While Marvel Comics characters like Spider-Man and teams like the X-Men have had television series, video games, and more for a long time, the official beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2008's Iron Man opened the floodgates for new media adaptations. One mobile game that emerged with this newfound mainstream interest in the rich Marvel Comics tapestry was Marvel Contest of Champions in 2014. Its developer, Kabam, would go on to launch another title called Marvel Realm of Champions in 2020, and on May 4 it released its 3.0 update - described as "the game's most significant yet."

Unlike its predecessor, Realm of Champions lets players partake in real-time 3v3 battles using customizable characters, called Champions, who represent different Houses on a planet called Battleworld where realities collide. Its newest Champion is Thor, the Norse God of Thunder, whom developers describe as an all-around brawler ready to take on any challenge. Game Rant spoke to Realm of Champions development director Ethan Young and creative director Gabriel Frizzera about the game's 3.0 update, Thor, and how it will evolve going forward. Interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

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Q: Could you guys give a rundown of what Thor can do in Realm of Champions?

Young: Thor is the newest Champion in the 3.0 build, and he can do a bunch of different things. When we were thinking about Thor we wanted to make sure we incorporated all those iconic elements; the lightning, Mjolnir, flying; into his ability kit. He can do all of those things, he can throw Mjolnir in battle and it comes back to him; he can whirl it around to charge up and use it to close distance; he can fly up in the air and do a devastating attack.

Where he fits within the world is he's like a brawler. He gets in the middle of the fray, he's dealing damage, he's taking damage. That's the niche he fits within the gameplay relative to the other characters.

He also has a second weapon, Stormbreaker, which is a bit more damage-per-second (DPS) focused. One of the interesting things we're introducing for Stormbreaker is an "execution" mechanic where, on an Ultimate Ability, when an enemy is below a certain threshold of health you can use it to basically destroy them - take them right out of the fight.

There's a bunch of really cool abilities that Thor has, he's one of our most versatile heroes to date. Gabe can talk about this as well, but he's got such a tremendous gear set. I think the customization options on Thor are one of the best we've done. It's my personal favorite, they look absolutely incredible.

Frizzera: I wanted to call the execution mechanic "go for the head," but I don't think Marvel wanted that. It was a little too violent.

Anyway, I really love Thor. I grew up reading Walt Simonson's run and all this cool stuff. Now, Thor is one of my favorites in the comics, but there's a whole other Thor in the movies. He's funny, he's a "dude" kind of guy. There's several different Thors, and because our game can put forward this kind of thing by playing in several alternate realities at the same time, we decided to bring in all the different Thors.

We started with traditional Thor, including the disk plates and wing helmet, but we also have the Sakaar gladiator straight from Thor: Ragnarok with short hair and a more alien outfit. Then we also have stuff like a full Destroyer armor where he's dressed entirely in metal, unworthy Thor, Odinforce Thor. The fun starts when players can start mixing and matching parts to make their own Thors. You can do quite a lot, I probably spend more time dressing my characters than I do playing them.

What's really a surprise to us is as much as we test a character and play in the office, they really only comes to life out there. Players find different ways to fight with a character that were never taught. As soon as we release, we'll start to look around and see different viable strategies, and that's the interesting part to me now.

Q: Will the execution mechanic you discussed be excusive to Thor? Or is it something other Champions will get access to as well?

Young: That ability is exclusive to Thor. It doesn't preclude us from introducing similar mechanics like that in the future for different Champions, but this one is exclusive to Thor's Stormbreaker weapon.

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Q: If changing weapons has an effect on abilities, how much of an effect does changing armor have outside of cosmetic appearances?

Young: It's pretty significant. There's different passives and stats that are attached to these different gear sets, and you can swap them in and out. The passive abilities are called Synergies, and if you have different gear sets it unlocks abilities that can be influential in terms of playstyle.

That's what Gabe was alluding to. We have these pre-conceived ideas of how characters are going to play because we play them a lot ourselves, but when we release them players find totally new ways to use Champions and gear to create different experiences and disrupt the meta. The gear plays a massive role in that, it's incredibly influential.

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Q: In terms of the Synergies Thor has, how much wiggle room is there to specialize around the idea of him being a DPS character?

Young: He can specialize in different ways. I'm not entirely sure of the specifics for his Synergies off the top of my head, but certainly Stormbreaker is more focused on DPS compared to Mjolnir. It's also the case where our intent behind Thor was to have him be a well-rounded brawler, and initially that's where his Synergies and gear set make him thrive. However, that doesn't preclude us from introducing new weapons or gear to push certain ways that players are going with him.

