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‘Suicide Squad,' Warner Bros.'s $200 Million :marseysamhyde: Flop, Haunts the Gaming :marseysephiroth: Industry - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-06/-suicide-squad-warner-bros-s-200-million-flop-haunts-the-gaming-industry

On May 9, during an earnings call, Warner Bros. revealed that it was taking a $200 million :marseysamhyde: loss on Suicide :marseyobamarope: Squad — making it one of the gaming :marseybulbasaur: world's worst blunders.

One of the biggest issues, said people familiar, was that the battles, levels and bosses in a live-service game needed to be designed so players could tackle them over and over again, while Rocksteady was accustomed to telling stories that were only experienced once. Hampered by bloated code, the team struggled to find ways to make these activities feel less tedious :marseybrokenrecord: and repetitive.

Many of the studio's employees are now helping to develop a new “director's cut” version of Hogwarts :marseychudhermione: Legacy. At the same time, according to people familiar, the studio leaders are looking :marseyinsane: to pitch :marseyhearnoevil: a new single-player game, which would :marseywood: return :marseymonke: Rocksteady to its roots.

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frick the capeshit, schreier dropped this beautiful lil nugget

“director's cut” version of Hogwarts Legacy :!marseybooba::!marseybooba:

👀 👀 👀 they still seethe about the original one on GCJ. this boutta do numbers :soysnooseethe:

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I think that's the best bit of all this. The Suicide Squad game was a no-hoper from the start, but it sucked even more massively than anyone expected. So what is Warner Bros hoping will save their asses?

TERF Mommy inspired game. You know, the game all the activists were assuring us nobody would play because who cares about Harry Potter anymore?

The seething is going to be exquisite.

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You can make a game that the whole gameplay is nothing but a cassino for . jpegs that shake their asses and profit billions

to make a AAA game and still lose 200M, you more than deserve it

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>You can make a game that the whole gameplay is nothing but a cassino for . jpegs that shake their asses and profit billions

This is more an indictment of g*mers themselves than game studios

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Yeah, g*mers have good taste. Eroge is ludo and fun, cape shit is r-slurred and dumb.

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Zoomers seem to be playing the same GaaS games from literally 5-10 years ago, I don't think they really bother much with new titles :marseyshrug:

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It reminds me of all the companies that made MMORPGs after World of Warcraft became popular. Everyone wanted to take a piece of the pie from Blizzard but hardly anyone succeeded. Anyone who wanted to play an MMO was already playing WoW, had invested a ton of hours into it, and all their friends played it, so there was no incentive to switch to something else. The more things change...

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Or after Command & Conquer and Warcraft 2 there were about 100 RTSs made in one year. I can't remember a single one of them.

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I miss RTS :marseysad: theres barely any old-school ones made, it seems. And the ones that are, are focused on multiplayer. And/or use world in conflict-style call-in reinforcements. I miss base building...

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only one that succeeded was FFXIV and that's because it didn't try to copy WOW, it made its own little weeb world for g*mers who are too precious to handle PVP (+ a sick in-world card game that sometimes i want to resub just to play)

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They also completely fricked it up to begin with. But they realised, apologised, started again and remade the game into the juggernaut it currently is. Admitting you made a mistake is far rarer then just blaming the audience, nowadays.

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Is FFXIV any good to play? I see 'free trial' offers and while I'm intrigued, I've never played any of the FF games and don't know if it's even worth wasting a couple of hours on.

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Give it a shot, the free trial is always available and pretty generous (base game + the first two expansions). It's completely disconnected from any other FF game so no background knowledge needed for the story. It's really more of a single-player RPG than an MMO, especially early on. You can do dungeons with an NPC party if you don't want to deal with other people for some reason.

DO NOT pick Thaumaturge for your starting class, it's horribly unfun until like lvl 80. Any of the other starter classes are fine. You can pick up multiple classes on the same character so if you're not enjoying one just switch instead of having to roll a new char and start over entirely.

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Okay, sounds good, I'll give it a try. And if I hate it, I only have myself to blame for taking advice from you guys on here 😁

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You'll absolutely waste more than a couple of hours if you get into it - MMOs by nature are very long games. That said, the free trial is a ridiculously good deal, and if you're enjoying the game up to the trial's level cap, you'll likely enjoy what comes next.

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dude bussy lmao

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ALSO WOW SHIT THE BED WITH CATA, WOD, BFA, AND SHADOWLANDS. ALSO PVP HAS BEEN DEAD LONG BEFORE FFXIV, HECK LONG BEFORE WOW, THAT'S WHY WARHAMMER ONLINE AND DAC failed...

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dude bussy lmao

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They relaunched it as the easier f2p version, Secret World Legends, a few years back. Integrated all the new bits, added a trip to South Africa. But it's been in maintenance mode for years now.

It had so much potential, but never the support/audience it needed.

