The Four Color Media Monitor

The BBC reports that a video that was in development for some time based on Wonder Woman has been scrapped altogether, and the company working on it, Monolith, has been shut down by owner Time Warner:

Warner Bros Discovery has confirmed plans to shut three of its gaming development studios.

The decision means the anticipated Wonder Woman game, which has been in production for three years at one of the affected studios, Monolith, will not be released.

Player First Games, which made MultiVersus, and Warner Bros. Games San Diego will also be shuttered.

The announcement comes after a difficult time in the industry, with widespread job losses since a boom during the Covid pandemic.

A spokesperson from Warner Bros told BBC Newsbeat the "difficult decision" was aimed at boosting profitability.

On Wonder Woman, they said: "Our hope was to give players and fans the highest quality experience possible for the iconic character, and unfortunately this is no longer possible within our strategic priorities."

Last month, MultiVersus said there would be no more updates for the game, which would have to be played offline "for the foreseeable future".

Warner Bros said it will instead focus on developing its core franchises including Harry Potter, Mortal Kombat, DC and Game of Thrones.

Ugh, they still consider Mortal Kombat a series worth continuing with, despite all the repellent gore it emphasized in over 3 decades, and even Game of Thrones? Well that says all that's wrong with WB's conduct. Harry Potter's a decent choice, but their reliance on the grossest monstrosities for video games only embarrasses the medium all the more. BBC also notes:

Warner Bros Games had big expectations for Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League but the game was panned by fans and critics.

Updates for the game ended in January after weak sales and poor reviews.

With a title like that, what can you expect? The emphasis on villainy is taking its toll, and thankfully, it turns out the video game community has common sense members who don't want anythng to do with a game where villains target heroes, and it makes little difference whether the game followed the premise of John Ostrander's 1987-92 series, with the crooks forced to do government service. It's also pretty weak to just blame the Covid pandemic for the Suicide Squad game's failure, because wokeness has played a role in recent video game development, and it remains to be seen if corporations will let it go. For all we know, even the WW game could've been subject to wokeness, but since it's been kiboshed, we might never find out the exact details.

The Verge also notes:

The cancellation and shutdowns are yet another rough spot in Warner Bros.’ gaming efforts. Player First Games recently announced that MultiVersus will be taken offline, ending a development period that has already included a long hiatus and a relaunch. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League was a flop, with that game receiving its last season less than a year after launch. A previous report from Bloomberg said that WB’s gaming division suffered $300 million in losses last year.

It's interesting to note there was a certain very far-left writer who was hired by Monolith as a consultant, according to IGN:

Comic writer Gail Simone has revealed she worked on Warner Bros.' beleaguered Wonder Woman game before it was shelved yesterday.

Simone, known for being the longest running female writer on Wonder Woman comics to date, praised the "dream team" working on the video game, insisting everyone she worked with from the now-shuttered Monolith and Warner Bros. was "enthusiastic and supportive."

"I was asked to do long-term consulting on the game, and I was thrilled to do it, it was a perfect storm of stuff I adore," Simone wrote on social media. "Wonder Woman, video games, and one of my favorite games studios: Monolith, who produced the Game Of The Year Mordor games, that I was completely addicted to.

"The game was gorgeous and expansive. It was beautiful to look at. I am not going to give details for a number of reasons, but every effort was made to make this not just a great game, but a great Wonder Woman game. A showpiece epic.

"And all of that was because of the team. Everyone who worked on it brought their A-game. Programmers, artists, designers, everyone. I don’t know that I have ever worked with a team that cared more about making sure the end product was perfect."

"It was a dream come true. Wonder Woman had a dream team and they put their all into it," Simone concluded.

"They made sure it had WW and DC lore on every aspect of the game. It was a thrill and honor to work with them. I know there’s a lot of finger-pointing going on, but everyone I worked with from Monolith and WB both was enthusiastic and supportive. Everyone wanted to make the best game ever."

With somebody that cynical and far-left, as she turned out to be, working with them, I'm not sure there'd be much to look forward to. What has she actually done to improve women's status in the long run? Not enough, that's for sure.

Since we're on the subject of WW, Polygon told why the writers of Absolute WW made her more like a witch, and:

Like her Gotham City counterpart Batman, Wonder Woman leapt into DC Comics’ blockbuster Absolute line — a starting-from-scratch setting where the odds stacked against DC’s classic superheroes are higher than ever — with a striking new look. Astride a red-eyed skeletal pegasus, Diana sports tattooed arms, a buster sword, a black-and-red color scheme, and (perhaps most controversially) pants.

One must wonder why these PC ideologues have a problem with a lady's legs, because this is getting absurd already. I suppose they'd also use Donna Troy's pants-built costume as justification to boot, which decidedly begs the question: did even Donna's costume have to be that way just to differentiate her from WW back in the day? Also note how any allusion to the colors of the USA flag have been muted, and you can guess where this is going too.

“She still has all these very superhero-y, classic powers,” Thompson told Polygon over video chat, “but they feel different now because they have this base of her being a witch. That’s how she was raised, and this is what she knows — even though she’s never going to be a sorceress the way Circe is, and she’s throwing around this huge magic. And then she’s saying to people, ‘Well, I’m not much of a witch,’ and you’re like, Really? What you’re doing is pretty huge.”

The way they put it obviously sounds like the negative connotation of the word "witch", and that's a problem. It's just embarrassing, right down to the mediocre artwork samples, and making matters worse:

Among the huge things Wonder Woman has done in Absolute Wonder Woman’s first four issues? Casting a spell to deafen an entire city — but first broadcasting a comforting, hopeful explanation about how it will keep them alive. Cutting off her own right arm to fuel an arcane ritual — freely given so Steve Trevor, playing his traditional role of catalyst to her hero’s journey — could escape hell. And in the latest issue, Absolute Wonder Woman #5, Diana musters a very different weapon than her traditional Lasso of Truth: Circe’s own Lasso of Transformation.

So this comic is another modern monstrosity built upon gore. That Absolute WW does the ritual just to enable this take on Steve to escape hell is no excuse. And what does writer Kelly Thompson think of the golden lasso?

Thompson said that the reason she wanted to show the full origin of the Lasso of Transformation here is precisely because of how big of a departure it is from the usual Wonder Woman canon.

“This lasso is not very Diana,” Thompson said. “It’s not who she is, in a lot of ways. […] You can be raised by someone and really believe in their ideals and believe in them — whatever Circe thinks about herself, Diana sees her mother as a heroic figure, for sure. But that doesn’t mean they agree. Even though Diana was raised in [hell], there’s just more darkness in Circe than there ever has been in Diana. That’s a wedge between them, a little bit, but it’s also a way for them both to learn. […] Diana recognizes that she’s an incredibly powerful character with an incredible amount of knowledge, but she’s also very aware of how little she knows, of how much she has to learn. That is a template for a great character, as opposed to a closed-off one that cannot move forward.”

Well if that's what Thompson has to say, it just compounds more of what's wrong with their approach. No doubt, for them, the lasso represents brightness more than darkness, and for them, that's another sad excuse to shove the vicious direction they're taking here down everyone's throats.

The news of WB's video game production outfits closing is likely for the best, because the company's been going in wrong directions for years already, right down to what's coming from their comics to boot. It's best not to finance their video games either, and most definitely not Mortal Kombat.

Labels: dc comics, golden calf of death, golden calf of villainy, Justice League of America, msm propaganda, sales, technology, violence, women of dc, Wonder Woman