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Narrative Structures in Multiverse Video Games

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: 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 o
Source: M/C Journal
DOI: 10.5204/mcj.3240
Language: English
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7138960503
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