Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was a wildly unpopular game, a microtransaction-filled, incomplete attempt at a live service game from a well-regarded team that had never made one before.
To no one's surprise, the negative reception of Suicide Squad was immediately followed by mutterings from Rocksteady that they never actually wanted to do a live service and that Warner Bros. hard pressed them to include certain predators.
Suicide Squad killed the passion of two designers
In a recent interview with Bloomberg, two ex-Rocksteady developers opened up about how soul-destroying the Suicide Squad development cycle was for people at the studio.
Basically, the longer the game took to develop, the bigger the budget, and the more anxious Warner Bros. became to recoup the money it had invested. This resulted in executive pressure on Rocksteady to aggressively monetize their game, leading to much player backlash when the game finally launched.
“That's when I started to feel like I wasn't making games anymore,” said Axel Rydby, who began the project as lead designer before eventually becoming the game's director. “I was following a spreadsheet, some elusive marketing analytics spreadsheet that no one could present clearly. I kind of felt that this is not the gaming industry I wanted to work in.”
Rocksteady had enjoyed great success with the Batman Arkham series and had welcomed the idea of trying something new with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. However, the team was not happy with the mandate that the game be a live service.
The development cycle ended up being a nightmare as a team focused on single-player action-adventure games was asked to make a perpetual game that never ran out of content.
“We put in all these hours, but it didn't feel like the game got any better,” said former designer Johnny Armstrong. “Everyone felt they had to run to stand still.”
A couple of delays did little to improve the game as fundamental issues remained unfixable. It's one of those nightmare scenarios where no one is happy with the game, but it has to be released just so some of the development cost can be recouped.
“I felt everything drain out of me,” Armstrong said. “I said, I can't do this again. I don't know if I'm done with the business, but I'm done. I felt myself coming apart at the seams.”
Rocksteady is reportedly working on a new single-player Batman game
Rocksteady is said to be working on a new Batman game that is still “years away”. Meanwhile, Wonder Woman has reportedly rebooted.
Rydby also became unhappy with the industry after shipping Suicide Squad, commenting: “I think as an industry we're losing our way. It used to be passion projects that you loved and hoped other people loved too. When they did, it was a great feeling. There was less and less of it. It became, 'Let's hope it sells.' Let's.”
Armstrong and Rydby have now teamed up to create Secret of Circadia, an RPG deck builder with roguelike elements. The pair have launched a Kickstarter with the goal of raising $11,447 (€10,000) to develop the game.
