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A RADICAL EVOLUTION BASED ON LEARNINGS FROM OUR LAST TITLE

SILENT HILL: Ascension audiences provided a wealth of feedback about how they preferred to consume and interact with transmedia experiences, and those learnings were incorporated into the DNA of DC Heroes United, causing Genvid to radically change the core user viewing and play experiences, creating a new, completely different product designed to meet their expectations.

WHAT AUDIENCES TOLD US THEY WANTED:

Weekly, episodic content vs Daily micro-installments

Audiences wanted a more traditional television format with weekly 24-minute episodes as opposed to daily livestreams for months on end in small 10-minute chunks, which they felt were too difficult to follow. In response, DC Heroes United’s narrative structure was designed to meet this expectation, bringing it even closer to uniting traditional media with the next generation of interactivity.

A tightly focused interactive experience tied to the narrative

Audiences wanted more depth to their interactivity, with a core loop more deeply integrated into the story they were experiencing versus SILENT HILL: Ascension’s gallery of smaller experiences mostly-disconnected from the narrative, so we completely reimagined the relationship between the interactivity and the story, connecting a singular, game with deeper play directly to the TV show so they evolve each other by a two way communication interactive model. Events in the story now update and unlock parts of the game, which in turn affect the story via user decisions. The game affects the show and the show affects the game.

Connections with established canon characters

Audiences wanted an experience where they were already familiar with the characters in the narrative, as opposed to spending time “getting to know” someone completely new as in SILENT HILL: Ascension, who they found hard to attach to out of the gate. Being based on some of the most iconic characters in the DC Comics Universe, DC Heroes United was able to provide the comfort of an authentic, immediately relatable cast of known characters with instantly identifiable stakes while still delivering shocking, novel storytelling experiences in the all-new canon universe Earth-212.

DESIGNING + DELIVERING THE NEXT LEVEL OF INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT

Interactive Media has come a long way from DC’s 1998’s Death in the Family event, which was an early experiment with audience interactivity, in which the general public was invited to call in by telephone and vote for one of two possible outcomes to the latest Batman story arc – would Jason Todd live or die at the hands of The Joker?

This early attempt was not without its problems–there was no way to stop people from voting multiple times, for example–and the plot only had one set of predetermined outcomes: life or death for Jason Todd. Still, the idea of the audience having control of a canon character’s fate and permanently effecting change–of creating official “fan canon”–was a compelling one, and which is core to DC Heroes United. We have come from a simple, singular binary choice, to now inhabiting an entire world continuously built and rebuilt upon successive audience choices.

Taking into account all the learnings from SILENT HILL: Ascension, the DC Heroes United team wanted to ensure that the audience would fully become a part of the story every step of the way, not just at the point of voting for a choice. The most obvious example of this is that they are literally invited by Lex Luthor to become an employee of Lexcorp and to change things via participating in the Everyhero Project simulation, which is integrated and referenced in the animated show portion of the narrative. The game has been fully baked into the universe, and updates the story, whose events then update it in turn.

More importantly, however, is that DC Heroes United takes place in an all-new, official DC Universe, where, while the characters may be known to the audience, their relationships and destinies are not yet set in stone. Audiences are, for the first time, able to continuously create the story of the characters who have shaped their lives in fandom, in a way that was previously impossible.

This led to a unique challenge in narrative and game design: Unlike with SILENT HILL: Ascension, which featured an unknown cast, this time we are working with a deep roster of well-known, beloved characters for whom the audience has certain set expectations based on decades of received lore. How, in this new universe, do we design the experience to give the audience agency to make changes while still remaining true to the characters?

CASE STUDY: LOIS & CLARK: WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

Lois Lane and Clark Kent / Superman are an iconic pairing across the DC Multiverse. Thus, in Episode 1 of DC Heroes United, when the audience is offered the chance to do something shocking–have Clark reveal his secret identity to Lois–the temptation for them to make a decision quickly is great, since they already “know” the history of both characters… but do they?