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dude bussy lmao

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Yeah media executives don't comprehend the idea of a saturated market

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Wtf is gaas

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Games as a service ie live service games.

Also :marseysniff:

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Why the r-slurred acronym

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There are a lot of As A Service acronyms. Software aas, Platform aas, it comes from tech mostly

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There are a lot of :marseytwerking: acronyms. Software :marseydumptruck:, Platform :marseytwerkinit:, it comes from tech mostly

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Can't wait until we get bussy as a service

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Codecels being codecels

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Referencing SaaS probably :marseycop:

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One can only imagine how much more money they would make with a dedicated single player game. Probably infinitely more since the game would actually make a profit. (and also would still most likely be bad, but the studio had enough good will to cover for that, not so much for the live service label).

Big studios' dedication to chasing the theoretical Live Service infinite money at the detriment of their actual profits is really remarkable.

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I thought it was because g*mers dgaf about super hero games, especially suicide squad.

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It was certainly a factor, but I wager the live service aspect and how bad and generic (gamplay wise) it looked were more important.

If Rocksteady made a Superman singleplayer game I would be surprised if it wasn't a success.

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You'd have to invent an entirely new gameplay style for a Superman game, though. The Arkham style that so many games mimic doesn't really work with a character who can fly across a city in seconds and punch through walls.

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People couldn't get enough of Batman, that's probably why Warner Bros thought Rocksteady could pull this off in the first place, because of Arkham Asylum. Even a plot about "we're gonna kill Batman" might have worked, but not as "just as part of taking on all the JL and you'll only see him for about ten minutes and most of the game is about this third-string bunch of loser villains". Joker, even if I hate what has been done with modern Joker, is iconic. Harley is just his side-kick/whiny girlfriend.

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I think Joker is too overused. They really need to let him rest for a while.

Harley on the other hand needs to buried alive, they really want her to be The Big Thing, and she is just more and more annoying every time.

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Definitely. Over used, and by trying to make her an independent supervillain, they just Mary Sue her (she can do all this cool stuff, guys!) I don't know what they did to Margot Robbie in the Suicide Squad movie, but they made her look way too old to be running around in torn fishnets, booty shorts and pig tails. She didn't look sexy, she looked mutton dressed as lamb.

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They should just go all in on Bane so we get more plane scenes

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Studio was dumb and greedy trying to make a franchise out of the Suicide Squad movie in a genre they had no idea about, Rocksteady was dumb for taking on something it had no experience with, end result was what anyone could have forecast.

As a single player one-time game, it probably would have been okay, but I don't think there's enough interest in the Suicide Squad characters to let them stand on their own. Playing them singly or as a bunch against the Justice League? Sure. Playing Captain Kangaroo (or whatever his name is, I honestly can't remember, the boomerang guy) as a stand-alone character in a series? No way.

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Haunts the gaming industry :soycry:

Nobody cares about your slop and nobody has a problem but you :marseygrilling2: :marseygamer: :!marseycrystalmaiden:

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As much as I hate that I love it, all I want injected into my brain at all times is Suicide Squad, Captain Marvel, and Rings of Power sneed.

I could live of that shit for 30 years


Don't forget to turn off signatures in settings!

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Watching Marvel movies dominate cinema for decades only to have capeshit fans cry themselves to sleep on reddit was kinda worth it

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Season two Rings of Power is coming in August, and the sneed harvest is looking to be bountiful and lush.

Spoilers alert, but their big idea of disguising Sauron so he can be Annatar (after they spend the entire first season telling us they didn't need or want Annatar) is to put the Halbrand actor into a wig and pointy ears. "The Elves will never recognise me like this!" and depending on whether they're going to have Annatar turning up after Halbrand has been chased out, or before, it works both ways: the Elves are indeed too stupid to realise "hey, this is the same guy!"

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levels and bosses in a live-service game needed to be designed so players could tackle them over and over again, while Rocksteady was accustomed to telling stories that were only experienced once

You wanted this game to be fun and not tedious to play? That's not playing to our strengths as a developer. We're better at making shitty busywork to intersperse between cut scenes. Sorry that you gave us $200 million. R u still mad?


https://i.rdrama.net/images/17189893364501786.webp

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Admittedly, there is a design difference between being fun to play through once and being fun to play through again and again. That said, the Arkham games generally were both, so I don't buy that excuse.

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dude bussy lmao

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Can't believe games even have that big of a budget let alone lose that much.

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They need to give us a single player Batman Beyond game or frick off

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the studio leaders are looking :marseyviewerstare: :marseyinsane: to pitch :marseyhearnoevil: :marseyhearnoevil: a new single-player game, which would :marseywood: :marseywood: return :marseymonke: :marseymonke: Rocksteady to its roots.

'im be takin' Rocksteady back to 'is roots an' 'ting.

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"Stop your messin' around" is indeed the message they need to hear.

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Death ☠️ to wokes, death 💀 to corpos

And death to Mickland

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Stop making superslop!!!

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