Other Bloomberg: Top ‘Suicide Squad’ Developers Say the Flop Made Them Not Want to Make Games Anymore

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The more time it took, the more money it cost. Conversations became less about designing the game, Rydby said, and more about ensuring it made back its hefty budget. During meetings,

executives would ask questions like: "How many players can we reach with this feature?" or "How can we twist this design into something that can be more replayable?"

Rydby understood why Warner Bros. was growing nervous about recouping its investment. But he worried that the game was losing its soul along the way.

"That's when I started feeling like I wasn't making games anymore," he said. "I was following a spreadsheet, some elusive marketing-analysis spreadsheet that no one could present clearly. I kind of felt like this isn't the gaming industry I wanted to work in."

Armstrong said that after the game came out in February 2024, he was surprised by how negative the reactions were. Shortly thereafter, when Warner decided to move on from Suicide Squad without even trying to turn its fortune around, something broke in his brain.

"I felt everything drained from me," Armstrong said. "I said, 'I can't do this again. I don't know if I'm done with the industry, but I'm done.' I could feel myself coming apart at the seams."

The realities of making a live-service game were a shocking adjustment for the studio. In the Batman games, designers and artists would create levels knowing that the player would only have to battle through them once. For Suicide Squad, everything needed to be endlessly replayable, and the team couldn't spend too long on each one because there was so much to make. "It was a big culture shift," Armstrong said.

The game was delayed multiple times and ultimately wound up taking more than seven years to finish. Problem was, the delays were all short-term extensions, and the resulting, ever-looming deadlines prevented the developers from making the sort of significant overhauls that could have made Suicide Squad much better.

"Six months isn't enough to do any fundamental changes," Rydby said. "That's just enough to just fix as many bugs as you can and see if you can squeeze in a bit of feature tweaks here and there."

"I think as an industry we are severely losing our way," Rydby said. "It used to be passion projects that you loved and hoped other people loved too. When they did, it was such an amazing feeling. It became less and less of that. It became: 'Let's hope it sells. Let's hope we get money from it.'"

 

[Demon_Skeith]

Fans are both the driving force and killing heartbreak for all game devs.

 

[Legend]

All we wanted from Rocksteady was Batman games, or at least a version of Arkham City.

No whatever this Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was.

If there was a true blue spiritual successor to Batman: Arkham City, I'll buy 5 copies. Okay? I don't care if it's Batman, or Flash, or Robin, or whatever.

Do. what. your. specialty. is.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

All we wanted from Rocksteady was Batman games, or at least a version of Arkham City.

No whatever this Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was.

If there was a true blue spiritual successor to Batman: Arkham City, I'll buy 5 copies. Okay? I don't care if it's Batman, or Flash, or Robin, or whatever.

Do. what. your. specialty. is.

All they had to do was advance the story into the Batman Beyond era and they would have sold another million copies of the series.

 

[Legend]

All they had to do was advance the story into the Batman Beyond era and they would have sold another million copies of the series.

I'm not attached to the Batman Beyond era. I've seen the cartoon(s), and if they went this way, then, the graphics are going be similar to the cartoons. Arkham City worked because of two things; graphics, and the open world. Then there's gameplay that seal the deal. Story adds to this, but I'm saying the Arkham City was their magnum opus. Beautiful game.

Arkham City is the exact Batman game that we all wanted. Arkham Asylum is good, but I mean, Arkham City took Asylum and perfected the Batman game. That was the perfect Batman game. THE. Not "one of." THE Batman game we all wanted.

I swear, if they actually did a good remaster of either Arkham Asylum, and Arkham City, they'd make their money back. Not whatever this glitchfest that was the Batman: Arkham Collection was. We DID want a collection of these games, but they were glitchy.