The Gazillion/Marvel deal is all about online game and MMO development.  While non-persistent, more casual online games may offer some relief for this deal, Marvel Universe has a tougher row to hoe: the history of the MMO industry is that original IP generally does better than licensed IP. Part of the reason is that media such as books and movies, being highly story and character driven, don’t lend themselves well to current MMO game design and technology constraints. Look at what happened to the NCsoft/Cryptic offering City of Heroes; players got bored with the lack of meaningful ‘heroic’ content and the mindless mission repetition and left the game.  The Matrix Online, which at its heart was a superhero MMO, had the same problem.

Compare the large successes, such as World of Warcraft, SOE's EverQuest franchise and Netease's Westward Journey franchise in China, versus the relatively modest successes of such MMOs as the Star Wars-branded Galaxies from SOE/Lucasarts, EA/Mythic's Warhammer Online and Turbine's Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online.  Although Warhammer online may equal the Everquest numbers sometime in 2009, no Western MMO based on a licensed IP is threatening to break even 1 million subscribers, much less WoW’s 11 million+. These kinds of MMO missions take longer to design and build and can’t be accomplished without a much greater use – and number – of designers, writers and coders. So unless Gazillion is prepared to spend a LOT money on writers and designers and think in new ways about the ‘grind’ to create compelling content, their Marvel Universe MMO is likely to be headed for the same fate as City of Heroes: initial good numbers, followed almost immediately by stagnation and loss of subscribers.