Talking With Senior Producer Charles Busch And “Putting On The Show” With ‘Marvel Contest Of Champions’

Marvel Contest of Champions has been a steady presence in the mobile gaming world for ten years. The title combines brawling gameplay with the popular IP of the heroes and villains from the Marvel Universe.

The game recently became available on PCs, hopefully exposing the game to new audiences as well as providing a different experience for current users. Recently, we spoke with Senior Producer Charles Busch to learn more about the jump in platforms and what fans can expect.

Gary Catig: Marvel Contest of Champions has been out on iOS and Android for over 10 years, which is a long time. Why is now the time the development team wanted to expand onto PC and Steam?

Charles Busch: When you have a game running for 10 years, something you start thinking about is what do we need to do to keep this game running for the next 10 years. And we believe one of those things is going cross-platform. This allows us to bring our game to a whole new audience, and also gives people another great reason to come check out The Contest again.

Catig: Part of making Marvel Contest of Champions available on Steam is to offer a more arcade style experience both in gameplay and graphics. There was an arcade version that released in 2019 at Dave and Buster’s locations. Did that version inform or serve as a precursor to the PC versions?

Busch: The Raw Thrills arcade version of Marvel Contest of Champions was a separate initiative to the PC version. However, it was an early ah-ha moment that this game actually feels pretty good to play on a fight stick.

Catig: Steam is a popular service to find and purchase video games. How do you think making Marvel Contest of Champions available there will help it find new players?

Busch: If you game on mobile, there’s probably a pretty good chance that you’ve heard of Marvel Contest of Champions before. But that’s not the case if you game primarily on PC. Launching on Steam gives us the opportunity to get our game in front of new players, and give our existing players more ways to play.

Catig: As mentioned before, Marvel Contest of Champions has been available for over a decade. I know it receives monthly updates, many tied in with current Marvel releases in other mediums, but how do you keep the game fresh and different for old players while being able to attract new ones?

Busch: One of the things The Contest excels at is what we call “putting on the show.” Every month there’s new Champions, Quests, Events – a whole slew of reasons to come and play. Every few months, we have a new Saga and a seasonal rotation in our competitive modes, mixing up the metas. And we have our year long Eidols arc that has new original Champions and an overarching story to keep players engaged. So it’s that mix of short, medium and long beats that helps keep the game fresh and exciting for players. We also have so many new things dropping in the second half of this year, it’s going to be an awesome ride.

Catig: Marvel Contest of Champions is introducing new original characters called Eidols through the “Founders” storyline. How has it been creating something entirely new in the Marvel world and how has the fan response been so far?

Busch: The Eidols have been a lot of fun to work on. We’ve done original characters in The Contest before, but this is the first time we approached doing a “family” of original characters all together, and creating this sort of year-long narrative arc with them. A lot of work went into creating their backstory, defining their unique visual style and powers, building out the new Fractured Power Bar gameplay mechanic they share, and more. It’s been awesome to see all the positive responses from players, but I hope they are prepared – the worst is yet to come.

Marvel Contest of Champions is currently available for download now on mobile and PC.