Questions that shouldn't be asked in the month of launch
If I were to make a checklist on all the things that are hallmarks of a successful or unsuccessful marketing campaign, based solely on the reactions of the public- I think the glaring red flag would be any campaign that has people in the weeks before launch asking "What is this game, exactly?". It would have to be right up there with "Wait, this game is coming out tomorrow?" and "Oh, are they making a game of that?" If somewhere along the line you haven't imparted this information to the interested parties, then I just have to ask what in the heck you're even doing as a marketing department. But then, maybe the blame doesn't just land with marketing, but rather the whole team for presenting an unclear image of the game that is supposed to be being sold. If no one can verbalise the vision, then is there even a vision to begin with?
Let me address Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League with a query: what is the main focus of this game in a systematic sense? Bare basic, right on the front of the first design doc- what was this game pitched as in the boardroom? Is is the successor to the Batman Arkham franchise, big on the spectacle and narrative focus on telling a compelling adventure with stakes and agency that excites and delights- or is this a live service gear-chasing game that spends it's efforts creating content loops for players to dedicate weeks upon months upon years of their time chasing? I know that in the mind of the marketing team they're certain these two concepts are not mutually exclusive, but personally I'm yet to find contributing evidence to that rather lofty assertion.
Gotham Knights is another Batman game released in the post Arkham World which suffered from left-over adoration for what that franchise did and expectation that the development team were not ready to meet. The game was clearly designed to be a live service from inception, but shifted direction following the downfall of live services into being just a co-op experience that was still resplendent with many of the hallmarks of recurrent play. I'm talking Gear Scores, content grinding, crafting materials, stat comparing- all the things that don't contribute to making a solid cinematic experience for a Batman game and which drove a wedge between the narrative that wanted to get out and the game the team were told to stick together.
Gotham Knights needed to turn all of it's villains and enemies into content hubs to drive retention. The league of shadows couldn't just be purposed for their narrative potential, but they had to be stuck all over the city pulling petty crimes so that the player could grind them in order to meet the quota of a 'stop X amount of crimes from this faction' style check-list quest. (The likes of which are infinitely spawning from any number of the dynamic open world quest givers.) The story couldn't just flow from one significant plotpoint to the next arc of the story, but they had to throw in a forced patrol quest in the middle of every chapter in order to force open world interactions out of the player. They couldn't even prioritise the coming together of the Batfamily without Bruce, because each character had to be playable entirely independently- so you can feel like a one man army with three tech supports if you're not playing with others. (Although that might be more a consequence of the co-op design as well as the Live Service skeleton)
Gotham Knights wanted to be too much and it ended up failing to do any one thing good enough to become genuinely praise worthy. I suspect it was even their limitations working with internet connectivity and 'collaborative play' which led to the vastly stripped back and genuinely less engaging combat which the game relies heavily on. Although of course, one mustn't conflate the resources that Gotham Knights team had with what Suicide Squad have available. It's clear from even a passing glance that Suicide Squad is a more expensive game. It's cutscenes look sleek and cinematic, it's character models are fantastic and dripping with character, the animations are at the industrial top standard- but is all of that enough to make up for the fact that it is a live service through and through?
Battle passes, unified gear systems, copy and paste enemy design format- this is all anyone can see from the footage we're being fed. But what we're being told alongside that footage? We're told how dynamic it is, how differently everyone plays, how transformative their progression system is! (With such spectacular perks as: 'Reload gun a little faster'. Transformative!) And lately; we're being told that this game is a successor to Batman Arkham in the all the ways it appears to not be. "It's still full of the DNA that infuses the Batman: Arkham series" insists Darius Sadeghian, the Studio product director in an interview with Play Magazine. And to Darius' credit, he seems to have his head on straight when it comes to selling his game. He talks about the 'trinity' or 'gameplay systems- shooting, melee and traversal' and the creation of a 'community' through the framing of the game's cooperative elements- and it all sounds... cohesive.
But then he says this. "We don't really think of our game as fitting any label." And I can't help but call absolutely hogswash on that nonsense! Every game has an identity, no matter how much you want to try and shy away from it in order to patch up public sentiment. Redfall tried to pull the same card out about how it was utterly genre-less, just to hide the fact it was a limp co-op shooter with vague looter elements sprinkled on top. Even Death Stranding was marketed without admitting it was primarily a really high budget physics puzzle game, which I guess is the true definition of 'strand type'. The didn't score a budget to make Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League by stumbling into the producer's meeting and just saying "Yeah, we wanna make a co-op game we guess, but we have no idea what it's genre or direction is going to be. Can you fund us to make the thing and support it for at least three years, pretty please?" Pull the other one, Darius!
I think this game is embarrassed to be part of a dying subgenre in a world that has no interest in it anymore. We're past the day when retail stores decide what genre of game is the it thing by stocking or destocking where they see necessary, meaning even a flagging genre still has it ardent and loving fan base. Games are digital and plentiful, yet still Live Service after Live Service has fallen from grace in lamentable fashion. Even Destiny is no longer where it should be in the popularity charts. That is the world that Suicide Squad is lumbering into, and it's doing it despite the reservations of a fanbase wanting a game more akin to the one they know and love. If this game really does manage to satisfy all comers, then consider the Rocksteady team actual magical miracle workers with the tools of no one else in the industry. Otherwise, prepare for a rude awakening with the next failure in the DC videogame slate.
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