Details have emerged about the recently cancelled Wonder Woman game with multiple sources explaining its beginnings to stopped development. WB Bros. Games announced it had just shutdown three of its gaming studios which included Monolith Productions who had been working on a Wonder Woman game. Monolith had been known for many games over roughly three decades.
Monolight Production game highlights – Blood (1997), Aliens vs Predator (1999), AvP 2 (2003), Tron 2.0 (2003), F.E.A.R (2005), The Matrix Online (2005), F.E.A.R. 2 (2009), Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor (2014), Middle-Earth Shadow of War (2017), and many more.
From original to WW
Monolith was known for producing sequels to its games but also changing up different gameplay mechanices along the way. Its Nemesis System used in its two later Middle-Earth titles garnered praise from gamers where players would encounter enemies via a ranking system during their campaign. Monolith had begun work on a new IP following the Middle-earth games but was then retasked to develop the Wonder Woman game instead and planned to integrate the system into it. This led to a number of high level position departures from the Monolith team while those remaining were left with the new goal of developing the Wonder Woman game.
Jason Schreier (Bloomberg) explained on a Kinda Funny Games Daily podcast (via VGC) that “During this time, it’s kind of clear to people at Warner Bros that this game is not going to happen, because people at Warner Bros are not interested in new IP,” and added “Warner Bros decides it’s not interested in new IP and decides they (Monolith) are going to make a Wonder Woman game.”
Schreier further clarifies that the Nemesis System would change directions in that instead of enemies, it would be allies who would befriend Princess Diana via a ranking system. However, Monolith was having difficulty in making that happen which eventually led to Warner Bros. Games deciding to reboot the game and abandon the system in favor of another blockbuster game franchise. On a side note, Eurogamer has reported that WB Games now the Nemesis System locked away via a patent that doesn’t expire until 2036.
“They rebooted it to be more of a God of War style more traditional action game, by then it was kind of too late.”
– Jason Schreier speaking on Kinda Funny Games Daily (via VGC)
Not just a great game but. . .
More details have emerged from comic book writer Gail Simone who had served as lead consultant for the game. Gail shared via social media how the team put in eveything they could into making what should have been a definitely great Womder Woman game.
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.
— Gail Simone 💙💛 (@GailSimone) February 26, 2025
It was a dream come true. Wonder Woman had a dream team and they put their all into it. They made sure it had WW and DC lore on every aspect of the game.
— Gail Simone 💙💛 (@GailSimone) February 26, 2025
It was a thrill and honor to work with them.
Despite reports of the team’s difficulties in adapting a changed style of the Nemesis system it sounds as if they had made a lot of progress before being told to scrap it to make a GoW clone. Sadly though, it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise this game got canceled as WB CEO David Zaslav is well known for putting things on the chopping block to cut costs and the game had already reportedly exceeded $100 million in development costs.
Discussion (12 replies)
Join Discussion →OK so my previous post about this is wrong. Sounds like this game could have been another Harry Potter winner if WB had the cajhones to do it and not cry at 100 million in spend. Billion dollar games happen... they've had them. Of course they've also had the opposite in a big way but didn't shit can those guys.
Probably because the leaders are bootlickers over on that other team.
Here's hoping Monolith comes back with their own new IP under a new name.
This was going to be another in a long list of flops and massive disappointments. We dodged a bullet with this one.
When you see stuff like this getting written by people who worked or consulted on the game:
That's a red flag to me. It means the game was going to be preachy and most likely, pander to a specific and statistically small subset of the population which isn't enough to make a game financially viable.
Tanya DePass, the lead writer on Wonder Woman had literally zero writing credits to her name. Tanya DePass is a former game journalist for Polygon and Vice and runs a non-profit focused on DEI in games. She's an activist first before anything else. The rest of the writing team are more of the same. Whatever Monolith used to be is not what they were when they were shut down. WB Games sunk 100 million dollars into the game over several years and they were no where close to a minimum viable product.
She's already threatening people online. She's unhinged.
Gail Simone, as a writer is a bit of a mixed bag. I can honestly say she's done some good things and some not so good things. She's a pretty polarizing figure, not just for her writing but for her politics. Her views from what I can tell align with the mainstream media and is ultra-left leaning. Meaning, her opinions on the matter are more of a red flag to me than anything.
You guys lamenting the loss of a studio are doing so based on out of date information. There is a lot of turnover in the game industry and the vast majority of people that made those great games you know and love are long gone. These studios are infested with people who are activists first and game developers second or third.
