Interview: John Vignocchi Talks Disney Infinity 2.0, New Villain Characters, and What's Coming Up
I'm hooked on Disney Infinity 2.0. With the mix of Marvel characters and Disney Originals, there's almost something for everyone. The series launched with Avengers, Spider-Man, and Guardians of the Galaxy playsets and figures and then followed by eight Disney Original characters.
On Tuesday, January 13, three villainous characters, Green Goblin, Yondu, and Ronan will be released.
Okay, perhaps Yondu isn't truly a villain, but then again, he's not the necessarily the nicest guy either. We'll post our first impression of these figures shortly.
We did get the chance to talk to Disney Infinity 2.0 Executive Producer John Vignocchi about the game and new figures as well as try to pry future information out of him.
COMIC VINE: Let’s start off with you is your current favorite character in the game?
JOHN VIGNOCCHI: That’s a great question, Tony. I personally split it up between what’s my favorite Disney and what’s my favorite Marvel? Do you want my overall favorite character?
CV: Let’s do both. Let’s do Marvel and Disney.
JV: If I go right now by figures that have been released on the Disney side, my favorite character is Maleficent. First of all, she has the highest DPS [damage per second] when it comes to her super-move. The amount of damage she can do can actually take out some of the large tank Frost Giants with one blow. On top of that, she’s also really versatile from her moveset as well as the fact she has the ability to fly. So she’s a really really powerful character. I like her a lot.
For overall favorite Disney Infinity character from 2.0, that’s not out yet, is going to be Jasmine. We had a lot of fun working on Jasmine. The team at Ninja Theory, which is based in Cambrige and they did some incredible games like Devil May Cry and Heavenly Sword. They actually worked on her as a character. The way she moves and animates and dodges and rolls is a bit like Chun-Li from Street Fighter. It’s a really cool interpretation of Jasmine as a princess and making her totally kick butt.
On the Marvel side, for characters that have been released, right now I’m totally crazy about Gamora. Our latest patch we put out there, we rebalanced a whole bunch of characters. Gamora and the sword ability that she has is really beneficial not only inside the Guardians of the Galaxy playset but also inside the Toy Box and especially the Toy Box games. We’ve made her a little bit stronger and a little bit faster. I really like the way she’s playing inside the game now.
But then, for the characters that have not been released on the Marvel side, Green Goblin is a ton of fun to play. Goblin, as you know, you just got a hold of. I’m also really enjoying Falcon. I think Falcon is such a cool character. I love what they’re doing in the books with Falcon becoming the new Captain America. He has a very versatile moveset inside of Disney Infinity. He’s a blast to play as well.
So I gave you a whole bunch of answers but I’m actually, what about you? I heard you’re playing this with your daughter and you guys are having a blast. So tell me what’s going on.
CV: I started off with Nova [Sam Alexander].
JV: Yeah, he’s a great one.
CV: It felt kind of like a cheat because you can fly and you can easily power him up. But I’ve been working on Captain America. I have him at Level 20 and he’s great. My daughter, her first go-to was Spider-Man. I was a little surprised she didn’t go for the female characters.
JV: Huh.
CV: But now she’s leveled Black Widow up to 20. She’s really liking her. She was really excited about Stitch coming out but she hasn’t really played as him all that much. She’s been focusing on Spidey and Black Widow. I do have to say I really like Donald Duck too.
JV: [laughs] Yeah. His moveset is pretty expressive, right?
CV: Maleficent is pretty cool. I downloaded one of the Toy Box games from the Community to really test her out. Like you said, she’s great with her powers, the visuals, and her flying.
JV: It was funny, someone wrote an article the other day talking about Maleficent as a character and actually ranked Maleficent low. I was like, “Oh my god. This person clearly didn’t play it enough to level her up to unlock flying," which is like so critical for that character.
It’s interesting that your daughter went with Spidey. Did she tell you why?
CV: I’m not really sure. She likes Thor from the movies, because…Chris Hemsworth.
JV: Chris Hemsworth…yeah, exactly.
CV: She just went with Spidey. Maybe because he was the character she knew the most from the animated series. I think she just likes his abilities and swinging around.
JV: I always love asking this question and getting deep into this because we look at the data all the time about who’s playing the game, who’s buying the game, what characters they’re buying, and why? What’s incredible about Disney Infinity is it’s become boys and girls. It’s you and your daughter. Actually you cover two spreads of it, which is very interesting. Not only the female player demographic, but also the father/daughter demographic, right? It’s not like Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed where we’re talking about nineteen-year-olds and mid-twenties college kids playing these games. Infinity has become a boy’s and a girl’s product and a young and an old product. It’s eye-opening in that plus what characters the girls are playing as.
Typically, as you said, girl players normally immediately go for a female character that they know and they’ll stick with the female characters. Your daughter’s really unique in that she went with Spidey and stuck with Spidey and then transitioned to a female character. Girl players will almost exclusively play with girl characters but the boys don’t mind switching between male and female characters so long as the female characters are powerful and have versatile movesets. Anyway, I could talk all day about this research stuff.
CV: Question number 2!
JV: [laughs] Sorry.
CV: What’s the decision process like in deciding which characters get made next?
