#77 Marvel Universe Online Project With Michael Davenport

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for the most casual and dedicated fans of comics and a member of the comic watch family I'm your host Sean join me

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hey everyone and thank you for joining us this is your first time thanks for checking us out if you're a returning

listener thanks for coming back one of the things I absolutely love about the world of comics is how we can engage in

that world through a number of different mediums in addition to reading comics we can also see our favorite characters

come to life on screen we can cosplay as our favorite characters we can read books about them we can even play games

as though we're in that Universe well a while back I came across a Twitter account whose focus is promoting a

really interesting game that lives in the Marvel Universe called the Marvel Universe Online project I know there's a

lot of Marvel games launched recently like Marvel snap we have some coming up as like midnight Suns Wolverine but the

Marvel Universe Online project is different because this game is created and designed by someone outside of

Marvel entertainment and it has a very unique take to it so I asked the creator of the game to join our show today to

talk to us more about it so please welcome Michael Davenport also known as Marvel Mike Michael has been lead writer

and creative director of the Marvel Universe Online project for the last 10 years connecting with artists writers and developers within the comic and

gaming communities outside of his day job he supports the troops as a network analyst for the dod and Mike has been

the face of the project advocating it in interviews and podcasts across the internet while supporting a rotating

team of creatives and help put together this extensive project Mike thank you for coming on the show how you doing

today I am doing excellent I'm doing excellent I want everyone to know that

we are we are the concept of the Marvel Universe Online is an idea I mean

started a little over 10 years ago and we asked the question what would it be like to have an

all-encompassing video game that allowed you as an individual not to be Spider-Man or not to be Wolverine but to

be you what would you be like as a character in the Marvel Universe you know the folks that that I used to run

with back in the day they played you know City of Heroes was a big influence on us you know a lot of games like

Champions online was a big influence for us so we were early early adopters of

the entire superhero MMO genre before it was any even you know a real genre yet right so

yeah that's that's where the inspiration came from and it's a lot of it built from there yeah no and it's really cool

and and I know we're going to get into a little bit more of the nuances of what I thought was really interesting and neat

about your game um and so um to start off with I do want to say

that I want to appreciate you coming on the show and uh talking about because you are actually out of the United

States currently you're what country are you in right now I'm in Germany right now yes can I ask what city is that okay

uh Wiesbaden he's about nice awesome you know I took

go ahead sorry about 45 minutes outside of Frankfurt oh nice so what's

interesting is I took three years of German in high school and I've been to Germany once just at an airport but I've

always wanted to go visit there so I think that's really cool that you're living there and I just want to say I appreciate you taking the time uh you

know from Germany to come on the show because I think you are what do we figured out like seven or eight hours ahead or something like that seven or

eight hours ahead yes yes yeah so for me it's a you know it's a 12 o'clock for you it's in the evening so I know it's

not too late but I appreciate you coming on the show and talking about that so to start off with I always like to ask our

guests what is your comic book origin story was there someone or something that got you into Comics that after that

moment you're like this is it I want to you know dive into that world what's your origin story there back in 1982

my uncle came back from overseas and he was a big comic book fan yeah and I was

like 12 years old at the time and he let me read one of his graphic novels it was uh God loves man kills the X-Men graphic

novel yeah and it was it was to say the least for a

12 year old it was it was hard it was a hard-hitting comic book I was I was amazed and it from that point on I I was

I was hooked yeah so the X-Men you know of course before then you you know as a kid I watched you know Spider-Man and

Amazing Friends you know the the electric company Spider-Man every time you know a little bit of you know the

