Genvid COO Stephan Bugaj and a host of creators — DC Creative Director Randy Ma and writers Brian Buccellato, Josh Fialkov, and Gail Simone — gathered today to discuss the upcoming social interactive game/series hybrid DC Heroes United. It takes place on a new earth where you and everyone else around the world will decide what happens next.
Bugaj described it as “Twitch Plays Pokémon combined with what we’re doing at Telltale,” referring to his past work on games such as The Wolf Among Us. “Complete lunacy,” Fialkov said.
New scenarios will be presented to the players daily or weekly, and collectively, the community will vote to decide what happens next. “It’s a chance for the audience to become part of the story and invest in it in a unique way,” Fialkov said.
Once a decision closes, canon is made — whatever happened cannot be reversed, and these choices will affect who the heroes are and where the story is going to go. Brief cinematics will be released after each decision, and at the end of the week, a “TV-like episode” reflecting the decisions made will come out, which Bugaj compared to cinematic sequences from Telltale games. At the end of the panel, Bugaj teased a “What If?” scenario once a storyline concludes where players could see what else could have happened.
DC Heroes United will begin with the formation of the Justice League. On Earth 212, heroes are not widely known, with Batman operating in the shadows and Wonder Woman as the only truly known hero. When the Tower of Fate plops down in Gotham City, this seismic event will gather heroes around the world. It’ll be up to you to determine how the Justice League is built, whether it’s a tight-knit community or one loosely hanging on. “I want to be surprised,” Simone said. “I’m hoping it’s something none of us would have thought of.”
The players will determine who joins the Justice League and how the relationships between them develop. The talented writers are still creating plots and character arcs, just now you, the audience, get to determine where they go. For example, Fialkov mentioned that Lex Luthor doesn’t necessary have to be evil — the audience could turn him into a hero or push him down a dastardly path. Buccellato described the characters as more impressionable and “a little less god, a little more human.”
Fans will have to wait some time, unfortunately, to start crafting stories on Earth 212. No release date has been announced yet, nor details about the length of each piece of content/storyline. Monetization details will be announced later, but the core experience — the entire story experience — is free to play and “not pay to decide,” Bugaj said.
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