The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has revolutionized entertainment by weaving a tapestry of interconnected films and TV shows into a single, coherent narrative. However, the same cannot be said for Marvel video games, which remain standalone experiences without any shared universe. For instance, Insomniac’s *Marvel’s Spider-Man* series operates independently from Eidos-Montreal’s *Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy*. Likewise, forthcoming titles like *Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra*, *Marvel's Wolverine*, and *Marvel’s Blade* are not linked in any way.

Yet, there was once an ambitious plan at Disney to establish a Marvel Gaming Universe (MGU) that would mirror the MCU's success in the video game realm. So, what derailed this promising venture?

On *The Fourth Curtain* podcast, host Alexander Seropian and guest Alex Irvine reminisced about the MGU project, shedding light on why it never materialized. Seropian, renowned for co-founding Bungie and developing *Halo* and *Destiny*, led Disney’s video game division until his departure in 2012. Irvine, a veteran writer in the Marvel gaming sphere, notably contributed to *Marvel Rivals*.

Irvine recounted the initial concept of the MGU: “When I first started working on Marvel games, there was this idea that they were going to create a Marvel gaming universe that was going to exist in the same way that the MCU did. It never really happened.”

Seropian revealed that the MGU was his initiative but lacked the necessary funding from Disney's higher-ups: “When I was at Disney, that was my initiative, ‘Hey, let’s tie these games together.’ It was pre-MCU. But it didn’t get funded.”

Irvine, drawing from his experience with the *Halo* alternate reality game *I Love Bees*, elaborated on the potential mechanics of the MGU: “That was so frustrating because we came up with all these great ideas about how to do it. And I was coming out of ARGs at that point and thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we had some ARG aspects?’ There would be a place where players could go that all the games touched, and we could move them back and forth from game to game. We could link in comics, we could loop in anything, we could do original stuff. And then, as Alex said, it didn’t get funded. So we made a bunch of games.”

The complexity of the MGU concept may have contributed to its demise. Irvine explained: “Even back then, we were trying to figure out, ‘If there’s going to be this MGU, how is it different from the comics? How is it different from the movies? How are we going to decide if it stays consistent?’ And I think some of those questions got complex enough that there were people at Disney who didn’t really want to deal with them.”

It's intriguing to ponder the potential of a realized MGU. If it had come to fruition, perhaps *Insomniac’s Spider-Man* games could have coexisted with Square Enix’s *Marvel's Avengers* and *Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy*, featuring cross-game cameos and culminating in an epic, *Endgame*-style event.

Looking forward, the standalone nature of *Marvel's Wolverine* raises questions about its connection to *Marvel's Spider-Man*. Could characters from the *Spider-Man* series make an appearance in *Wolverine*?

Ultimately, the MGU remains an unfulfilled dream, a tantalizing "what if" in the annals of video game history. Yet, in some alternate reality, perhaps it thrives...