I read that Marvel gave Insomniac the choice of which superhero they wanted to do a game about, and Insomniac chose Spider-Man. It aligned best with their core strengths and the type of game they wanted to make. I didn't realize that. I thought Sony and Marvel had decided to make a Spidey game, and they gave the project to Insomniac. Instead, it sounds like Insomniac themselves made the call about which superhero to make the game about. That's cool. It gives me more confidence in the game.
Here's an Insomniac rep talking about it:
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Marvel wanted to work with one of the big studios and specifically mentioned us. Sony said 'Hey are you guys interested in working with Marvel?' and we said 'Of course, but what character do they want us to do?' And they were like, 'Oh no, they want you to pick. You guys can have all the choice of which one you want.' It was like 'Oh wow. So huh, ok, that's an overwhelming decision,'" Stevenson recalls, laughing with the kind of childish glee someone has when they're given the keys to the candy store.
"Spider-Man was the easy choice ("the one that matched up very well with Insomniac and made most sense with the DNA of the games we've made, the types of games we make, the kinds of stories we tell, the character we felt closest to") and work began in earnest, with the teams looking at all manner of games and mechanics past and present as inspiration and to see what worked, and what fell flat."
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https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainme...ity--the-burden-of-making-a-spidey-video-game
About the poll results... I'm surprised and honestly a little skeptical. I wonder if maybe GI did a feature on Spider-Man, and then they took a poll of their audience. That might skew things. Another factor is that Spidey is closer, so it's getting a lot of marketing push, whereas Red Dead is simmering on the back burner. I guess I'm just finding it hard to believe that, overall, the average gamer is more excited about Spider-Man than RDR2. But maybe so. I did see another poll with 3000 people, supposedly by a guy who has a predominantly Xbox audience, and Spider-Man still came out ahead of RDR2.