The next big Marvel Comics video game is being made in Seattle.
Electronic Arts (EA) revealed Monday that it’s opened a new Seattle-based studio called Cliffhanger Games. Cliffhanger’s first project is an original single-player game starring Marvel superhero the Black Panther.
The new studio is led by Kevin Stephens, who previously spent almost 20 years at Monolith Productions in Kirkland, Wash., and exited the company in 2021 as its studio head. He’s been working full-time at Cliffhanger since May 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Monolith is the company behind the F.E.A.R. and Condemned series, but is most famous for the Lord of the Rings-based Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War.
“We’re dedicated to delivering fans a definitive and authentic Black Panther experience, giving them more agency and control over their narrative than they have experienced in a story-driven video game,” Stephens wrote in a press release.
Cliffhanger is described by EA as an AAA studio, which is an informal industry term that typically means it’s intended to work on big games with a big team (100+ developers) and a big budget. It’s suggestive that EA’s Black Panther will be a massive, open-world experience.
Electronic Arts, founded in 1982, might be best known by its initials. It’s currently the second largest third-party developer in the modern video game industry, behind Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard, with multiple successful franchises that include The Sims, Star Wars, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Titanfall, and the annually-updated Madden and FIFA sports simulators.
Electronic Arts has at least two other studios in the Seattle area, including casual-gaming giant PopCap (Plants vs. Zombies) and Ridgeline Games, the previously-unnamed developer headed by Halo co-creator Marcus Lehto. Cliffhanger is apparently the mystery studio that EA began to set up back in 2021, with Stephens and former Monolith president Samantha Ryan.
The character of the Black Panther first appeared in 1966’s Fantastic Four #52, and was created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. T’Challa is the ruler of the fictional African nation of Wakanda, which has used its local deposits of the metal Vibranium to build a high-tech, secretive society.
EA hasn’t discussed further details about the version of the Black Panther it might feature in its game. In the comics, T’Challa is currently a member of the Avengers and has been deposed as the king of Wakanda.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, due to the passing of T’Challa’s actor Chadwick Boseman in 2020, the role of T’Challa was retired and the mantle of the Black Panther passed to T’Challa’s sister Shuri (Letitia Wright).
If EA’s Black Panther follows a similar model to other recent big-budget Marvel games, such as Insomniac’s Spider-Man, then it’s probably safe to assume that it’ll be set in its own continuity that draws in equal parts from the comics and film.
