Marvel is quietly building a shared game universe

Marvel Entertainment knows a thing or two about shared universes. Its superheroes interact with each other all of the time in the comic books, and Marvel’s movie studio successfully replicated that formula with its “cinematic universe” of TV shows and blockbuster films. The company hasn’t done anything nearly as ambitious for its video games, but if you’ve been paying attention, the seeds are already there.

I started noticing it a few months ago when I downloaded Spider-Man Unlimited on my iPad. One of the resources you earn in that game are purple gems called Isotope-8 (Iso-8 for short). You get them by either playing through levels or buying them in batches with real money. The thing that bothered me was that I knew I saw Iso-8 somewhere before … and then it clicked. Iso-8 was in the Avengers Initiative mobile game that I reviewed here more than two years ago. I also remembered seeing it in Gameloft’s Iron Man 3 and in Marvel: Puzzle Quest on PC.