Superman oh Superman shows everything you know but when I read that comic for the first time that graphic novel that

was it for me I knew that these would this would be my thing from now on and it just blossomed from there that's

awesome you know I love hearing that because that is very similar to my origin story my uncle got me into Comics

as well too and the one the very first Comics I read was X-Men it was it was the first issue

not the first print but it was the first issue of X-Men so our story is very similar in that regard I love that

that's so cool um well the next question I had was what exactly is the Marvel Universe Online

project but I know you kind of answered that so um I wanted to maybe dive in a little bit more uh what was the motivation for

you to create this game and how long have you been working on it well it's more it's more I want to get I

want the the audience to understand it's more of a pitch project right because we do we don't have licensing and I I do a

regular dance with uh with the Marvel execs about getting licensing but it's

it started out as a concept built on the things that we saw in other games uh a

collection of ideas that that Blossom from like I said City of Heroes which had a lot of potential but it really

didn't take off before it's Sunset back in 2012 I believe it was and then uh of

course after that it was uh Champions online which fun fact after sitting here at sunset I

I took you know I took all of the ideas that me and my friends had put together and I reached out to Jack Emmert

the uh the creator of City of Heroes to ask him directly

you know what happened you know because uh Apparently after city of hero Sunset and Jack moved on uh Marvel had actually

approached him about doing a a superhero game doing the

superhero MMO the original and a lot of people probably remember seeing the original

advertisements for the first Marvel Universe online game right so if you see those yeah this is like

short video clips of the the the actual figures you know you know this it was a

really short thing but basically we took we actually took so that if you anyone you look at us on social media our icon

our our Avatar is that original icon

so that's that's where the Marvel Universe Online project originated from

nice awesome so he gave me a lot of pointers about what happens behind the scenes these

kind of deep these kind of negotiations and uh from there I just I still started

digging more and more into it I had people helping me out from time to time you know explaining the background about

you know how games are actually made you know I I didn't want to be one of these people that just had an idea and then

that was that you know right I did the legwork I'm an analytical type of person so you know I did the research I reached

out to companies I reached out to companies like uh um was it uh

we reached out the crying and had them explain to us how how um development

pipelines typically work right now the amount of people that that is involved

in a typical AAA game for example you know we had them explain those those

details to us in a way that we could formulate you know what our next Moves In in putting together a presentation

right from there it everything just started building on top you know one one move on

top of another move on top of another move and then you know uh Hero Marvel Heroes at that point Marvel hero sunset

so that was another indication that yeah you know that the the the the the niche

is there you know there there is a customer base for that type of game Marvel heroes prove that you know but

unfortunately you know uh circumstances behind the scenes never allow these kind of games to

Blossom to their full potential right so we just kept in the background checking along chugging along talking along more

more Concepts more you know more resources you know more inquiries you

know into different you know areas of the genre itself you know in gaming you know my you know I consider myself very

knowledgeable in comics but I'm not super I'm not the end all the be-all of Marvel information so of course we reach

out to you know comic experts as well you know we talked to you know I talked to uh the I talked to um

Elliot Brown if you don't know who Elliot Brown is Elliot Brown make the

artwork for the official Handbook of the Marvel Universe yeah yeah yes Elliot

Brown so again another resource I reached out to and talked to it he had a lot of great insights on you know the

comic aspect of it you know how Marvel does things how Marvel's how Marvel focuses on the details of the characters

and their worlds and their environments and how he you know in his instance how he structured that to make those you know

the artwork for those handbooks that's awesome yeah it was a lot there's

a lot of a lot of legwork oh it sounds like it yeah yeah I bet so when when

you're working on this project and you know like you say I I appreciate you clarifying that this is not an actual

game yet it's more of a pitch deck yes to try to make this a reality um as you had said it sounds like you're

trying to make things as accurate as possible do you have any Liberty to kind of Veer off a little bit because one

thing is I I also want to ask you is that it I think I read somewhere that this lives in Earth 619 and I'll be

honest I don't know if there's actually an established Earth 619 in the Marvel Universe and if it is is that a way for

you to be able to try to keep as accurate as possible but be able to tell and Veer off from the continuity of 616

as well or or tell us a little bit about that process there's a we we did a lot of research to find a version of an

