For over 12 years, Marvel Contest of Champions has provided an outlet for Marvel fans to get hands-on with their favorite comic book characters and put them to the test in a battle arena. The free-to-play fighting game from Kabam has long been available on mobile devices and recently received a PC port on Steam. As the MCU continues to expand on-screen, so does Marvel Contest of Champions, with the mobile game continually adding new players thanks to its regular in-game events and a plethora of playable characters.
This year at San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), Marvel Contest of Champions set up in the Marvel x Moonrock Gaming Lounge, with a booth that was buzzing all weekend with long lines and exclusive giveaways. The Direct had the chance to play through the game and its new Towers mode, as well as speak with Kabam team member, Tyler Churilla, who works as a video artist on Marvel Contest of Champions.
With Marvel Contest of Champions releasing two new characters every month, adding to a roster built over a decade that now spans 350 unique characters, there's a champion for every kind of Marvel fan. Churilla said one of their driving focuses at Kabam is: "How do we get characters who are already in the spotlight even further into the spotlight?"
This leads to frequent character-focused events in Marvel Contest of Champions that often tie into the goings-on in the broader MCU landscape, which has helped add to the game's 300 million downloads since its launch in 2014. "When a big movie is coming out, we try to do a release where the characters line up," Churilla said. One such instance was the game's Summer of Spider-Man event, which tied into the release of Spider-Man: Brand New Day and included additions like Tarantula and Hobgoblin.
Marvel Contest of Champions has also recently expanded its gameplay offerings with a new Towers mode, which Churilla describes as "testing the limits of everyone's roster," adding that it's designed to be "accessible for everybody."
Marvel Contest of Champions is free and available to download on iOS, Android, and PC. See the rest of the interview with Churilla below, and for more gaming news, check out The Direct's Comic-Con interview with the Stage Tour team.
Marvel Contest of Champions Has Something for Every Kind of Marvel Fan
Choose From Over 350 Marvel Heroes
- The Direct: "If people don't know what Marvel Contest of Champions is, how would you describe it?"
Tyler Churilla: Contest of Champions is a one-on-one PvP/PvE Marvel fighting game. You can collect your favorite Marvel characters. We have over 350 to choose from, and it's just a really solid mobile and PC fighting game that anybody can pick up and play. We've got a game mode for everybody. You can start at the absolute very beginning, and there's still content for you to do right away.
- The Direct: "Walk me through some of the characters in the game that people might know and some of the ones that are a bit different, and how the team decides on who is being introduced."
Churilla: So obviously we have our headliners. We've got plenty of Iron Man, lots of Captain America, plenty of Spider-Man. Sometimes we do like a skin or a version of the character from the movie, and those are always really successful. We do have some obscure characters. Ruby Thursday is a bit of a hidden gem in Marvel. We've also got characters like Arcade, who's an X-Men villain, who's like a crazy gamesman.
The team, [when] we plan out the characters, we're looking at, you know, we've got a lot of characters that people know, but how can we bring a character to light and kind of highlight them in a new way and bring them to a new fandom so people can experience these characters for the first time? ...So it's a lot of how do we get characters into the spotlight and then how do we get characters who are already in the spotlight even further into the spotlight?
- The Direct: "Is there a narrative element? How does that come into play?"
Churilla: So we've got a wonderful narrative writer who's been working on the team for a long time now. The narrative of the game has continued since it started. We're a 12-year-old game, you'd think maybe the narrative would have some twists and turns, or maybe some retcons, but the narrative is just a continuation of what was started way, way, way back in the day, and we just built upon it.
The narrative ties into the new characters released each month and to what the actual story has been like since the game came out. So we have these different chapters of story modes, and they tell the story of the history of the contest. The player is the Summoner and the Summoner is sent to this battle realm, and essentially they're made to fight, but they want to escape.
We have these elders of the universe, like the Collector and the Grandmaster, and they run the contest, so the Grandmaster himself is like the ruler of the contest. You'll fight these big bosses, and it moves the story along. So if you really care about the story, you've got plenty of story.
Tower Mode Unlocked
Marvel Contest of Champions' Tower Mode Puts Your Team to the Ultimate Test
- The Direct: "Tell us about the game's new Tower mode and how that works."
Tyler Churilla: So, Towers is a brand new game mode. It tests the limits of everybody's roster. In the tower mode, you pick a character, and you put them on a floor. There's different floors for different levels of towers. In the permanent game mode, the tower is nearly endless. It scales with your roster, so the more powerful your team becomes, the more you can climb the tower.
It's accessible for everybody. You jump in, you set up a fight, you do the fight, you move on to the next floor. Once you finish all of the floors, you move on to the next block, and it's just like you're climbing a tower, you know?
How Contest of Champions Leverages the MCU
The Wider Marvel Universe Feeds Into Contest of Champions' Story Decisions
- The Direct: "Recently, there's been Spider-Noir, and next we have Spider-Man: Brand New Day coming out. How did you plan to tie into those projects?"
Tyler Churilla: So this month's characters, we released the Hobgoblin and the Black Tarantula. Those are two Spider-Man adjacent characters, kind of in the world of Spider-Man villains. Sometimes when a big movie is coming out, we try to do a release where the characters kind of line up. This landed perfectly for us because the [Spider-Man] movie is coming out.
- The Direct: "The game has an existing narrative. How do you balance that with new projects coming out in the wider Marvel universe to capitalize on hype?"
Churilla: When we have activations for movies that come out, obviously, it makes a lot of sense to do a tie-in. For Spider-Man, you know, we've got the movie coming out, let's get some Spider-Man villains in. We'll have Black Tarantula kind of run an underground market in the summer. [The player] has to figure out 'Okay, who's doing this? How are we going to stop it?' Fans love it. The people who love the story love it. The people who are in for just the characters, they love the new characters.
