Long before Marvel’s Avengers, developer THQ Studio Australia was working on another Avengers game, which would have been a co-op first-person shooter that put a gun in Captain America’s hand, according to a new report. Earlier this year, footage from the canceled Avengers game turned up on the internet, showing how the bizarre superhero FPS could have worked in action.
THQ’s history is full of sell-offs and acquisitions, leading it from its start as a toy maker in the ‘90s to its eventual liquidation in 2012. The name still pops up on plenty of big games, as THQ Nordic, but the current developer has little to do with the original THQ, having simply purchased the company’s trademark. THQ Nordic recently purchased 4A games, developer of the Metro series, and plans to make a multiplayer game set in the Metro universe.
Before THQ’s downfall, it ran several development studios, including THQ Studio Australia, which was at one time tasked with developing a game based on The Avengers. A new report from CNET details the strange journey the game took before its cancelation, including the reasons for the unlikely decision to make a first-person shooter starring superheroes. According to CNET, the game’s director, Christian Dailey, was simply tired of all Marvel games going the same route of placing their superheroes into third-person action games. Dailey’s decision was apparently inspired by Left 4 Dead, the co-op shooter from Valve that’s still influencing games in the genre to this day.
As strange as that direction might seem, even stranger was what Dailey thought about Captain America. Dailey says he “couldn’t imagine a world where Captain America would have his own movies and be a lead character.” The team also had doubts about whether he could hold his own against the incredible powers of the other Avengers, armed with little more than a shield, which THQ’s games division chief Danny Bilson likened to “a frisbee.” To solve that problem, Bilson suggested that they give Captain America a gun – an idea that Marvel reportedly rejected outright.
While the story of THQ’s doomed Avengers game is full of amusing twists, it also illustrates the pressures of game development, particularly when the games involved are attached to massive budgets and even bigger franchises. Like with many games, production on the THQ Avengers game ramped up to the point where working conditions and sheer hours became dangerous – a process that’s now more widely recognized as crunch – causing developers to neglect their health or fly off the handle.
As entertaining as the story of this early Avengers game’s implosion is – and as intriguing as the game sounds – it may be for the best that work on the game was halted when it was. Plenty of games have progressed much further before being cancelled, taking an even larger toll of their developers without ever giving them the satisfaction of a finished product. All these years later, Marvel’s Avengers even gives superhero fans another chance to play as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes – without the shock of seeing Captain America gunning down the likes of MODOK.