earth designation that wasn't if not used at all but was minimally used and

there is a brief mention of an earth 619 in a in a I guess it was back in the

spider-verse okay but it came and went so we wanted a designated that was as

close to 616 as possible so we chose 619 since it's technically not on the books

anymore right so that gave us the leeway to

um alter certain characters histories the the point is we had to take well we had

to take the orange original versions of these characters and these worlds from 616 and we had to diverge them at a

particular point so that would make you know narrative sense for there to be all

of these news new uh people with superpowers in the world and how you

know what led up to that so we have an extensive you know history of what

happened where everything began to diverge and what we what we promote is that in the

end when players actually get a chance to play this game what they'll want to do is they'll want to interact with as

many characters known characters in the Marvel universe as possible to find out

in their history where things went different you know so you'll discover you'll learn

more about how Earth 619 differs from 616 by your interactions with the

character NPCs that you you meet you know if we we give you know on the website we give people an opportunity to

read a few of the bios so we have a sampling of BIOS of different characters and how their histories changed and we

do that on purpose we basically take their their origin stories from 616. we picked a particular point in their

history to diverge to allow them to exist at the point where the game begins

gotcha yeah so kind of like what we saw happen in the Loki Series right just kind of Veer off of that a little bit

exactly exactly small deviations yeah small deviations lead characters into

different directions to eventually lead to the point where our story be our Earth 16619 Story

begins basically our our version begins at our version of

Civil War oh cool okay so so in in talking about that that

sounds like a lot of fun to be able to take something that's kind of already established and then create a world by

changing a particular event and all that can you tell us a little bit more of like what character histories or

um events that you all have changed to make that happen you said Civil War is kind of the starting point is there other

um events that you all change that you know one you said like it had to but two

was a lot of fun to be able to change and come up with a new story for them yes

for example Wanda Wanda never went insane oh okay

Wanda never went insane because doctor strange and and Agatha Agatha uh

Park act as a Harkin discovered back in back originally when

she fought Triton that there was a sliver of his Essence in her mind that would years later and

you would see that in the regular comp Mark you know uh um Scarlet Witch's comic you see her

slowly her mind slowly deteriorate right well on 619

doctor strange and Agatha the Harkness discovered that sliver in her mind removed it

right around the time that things began to go south but Wanda was able to become

an actual functioning superhero so with Wanda not losing her mind that

opened that that opened up a lot of things first of all in uh you know uh no more mutants didn't happen right you

know the the ex The Avengers disassembled never happened yeah so a

chain of events because she didn't have that those episodes a chain of events allowed us to open up possibilities by

the fact that those major events never happened so the world still has all of the

Avengers that supposedly died out of an Avengers disassembled and the world is

still populated by a full host of mutants that's awesome so yeah we get to play with that now we

have we set the stage so that at that point when when uh Civil War happens the

the Slate is full of everybody who could possibly be involved in it now our

version of Civil War we call it the global Civil War okay now global in the fact that it you know

in the comedy was just Superheroes versus superheroes in their disagreement as far as being registered right well

something happened before all of this that led to making this uh making this

disagreement is conflict a global one well basically what happened three supervillains figure out a way of giving

everyone on Earth well most people most people on Earth well I don't even say

most people I would say probably about 30 of the human population superpowers

so random people on the street just burst you know have powers you know you can

read that on on the website it's called basically they can call it the event okay that happened just random people

just develop super abilities and that's the players that's us building up to the players involvement in the game right so

this led the world governments to to not know what to do with it so this you know of course that leads to you know we have

to do something with all these super power people so the legislation of the world government was to register them

and hence you know Civil War there every you know

it was it wasn't just the superheroes fighting it's ever your neighbors you against your neighbors your neighbors

might agree that you need to be controlled or you may agree that your neighbors need to be controlled or vice versa so it was it's fighting on every

street around the world and superheroes were right in in the middle of it even super villains had to

decide at some point what they were going to do in the situation where you know anyone could pop up with

superpowers right so it was a catastrophe of epic proportions

so it right so the the player the player the player

interjects at the end of this so you so the world is recovering

we found a solution uh everyone you know on the hero side

everyone is taking the lesson from Charles Xavier and decided to open these facilities to train all of these people

