BREAKING: Warner Bros. Games is shutting down Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB San Diego, sources tell Bloomberg News.
Warner Bros. is also canceling the Wonder Woman game.
Warner Bros. is also canceling the Wonder Woman game.
This is maybe the biggest bloodbath we’ve seen in this industry? What a damn shame.
Sure is great that they patented the Nemesis system just to do nothing with it for the better part of a decade then shut down the studio that invented it. Brilliant use of talent and the US patent system there.
I know I’m in the minority here, but I really didn’t like the nemesis system at all. Just like roguelikes, the infinite repeatability of it was a turn off for me and made it feel pointless. I’d much rather play a hand-crafted, limited, curated experience that actually feels meaningful. These generative systems just feel lifeless and pointless to me.
I have the exact opposite opinion of procedurally generated continuity (because I play for the gameplay and that stuff keeps the game going well after the story ends), but share the same opinion of Warner Bros.
I didn’t like it because it seemed pointless if you don’t really care about getting vengeance on specific thing. So the name of a mob that kills you fills in an empty space? Which is the same thing that happens any time you hit a story beat anyways? What’s the point? It’s all just randomly generated grunts that try and kill you.
It brought very little in the way of innovative gameplay and roleplaying, yet people seem to treat it as the greatest revolution of game design in the last several decades.
I love proc gen stuff for how it can make each playthrough feel different or even just make yours feel different from your friend’s. I appreciated that the enemy would remember how you defeated them in particular, because it called out those unique events. I also don’t know that there are a ton of settings where this mechanic makes sense outside of the two it appeared in already, so I won’t miss it too badly.
But the story beat is static, it always gives you the same enemy in the same situation. The nemesis system turns that story beat dynamic. Every time you hit that story beat you get a different enemy in a different situation. It doesn’t give everyone the same story, it gives everyone their story. It’s innovation is how the system sets up stories and ties them into the gameplay. The system is designed to draw you into an encounter with a nemesis, there are multiple outcomes to that encounter. Those encounters become callbacks in the next encounter and so on and on until you’ve create a storyarc against that enemy.
For example I remember having a nemesis I couldn’t kill with a sneak attack (which was very much my preferred way of getting rid of nemesis I wanted to get rid of). So I had to fight him head on and I set him on fire. He managed to escape while I was being overrun by grunts. One of the grunts slayed me and became a new nemesis. Meanwhile the one that got away gained a new weaknesses to fire. One storyline branched into two storylines. Not only did my individual story born from the nemesis system branch out, the gameplay encounters with those nemesis also changed from the previous encounter. The next time I fought my old nemesis I had a new trick up my sleeve, I could use fire against them. As for the new nemesis, well get to him.
That’s the innovation of the nemesis system. It’s a story generator that gives you your story and each encounter alters the gameplay for the next encounter. But that’s only the foundation of the nemesis system. The Nemesis hierarchy and relations between them is an extra layer of storytelling. For example that grunt who killed me turned out to become a really annoying nemesis, I really struggled killing him and every encounter only made him stronger. So I devised a different strategy. I ended up turning other orks that surrounded him in the hierarchy and started using them to do my dirty work. In the end I wasn’t the one to slay my new nemesis, it was a different ork (under my control) who challenged him and killed him.
And final note on what really makes all of it work is the presentation. The orks aren’t just a randomized collection of traits, they’re voiced and somewhat visually unique and whatever randomized outcome they get to at the end of the encounter gets properly presented in the next encounter. The presentation is the glue that ties all those encounters together into one story. You’re presented with an actual nemesis and not just some generic mute and they “remember” the things you did to them before. They feel like a nemesis and not just some randomly generated grunt.
If you tried it and didn’t see the appeal I’m guessing the game was too easy. I wasn’t impressed by the nemesis system until the orks had a chance to escape or I was forced to retreat or I got killed. The system really opens up and gets interesting when the game gets so challenging that you’re no longer certain what will happen in any encounter.