For now though he's pretty well-rounded, good at everything. But players can take it in certain directions as they see fit.

Q: Realm of Champions appears similar to a team-based Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) like League of Legends. How does Thor play against other Champions in terms of its team aspects?

Young: The cool thing about Realm of Champions is we have creative license to do so much. Even though it resembles certain aspects of a MOBA, the way I envision it is so much more. For example, in 3.0 we've got a big boss fight coming out, and that's not something you'd see in, say, League of Legends.

For how Thor plays relative to those other Champions, as I mentioned before a lot of them can be fairly niche. They have customization options, but Black Panther, for example, is a melee DPS character without a lot of durability compared to Hulk, who's more of a tank. Thor is somewhere in between, and it's a role we don't necessarily have yet.

Frizzera: Just to elaborate on the MOBA thing, when we started the game there were only a few things we wanted it to be. Marvel never came to us with instructions.

There were some things we didn't like in MOBAs: The play sessions are long, the movement is slow, you have minions and things. We didn't want all of that, we wanted a team-based action brawler. The first few modes we experimented with that were successful felt a little like MOBAs, but new modes we're trying don't feel like them at all. They're just using the same platform of having Marvel characters with three abilities on a team - or maybe not even a team, it could just be you against a boss or something.

We aren't trying to stay in a lane. We're just trying to take this universe and figure out where it fits, what players are enjoying the most. I joke a lot that maybe we could try a racing mode, wouldn't it be fun to have a bunch of MODOKs doing bumper racing? We talk about that in the office and nobody ever says, "No, we're never doing that."

That's the mentality of this game, we've never thought about ourselves and what genre we fit. As long as there's action, it's a Marvel game, and preferably has teams and PvP, we're open to different kinds of modes.

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Q: Kabam also works on Contest of Champions. How did the idea for Realm of Champions come about, and why was the decision made to make it so different?

Frizzera: I've been with Contest since the beginning, I'm also Creative Director there. Contest has been a big success for us, and a big laboratory for ideas with spending, marketing, etc.

There was a time when I started thinking about the next project. I really love Marvel's alternate reality stories, how you can take a character and change them into something else while keeping the core ideas of the characters. So, I put a small pitch together and presented the idea internally, basically saying "what if we completely broke our toys?" We have Marvel's approval because we'd shown that we respect the universe and understand it, so why not try to take things to the next logical step? A game where you can completely customize the characters, in a universe that feels fresh but familiar at the same time.

The gameplay kind of game afterward. Like I said, we just knew we wanted to make an action game that could do what Contest couldn't, like playing together in real time rather than something asynchronous - a direction mobile games are generally moving in.

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Then we presented it to Marvel, and Marvel immediately greenlit the thing. Even the movies are going in this direction with multiple realities. However, we were very careful to make sense of everything. We said this second game is in the same universe as the first, because as comic geeks we know that's what happens, you like crossovers.

We took a lot of time writing this as an offspring of Contest, living in the same universe. In a nutshell, it came from the creative side before the mechanics were defined because we wanted Marvel to get excited about it first. It's a big ask to say let's change our characters completely, so we wanted to make sure we did it the right way rather than just changing Spider-Man to be lime green because I like that color.

Everything comes from the story and the universe, and I think it's growing well. We're already seeing some stories in Contest that bring over characters from Realm to play in that universe, they're merging a little bit. They're completely separate games and perhaps have different audiences, but we want you to be rewarded if you want to know more. If you have enough hours in the day to play both, you're rewarded with cool lore and things to do. That's the big experiment we're in the middle of.

Q: You said you're a fan of comics and the movies Gabe, so what do you hope fans of either or both take from playing this game as a unique take on the universe?

Frizzera: If you're a Marvel fan I want you to be as excited as I am. When I write stories and put little Easter eggs in there that I know only five people will see or understand, then I go to forums and I see one guy who remembers it from some story from the 80s, or whatever. That's the kind of thing that makes me happy.

I know there are other people like me because I've talked to fans of Contest who say they like I put nods in to their first comic stories. That's the kind of thing Marvel is really good at. I hope people have something fresh to look at in this new universe where they can say, "Hey, this is the kind of Iron Man I like but a little different, so let me go through the House of Iron chapters to see what this is about." Maybe go through all the stories and see how the different points of view in Battleworld contribute to a major feature.

We like to tell long-form stories. Contest has been a lot of fun - its been six years, and we're still telling the same story. People are still enjoying it. This game is like twice as much.