with superpowers and how to control and use their powers more constructible right so that's where the player comes

in he chooses this different school where he wants to go Xavier Avengers Fantastic Four doc strange we have all

these different houses represented for superheroes and super villains decided to do the same thing covertly so

that is that is your premise in a nutshell in front there you discover everything about the world and how it

differs from what you know that's awesome well that sounds really fascinating in you know just coming up

with a brand new idea of changing one thing but then you know making another

cataclysmic event happen and as you had mentioned one of the things about this

game that I absolutely love the idea is that the user can create their own

character that lives in this Marvel 619 and in doing so it updates the game

handbook with the character stats which I think that's so amazing that's such a great idea

um can you tell us a little bit more about the origin behind that idea and just you know anything about the user

creating their their own uh character in there like you know my guess is they can either be a hero or can they select to

be a villain and what else they can do with that you can you're of course beginning

you know the the whole idea was that you know we wanted the the it all to be

comic book based so we wanted you to feel like this was you know your comic book so the beginning so we designed the

the the character creation tool to look like an entry in the official Handbook of the Marvel Universe right that you

know from there you you see where it's going to go you see that you know this is going to be this is you're creating

your avatar you're creating a version of yourself however you want to create it and you put in uh you know your first

few lines of blood that's originally you you put in your origin story there and

you know talking to people who who write scripts of uh uh uh branching narratives

we came to the idea that hey why don't we would it be possible that certain

missions as a player plays a game would add to their their bio and it's there

there really wasn't any limit you know it wasn't a barrier to that being possible so that's where the whole idea

came from and plus I really I'm a big fan of the handbooks I really and I'm a huge fan of the handbooks right it was a

shame when they stopped making so I thought well why don't we you know Focus the the

players creation in a handbook and from there the concept

led to the idea of being able to take these these character sheets that you create for your character trade them you

know collect other people's bios and and build your own handbooks

you know you can you know volumes and volumes of your all your friends characters and build that build your own

handbook so and from there the mo from there we

looked at a business aspect of it and found that you know why not take that

even further and have players be able to create actual books you know so you can

you know you create these these books virtually but you could also you know

spend a little extra money and have them created as you know actual paperback books you know Comics that you could

collect yeah not just other players but actual NPCs as well you're you're collecting this

information because the information is actually as you play the game if you're fighting an NPC it's valuable

information that you get from those NPC stats that allow you to to fight them

effectively so it all ties together to the handbook you know every character in the game has

an entry in a handbook you may not Discover it yet but that'll be part of the gameplay aspect that you go out

there and you interact with these characters you know he's super non-super characters depends you know it doesn't matter you know they'll have a stat

they'll have a handbook entry that you can collect for information front door right

and that's you know it it it it was a no-brainer for us to say hey this is where we're going to focus it this is

where we get this is where the the main interest in the game should should focus

right here you know this is where it all you know the the everything else orbits

around the handbook right yes as feature-wise so it was I think it's

right now it's one of the most popular aspects of the project oh I bet yeah I mean that when I was reading your

website like that was the thing that really intrigued me the most is doing this sort of thing where we can be

ourselves part of the universe and I think that's just such an interesting and unique idea to be able to try to

implement and it sounds really cool to do that and I can even see not just having a character she in a handbook but

being able to translate that into uh even like trading cards and have people create trading cards and do that sort of

thing I I love that idea because I think this allows people to not only live

through the characters but to feel like they're part of this universe that they're interacting with some of their favorite people and they can be at that

same level as well yeah so I love that idea yeah and and it gives us an

opportunity to to make the make the game profitable outside of the normal realm

of monetization right you know it I want people to feel like of getting value if

you put more money in this in this game beyond what you paid for to play it there should be value in it right I feel

that your creative abilities should add value to your game experience right this

was a this was a logical way to do that yeah no I think that's great I so I love

hearing everything about this project I think this is amazing and I'm just curious how can listeners and other

