Well, look at that, we released one article about the majesty of James Gunn and just a few weeks later, bye! While he is still employed with Warner Brothers, alledgedly, he is no longer head of DC as he, and Peter Saffron, have officially "stepped down". Why this happened is rather clear and very much known to anyone who has seen what they have released in recent years. You need only view the former article for several different reasons.
Clayface has officially lost money for the studio, Superman was barely profitable and Supergirl has sunk so low, it is considered one of the largest box office bombs in their history. Given what titles it is competing against, that is very sarcastically impressive. It's almost like no one wanted to watch Supergirl throw up milk, eat fecal matter from an alien and have ugly, greasy faces loaded with piercings pushed against the camera every five minutes. There were many voices on the internet telling people to "give them a chance! You can't judge them without watching them!" And we all know that is not at all true.
If we couldn't decided exactly what we like and what we don't like simply from watching a clip or a trailer, then what is the point of showing us them in the first place? They are there for us to do just that, even if it is a subjective view, and people will decide on those guidelines whether you glaze the title or burn the title in a review or rant. That is how people decide and they did not like what they saw from those trailers, nor word of mouth from those they trust in their taste in entertainment.
James Gunn was supposed to bring us in on a DC universe that we wanted to watch. Clayface, Creature Commandos, Polkadot Man, a musical Gorilla Grodd, a repulsive Supergirl, and a divisive Superman, none of these titles even put a dot on the radar, not even Polkadot Man, ESPECIALLY Polkadot Man. It was clear that he wanted to make his own DC, not the ones that the fans wanted. Booster Gold and the Authority were also titles he showed "interest" in. He was the only one who showed "interest" in them. No one else cared. This is especially true when the first thing he did as head of DC, was fire Henry Cavill.
What's surprising, though, is that DC booted him very, very quickly. He was head for four years and the DCU has only been really active since Superman, one single year ago. The DCU literally was born and died in just a shadow over a rotation around the sun. That. Is. BONKERS! If we had that kind of speed with Kennedy's tyrannical reign over Star Wars, we may have been able to avoid The Acolyte, but that's a story for another day.
So, if that weren't enough, if James Gunn's exodus from DCU along with Peter Saffron wasn't big enough news, we have another bit that will raise your brows. Sweet Baby Inc has long been on our radar as a venomous, detrimental existence to the entertainment world and their bubble has been thoroughly popped once again. Not only did Unknown 9: Awakening (or Unknown 9 From Outer Space) fail, but now the studio Reflector Entertainment, featuring prominent members of SBI, is no more.
Yes, since their embarrassing numbers (around 300 concurrent peak players), people have forgotten about this title, while many had never heard of it to begin with. It was supposed to create an enormous universe for us to explore through TV shows, movies, video games and comic books, or something along those lines. They were looking the franchise it as some sort of flagship franchise for them to cling to and continue to make profits. That... did not work out, as it happens, and no one was interested in a story about a very uninteresting girl with uninteresting mentors showing her how to take down a group of uninteresting men.
The game was lambasted as boring, overly cinematic and deprived of quality in basically every category. Streamers were being bored to tears at the constant, clumsy action sequences and extremely cringeworthy dialogue. This was all bad enough, but then they came at us with the sad story of how they worked so hard blah blah blah, we've heard it.
If that wasn't bad enough, this game crash is apparently wanting to go a mile a minute. Not only has Reflector Entertainment been shut down, but now FairGame$ has officially been cancelled! It's like trying to keep up with a monkey hopped up on espresso shots! It's like they were delivered the death blow, and ten minutes later they finally fall to the mat. Why is it that Bioware took so long to take a dirt nap after Veilguard and Reflector took nearly the exact same amount of time to do the same? FairGame$ was announced around the same time, back in 2024, and it's just now getting cancelled.
In 2024, two games come out, both companies take forever to die. Then a game that was announced in 2024 gets a trailer released in September of THIS YEAR and suddenly gets cancelled within the same month of these events occurring. There must be some sort of pattern here. It's almost like games they had no control over slipped through the cracks and now they're getting them under wraps? There's a ton of speculation to be had, but that's really just a ridiculous coincidence that is probably not one by any stretch of the imagination.
With Horizon Hunters Gathering being announced in February and already pushed back due to poor feedback from closed playtesting, it only spells either a very messy release or a very sudden cancellation. To think they could really make a huge difference in such a short amount of time to fix anything about it is laughable. Unless they plan to make a completely different game with completely different characters, the writing is on the wall.
In case you were wondering, no, I did not remember that Fairgame$ was once known as Project Espresso at some point. Keeping up with all of this news and bursting studios has become almost a second or third job by now. The moment says they do not believe the gaming crash is real, another studio just sunk into the earth, along with whatever WIP titles they had in the works. Gamers are being blamed for getting Bioware closed and them cancelling a Mass Effect game, is absolute absurd. You can thank Veilguard for that and anyone who says otherwise wants you to sell your soul and give them your money. The fact that all of these studios are closing after arguing with their fanbase and demanding they buy their games, should tell you that it is not a good business practice. It's one of many reasons the AAA gaming industry is dying and it's starting to gain up a full head of steam as we approach the holidays.
I completely forgot that this article started with James Gunn's firing. I understand that this is not directly connected to the gaming crash, but it was nice to have some more good news at a time like this. It shows all of us that our voices are one of many, but they are listening to them because it is connected to their money. It looks like they are starting to see where their paychecks are coming from, now they just need to tweak their gaming studio wavelengths to making good games. If you get a studio that actually knows what a great game needs and how to make it, we could have a renaissance like the late 80's and early 90's! Do I believe that will actually happen? It's possible! We're not there yet, but this is a decent start.
