Disney Gaming Chief on Marvel’s ‘Blade’ Plans, ‘Dreamlight Valley’ and ‘Spider-Man 2’ Success and the Double-Edged Sword of User Generated Content
2023 was a big year for Disney gaming. From the huge debut for Marvel’s much-anticipated “Spider-Man 2” in October to the move of “Disney Dreamlight Valley” out of its year-long beta phase into its hard launch in early December and the recent release of “Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora,” the Disney team and its outside developers and publishing partners have been hard at work.
And with the announcement of a new “Blade” game tied to the upcoming Marvel movie during the 2023 Game Awards, things don’t appear to be slowing down for the Mouse House’s gaming division.
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“We obviously have a robust team across all franchises: We’ve got a Marvel games team, a Lucasfilm games team, we’ve got folks that oversee Disney/Pixar games, and 20th Century games, as well,” Sean Shoptaw, Disney’s senior vice president of games and interactive experiences, told Variety. “So we kind of break it down by franchise. And then within that, we’ve got a central business development team, a central marketing team, a central creative team and then production roles that support those franchises, as I laid out.”
Currently, Disney’s gaming division is spread across Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul and London.
On this week’s episode of Variety’s “Strictly Business” podcast, Shoptaw talks with TV business writer Jennifer Maas about focusing on licensing versus developing in house, the future of generative AI in gaming, the pros and cons of user generated content, the power of Disney IP, and what big titles are coming from the brand in 2024 and 2025.
“We’re really happy with where we are. We made a conscious decision to do this roughly five years ago,” Shoptaw said. “We had historically done different things in games, as you’re aware, we were a vertical business for a long time. We were a co-development business for a while where we would outsource development and we would publish and we’ve always, of course, licensed. We felt like where we are and where we were then, it made the most sense to pivot the business exclusively to licensing and that allows us really to work with the best publishers and developers anywhere they are.”
And it’s Disney IP that is the real priority for Shoptaw, no matter where the games are being developed or published — although working with partners including PlayStation, Bethesda Games, Gameloft and Ubisoft, is certainly a point of pride for the final products Disney churns out.
“For us, with the breadth of IP we have, there’s so much ambition to tell really great original stories in this space,” Shoptaw said. “For our characters, stories and worlds, matching that with best in class developers has really been a formula for us that we think is is really valuable for the company and really drives ultimately the best product for fans.”
“Strictly Business” is Variety‘s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. (Please click here to subscribe to our free newsletter.) New episodes debut every Wednesday and can be downloaded at Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, Google Play, SoundCloud and more.
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