Interview: Celebrate Marvel Contest of Champions’ 10th Anniversary with Kabam’s Bryan O’Hara and Tyler Nicol

For the past decade, game developer Kabam has brought Marvel fans into The Battlerealm for exciting and unforgettable adventures with Marvel Contest of Champions. The mobile game, which originally launched on December 10th, 2014, started with a mere 25 Champions and has grown exponentially since. Now boasting 300 million downloads since launch, over 250 Champions, and countless exciting updates and events, Marvel Contest of Champions is ushering in a new decade of exciting superpowered additions, original and classic Marvel Champions, and more. Laughing Place had the opportunity to chat with Marvel Contest of Champions’ Game Director Bryan O’Hara and Principle Creative Writer Tyler Nicol about their amazing journeys helping bring the hit mobile game to life.

Maxon: Congratulations on 10 years of Marvel Contest of Champions! How long have you been a part of Marvel Contest of Champions and what are you most excited about for the upcoming 10th anniversary?

Tyler: I’ve been with Kabam since early 2018, but I’ve been a Marvel fan since I could pick up a comic or tune into Saturday Morning Cartoons. For the anniversary, I’m very excited for the trailer I wrote! Having my copy read out by the talented Erika Ishii was a thrill and it’ll be a splendid introduction to our newest original Champion Isophyne. We always end the year with a lot of fanfare as we welcome the next year of The Contest.

Bryan: I’ve been at Kabam a similar amount of time to Tyler but I’ll be crossing my second anniversary on The Contest in December. Personally I was most excited for our rollout of 60 frames per second to our players in early November as this was just a massive leap forward in quality for the game, but now I’m very much looking forward to our Grand Banquet event in December. There are a number of new systems and improvements we’re making to this special iteration of one of our favorite events this year for the anniversary.

Maxon: When designing original Champions like Isophyne, how do you find inspiration and manage the pressure of placing original characters up against Marvel icons like Captain America and Black Panther?

Tyler: The wonderful Marvelous universe is so full of big and small personalities. For every world-ending threat like Thanos there’s someone keeping their own neighborhoods safe like the unbeatable Squirrel Girl. We are very lucky to have somewhere to tell our own stories, so the origins of Isophyne draw right from The Battlerealm itself. A place of power, crystals, and mysteries. It was no small task by a massive team of super talented individuals to create a character that feels like they belong in the Marvel Multiverse as well as specifically being made for The Contest itself.

Maxon: Who is your favorite Champion and why?

Tyler: One? Just the top fave? That’s a big request. Working on the story side I’m always drawn to the Champions who have the most opportunities for fun and games. Fourth-wall breaking with our many Deadpools is a joy, big villain speeches with Doctor Doom, and some Guardians of the Galaxy chats/bickering. If we’re going to have to pick one out of nearly 300 Champions, I’ve got to give some love to the Mallard with the most and let Howard the Duck and his mighty mech have a moment to shine. He was the first merch I ever got from the game, and as a pop-culture collector that makes him extra meaningful. He also has some really entertaining animations, and in terms of writing there’s never a dull moment when Howard gets going.

Bryan: Oh man, brutal question! I obviously have a personal affinity to Spider-Man 2099 because we share a last name, but Symbiote Supreme will always hold a special place in my heart. He was the first Champion where modern MCOC really clicked for me back when I started my second playthrough of the game in 2018 after freshly joining Kabam. Contest presents as a relatively simple fighting game but the real depth is in the unique rotation and RPG abilities that each of our Champions have. Symbiote Supreme has a specific “phase” you can enter into with him where he starts dealing a massive amount of damage over time. When I first discovered this, I started reading up on his abilities and learning to adapt my playstyle with him. That was really the moment where the entire experience started to make sense to me as a player and I could see the depth of the game open up before me.

Maxon: Can you tell us about the most fulfilling and challenging aspects of developing Marvel Contest of Champions?

Tyler: Both the fulfilling and challenging aspects are the same aspect. CONSTANT WORK. This is a live game and there’s new things to do every month. Last year alone I wrote the majority of our monthly Event Quests, 2 Chapters of our epic Acts, a good half dozen trailers, and more direct messages to our players than I can count. The game is constantly celebrating the 85 year history of Marvel and there’s a lot of stories, adventures, and Champions to showcase as we do that.

Maxon: Over the past few months, Marvel Contest of Champions has received countless quality of life updates including a frame rate boost, new and upgraded Champions, and special events. Where do you hope to see Marvel Contest of Champions growing over the next decade?

Tyler: I’m not on the gameplay side myself, I’m on the adventure and experience side of things. I really value the community that we have here with our Summoners and I’m excited for even more of that to grow. Through the years we’ve had convention appearances, live streams, and even our own celebration with Battlerealm Brawl. I really look forward to finding new ways to reach out and get more fan-meetups, conversations, and behind-the-scenes looks at how hard all my talented friends here work to bring this game to everyone’s homes every day of the year.

Bryan: Despite being nearly a decade old, we’re still heavily investing in MCOC’s growth and evolution. We have two major focus areas that we’re particularly excited about.

First is expanding our gameplay mechanics. For almost ten years, MCOC’s core combat has operated within a specific set of rules and systems, with only occasional minor additions over time. While this has served us well, the need to continue evolving the game and meta in a relatively fixed space has contributed to a lot of complexity. We’re now investing in ways to thoughtfully expand these mechanics to enable entirely new styles of Champions and fights. This is about opening up new possibilities that will benefit all our players.

Second is simplification. Over a decade of development, we’ve naturally added many systems and features to the game. We’re now taking a careful look at everything to ensure we’re respecting our players’ time and keeping the game accessible to future new players. A recent example of this is our Daily Super Event, which streamlined several rotating events into one simplified experience. This is just the beginning of our efforts to help players focus on what matters most – enjoying the game.

Maxon: What is it like working with Disney and Marvel?

Tyler: It’s a true and real honor. I am a big fan of Marvel, “Friend of Ol’ Marvel” for the old school fans (and if you knew that before I mentioned it you win a No-Prize). I’m an opening night movie screener, midnight show streamer, and weds morning comic shop customer. To be any part of that giant tradition of mythmaking is just an absolute joy. I have to sometimes be reminded that when I write my “fan canon” it can in fact just become “canon”. I do not take that lightly.

Bryan: Marvel are incredible partners. There’s a huge amount of mutual trust and respect that the team has built with them over the past decade and that results in a relationship where regular communication with them is just part of daily operations. As Tyler mentioned earlier, that is absolutely critical when operating a fast-moving live game.

Maxon: What is your dream Marvel character you hope to bring to the Battlerealm?

Tyler: One day I’ll get the world renowned newspaper editor-in-chief J. Jonah Jameson in the game. I swear it. Maybe he’ll be in spider-slayer power armor, bitten by a radioactive photographer, from an alternate universe where he’s a herald of Galactus, or he’ll be powerless and will just throw hot cups of coffee and rolled up Sunday editions of the Daily Bugle at his foes. I’m not sure how, but we’ll get there.

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