I really hope these teams are able to stay together. Monolith was absolutely getting wasted by Warner Bros. Games, they’re way too good a studio to get stuck making brand tie-ins. Just more dogshit mismanagement from Zaslav though, Warner Bros keeps seeing flops but won’t address the problem.
I see a lot of people responding to this news with complaints about David Zaslav, but it was president David Haddad who ran Warner Bros. Games for the last decade and who was responsible for overseeing all of the studios and their output.
By the time David Zaslav took over WB Discovery in April 2022, Monolith had already gone almost five years without shipping a game and lost almost its entire leadership team under Haddad’s management
That’s fair, I only knew Zaslav had been pushing hard for live-service games and will likely be the death of Rocksteady. Fuck Haddad too then. Why does Warner Bros employ so many execs with Batman-villain ass last names?
Definitely not Batman villains. If they were Batman villains, they’d be puns like Egsek Yutiv or something to go along with the Harleen Quinzels and Edward Nigmas of its world.
If Jason Hall is still out there and sitting on cash, I’d love to see him get some of the team back together and reboot Blood. But my understanding is WB owns the rights and Atari couldn’t afford to get the rights (they still hold the publish rights from the Infogrames days, hence why we got a re-release).
Even if they can’t get the rights, it’s not like there’s anything stopping them from making a new original “boomer shooter.” I don’t need it to be called Blood 2, I just want them to make something high-octane and kickass again.
29 years later, after working with Monolith on one of the worst projects in history… I can finally piss on their grave. Fuck you Matt, fuck Monolith. Yeah this is fucking personal.
Big money first bloated up the industry and is now scooping it out from the inside until it collapses. Well, AAA and AA gaming anyways. I‘ve noticed I‘ve been playing smaller indie games for the most part in the last decade and I know why. It‘s not so much a deliberate choice but simply where talent and care has been moving towards.
Games are doing fine for now, but how much longer will devs and artists continue being treated like disposable tissue before we see the talent pool implode? It doesn’t seem to matter what game is built, how well it performs, if it’s single player or live service - the layoffs and closures come for everyone.
There were some AAA standouts, like Baulder Gate 3 and Hogworts Legacy, that did very well. It is possible if the company focuses on producing a fun user experience.
Replace mega corp with ‘a publicly traded entity’ and you’re spot-on the money.
There are a very few studios that aren’t beholden to the whims of vulture capitalist investors, and they’re the only ones still putting out absolute bangers (Larian), upholding their promises (Hello Games) or keeping the entire gaming industry from consuming itself in a blaze of pure shitfuckery (Valve).
The games that survived are doing fine. There’s a lot of reason to believe that what we’re seeing can at least be partially attributed to just how many games are coming out these days, even good ones. I’m already falling behind on games I want to get to just out of the ones released in 2025.
Oh I guess it’s that time of the month where WB butchers active projects to reduce expenses. I saw this coming, they literally cancelled a finished movie (Batgirl) just to lower the taxes they have to pay! How anyone would want to pitch a project to Warner Bros is beyond me.
With how long Wonder Woman was still going to have to cook, it was never going to make its money back. That’s more of a mistake that was made 7-8 years ago though.
I can finally give up on a sequel to Shogo Mobile Armor Division. What a sad day but Monolith also hadn’t released a game in 8 years. If Rocksteady hadn’t made the Arkham asylum series they would be gone too.
If WW was stuck in development hell, cutting Monolith makes sense I guess. PFG only did Multiversus, WB SF seemed to only work on/support mobile games, with no recent credits.
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Sure is great that they patented the Nemesis system just to do nothing with it for the better part of a decade then shut down the studio that invented it. Brilliant use of talent and the US patent system there.
I know I’m in the minority here, but I really didn’t like the nemesis system at all. Just like roguelikes, the infinite repeatability of it was a turn off for me and made it feel pointless. I’d much rather play a hand-crafted, limited, curated experience that actually feels meaningful. These generative systems just feel lifeless and pointless to me.
Also, fuck warner bros.