The power was put in the audience’s hands and they voted to have Clark reveal his secret identity, presumably in the hopes that the legendary couple’s relationship would deepen and follow an interesting path where Lois follows Superman on his journey as a knowing companion…

However, the revelation had the opposite effect, as Lois called off the relationship, angry that Clark had lied to her for a year. This was not a “shock” outcome, as Lois had highlighted very early on in the story that the truth was extremely important to her. She remained true to her values.

What this revealed was that if the audience failed to consider the version of Lois before them, as opposed to others they may have encountered in other DC media, they would get the decision wrong. This is one way DC Heroes United was able to uniquely leverage the expectations that audiences have for these characters that they are instantly connected to and create surprise, drama, delight, and even (an engaged) consternation.

This level of engagement goes beyond merely selecting binary choices for what characters will do. Audiences are also asked to decide what characters may want from other characters, such as what Wonder Woman wants from Amanda Waller – Respect, Love, or Obedience. The answers to these choices don’t pay off immediately, however they give the series writers guidance which shapes how character interactions occur in future episodes and what concrete choices will eventually arise from them – another evolution from a standard branching-path narrative which added its own layers of complexity to the project.

DESIGN CHALLENGES

UPPING OUR GAME: EVOLVING THE PLAYER EXPERIENCE TO CREATE A TRULY INTEGRATED TRANSMEDIA EXPERIENCE

Game and Series, evolving together

A major innovation in DC Heroes United was the creation of the EveryHero Project, a rougelike game audiences can play which also exists in the metanarrative of the series as a “superhero simulator” Lex Luthor uses to examine various combinations of Superheroes, Supervillans, their powers, equipment, and abilities.

Deep Integration

Unlike in SILENT HILL: Ascension, where the minigames–while fun–were not linked to the story, here the game is woven into the story. The actions audiences take in EveryHero Project not only allow them to earn “Story Tokens” they can use to influence the narrative direction of the show, but the resultant developments in the show feed back into the game, unlocking new levels, characters and items as things progress.

COMPLEX INTERACTIVITY

While the prior project featured simple minigames with simple interactivity elements such as match-3 and tiling picture puzzles, DC Heroes United integrates a full-fledged mobile experience with rich, challenging combat interactivity that makes the audience instantly feel like a superhero, allowing them to battle hordes of enemies, gather equipment, unlock new characters and level up to face ever-increasing challenges, with a branching narrative TV series.

EXCITEMENT ENCOURAGES ENGAGEMENT

The new core interactivity loop of DC Heroes United is structured around the revolutionary bidirectional flow of information between the series and the game. It rewards a sense of competition versus mere play, because the more a user engages with the app (even by doing things as simple as meeting daily / weekly goals), the more story tokens they can acquire in order to influence the story. Since, unlike in SILENT HILL, Story Tokens cannot be purchased, engagement with the app is the only way to gain the ability to shape the story – the more you interact, the more influence you have – and the more influence you wield, the more the story and the very game you play is changed… forever.

DEVELOPING NEW TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGIES TO SUPPORT NEXT-LEVEL NARRATIVE MANAGEMENT

In our previous projects we streamed around 10 minutes per day of story blocks that were connected specifically to decisions.

Audiences instead told us they wanted a proper weekly television show cadence, but with each episode branching based on their decisions and gameplay. This posed unique design challenges we needed to adapt our techniques and technologies to accommodate.

In prior projects, story decision setups and payoffs happened daily and weekly in a strictly linear setup-then-payoff order.

With DC Heroes United, these decisions are interleaved within a larger episode. This necessitated the creation of systems for management of callback story blocks and setup for branching of future decisions based on prior ones, with cumulative repercussions that would last into subsequent episodes.

This required that we manage branching changes which accumulate weekly and all persist until a future event changes them, for both the TV series story and game assets and play patterns based on player input, on a timescale that goes far beyond simple daily or weekly updates as in our prior productions.

Overall, these reinventions of our gameplay integration, narrative management and construction resulted in a more focused, more integrated, more responsive, and therefore more premium experience than our prior MILE and Interactive Streaming Series titles which gives audiences much more bang for their buck.