cameron, took part in an exclusive email interview with Screen Rant discussing the game's evolution, its many heroes, and what players can expect in the future.
Screen Rant: In celebrating MARVEL Contest of Champions' eight year anniversary, when you reflect back on how the game started and where it is now, what are the biggest changes and evolutions you've seen over the years?
Simon Cameron: I think the biggest evolutions I’ve seen in the game is in the depth of interaction of our Champions and the Quests you take them into. When we started our characters were very simple by comparison. So the way you needed to think ing them was also quite simple, and that could lead to them feeling “same-y”. These days we build characters whose kits encourage and reward players to play them in different ways, and we build Quests, Bosses, and Encounters to encourage even more variety in play.
The game has added so many Champions over the years - what's the decision process like when adding a new character to the game?
Simon Cameron: We plan out a whole year of characters in advance, and several different groups have a say in who ends up on the roap. Our Marketing team and Marvel look to see if there are any opportunities to tie our characters to exciting releases Marvel has planned, our Champion Design team tries to make sure we keep the balance of our classes relatively even and that they can see interesting gameplay possibilities for their powers, our Art and Technical teams make sure we think we can make them look and feel like the characters we know a love from the source material. There are lots of considerations, so we give ourselves plenty of time to discuss, and plan our release roap well in advance.
Has it ever felt difficult to keep character additions and their moves feeling fresh after so many have been added to the game?
Simon Cameron: Absolutely! This is a constant challenge. But we’re always adding new tech to our toolbelt to help keep things fresh, both on the art and the gameplay side. We do our best to plan well in advance what the cool new thing we want to add to each character will be, to give us time to build any new tools we’d need to make it happen. We also strive to build our tools in such a way that we give maximum freedom to the artists and designers who will end up implementing the characters. This way we can create as many cool and unique combinations of all of these pieces as possible!
What's the most exciting part of adding a new Champion to the game? Have there been any particularly big fan reactions to Champions that stand out?
Simon Cameron: For me the most exciting, and the most nerve wracking part of any Champion release is the reaction of our player base! It’s great to see players excited for one of their favorite Champions to enter The Contest. Since I’m also very close to the gameplay side, I’m always watching to see how players end up using a Champion we release. There’s always some sort of unanticipated interaction or combo that our players find! A stand out moment for me came a few years ago at New York Comic Con, when a fan came up to our booth in full cosplay of Guillotine, one of our MCoC original characters! The attention to detail was amazing, absolutely spot on. We actually had a professional cosplayer as part of our booth that year, also dressed up as Guillotine, and I think the player cosplay was even better!
Do you have a personal favorite Champion?
Simon Cameron: I think my favorite Marvel character is Doctor Strange, but in MCoC I think my favorite Champion is Captain America (Infinity War). He’s a great representation of his character in game, he’s a counter puncher, needing to block hits to power up his attacks, and he’s very focused on his team with an impressive suit of synergies to power up his teammates, while also gaining additional abilities for himself.
Contest of Champions has a lot of depth to its mechanics, letting players not only upgrade their characters but also allowing players to take advantage of things like synergy bonuses when particular characters come together. Can you speak to how creating depth in the game's fighting and character growth mechanics has been an important part of development and a key element of the game's success?
Simon Cameron: It’s The Contest of Champions, so making sure the Champions sing is always a focus for us! We try to keep the core gameplay loop simple and accessible for all Champions (ie All Champions can do the basic 5-hit combo), and then we focus a lot on the RPG elements. We plan out a vision for both gameplay and RPG for each class, and how the classes should interact with each other. Then we use these core identities to design the Champions: where should they fit within their class's identity, where should they break it? Always searching for areas of interaction that are missing or under served within our roster, or putting a new spin on an existing interaction. This is what keeps new Champions interesting, and gameplay feeling fresh but familiar, and has been a huge part of MCoC’s success.
Eight years in, so much content has come to Contest of Champions. Where do you see the game going from here? Are there any exciting future plans you can share?
Simon Cameron: That’s always the big question isn’t it? And one we’re regularly changing our answer to! We’re going to continue to try and evolve the game. There’s a core that’s a ton of fun and our players love, so we want to make sure we’re still serving that up, while we try new styles of content and gameplay to keep things fresh! New types of enemies, new types of abilities, new ways to use your existing Champions. For example, we've recently introduced our newest game mode, Battlegrounds. We love how it makes players think differently about which Champions are most valuable to them, and how you have to react to how the Champions in your deck compare to your opponent’s. We have a community of players who absolutely love it, but for some players, it can be overwhelming. So now, we’re thinking about how we can keep the competitive spirit alive for these players, while still making it more approachable? We’re also thinking long term, as we’re 8 years in, we want to still be serving up fun and exciting gameplay 8 years from now. Internally, we’re discussing what plans we need to set in motion now to be successful years ahead. It’s going to be an exciting and interesting set of challenges to solve!
Is there anything else you want players to know about MARVEL Contest of Champions as it celebrates its anniversary?
Simon Cameron: I just want to say thank you to all of our players! It’s always amazing to see how engaged and ionate they are. The community driven tools and events are incredible! Players are organizing tournaments, filming tutorials, and creating valuable Champion reference tools. It blows my mind to see it all! It’s that kind of ion, and excitement that I getting from playing games that really drives myself and our team to keep making the very best game we can! It’s been 8 crazy awesome years! Here’s to 8 more!
Marvel Contest of Champions is available for iOS and Android devices via the App Store and Google Play Store, with MANTIS arriving December 15 and Rocket's Holiday Scraptacular running from now through January 11.