I have the exact opposite opinion of procedurally generated continuity (because I play for the gameplay and that stuff keeps the game going well after the story ends), but share the same opinion of Warner Bros.
The Problem is… I Love The fucking Gameplay, this together with the Nemesis System was super addictive to me.
I didn’t like it because it seemed pointless if you don’t really care about getting vengeance on specific thing. So the name of a mob that kills you fills in an empty space? Which is the same thing that happens any time you hit a story beat anyways? What’s the point? It’s all just randomly generated grunts that try and kill you.
It brought very little in the way of innovative gameplay and roleplaying, yet people seem to treat it as the greatest revolution of game design in the last several decades.
I love proc gen stuff for how it can make each playthrough feel different or even just make yours feel different from your friend’s. I appreciated that the enemy would remember how you defeated them in particular, because it called out those unique events. I also don’t know that there are a ton of settings where this mechanic makes sense outside of the two it appeared in already, so I won’t miss it too badly.
Right on the money
But the story beat is static, it always gives you the same enemy in the same situation. The nemesis system turns that story beat dynamic. Every time you hit that story beat you get a different enemy in a different situation. It doesn’t give everyone the same story, it gives everyone their story. It’s innovation is how the system sets up stories and ties them into the gameplay. The system is designed to draw you into an encounter with a nemesis, there are multiple outcomes to that encounter. Those encounters become callbacks in the next encounter and so on and on until you’ve create a storyarc against that enemy.
For example I remember having a nemesis I couldn’t kill with a sneak attack (which was very much my preferred way of getting rid of nemesis I wanted to get rid of). So I had to fight him head on and I set him on fire. He managed to escape while I was being overrun by grunts. One of the grunts slayed me and became a new nemesis. Meanwhile the one that got away gained a new weaknesses to fire. One storyline branched into two storylines. Not only did my individual story born from the nemesis system branch out, the gameplay encounters with those nemesis also changed from the previous encounter. The next time I fought my old nemesis I had a new trick up my sleeve, I could use fire against them. As for the new nemesis, well get to him.
That’s the innovation of the nemesis system. It’s a story generator that gives you your story and each encounter alters the gameplay for the next encounter. But that’s only the foundation of the nemesis system. The Nemesis hierarchy and relations between them is an extra layer of storytelling. For example that grunt who killed me turned out to become a really annoying nemesis, I really struggled killing him and every encounter only made him stronger. So I devised a different strategy. I ended up turning other orks that surrounded him in the hierarchy and started using them to do my dirty work. In the end I wasn’t the one to slay my new nemesis, it was a different ork (under my control) who challenged him and killed him.
And final note on what really makes all of it work is the presentation. The orks aren’t just a randomized collection of traits, they’re voiced and somewhat visually unique and whatever randomized outcome they get to at the end of the encounter gets properly presented in the next encounter. The presentation is the glue that ties all those encounters together into one story. You’re presented with an actual nemesis and not just some generic mute and they “remember” the things you did to them before. They feel like a nemesis and not just some randomly generated grunt.
If you tried it and didn’t see the appeal I’m guessing the game was too easy. I wasn’t impressed by the nemesis system until the orks had a chance to escape or I was forced to retreat or I got killed. The system really opens up and gets interesting when the game gets so challenging that you’re no longer certain what will happen in any encounter.
I really hope these teams are able to stay together. Monolith was absolutely getting wasted by Warner Bros. Games, they’re way too good a studio to get stuck making brand tie-ins. Just more dogshit mismanagement from Zaslav though, Warner Bros keeps seeing flops but won’t address the problem.
I’ll point out an additional post from Schreier:
That’s fair, I only knew Zaslav had been pushing hard for live-service games and will likely be the death of Rocksteady. Fuck Haddad too then. Why does Warner Bros employ so many execs with Batman-villain ass last names?
Definitely not Batman villains. If they were Batman villains, they’d be puns like Egsek Yutiv or something to go along with the Harleen Quinzels and Edward Nigmas of its world.
