NetEase Games has made an unusual bet on Marvel Rivals: that audiences will embrace characters they have never heard of. The strategy is deliberate and articulated. According to Marvel Rivals executive producer Danny Koo, the game features 47 playable characters as of Season 6.5, built on a three-tiered pyramid.
Roughly 70% of the roster comprises 'greatest hits' of popular franchises, whether from movies, comics, TV shows, or games. Spider-Man, Captain America, and Thor occupy this tier. They anchor the game and attract audiences already familiar with Marvel through the MCU or decades of comics.
But here is where the strategy deviates from convention. About 25% of the roster is a 'curveball', characters that spark recognition among hardcore comic readers but surprise casual players. These are characters like Gambit, Rogue, and Deadpool; fans of the X-Men know them well, but the average player encountered them only if they caught a film or animated series.
Then comes the real experiment. The final 5% consists of deep cuts, characters fewer than 0.01% of the player base would recognise. This tier is where Jeff the Land Shark lives. A literal shark character from the comics, absurd and charming, he became a breakout favourite after Marvel Rivals launched. Taking Marvel characters most of us had never heard of before and thrusting them into the limelight has been one of the game's greatest strengths.
The success of lesser-known characters has not gone unnoticed by studio leadership. Game director Guangyun Chen said NetEase was given the green-light to explore the full Marvel universe and shine a light on lesser-known yet equally fascinating characters. With 85 years of comic history at their disposal, NetEase is not constrained by cinematic logic or licensing limits that plague other studios.
The counterargument is obvious. Big-name characters drive attention. Iron Man, Thor, and the Avengers carry cultural gravity that Elsa Bloodstone, a monster-hunting duelist now thriving in the game, simply does not. From a business perspective, Hollywood franchises are safer bets.
But Koo contends that each hero, regardless of obscurity, is authentic to the source material and designed with the Marvel Rivals visual style on top of it, which also pulls in players who do not usually play games because the game appears like moving anime on screen. The art style becomes a translator, a way to make comic-book depth legible to audiences who have never cracked open a comic.
The real gamble is retention. A game with 47 characters will need to add more regularly if live-service economics demand sustained engagement. Marvel Rivals has maintained a relatively aggressive content cadence, often introducing one new character per month during two-month seasons. At that pace, a deep bench of lesser-known heroes becomes essential; there simply are not enough A-listers to sustain yearly releases indefinitely.
Whether casual players will care about the difference between a character from the MCU and a character from a 2000s comic mini-series remains an open question. The game's early success suggests they might. But five years from now, when the novelty has worn and Marvel's cinematic output has inevitably slowed, the true test will be whether comic-book depth alone can keep a live-service shooter alive.
For now, NetEase has wagered that surprising players is more valuable than reassuring them. That small shark called Jeff the Land Shark embodies that bet: unknown, unexpected, and somehow, unforgettable.