Introduction
Since 2019, DC Comics have licenced their superhero characters to Fortnite (2017-), an online multiplayer video game (Fillery). In Fortnite, players can engage in ad hoc multiverse scenarios where multiple versions of heroes from different comic book universes—and a myriad of other pop-culture figures such as Godzilla or Sabrina Carpenter—can fight each other. With this type of Games as a Service (GaaS) or ‘live service’ model that features ‘open-stories’ (stories with no determinate end), the base game is usually offered for free or at a low cost to players. However, additional game content, such as characters, clothes, weapons, and new story beats often contained within limited-time ‘seasons’ are offered on a continued, and frequently purchasable, basis; these sales form the basis of the revenue stream (Mayhew).
Beyond the open-story structure of GaaS, multiverse storylines in video games made with DC Comics licences predate Fortnite in the forms of Injustice: Gods among Us (2013) and sequel Injustice 2 (2017). These titles are ‘AAA-games’ (their budget and production levels are of the highest quality), and they both feature closed stories (stories with a determinate end), in which a limited series of non-interactive, animated cut-scenes are used to contextualise a series of ongoing bouts of interactive, one-on-one combat (Klevjer 301-309).
In their use of more sophisticated ‘parallel’ multiverse storylines, the Injustice games differ from the ‘collided’ worlds version of the multiverse, seen in Fortnite and earlier hero games such as Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (2008). In this aspect, the Injustice narratives are comparable to those found in Marvel movies such as Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). The complexity of such Superhero stories does not necessarily guarantee financial or critical success (Cook, this issue), but in a parallel multiverse, characters can move between different superhero universes to find themselves in reconfigured situations, divergent storylines, and alongside alternate versions of themselves.
Developed by Rocksteady Studios, the development team behind the acclaimed Batman: Arkham (2009-) series of single-player games, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League (2024) is the first video game made with a DC Comics licence to combine the agile open-stories format of GaaS with a AAA-game approach to quality, parallel-multiverse storytelling (Walsh 117-119). Here, a group of four villains turned anti-heroes from the DC Comics back catalogue (Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Deadshot, and King Shark) are forcibly compelled to unite and save the world from DC Comics superheroes (The Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, and Superman), who have been corrupted by DC Comics supervillain, Brainiac. The Squad, one of which is always controlled by the player, sequentially kill the League members, then Brainiac. Concluding this primary narrative arc, the Squad determine that they must travel to alternate worlds, or “Elseworlds”, within the multiverse to kill every Brainiac that they encounter. This is where, following GaaS principles, the narrative then continues through a series of additional seasons (released for free), including new gaming content (released for free and at a cost), periodically put out by the developer.
In his discussion of the transmedia failure of the video game Batman: Dark Tomorrow (2003), James Fleury joins a wider call for “looking at examples of failure, such as discontinued products or incompatible production cultures, to gain insight on what does not work” (179). Suicide Squad is one such failure. Within a year of release, the game quickly dropped from being sold at a premium price (Welsh); it lost Warner Bros. Discovery, who were both the DC Comics licence holders and publishers of the game, US$200 million (Rousseau); on the Steam game platform, the number of concurrent players plummeted at one point to 118 (SteamDB)—during this same period, Fortnite had a daily player count of over 1 million users across all platforms (ActivePlayer). Rocksteady Studios suffered multiple rounds of layoffs (Phillips), and following the prophecies of Lehtonen et al., who note that with GaaS, “the game itself is terminated when it is no longer profitable for the game development company” (572), ‘live service’ support for Suicide Squad ended (Bailey, “Pulling the Plug”).
Taking into consideration that “the distinctive elements of a particular economic model can hold important implications for narrative design conditions and processes” (Smith 37), and with a focus on the implementation of DC Comics licences across a multiverse setting, this article will explore how the combination of GaaS and AAA-game models directly affected both the development and reception of Suicide Squad. In their essay “From Narrative Games to Playable Stories: Towards a Poetics of Interactive Narrative”, Marie-Laure Ryan describes five types of narrative immersion: spatial, epistemic, temporal, emotional, and social. We will use Ryan’s points as a framework to identify and understand where these points of friction may be located…
The full 4,500 word version of this article is published in ‘Multiverse’ themed issue, M/C Journal vol. 29, edited by Angelique Nairn and Lorna Piatti-Farnell, published 2026.
Carl Wilson 