I was thinking more like a Victor Zsasz or an Aaron Helzinger. Not top tier Batmen villains, more like the C-listers.
If Jason Hall is still out there and sitting on cash, I’d love to see him get some of the team back together and reboot Blood. But my understanding is WB owns the rights and Atari couldn’t afford to get the rights (they still hold the publish rights from the Infogrames days, hence why we got a re-release).
Even if they can’t get the rights, it’s not like there’s anything stopping them from making a new original “boomer shooter.” I don’t need it to be called Blood 2, I just want them to make something high-octane and kickass again.
There was a Blood 2 and it sucked, you have a good point
Are any of the old F.E.A.R. or Condemned developers still at Monolith?
29 years later, after working with Monolith on one of the worst projects in history… I can finally piss on their grave. Fuck you Matt, fuck Monolith. Yeah this is fucking personal.
For a second there, i’ve panicked, thinking this is about Monolith Soft. Either way, really sucks for the workers, but WB themselves can eat shit
Same, I was wondering how WB would shut down a Nintendo-owned developer…
Big money first bloated up the industry and is now scooping it out from the inside until it collapses. Well, AAA and AA gaming anyways. I‘ve noticed I‘ve been playing smaller indie games for the most part in the last decade and I know why. It‘s not so much a deliberate choice but simply where talent and care has been moving towards.
Christ, the game industry is absolutely cooked.
Games are doing fine overall. But I wouldn’t want to be working for a mega corp these days. Well, I already didn’t want that actually.
Games are doing fine for now, but how much longer will devs and artists continue being treated like disposable tissue before we see the talent pool implode? It doesn’t seem to matter what game is built, how well it performs, if it’s single player or live service - the layoffs and closures come for everyone.
There is more to gaming than the AAA studios. There have never, ever been more people making video games. They don’t all work for mega corps.
There are plenty of countries with better worker rights in which to set up shop as well.
Ubisoft is french and… ugh no
All the best games of the last 10 years have been built and published by teams smaller than 20 people.
There were some AAA standouts, like Baulder Gate 3 and Hogworts Legacy, that did very well. It is possible if the company focuses on producing a fun user experience.
Replace mega corp with ‘a publicly traded entity’ and you’re spot-on the money.
There are a very few studios that aren’t beholden to the whims of vulture capitalist investors, and they’re the only ones still putting out absolute bangers (Larian), upholding their promises (Hello Games) or keeping the entire gaming industry from consuming itself in a blaze of pure shitfuckery (Valve).
The games that survived are doing fine. There’s a lot of reason to believe that what we’re seeing can at least be partially attributed to just how many games are coming out these days, even good ones. I’m already falling behind on games I want to get to just out of the ones released in 2025.
The industry makes 300 billion dollars and it “can’t afford to make video games.”
Oh I guess it’s that time of the month where WB butchers active projects to reduce expenses. I saw this coming, they literally cancelled a finished movie (Batgirl) just to lower the taxes they have to pay! How anyone would want to pitch a project to Warner Bros is beyond me.
*three movies
Batgirl, Coyote vs ACME and a third one I can’t recall the name of.
Scoob! Holiday Haunt, was the third one.
I hope one day they suffer a massive data breach and these movies leak in full, even if they’re unfinished. Fuck 'em.
Yeah, I’ll see if I can help make that happen. Decent enough movies to come out.
With how long Wonder Woman was still going to have to cook, it was never going to make its money back. That’s more of a mistake that was made 7-8 years ago though.
I can finally give up on a sequel to Shogo Mobile Armor Division. What a sad day but Monolith also hadn’t released a game in 8 years. If Rocksteady hadn’t made the Arkham asylum series they would be gone too.
Seems like if you’re publicly traded you can’t also be profitable in the videogame industry.
It doesn’t seem that big, right?
If WW was stuck in development hell, cutting Monolith makes sense I guess. PFG only did Multiversus, WB SF seemed to only work on/support mobile games, with no recent credits.