Q: And how much experience did you have with the Marvel universe before coming into Realm of Champions, Ethan?

Young: I love it - though not nearly as much as Gabe. I sit here, listen to him talk, and say this guy is a creative mastermind. I learn more and more everyday, and it's really cool as we're developing the Champions and seeing their backstories.

One of the things that's particularly unique is my perspective is moreso focused on how they play: are they fun, do they work well? It's such a fascinating experience when there's that push/pull between creative and story versus the gameplay, seeing what we want to do from a functional gameplay perspective and trying to tie that into the Marvel universe. How is that represented so the narrative is cohesive and makes sense?

It's such a rich, diverse IP and I think there are pockets of it for everyone. That extends to everything we do, even the backgrounds that maybe seem innocuous if you don't know, but as you learn more you see its a homage. The creative license we have and territory to explore seems endless, especially when you get to marry that with building cool gameplay experiences.

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Frizzera: I agree 100 percent. Our team is at its best when we have the integration that goes back-and-forth. I know there are a lot of other teams that will create the whole experience before hiring some writer to put a veneer of fiction on top of it. Its never been like that for us, I'm always in their brainstorms and vice verse.

The best ideas happen when a designer comes to me and says, "Hey, I'm want to do this kind of gameplay, what do you think of that?" and I have a perfect start for it. Or, vice verse, when I say next month we're going to talk about Black Panther, so what if you guys try something like this?

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Q: Realm of Champions started with six Champions, and Thor will make eight. Did you guys learn anything from adding in the seventh Champion that informed future game balance?

Young: There's a ton. I said this before, we learn so much by having pre-conceived notions, releasing characters, and quickly seeing players find their own ways to disrupt the meta. That's one of the cool things about working on a mobile game is we're constantly updating new releases, and we have pretty advanced analytics to see win rates by Champion, damage done by certain abilities, etc. We look at those and say what are balancing changes we can make? Also, what are we missing? What roles do players want, how can we use that feedback to inform future Champions?

I don't know that I can think of anything specifics from the seventh Champion and how that informed Thor, it's more of a holistic approach where we looked at those seven in totality and decided we wanted a brawler who fits that all-around role Thor is perfect for.

We are learning a lot of things about the current meta. For instance "roots," disabling movement, is very popular and effective, so we're thinking about future Champions, Synergies, or gear that impact gameplay. We want to introduce things that don't necessarily invalidate that root style, but disrupt it by adding new ways to play the game. We're always tailoring our new Champions with those learnings in mind.

Q: Earlier you were talking about a boss fight coming in the 3.0 update. Can you say anything about that or other new features?

Frizzera: The boss fight is my favorite mode by far. Skaar is the first boss, because we're going to use the Barons as bosses in this. The Barons are some of the most popular characters, and we held off on them because they're too important. However, now Skaar just comes down and decides to teach you a lesson.

It's amazing because we've completely changed how the experience works. It lowers the camera, and we created a new kind of arena where Skaar is sitting on his throne and jumps out.

We're hoping to have more of that kind of experience in the future. I can think of ten different kinds of boss experiences in games out there, and we want all different kinds. Maybe there's a giant boss, maybe there are multiple bosses, maybe there's a boss with lots of minions. If people like what we're doing with Skaar, we've got something even bigger in mind for the next one.

For the other stuff there's also Summoner's Journey. It is a step we've been working on for a long time to get that comprehensive single-player progression experience. As you come into the game now you get this line that will take you to all the places in Battleworld, and different chapters will be centered in different Houses. They will have quests and other things to do, rewards, and some story about that House.

Who killed the Maestro, for example, and why that House would have done it. Or a little scene that shows the motivations of that House. You unlock lore about the world as well as characters, new gear, and other rewards. They should help people progress through the game.

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Q: What is the difference between the Champions that players use versus the Barons? For instance, with War Thor leading the Asgardian Republic.

Frizzera: The Barons are usually twisted versions of characters you might know from the Marvel universe. You have Stark Prime, who is an AI version of Tony Stark because he disappeared and the AI took over the land. You have Peggy Carter, the President of the Patriot Garrison. You have Madam Web, a version of Spider-Gwen but older with powers at another level.

All those characters are the leaders of their land, either because of their super powers or because they are very old. You have The Ancient One, who is a version of Stephen Strange that's been playing with the Time Stone for thousands of years so he sees every reality and is a bit crazy, he doesn't know what reality is anymore - but he's very wise at the same time.