people hear about your project get involved is there something that they can support you in this how if they're

really interested and would like to see this like come to life or just support it any other way what can they do

well a hundred percent well we do have a we do have a patreon and we do have a coffee account 100 of the to keep us

above board 100 of those profits go directly to the the artists that help us

create the concepts for the game gotcha so that money goes directly to them I have a model I have a model in this

project that says I say everyone gets paid in this project to tell me [Laughter]

nice that's fine everyone is and and it's important that we do this in the

way that we're doing it by uh bringing in creatives within the community right

you know we we want to we want to show that that this project is about them so

the version of the handbook that we have on a web page is designed to feature new

artists every entry is a different artist and we we take the money that we get donated to to commission those

artists to come on and do an entry in the handbook so we showcase their work as well you know this is the com we call it the

community edition of the handbook right that's awesome the more the more people that we can get to support us that way

the more options we have to reach out and not only just artists we eventually

want to get you know we want to get more writers involved we want to get game developers because the technical aspect

I'll be the first to admit the technical aspect of of the website is a little lacking and that is because we want to

maintain a level of professionalism that costs mm-hmm so you know we want to get uh I have people

who would love to get involved but you know like I said their time is important to them and I want to make sure that

they're fairly compensated yeah yeah no that's great I love hearing that yeah and yeah that's that's what I mean we

get a lot of complaints we get a lot of complaints that it's moving very slow but honestly that that's the reason why

we we want to make sure that everyone involved in this project feels that that they're being you know

fairly compensated for their efforts because I for one know that times are tough right and I want everyone to know

you know you know recognition you know you know promotion is is all well and good but you know we

all Gotta Eat oh yeah definitely well and I think that's a great

um thing to keep in mind as well too with all the things that we've been hearing from artists in the actual

Comics industry about how there have been um a number of times that they felt like

they've been sort of changed and not fairly compensated for their work so I love hearing that you're you know trying to do that with this uh pitch deck of a

game idea and so I think that's wonderful I think that's great to try to do that so that's awesome

and if you if you don't if you don't feel you don't have the opportunity to donate to through one of those Avenues

the best thing you can do for us is to spread the word right I tell that everyone on all every every platform on

social media that we're on the best thing you can do for us is to spread the word because the more people that hear

about us the more people that hear about us so the right ears once you know once word gets to the right ears and they pay

more attention to us than you know things things can start to happen right

you know the the idea is that the idea is that you gotta want it yeah I can

build the framework but I can build a field but we got to get people to come

to watch the game yeah you know yeah you know that's that's the thing I need we need people out there in every corner of

social media and Beyond spreading the word about the Marvel Universe Online project yeah I love talking about it I

will talk ad nauseam about it every aspect of it if anyone has questions I'm

always available online to discuss it and I'll make sure to uh put a link to

your website in the show notes here as well too so if anyone's listening to this and they want to check it out you can definitely look at the show notes

and there'll be a link to the website that you can find more information about it so awesome thank you well um I'd like

to end every episode with our guest to talk about the comics that we're currently reading and I know you and I

had a conversation before we started recording about this um but I want to ask you what uh Comics are you currently

reading or that you're keeping uh on top of because I know with this project you're probably you know keeping an eye

out for things that's happening in the world of comics especially the Marvel universe so I just want to ask you what

are you currently reading or at least being uh keeping an eye out for keeping an eye out on the X-Men they're

staying with Sinister right now yes it's funny [ __ ] funny business yes funny

business yeah I'm watching him watching him watching Hope too oh yeah funny

funny business right yeah and and if you're not familiar with the X-Men story

uh there was a big event called the house of X powers of ten yes where all

the mutants are now living on an island design it's a living Island designed for

mutants uh called krakowa that they can live safely and the whole story is that they kind of made a deal with

um Humanity of Earth saying that you know they let them be um just you know leave them alone and basically and let

them live on this island then uh Professor X actually figure out the way to give all of humanity you know

