Back in 2021 during The Game Awards, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War developer Monolith Productions revealed that its next project is a Wonder Woman game. They’ve been silent as they continue to work on the game so not much is known but recent new job ad suggests that the game will have live service elements. This revelation comes after Warner Bros. Discovery’s latest earnings call where CEO David Zaslav talked about doubling down on live service games going forward.
The ad is for a Lead Software Engineer, Gameplay who “will lead the team responsible for core gameplay systems inherent to Monolith’s proprietary engine, including combat, movement, the Nemesis system, and more!” Another aspect that Monolith is looking for is someone with “experience helping maintain a live software product or game.”
During the earnings call, Zaslav talked about his plans for the gaming side of the company. “Our focus is on transforming our biggest franchises from largely console and PC based with three-four year release schedules to include more always on gameplay through live services, multiplatform and free-to-play extensions with the goal to have more players spending more time on more platforms. Ultimately we want to drive engagement and monetization of longer cycles and at higher levels. We have specific capabilities. We are currently under scale and see significant opportunity to generate greater post-purchase revenue.”
While Games as a service took the industry by storm, it would appear that the genre has started to hit its ceiling with gamers. Bungie says that Destiny 2 revenue hasn’t hit the marks they were hoping for, Sony announced that they are delaying half of its live service titles currently in development, and Epic Games admits that they have been unprofitable, even with the juggernaut that is Fortnite which recently reached new peak count of 6 million concurrent players with the release of Fortnite OG.
There have been issues gamers have had with other WB games as well. There was backlash from the community for Mortal Kombat 1’s prices for items in the in-game store and there was heavy criticism against Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League when it was revealed that the game will have live service elements.
We’ll have to wait and see how the GaaS elements will affect Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Wonder Woman and whether or not it affects Warner Bros. Discovery’s plans for the future.