DC Heroes United: Dissecting The Creators’ Interview

Yesterday we looked at the first episode of DC Heroes United, a “massively interactive live event”, and went over the positives and negative, and why I’ve opted to not take part in the interactive side due to wanting to enjoy the story as it comes out.

Today I want to look at the creators’ interview, as I thought yesterday’s post would be too long with both the review and the interview. Specifically we’re reading the answers of showrunner Stephan Bugaj, and writers Martin Montgomery and Chris Schroyer. Doing an interactive novel approach is not something new to these three as they worked at Telltale Games before it collapsed. At the time one of the games they were working on was a Batman series that will never be finished. I don’t like the idea that Bruce never got to clear his father’s name, from what I hear as I didn’t get a chance to play the two games they managed to get done, but what can you do? I’m hoping the last game would have done so. Thomas Wayne having a dark past is so unnecessary to me.

Here’s the interview so you know I’m not taking things out of context, but for the most part I think they understand what they’re working with better than most people in comics or other media currently working with these characters. I still have a few notes, but for the most part it’s nice to see people understand what they’ve taken on. The story takes place at the dawn of heroes, if you missed yesterday’s article, with Batman just starting out, Superman still not revealing himself as anything other than a blur (so the Smallville treatment), and Wonder Woman…actually I don’t think we really know what her deal is. She basically just dropped exposition as a long-lived understander of the basics of magical things like Doctor Fate and his tower. So let’s see what they have to say for themselves.

STEPHAN: Before we dig in to telling the audience about our own work, let’s talk about the inspiration DC’s long history of creativity had on us.

What got you excited about working on a DC project in the first place?

Odd to see an interviewee decide the course of the interview, but I’m not against where he wants to start.

CHRIS: To tell a great story, you need great characters, and Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are the greatest that comic books offer. Over generations, these characters have shown audiences of all ages what it means to be a Super Hero. We feel for them when they fall and celebrate their victories because they represent the best parts of us. Being able to create an interactive experience with them is an honor! Also, and I swear this isn’t a humblebrag, DC Heroes United is the third time in my career that I’ve been fortunate enough to contribute to a DC comics project. DC has always been and continues to be one of my favorite creative partners. This is an opportunity to explore fascinating narrative and interactive spaces with some of their most beloved characters. I could not be happier with the support and trust they share with us.

As a (pre-DiDio) DC fanboy myself I can’t argue with that. It sounds like he actually likes the character, but I haven’t played the Telltale Games to tell if he actually likes the characters as created or likes ” his version” of Batman and the rest of Gotham. This doesn’t seem to be set in the same universe from what I can tell as their games.

MARTIN: Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to write for arguably the most iconic characters in comics? Many have been part of stories for over eighty years, and I find it an exciting challenge to write a new story that hopefully feels familiar yet fresh.

STEPHAN: For me, I was excited to work with highly recognizable characters and to bring back the classic optimistic, heroic tone of the Golden Age while also integrating more contemporary sensibilities and style to the project plus adding our own spin that still honors the classic characters.

I really like Stephan’s response. You can do something familiar yet fresh, as Martin stated, but too many writers just use the current characters as a mask for their own characters. Meanwhile, Stephan (the showrunner) is trying to go back to the Heroic Age tone of being heroic while still working in a modern framework, where the superhero concept has advanced. While this does include a couple of race swaps and one odd choice we’ll get to momentarily, they aren’t being antagonistic to their roots. They want to honor what came before without being outdated. They kept Superman’s outfit right.

With that in mind, who is your favorite member of the DC “Trinity” of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman?  How did you put your own spin on who that character is in DC Heroes United?

MARTIN: I grew up on Bruce Timm’s Batman: The Animated Series, so Batman will always be my favorite. However, unlike that series, where Batman is sort of fully formed when we meet him, DC Heroes United begins at the dawn of Super Heroes, and our Caped Crusader still has a lot of rough edges. These surface mostly in his relationships with the other Super Heroes, in particular Black Canary, who he tries to mentor. As a recent dad, feeling the weight of responsibility for guiding and mentoring, while also feeling out of your element hits pretty close to home!

So why Black Canary? I didn’t understand why Beware The Batman went with Katana, either. At least Dinah Lance has ties to Gotham City, but if this is the early age of heroes, why not use Robin?

Oh, right. This is another “Batman don’t need no family (until he does) character arc. Do we really need that over and over?

CHRIS:  This is a question I think about daily, and my answer changes from moment to moment depending on what scene or decision I’ve worked on most recently. For right now, I have to go with Wonder Woman. The decisions she faces ask her to navigate complicated dynamics between her role with A.R.G.U.S., manage old friendships, and act as a responsible representative of Themyscira. In our story, she’s one of the more established, publicly known Super Heroes, so some other characters also rely on her for guidance. Exploring and influencing that careful balancing act is something I’m really excited about. I can’t wait for our audience to decide what matters most to Diana.