JV: It’s three things. There’s three factors that go into it. First and foremost it’s what’s going to make compelling and fun gameplay.? The second thing is what are our fans and community asking for? The third thing is what’s the priority for the partner we’re working with? In the case of Disney Infinity 2.0, obviously we worked incredibly close with the team at Marvel. We had long conversations with them about what characters are Marvel’s priority in 2014 and early 2015 and what can Disney Infinity do to support that? We had made the announcement to the community that Marvel was being integrated and people got very very excited. So we knew we were barking up the right tree there. At the same time, we also knew that given how diverse all of the superheroes’ powers are, it was going to make for some really fun and compelling gameplay.
It came down to asking Marvel, “What does 2014 and 2015 look like for you guys? Where should we be?” I think the heavy support we provided Avengers and the Avengers playset, which you can also play with Loki inside the playset as well as Falcon when he’s released, is a testament of us going in that direction with them. At the same time, with Guardians of the Galaxy, here’s an amazing film. The beginning is about all these different characters from all over the place. One of them is a talking tree and one of them is a talking raccoon, but our unwavering faith in the Marvel film team, being able to pull off something so compelling and exciting is a big part of the reason why we integrated Guardians into it as well. They had said that film was going to be huge for them and a big priority so we agreed to put those characters in as well. But that’s the long-winded answer. The short-winded answer is the three pillars: fun and compelling gameplay, what are the partners looking at, and what does the community and Disney Infinity fans want?
CV: With the three new figures coming out this week, Green Goblin and Ronan make perfect sense. Was Yondu more of a fan-favorite request?
JV: To be honest with you, we had a conversation with Marvel where we were actually running ahead of schedule on a portion of 2.0 and we said, “We’ve got the ability to add a few more characters. What characters would you like to see us add from the various franchises that are your priority for 2014 and 2015? Yondu was the character they came back with. For us it was a slam-dunk because he’s a fun and compelling character to play with inside of the game using his arrow as a projectile. Of course he’s also super-cool looking. That’s how Yondu actually ended up entering the fray.
CV: So those three come out this week. Jasmine is being released on February 3. Is there anyone else coming out with her that I missed?
JV: Uh, no. Jasmine…that was another fun one because it was the same type of conversation where we had integrated Aladdin. There was a big fight, internally, about, “You can’t have Aladdin and not Jasmine.” Because we had a little bit more production bandwidth, we were able to add Jasmine but given our manufacturing timeline and distribution timeline, the earliest we could get her out was February. And then we said, “Hey, let’s make it a Valentine’s Day beat and have it be an Aladdin and Jasmine two-pack with sky and ground texture for Agrabah so people can recreate their own version and tell their own stories. That’s probably more detailed than you wanted about why Jasmine’s in February.
Falcon’s coming out as well but that’s in March. And Loki. Loki’s awesome. He’s so much fun to play in game. Ronan, from a gameplay perspective, is a slower character but he is incredibly powerful. I think it’ll be interesting for fans of Disney Infinity to get their hands on that character because he’s a brute character like Thor is, but he’s got some mid-range projectiles that he does. He’s got some really powerful in close melee attacks. His in-game VO lines are a lot of fun. He’s just brooding. I think he’s the first Disney Infinity character, I would say, that is scary. Maybe it’s just because I know his backstory from the books as well as the film. He’s just a really intimidating character. I think it’s fun that our art style can bring out just how villainous he is even though we have an art style that is appealing to kids of all ages.
CV: Some characters have similar abilities. What goes into coming up with all the powers in the Skill Tree?
JV: That’s something our character team works on. Essentially what they do is they look at what ability those characters are most well known for and integrate those. It’s an interesting back and forth, Tony, because like with the case of Iron Man, we went through this process of saying, “Should Iron Man and Thor be able to fly right from the beginning? Or is that something that players should have to level up, in order to do?”
The thing with those two characters and kind of our overall design philosophy has always been that we want to make sure players that go and pick up their favorite characters can put them down and begin having an experience that they love with those characters right out the gate. Over time, they can upgrade those different abilities to be stronger, but that’s been part of our design philosophy as we’ve worked on 2.0.
CV: We have an Avengers, Spider-Man, and Guardians world playset. Can we expect a new world soon?
JV: What I can say, because the PR guys won’t let me talk about future content, what I can say is that as Infinity continues to evolve as a platform, that we will continue to support Marvel’s initiative on that platform. It’s really exciting being able to work with the creative geniuses over at Marvel and talk about what their priorities are from a film slate perspective or from a comic book publishing perspective and talk about how we can integrate those characters into Infinity moving forward.
CV: This might be something else you can’t talk about but could we see the possibility of seeing the line expand to characters from the comics not in the animated series or movies? Like where do the Fantastic Four or X-Men fit in?
JV: The answer to that is it really comes down to Marvel’s priorities. We’re willing to support Marvel’s priorities in any way that we can. So if there was ever an opportunity to integrate those types of characters, because that’s what their priority was as a business, we’d love to support Marvel in any way we can.
CV: And hopefully you’ll expand the line to include something like Star Wars. I’m not even going to ask you about that.
JV: [laughs] If we added those Star Wars characters, I think the Disney Infinity platform would become a force to be reckoned with. Oh! Ba-dum-tssh.
Disney Infinity 2.0 is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360. Green Goblin, Yondu, and Ronan are now available for $13.99 each.
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