James Gunn’s plans for DCU games “a nightmare” says Marvel game lead

The DC Studios cochairmen James Gunn, Peter Safran, and Peter Safran outlined their vision for the rebooted DC Universe. It was also mentioned that the actors should be the same across media.

“One of our jobs is to come in and make sure the DCU is connected, in film, television, gaming, and animation,” Gunn said in an official video. “That the characters are consistent, played by the same actors, and it works within one story.”

It isn’t a brilliant idea, but not everyone agrees. Commenting on gaming’s integration with the DC Universe, Jake Solomon, director of the recent Firaxis game Marvel’s Midnight SunsIt could make development of games more complicated and also threaten the livelihoods voice actors who are involved in making video games.

“This would have been a nightmare for us on Midnight Suns,” Solomon said on Twitter, “I understand the desire (I think) but movies and games are so, so different. And the pressure this puts on the amazing voice actors in the games space?” Solomon went on to predict the proposed integration wouldn’t happen. “Different universes. And that’s how they should/will stay.”

Solomon isn’t going out on a limb here. For over a decade, industry experts have accepted the view that games built on large properties should be independent of film release plans and continuities. The creative and logistical freedom this approach grants game studios has allowed the likes of Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham series, or Insomniac’s Spider-Man games, to become massive franchises in their own right, despite overlapping with popular film iterations of the same characters.

Marvel Studios hasn’t had the same success with its own game licensing efforts. (Spider-Man’s video game licensing rights are held separately, by Sony.) But even Disney and Kevin Feige have resisted trying to tie the likes of Crystal Dynamics’ Marvel’s Avengers into the Marvel Cinematic Universe continuity, and it sounds as though future Marvel projects — which include an Insomniac Wolverine game, an Iron Man game from EA’s Motive studio, and a World War II-set Captain America and Black Panther game from Amy Hennig’s Skydance studio — are freestanding games built on the Arkham/Spider-Man model.

Gunn and Safran haven’t said much about their plans for integrating games with the DCU yet. Gunn suggested that they would split the difference by proposing games to fit the timeline (and fill any gaps), while also telling stories that stand alone. “It’s not like we’re going to have the Superman movie come out and have this Superman game come out. It’s more like we’ll have the Superman film come out, then maybe two years later, we have the Supergirl movie coming out. So, what’s the story in between there? Do we have a Krypto-game that can be played that is between these characters? Something that’s still set in the world with these characters, but is its own thing.”

If Gunn is proposing, even as a hypothetical, slotting a game about Krypto the Superdog between two major in-development movies, it doesn’t speak that well of his opinion of the gaming medium or his grasp of game production schedules. He has an easy escape, however. There’s nothing to say the DC Elseworlds label, which will be applied to Matt Reeves’ sequel to Batman and Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux, can’t be applied to games too. Expect this to appear on Rocksteady’s forthcoming Kill the Justice League with Suicide Squad — and, perhaps, once Gunn and Safran’s plans meet reality, the majority of DC game releases in the future.