Suicide Squad
It is rare to be able to spot video game disasters on the horizon so clearly, but the turn from Rocksteady, maker of the famed Arkham series, to do a Suicide Squad game based on co-op play, live service offerings, loot grinding and microtransactions seems destined to go poorly, especially after recent gameplay showcases that ended with the game getting delayed into next year.
But everyone’s favorite media executive, WB Discovery’s David Zaslav, does not seem to care, and has announced that WB Games will go full speed ahead by turning its well-performing single player IPs into live service, monetizable, “engagement” focused projects.
Zaslav says that WB has at least four billion dollar gaming properties, Harry Potter, DC, Mortal Kombat and Game of Thrones, though I suppose he’s talking about the potential for Game of Thrones there, as I’m pretty sure he’s not referring to the Telltale games.
But while Hogwarts Legacy is one of the best-selling games of the year, Mortal Kombat 1 performed well and the Arkham games are some of the most beloved superhero offerings ever, that’s not enough. We need more Suicide Squads, it seems:
“Our focus is on transforming our biggest franchises from largely console and PC based with three-four year release schedules to include more always on gameplay through live services, multiplatform and free-to-play extensions with the goal to have more players spending more time on more platforms. Ultimately we want to drive engagement and monetization of longer cycles and at higher levels. We have put specific capabilities. We are currently under scale and see significant opportunity to generate greater post purchase revenue.”
Live service, microtransactions, free-to-play, engagement. The four horsemen of the gaming apocalypse. WB feels like it’s trend chasing here while being years behind schedule and ignoring the incredibly long list of studios that have tried to morph their single player studios to build live-service cash-ins and having it blow up in their faces.
Hogwarts Legacy
Literally today, Sony announced that it was cutting its live service release calendar in half, first promising 12 live service games in the next few years, which is now down to six. This is also in the wake of Sony-owned Bungie having a terrible year with its live service baby, Destiny 2, with a 45% revenue miss. And that’s one of the most successful live service games of all time.
It’s true that many studios are between a rock and a hard place. Single player games can be well-received and sell well, but their budgets are usually enormous to the point where the cost can be hard to justify. But acting as if a pivot to live service is some magic wand to fix everything has not proven to be true. Some series can get away with this, Call of Duty morphed into that pretty well. But you cannot predict out-of-the-blue successes like Fortnite or Apex Legends, and to hurl your budgets and workers toward trying to reproduce that may damage your various brands more than it helps. Rocksteady, for instance, may be about to release a live service-focused co-op arcade brawler that doesn’t do well in the form of Suicide Squad, compared to what might have happened if they made say, a really great single player Superman game in the vein of Arkham.
It will likely take years to see exactly what WB is trying to do here, but Suicide Squad should definitely be viewed as a trial balloon. Otherwise we’ll be grinding out Harry Potter battle passes for broom skins and floo powder soon enough here.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