Any issues I have with Wonder Woman as the “first hero” is one I have in the comics, and it’s more “modern audiences” nonsense than anything else, the usual race/gender quotas that are now official if you want an Oscar when making movies. This is a web series/interactive novel combo, but my point is things are changed for the wrong reasons. Otherwise I wouldn’t mind as Diana is the oldest one of the bunch and the other two can’t be around for World War II thanks to the sliding timeline.

STEPHAN: I’m going to use Showrunner’s prerogative to cheat my answer and say Lex Luthor. I’m really excited about the characterization of Luthor as an ego-driven optimist who genuinely wants to do good but always needs it to reflect well upon himself. This to me is a much more interesting kind of “good guy who might possibly go bad if he’s constantly rebuked and mistreated” than the more typical “they just pushed him too far” type of anti-heroes and “born bad” villains. I hope audiences will also enjoy that, because we are an audience-focused company.  That’s why we listened to what did and didn’t work for our fans on past projects and incorporated those learnings into DC Heroes United, delivering a more focused experience with weekly top-quality episodes, and one more substantial and enjoyable integrated game. We do still have the challenge of designing for a social meta stemming from all the players competing (and collaborating, especially via rallies) to make decisions, and a long gap between the setup of a decision and the payoff of that decision in the next episode (rather than setting up and paying off within seconds inside the same scene).

This is the one I have the most issues with. Steve Trevor being race swapped is what it is, but Lex is all wrong. Pre-Crisis Lex was a criminal genius out to prove his mental and scientific superiority. While the Silver Age did retcon a young Lex being mad at Superboy because young Clark blowing out the fire caused the chemicals in his lab to make Lex permanently bald, post-Crisi Lex never knew young Clark. He was a self-made businessman but was also involved in illegal activities like gunrunning and other morally questionable “business” acts. He hated Superman because he was genuine and more people looked up to him than Lex, who felt he deserved it more than a humble alien. Having a young good guy Lex is just so off to me that I couldn’t connect with him in the first episode, and the possibility that decisions might keep him from turning bad, other dimension or not, I just don’t feel it.

(Also, as mentioned, Lex was a redhead before going bald, so another ginger got blackfaced for the racial quota. That having an impact on Lex not being evil I wouldn’t deny is possible in 2024.)

 How has this format caused you to adjust your approach to narrative design?

CHRIS: The most significant change is the pacing of decisions and the timing of their consequences. In a single-player console experience, time can be used to pressure the audience into making an immediate decision out of fear they won’t make any decision if they don’t act fast enough. This is certainly a valid approach for some stories and platforms, but this format presented us with the opportunity to rethink how our audience can interact with serialized stories in new ways. Considering the comic book roots of these characters, it feels more natural to allow our audience to consider all possible repercussions as a community before making a collective choice. For example, Superman is faster than a speeding bullet, so it’s not really a matter of IF he can do something quick enough. But there’s only one Superman in the world and he can’t be everywhere all the time, so WHAT he chooses to do in any given situation can have a massive effect on people around him. The Justice League is made up of legendary characters with extraordinary powers, but the thing that makes them true Super Heroes is the choices they make. My favorite parts of this series are when we give the reins to the audience and allow them to determine what kind of heroes they want to be.

Points for understanding that Superman does in fact have limits. So many of Superman’s haters think there are no limits to Clark because there are no limits to his powers, which also isn’t true under good writers. Even during the Silver Age you just needed a villain Superman can’t punch. It’s why Superman finally being able to “cut loose” on a suped-up Darkseid in Justice League Unlimited was a breath of fresh air for him.

STEPHAN: I think that making the gap feel natural, either through use of cliffhangers like TV episodes do to build a week’s worth of anticipation, or through situations wherein the character is naturally interrupted, and the story compels them to defer making the decision or answering the question, are the most unique challenges in dealing with the time-spanning issue.  As for social – it’s still about making choices worth debating, but in the Genvid format those fan arguments happen before the decision is finalized and drive story outcomes. I think fandoms who are accustomed to debating these kinds of situations will find it thrilling to be able to hash out these arguments in a way that then impacts the canon storyline forever.

Okay, so it is a weekly production. Still curious how they’ll work the “simulation” games and decisions in. The former can be added in dialog somehow but the latter requires a quick turnaround or all the choices already animated with openings for the simulation dialog (unless they’re lying about that). As for the arguments, geeking discussions as to who would do what is certainly the norm for geeky fandoms like superheroes, so congrats on finding a hopefully positive way of using that to your advantage in making fans feel like they’re part of the story decisions.

Speaking of story, how has this new format of the interactive streaming series where we’ve got one full episode per week in the app (rather than daily mini-episodes that stitch together weekly) impacted the way you think about structure?

