Jason Schreier has shared his insights on what has been happening to WB Games Montreal behind the scenes, in the midst of all this turmoil in their company.
In a new episode of the Kinda Funny Gamescast, Schreier shared everything he knows behind the scenes at WB Games Montreal. We’ve paraphrased his story for you below.
WB Games Montreal’s very 1st project was Batman Arkham City Armored Edition, a port of Rocksteady’s classic, for the Wii U. Of course, they’re originally known for Batman Arkham Origins, a game that was regarded as the black sheep in the franchise, until we get hit with the later titles.
As you may have heard before, the studios tries to pitch their own Suicide Squad game, as well as a Damian Wayne game. WB Games management mandates that they instead make a “digitally powered” game, which is internal doublespeak for a live service or games-as-a-service video game. They’re also given an additional challenge: to make a Batman game without Batman.
This live service game would go on to become Gotham Knights. WB Games Montreal starts production on Gotham Knights in 2017, but sometime in the middle of development, the live service element was removed.
After the release of Gotham Knights, WB Games Montreal tries to pitch multiple projects, but they run into a problem. The perception from management is that they can no longer be trusted to make original projects after Gotham Knights’ failure, so they decide to make them a support studio.
However, WB Games is not upfront about their decision. Instead, they put on a show of meeting WB Games Montreal’s studio heads to listen on their game pitches. As we explained in the story of Monolith Productions, WB Games management gives their Montreal studio the “Hollywood no”, leaving them unsure if any of their pitches will be approved.
WB Games Montreal’s original pitch is to iterate on what they learned from Gotham Knights, to make a better version of the game, the same way Insomniac did with Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. Schreier opines that this was a similar creative path that led to the likes of Mass Effect 2, Uncharted 2, and Assassin’s Creed 2. He believes that it’s a waste that WB Games didn’t want to give their Montreal studio the opportunity to learn from their mistakes and iterate.
As we had previously reported, WB Games Montreal also pitched a Constantine game, and was working on a Flash video game until the movie tie-in it was based on crashed and burned.
As of this writing, WB Games Montreal’s founders have left the studio, mirroring what happened at Monolith Productions yet again. But the studio still exists, and as we know, they’re currently pitching a Game Of Thrones video game. Given WB Games’ new direction, they actually have a shot at getting this title approved.
