Who Is Asking For This?
As Epic Games prepares to use the power of AI slop to mash together Marvel and Star Wars, the increased desire to cross over the brands reeks of similarly increasing desperation.
This week, Bloomberg reporting lifted the lid on Epic Games and Disney's next big step in the latter's investment into the former: what started out as Fortnite collaborations and whole seasons of the battle royale dedicated to Marvel and Star Wars is now becoming an already-delayed, AI-first extraction shooter fusing the two properties into one unholy mishmash.
There's obviously a lot wrong with the above sentence. Sure, Fortnite is still one of the biggest games on the planet, but the moment for the extraction shooter as a concept seems to be already on its way out, with Marathon struggling to get off the ground without a significant overhaul, and the likes of Arc Raiders fading from the height of its popularity. Epic's further decision to use the game as an opportunity to pivot to an AI-led design philosophy—Bloomberg reports that the initiative, which has faced internal unease, will see Epic developers mandated to use AI-produced code, and artists work entirely through an AI workflow—as pushback against the use of vibecoding and slop in games reaches stronger and stronger levels feels like a PR nightmare waiting to happen, one that is already unfolding even before the game has been officially revealed.
But then there's the other part of all this that has bothered me almost as much as the slop. Epic's game is, specifically, a crossover between Marvel and Star Wars, and it's not the first mashup of the two brands being planned for next year.
My question is, why?