OK, Mr. Hindsight, that information and comments from the writer and their identity was only revealed after we were lamenting the cancellation of the game. Obviously after I saw her comments on twitter, I immediately said now I'm glad it was cancelled, because it wasn't going to be escapism.
Still I'd rather they closed rocksteady than monolith who might have had people who worked on AVP or Fear somewhere in the shadow of activists. I don't think any studio is entirely made up of activists and bad faith developers. But at this stage they are still having trouble admitting the cause of their problems, which means there is still some time until that direly needed cleaning of the houses can happen.
Jason Schreirer just released a sob piece on how there are only two dozen games journalists out there now. Well, that's still two dozen too many, as they are the ones who lead the industry astray in the first place, and they are the ones present company (Jason) NOT excluded who keep insisting DEI is good and it doesn't hurt games.
The problem however is that even if dedicated games sites like eurogamer polygon, etc completely die off, there are still journalists out there at non-gaming focused outlets who insist on writing puff pieces about games and gamers. These are often even more asinine than what's coming from rags like thegamer. And this is not a partisan thing either, the right wing sites are even worse in focusing on politics instead of escapism. IGN still at least writes guides and waklthroughs, what does thatparkplace do? They are nothing but a reverse kotaku.
Yeah clearly, woooow. I had no f*cking idea Monolith was like this now. I was mainly thinking about the days when people like Jace Hall were running the show.
Wokder Woman .... no thanks!
And Wonder Woman doesn't have the draw that Harry Potter does. Hogwarts Legacy was going to make money even if it sucked.
I don't really care if a game developer wants to make their game all DEI/Woke/Affirmative Action/Inclusive/whatever label you want to put at it.
I mean - I don't have to buy it or play it. Sometimes it's fun just reading about all the blowback.
My wife was playing the latest Dragon Age, and it seems every time i'd catch a hint of the dialogue, it was something about "Well I chose to be neither Gender!" and it made my head shake. I mean, she enjoyed it, didn't bother her a bit. And I don't have to play it - so I say let EA/Bioware make all the games like that if they want. If there's market, they will do well. And if there really isn't a market for it, well... I guess they will have to put up with disappointing sales figures. I have no idea how Veilguard did on sales.
Look if games want to have generic looking characters with little emphasis on sexuality that's up to them. Just if there's a romance arc in the game I better dang well be able to say.. "Uhh yea no you're nice but just not attractive to me."
Because escapism as called out is key for me. I enjoy these games for that aspect. If I wanted to be in a world where I can succeed with the most average of my preferred gender, then I can do that today. I don't need a video game for that level of immersion.
I mean why not make the freaking game about going to work, doing an average work day, and coming home to your average home, wondering if your car needs an service... and feeding your pets... then watching TV of notably above average looking individuals doing things... oh wait... escapism in a game isn't allowed.
Anyone read the short story where it was about how everyone was kept equal.. if you had better than average eyesight you had to wear glasses to see less clearly, if you were athletic you had to wear weights to slow you down, if you were smart you had to wear things that interrupted your concentration. I can't recall it but I hate that so many people seem to WANT that.
Found it, the story is Harrison Bergeron.
Here is a link to a short film 25 min that should cover it according to Wiki.
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.teaching2081.org/[/URL]
I watched it... very good btw.
Of course, I don't have to play it (although they'll call you a bigot for not doing so). But pointing and laughing at the failures is not as fun so I'd prefer if games were actually good and worth playing.
I don't think it requires hindsight entirely. Even long running studios with a good track record have been absolutely screwing the pooch on releases for the last several years. The gaming industry as a whole has a problem thanks to its hiring practices and the inclusion of consultancy grifters like Sweet Baby Inc. and others to help make their games as inoffensive and bland as possible.
We've seen stagnation and even regression in graphics, gameplay, detail, quality, features, etc. in AAA games for awhile now. While this statement doesn't apply to every Western AAA developer out there necessarily, it applies to the vast majority of them. I presume any Western AAA game studio is going to turn out another floater until proven otherwise. If its an EA game, I assume nuts or corn are DLC's you have to pay extra for.
Oh I dunno, I kinda get a schadenfreude thing out of it, I admit. I mean, all I have to do is say "Star Citizen" and I start to giggle uncontrollably. Which is totally bad on me, but I can't help it.
Well, then you can call me an optimist. I hope for the best until I see proof otherwise.
There are tons of SC stans who will defend it to the end of days and claim they had their money's worth already. The only people left hanging are those who believed they were making a proper game, not a perpetual alpha live service mmo. So unless it is possible to feel schadenfreude at myself for believing them in 2012 I can't really laugh at that either.
That is .. amazingly deep and complicated.