Those characters are usually the ones stirring you to do things with a bit of a Game of Thrones dynamic. They don't like each other, but Stark - out of guilt for helping the Maestro - is trying to have the Houses make peace, and it is a very difficult thing. There's a lot of intrigue and conflict, and those characters are at the center of it.

kabam version 3.0 update interview

Usually when you play the game, you are a recruit in one of those Houses. If you play for Asgard, you are a Thor in the Thor corps. You work for War Thor, but you're just starting as a guy with a hammer trying to make his way in the world. But, what the story tells you in the beginning is you are, in fact, a spy: a summoner who has been brought into Battleworld to infiltrate one of the houses.

The Watcher is the one that is taking you to this, saying something is going on that is making these Houses go to war, and you need to go investigate every House to find out who killed the Maestro. Whoever did that is responsible for trying to make the war happen.

That is the main thread, but if you don't care about story or anything you don't even need to pay attention. It's there, it's part of the texture of the world, but it's not forced upon you. As you play Summoner's Journey, you see some of those tidbits, and if you want to put the puzzle together you can figure it out.

Q: Are the Barons original characters? Or did you pull them from the comics canon?

Frizzera: They're all pretty original. They have inspirations from other places, but we always do a last round of twists.

Design-wise, Peggy Carter is inspired by the Captain America from Marvel Puzzle Quest actually, we loved the idea so we asked Marvel if we could use that character as the base for our own. So we took it and twisted it; now she's the President, she has an eyepatch like Nick Fury, and her shield is broken.

We always take a seed from somewhere, but we like to twist it as much as we can without breaking the character and making them unrecognizable. They are all our own creations in that respect, with their own backstories and the like.

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Q: With the addition of Thor, there will be a Champion corresponding with all the Houses established in Battleworld. What's next as far as adding more characters?

Frizzera: A new House. Every character we introduce from now on will have a House associated with them, and if you look at the map, the center is taken but there are lands all around them greyed out.

We have 15 Houses with backstories for who is the character, the Baron, their relationship with the main houses, and what their motivation for participating in this world or not is. Then we have about 20 or so after that which have just been named.

If you know about Marvel, you probably know some of them based on the big families of heroes. People talk to us and say maybe Atlantis would be a good one, or the Eternals. There might also be some that are a twist on small things - I'm not saying those are the ones.

There are some popular characters that became families, for example Wolverine. He used to be a character but now he's a family, there are many Wolverines. That's a prime candidate to be expanded into a kingdom. In fact, you've already seen the clan of Wolverine Baron, Old Man Logan, in the trailer.

We have people like that who everybody already knows is coming, and then we have others where maybe they're groups like the X-Men. They're not a single character, but they're big in their own right. Again, I'm not saying those are the ones, but that's the kind of logic we follow when we create.

Q: Maestro plays a big part in your game, but he also recently appeared in Marvel's Avengers. It seems beyond the movies, a lot of properties are experimenting with deeper lore. How much of a benefit is that to creators or audiences?

Frizzera: I think for the fans it's a big win. The Maestro was a character nobody used when we created Contest in 2014, and I like to believe the success of Contest brought him back into the spotlight. Other people could say that guy is pretty cool, let's try and use it too.

Marvel definitely loves that we take C and B-listers and polish them, bring them out of obscurity. It exposes them to different people, and I don't know if the TV or movie people are looking at all these things, but I would if I were them. I would see which characters are a big hit with fans.

You have millions of players every day, so it's good for the IP holder to see that someone like Moon Knight did a lot of business for those guys. Gone is the age of video games being the ugly duckling. We are the center of everything now along with the other media, and ideas are ideas. That's what Marvel thinks, good ideas can come from anywhere.

Comics are traditionally the big garden of ideas, because it's so cheap and easy to make a comic that they can create tons of them and see what sticks. If it doesn't work, you just cancel them. Video games are becoming like that, especially mobile games, which is fascinating.

I think everybody is looking at what everyone else is doing to see what's next, because we can only use the same three guys from the Avengers so many times. I think there are something like 8,000 characters in the Marvel universe, and some of them are primed to have a comeback.

Q: Anything else you want to add?

Frizzera: This is our biggest update so far, and hopefully players enjoy it. We are going to look toward 4.0, 5.0, and beyond, we're already working on those things. It's a continuous roadmap we're working on, and we're going to look at 3.0 as an experiment for what's to come.

This is a marathon for us, it's not a sprint. Every step of the way we're going to add more to the experience. Version 3.0 is a big step, but it's not the last step.

[END]

Marvel Realm of Champions is available now on Android and iOS devices.

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