medicine for them to you know be cancer-free and even extend their life by like I think 10 or 20 years or

something like that um since then there's been a lot of spin-off series of the X-Men and I have

to say I got away from Reading from Comics around high school so I just got back into it like five years ago and I

have not been keeping up with all the things that's going in X-Men stories and so I read the house of X Powers at 10

and one as confusing as it was it was really exciting but I will say that I

was a little lost trying to read and follow what was going on but since then there's been a number of Side Story arcs

that plays into this story that it's hard to keep top of all the stories that's happening so for me I'm just

following Immortal X-Men which is a great story because you kind of see what's been happening at the leadership level

um but there's a lot of other spin-off series that are kind of many teams for the X-Men and everything and so it's

been really interesting so um yeah immoral X-Men for me is something I've been keeping on top of

absolutely yeah it's gonna blow your mind trying to keep up with all of it oh yeah well and it's

a great story but again there's a lot that's going on yeah you're totally right so um for me so one of the things I want to

say is that usually um I invite listeners to share what

comic steer reading um unfortunately I was able to do that this week because I'm recording at an

earlier time than I usually do because of scheduling and everything like that so I had just asked people what Comics

are reading and so I feel like there wasn't gonna be a lot of opportunity to do a quick flip around so there won't be listeners

um uh and uh what am I trying to say here um so there won't be any listener

mentioned Comics here just for that reason but for the next episode I'll definitely put a call out and make sure

to include everybody's in the episode but for me uh I've been talking about how I'm going to be reading um Superman

son of Kalel I still haven't started yet it's still on my to-do list I've just been really busy with everything but on

top of that um there are three Comics I just picked up this week that I'm looking forward to one of them is uh Star Wars Visions

which if you haven't heard of before it's a series uh that's anime on Disney plus that is fantastic I'm not an anime

person but I watched that show and it is a wonderful wonderful show and so I

picked up that issue of Star Wars Visions that's supposed to be um I think a not a retelling but adding

on to the stories that's already been told in the series um I also got Superman Cal L return special that just came out from DC

Comics and then last but not least I also got uh DC's grifter got ran over by

a reindeer which is DC's holiday comic that they just released this year as well too so those are the ones I'm

planning on reading I have not read yet but I'm very excited about that I will share that I did get to read Planet Hulk

World by uh World breaker for Comic watch and I haven't read a lot of cult

Comics but that is issue was really fantastic and so it was one of those

stories that I'm probably going to pick up the tray paper back once it's done because it is a really intriguing story it's probably one that is a little bit

reminiscent because there's been a lot of Planet Hulk stories that's been told but I feel like this one's a little bit different I think it's a lot more of a

mystery to figure out you know what's going on almost like a series of lost where they talk about what's happened in

the past and you don't know what's going on and so they're kind of going back and forth a little bit to share you know the stories and everything so

um if you haven't read Planet Hulk World breaker I definitely recommend picking that up and checking that out so

all right well Mike thank you very much for coming on the show I really appreciate it before I let you go can

you share with everybody where they can find you and your work online we are everywhere literally we are

everywhere we are on Facebook we have Facebook page that I'm very proud of we are on Twitter we are on Instagram we

are on LinkedIn you can actually have an article I wrote on LinkedIn so and I'll

link that in the show notes as well too yes we are also we are also on uh the

new ones we're on uh uh Hive we're on Mastodon we're on Tumblr

plus we have our patreon page we have our coffee page and of course the website

www.themarvaryuniversonline.com awesome and then on social media is it uh the same uh username for all of them

we try to use it as close as possible Marvel underscore MMO or Marvel MMO gotcha so you will definitely find this

awesome awesome great and like I said I'll link the website uh in the show notes as well and that should have all

the links to your social media as well too so all right all right well thanks again Mike I really appreciate you

coming on the show and best of luck to this project all right thanks sir and that wraps up another episode of the

caps in life don't forget to hit the Subscribe button you can follow us on social media at caps in life for more

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#77 Marvel Universe Online Project With Michael Davenport

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