Narrative Structures in Multiverse Video Games

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. Spatial Immersion Ryan describes spatial immersion as being “the easiest to achieve in an interactive environment” (54) due to the resources now available in digital media. Still, game technology specialists Digital Foundry found that within Suicide Squad, the environment of Metropolis—the virtual playground that the player moves through—was expansive and detailed but equally indistinct and devoid of its own character (Linneman). Compared, for example, to the evocative night-time ambience and neo-noir stylings of Gotham City, explorable in the Batman: Arkham games, sunny Metropolis is presented as a largely generic city space. Metropolis, being a blank template, benefits GaaS gameplay; it provides a large map for a player to explore and engage with emergent combat situations, like those found in Fortnite. However, unlike the crafted open-world spaces seen within the AAA-game Batman: Arkham series, where there is a greater focus on directed environmental storytelling, with GaaS titles, there is a competing need for developers to be able to quickly move around and reuse environmental assets (prefabricated digital components) to reduce development time for subsequent content releases (Nieborg and Poell 4275-92). Within a multiverse context, this strategy can be seen deployed in Season of Frozen Hearts, which is a snow-themed alternate version of Metropolis. To help us understand how problematic Digital Foundry’s assessment may be for players, Ryan suggests that “spatial immersion is not only a matter of experiencing space through movement; it can also consist of an emotional attachment to a certain location” (54). Within the central story and internal geography of Suicide Squad, there are contained spaces where more attention to adaptation from within the superhero transmedial network has been made (such as “The Batman Experience” building, the Daily Planet, or the Hall of Justice, which features as a headquarters for the Squad). Contemporary reviews, craving a more narrative-led experience, suggest that these are the outstanding elements of the game (Chow). Nevertheless, when the Squad travel through multiverse rifts, it is always to other reconfigured variations of that initial, indistinct Metropolis. Throughout Suicide Squad, these same narrative pressures that emerge from balancing game production choices between GaaS volume and AAA-game quality continue to affect spatial immersion. Reviews consider it problematic that when players fight the Justice League and Brainiac, instead of a myriad of creatively written encounters, the fights largely devolve into the protagonist (the player) shooting the antagonist (a ‘bullet sponge’ that keeps moving around) in a nondescript environment until one of them is dead (Cardy). This same fight is then repeated across the multiverses as, with each seasonal release, Brainiac has reimagined himself as one of the four Justice League members, only slightly reconfigured in the powers that they possess. This same focus on incremental iteration is also deployed in other areas of game design: with the non-superheroic enemies (generic aliens encounterable by any character, that can be deployed in any multiverse landscape as game development progresses, and are colour-coded so that the player knows how difficult they are) and weapons (generic guns operable by any character, that can be deployed in any multiverse landscape as game development progresses, and are colour-coded so that the player knows how rare they are). While these iterative elements serve GaaS functionality, they come at a cost to the spatial immersion. Epistemic Immersion With the player impersonating a detective to extract information from the game world, Ryan identifies epistemic immersion as “the desire to know” (55). The unfurling of interactive story ‘clues’ within Suicide Squad takes place in several ways: through thousands of lines of in-game dialogue, through in-game monitor screens where Lois Lane provides updates in a news reportage format, and through other environmental storytelling tricks, such as discarded newspapers, abandoned buildings, or the presence of enemies in specific locations. Nevertheless, in following a traditional AAA-game mode of production, as with the Injustice and Batman: Arkham franchises, the primary method of moving the narrative forward is through non-interactive cut-scenes (Klevjer 301-9). These narrative scenes contain characters presented using cutting-edge motion capture software and graphics technologies to create a remarkable level of detail and immersion, which reviewers were keenly impressed by (Linneman). These pre-scripted scenes are also costly and time-consuming for developers to produce (Dansky, “Cut Scenes and Scripted Events” 144). The balance struck by Suicide Squad is that once the player has completed the primary narrative, the GaaS narrative extensions for each of the subsequent seasons’ multiverses start to replace animated cut-scenes with “static [or minimally animated] artistic renderings in the style of comic book pages”; players found this abrupt stylistic change to be dissatisfying (Gach). Richard Dansky advises that with video games, “Since the audience is actively participating in the narrative flow, the narrative has to be built around the concept of audience buy-in” (“Introduction to Game Narrative” 17). Making alterations to the main method of conveying the story signifies a planned pivot by the developers to a different approach to narrative production. While this change was likely made to ensure the ongoing sustainability of the game in its open-ended live service phase, it also shifts the contextual framework of the epistemic immersion for the player. Here, the positive features of the AAA game model become problematic when the game’s direction switches to a different, GaaS-led model and the time and budget priorities of developers are reallocated elsewhere. Despite a comic book art style implying