Cognition Dissemination: The Suicide Squad Game Seems Misguided

Questions regarding the type of game Rocksteady Studios’ Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League would be were answered through the newest gameplay demo. The live service title will let teams of players venture through the experience as Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Captain Boomerang, and King Shark, four anti-villains who’ve long been members of the titular Suicide Squad. Rocksteady clarified their plans to support the game with loads of cosmetic and gameplay-related content (with some qualifying as both) in the additional “Behind the Scenes” video, with new material coming for as long as the game is being purchased and played.

They also want players to progress through the experience in a very specific way. If less than four of them are gathered for co-op play, bots will control the other characters. The missions, and likely the dialogue, are designed around all four characters being active simultaneously. A constant internet connection will also be required, regardless of whether it’s being played in single-player. The game won’t be preserved for long once it dies.

But it’s worth asking just how long it will be around, whether a large-enough audience will find the concept appealing. This is a perplexing initiative on Rocksteady and publisher Warner Bros. Games’ parts for a few reasons.

A number of high-profile live service games funded by big publishers have come and gone with a whimper over recent years. Anthem, once intended to guide Bioware into the future with years of support until an eventual sequel arrived, was one of the biggest. Support for it was pulled before the experience could be revamped. Tom Clancy’s The Division II also qualifies to a lesser extent, the reason why developer Massive Entertainment likely has no immediate plans to work on a follow-up. They won’t have much time between working on Avatar and Star Wars games.

By far the most relevant example to Suicide Squad is Marvel’s Avengers, a fellow superhero live service game that featured big characters like Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man, from some of the highest-grossing movies in history. The game appeared to have every element necessary to succeed, including plenty of financial and content support form Marvel Studios, Square Enix, and developer Crystal Dynamics. Yet, its service is ending after a mere three years in September, despite constant attempts to save it, and potentially before planned content will release. Promised characters like She-Hulk and Captain Marvel may never arrive.

Marvel’s Avengers notably had a number of unforced errors that harmed it. It launched in little more than a threadbare state and content took longer to arrive than promised, though both issues were at least partially the result of the developers working through the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Delaying the game to ensure that more content would have been available during the launch window would have been the better alternative, which would have given most who purchased it enough content to tide them over until more arrived. But even considering that, Square Enix president Yosuke Matsuda acknowledged that it was selling below expectations before a bunch of post-game content released. Square Enix is known for setting high sales expectations, but this was a crushing disappointment for an Avengers game released while Marvel movies were killing it at the box office. (Now known as the Before Quantumania era.)

The jury, meanwhile, is out on whether Gotham Knights will qualify as another title that came up short, a fellow live service game from the same publisher and developed by Warner Bros. Montreal released last fall. It sure seems to be heading this way.

There’s no chance of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League reaching the same heights thanks to the differences in popularity between brand names. The mediocre 2016 Suicide Squad movie did potential damage to the brand in the public’s eyes, which didn’t help the considerably-improved The Suicide Squad (big difference in names there) from director James Gunn in terms of its box office gross. I’m aware that it releasing during the still-ensuing pandemic and on HBO Max simultaneously didn’t help either. But the Suicide Squad name doesn’t carry the same prestige as the Avengers, or even individual DC heroes like Batman, Superman, and perhaps Wonder Woman.

Consider how cutthroat Warner Bros. Discovery has been since David Zaslav and his crew took over to gauge the concern regarding what could befall Rocksteady if, or when, this game underperforms compared to exorbitantly-high expectations. The key element that could save them is the future plans for the connected DC Universe from the aforementioned James Gunn and Peter Safran, which is planned to include video games. That, or they could work on another Batman game guaranteed to sell.

It’s not cynical to presume that Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League could come up short sales-wise. The subjects delved through above and the overall lukewarm reception (to put it lightly) from the online gaming community to the gameplay from the presentation suggests an imminently underwhelming performance. The departures of Rocksteady co-founders Sefton Hill and Jamie Walker at the end of 2022 sure didn’t help the overall perception either. There’s still a chance that it could be a nice surprise, but if not, at least clips from the late Kevin Conroy’s final performance as Bruce Wayne will be preserved on YouTube.