MARTIN: The bite-sized story structure was often difficult to write for because you need rising and falling action to make a great story. You’ll have quieter moments that build to something big and satisfying. This meant you might tune in to SILENT HILL: Ascension [another of the “MILE” games Genvid produced–SWT] and not get a very exciting watching experience that day because we were building to a big moment. With DC Heroes United’s longer runtime, we can take the audience on a more familiar, intact journey, where you’ll get quieter character moments AND bombastic action scenes all in the same episode.

On the other hand you have to get a almost 30 minute episode done each week based on fan choices. If they aren’t already mostly produced you’ll have to cut off the vote time sooner to have time to get the next installment ready each Wednesday.

CHRIS: With the longer runtime, we can tell a broader range of stories featuring longer explosive action sequences and occasionally take a break to highlight more relaxed story moments. It feels like painting with a bigger canvas that lets audiences bask in larger-than-life set pieces and discover the small details that remind our audience that these Super Heroes are people too. One of my favorite examples of this is how we see the relationship between Superman and Blue Beetle begin with a mentor-mentee dynamic that can become more personal, like they’re “Superbros.” Of course, the audience’s role and agency in all this is still THE driving factor. When characters grow closer or further apart, it’s because of their decisions. It must feel earned.

Is everybody getting a mentee this story? I’m guessing Wonder Woman’s is Cyborg, but while I don’t even know what her character arc is, I don’t know if Superman needs it for his. Batman, maybe, since he can’t be with all the heroes all the time.

STEPHAN:  My feeling is that the DC Heroes United format brings us closer to television with the weekly full-episode approach, allowing us to apply more traditional TV structure approaches to the overall character arcs and throughlines. Of course, we still need to account for branching structure not just in the immediate payoff scenes, but as callbacks that alter later story beats based on prior audience decisions.  We’ve also got input coming in from the EveryHero Project game, which creates another dimension of audience impact that’s quite different from Quicktime Event-style gameplay in most interactive narratives.

That’s the part I’m worried about, adding Lex’s simulation (the “EveryHero Project”) into the story.

How does the whole gamut of audience input – decisions, gameplay, social communications – get factored into your narrative thinking on a project like this?

CHRIS: When I design decisions and choices for this project, the biggest thing on my mind is how the audience uses a currency they’ve earned in the EveryHero Project to support the outcome they want to see. It sounds simple, but it’s vital to an experience like DC Heroes United. This isn’t an experience with a reset button. There is only one “canon” run through the story. There is no way to tip the scales without the community’s collective effort. It means every decision counts and every choice must be equally logically viable and narratively compelling. I use this reminder to help refine the decisions the audience interacts with and ensure choices reflect the spoken dialog from our cast of characters as closely as possible. So much of this experience rides on just a few words.

STEPHAN: I think it’s an interesting challenge to make the audience input have impact while keeping the story coherent and producible.  For DC Heroes United we took prior learnings and developed a focused concept of audience impact that hinges around social engagement and rallies, and the narrative connections to a single highly engaging mobile game. Social in general is all about what various things the audience can debate – decisions, for sure, but also hero builds and tactics in the EveryHero Project. And letting gameplay have impact is a matter of finding the right moments of connection that pay off the conceit of Lex’s EveryHero Project in satisfying ways without it taking more precedence than it was designed to.  It’s been a lot of fun to make DC Heroes United, and we hope that you’ll all have a lot of fun experiencing it.

That seems like a lot of extra work. However, that’s not the only role the EHP plays in the decisions, and that’s where I start calling seeing potential fouls. That would be the tokens. Do the tokens allow an extra vote, or giving one vote more priority over others? So if I suck at the game or just don’t have a chance to play it, does my vote count as much as the top scorer in the EHP? If not, it seems to favor the players who have more time or ability to play the connecting game and that’s not fair voting. Remember, I’m not taking part in the game at all due to just wanting to enjoy the story without being annoyed my choice didn’t come up or worried my sucky gameplay damaged an outcome, so I have no dog in the fight, but for the people who are just voting or just playing the EHP, someone isn’t getting their full vote’s worth.

 Any last words for the fans?

MARTIN: We are massive fans of these characters, and we hope you feel like we’ve honored what you know and love about them – while also giving you something exciting and new to experience!

CHRIS: Writing and designing for these characters is an incredible honor. I hope fans can see this team’s love and respect for them on screen. From a narrative design perspective, there is no better form of applause than seeing a community engaged with a story and championing for their preferred choices. So, I hope to see you in the chat when we launch on November 20.

STEPHAN:  Thank you all for being a part of this experience with us, and we hope you’ll invite all your friends to join the fun because given the social meta of our interactive streaming series – the more the merrier.

I went over my issues yesterday, but for the most part I enjoyed the first episode and will be curious to see the rest of the series. When it’s done I’ll go over the entire series on a special Saturday Night Showcase depending on what happens during the holidays. I don’t know right now how many episodes are coming or how many weeks they’ll be working on this but I hope it’s as good at the end as it started out, adaptation errors notwithstanding. I’ve seen worse errors out of DC adaptations lately.