a closer relationship with the comic book origins of the adapted licences, the overtly lower-cost method of exposition may also suggest a reduced commitment by developers to the ongoing production of the game, which is ironic given the possible reason for the change (McWhertor, “Players Aren’t Laughing”). Nevertheless, these alterations sharply impact upon the players' active ‘buy-in’ or continual ‘desire to know’ more about other—potentially lesser quality—locations within the multiverse, which then works against the ongoing GaaS model. Temporal Immersion Ryan argues that temporal immersion increases the narrative elements with “curiosity, surprise, and suspense” (55). Suicide Squad is an action title within the ‘looter shooter’ genre (whereby a player takes on enemies to acquire better weapons and equipment, or ‘loot’, to enable them to take on more difficult enemies). This circular gameplay ‘loop’ fits with the open-ended GaaS model, seen in games such as Fortnite. In discussing the “clash between game and narrative”, Jesper Juul contends that “this is the basic mode of the classical action game: A clicheed [sic] story with a well-known ending, and a game that actually never reaches that ending, it just gets harder and harder” (“Game and Narrative”). Developers adapting this aspect to Suicide Squad explains why the enemies and weapons are colour-coded: while it impedes spatial immersion, for some players, the hierarchical structure can improve their moment-to-moment enjoyment of the game. However, as Juul adds, “trying to add a significant story to a computer game invariably reduces the number of times you’re likely to play the game” (“Game and Narrative”). The multiverse storyline of Suicide Squad provides a broader context for continual play by providing multiple mission types that need to be continually worked through while tantalising a plethora of Brainiacs for the player to defeat. Yet, this emphasis on repeated story beats through a fixed number of available mission variations also points towards the repetitive nature of the game itself. This is not an inherent problem with the looter shooter genre per se—it can be done well in the linear progression system of a game like Diablo II (2000, 2021) (Munnelly)—but it is something negatively commented upon within multiple articles about this game (Tassi, “Two Big Problems”), where expectations from Suicide Squad are more closely aligned to the belief that “the story provides a way to believe in [game] mechanics and to give the player a reason to accept the need to do them” (Dansky, “Introduction to Game Narrative” 6). Through approaching the game from a different expectation of immersion, players, primarily drawn in by narrative questions based on their understanding of the DC Comics licences and their transmedial usages in comics, film, and television—what will our plucky heroes do next?—are met with temporal disruption in the form of tedium as the answers provided by the game eventually become: more of the same, no matter which part of the multiverse the characters are traversing. From this vector, as Juul suggests, the content offered by the game is then considered limited and exhausted rather than endlessly replayable. Social Immersion Although Suicide Squad deploys elements of live service design, the game does not have to be played with other ‘live’ players in the Squad; it can be played solo (single-player) with ‘bots’ (computer-controlled characters) forming the rest of the unit. Despite the potential for solo play from the day of release, it took the developers until their final update of the game (season 4) to allow players access to an offline form of the game (Kim). This clearly indicates that they would have preferred players to have been permanently online. The ‘always online’ aspect of Suicide Squad does not appear to have been entirely designed to encourage social cohesion through the immersive possibilities afforded by each player being a separate member of the Squad. When in solo mode, the player can switch between any of the four Squad members to experience their individual attributes, but if the player is online with others, then a Squad can comprise up to four versions of the same character. While the various narrative cues make efforts to explain the recursive multiversal nature of many aspects of the game design, and in doing so validate their in-game presence within Suicide Squad, they do not do so with this aspect of the multiplayer offering. In fact, the narrative immersion is further impacted upon as non-interactive cut-scenes do not take into account any combination of characters other than the original four Squad members, and the scripted in-game voice lines from all four characters, which reviewers point to as being among the best aspects of the game, are significantly reduced with each character that is no longer present (Cardy). Discussing comic book media, Karin Kukkonen offers that “as the narrative unfolds, readers can, with the help of surrogates, construct a more or less continuous mental model of the multiverse” (Kukkonen 55). With Suicide Squad, we find the player’s relationship with their digital surrogates (the Squad) and their role in the formation of a coherent framework for understanding the parameters of the multiverse being disrupted. This design decision does, however, encourage GaaS purchases. For example, the player is no longer controlling the Harley Quinn of their own solo story, but one in competition with a plurality of Harley Quinns jostling to be the ‘best’ version of their character. After the completion of each mission the game singles out the player who achieved the highest score (which on a meta-narrative level does align with the petty squabbles between the Squad members), rewarding them with a celebratory animation specific to their avatar, but players can also buy skins (outfits, which like the weapons also come with colour variants to denote exclusivity) and emotes (repeatable canned movements), available in limited access windows, to further demonstrate a higher level of time/financial player investment in the game to other players (Bonthuys). The intra-Squad social competition is, therefore, intensified the more closely comparable the selected characters are. An issue with the GaaS model, highlighted by player responses to Suicide Squad, is not that this competition and disruption to multiverse cohesion occurs (the financial success of Fortnite points towards its popularity) but that it is not deemed good enough, with players invested in the use of DC Comics licences and those players familiar with GaaS always-online features lodging multiple, ongoing complaints regarding the quality and volume of content offered ‘post-launch’ (Zwiezen). Emotional Immersion “The combination of emotional immersion with interactivity is the most problematic of all”, Ryan writes, “because it involves interpersonal relations between the player and computer-operated characters” (56). This article suggests that the emotional immersion of players engaging with Suicide Squad is also the most critical element in the game’s poor reception. A report by Bloomberg (Schreier), interviewing people involved with the development of Suicide Squad, points towards management decisions impacting on the design of the game (Rocksteady staff being asked to make a live service game, when they had no experience in the area; mid-development changes such as combat moving from melee to a shooting style, etc). While these choices may not be accountable for all of the game’s apparent shortcomings listed throughout this article, they do point towards a subsequent lack of unified ‘vision’, or consideration for an “aesthetic of consistency and coherency” within game development (Uricchio 192), especially when considering the emotional immersion of players (coming to the game with GaaS and/or AAA game expectations) overlapping with fans of media made with DC Comics licences. Where the professional reviews considered Suicide Squad in all its aspects, journalistic think-pieces and public discussions on social media platforms strike a different tone, with conversations centred on: the “disrespectful” death of Batman, compounded by the death of seasoned Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy prior to the release of the game (Tassi, “Disrespect Arkham”); a frustration at Rocksteady Studios not confirming whether Suicide Squad Batman was the ‘Arkham Batman’ from their earlier games (McWhertor, “What Happens to Batman”); that Captain Boomerang’s main method of enacting violence in the game is through firearms and not boomerangs, arguably the one defining aspect of his character (Deschamps); that seasons introduced playable characters who were not from pre-existent DC Comics licences, but were newly created and tangentially adjacent to legacy characters not featured in the game: Mrs. Freeze instead of Mr. Freeze, Deadshot’s daughter instead of Deadshot (Flores Jr.); and when the first Season introduced Batman’s arch-nemesis, the Joker, as a playable character, there were then complaints surrounding the quality of the additional GaaS content: “one of the worst live season launches ... ever seen” (Tassi, “Joker Season”). It would take several further articles to unpack all of these socially articulated anxieties, stemming from questions around franchise licence management, the intention behind game design decisions, the debates around the potential limitations of transmedial narrative extensions when they are presented as original content, and more. However, even from presenting an overview of these concerns, it is apparent that interested parties have coalesced on the use of DC Comics-licenced characters and how their deployment directly affects the immersion of the video game experience for the player. Where emotional appeal could smooth over the ambiguities, uncertainties, and tensions raised by transmedia adaptation, especially within a multiverse story, the inconsistent application of GaaS and AAA game models of narrative production to the DC Comics characters instead compound any and all perceived faults with Suicide Squad. Conclusion Suicide Squad is not the only video game to recently feature licenced superheroes within an AAA game and GaaS hybrid structure of gameplay (Wilson 149-59). Marvel’s Avengers was released in 2020 and, due to a litany of comparable failings, was abruptly delisted (removed from sale) in 2023 (Bailey, “Marvel’s Avengers”). Nor is Suicide Squad the only video game to feature DC Comics licences in a multiverse story within a mainly GaaS model. MultiVersus was released in 2024 and abruptly delisted in 2025 (Wales). Conversely, in addition to Fortnite, there have been critical and financial successes in the application of superhero licences in video games containing a ‘collided’ multiverse setting: Marvel Snap (2022); a ‘parallel’ multiverse setting: Marvel Rivals (2024); and a great deal of social media anticipation for the upcoming LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight (2026), which self-consciously pulls from and celebrates the Batman transmedia multiverse. As we have seen in this article, Ryan’s five types of narrative immersion can provide a vital framework with which we can begin to understand how some of these games become critical and/or financial failures while others become award-winning, multi-billion-dollar franchise successes. Evidently, Suicide Squad sits within a broader, ongoing trend for the creation of video games that use superhero licences, and the deployment of a multiverse storyline can play a sophisticated and nuanced part in developers qualifying the appeal and dimensions of these games to multiple player types. But, with the ever-expanding production costs and increasing complexity of how these games are designed to interact with players, a game that “does not work”, even if those perceived faults are subjective, can have much wider ramifications beyond a quality judgment on the immersive potential of the game itself. 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