Suicide Squad game marches on after $200M loss with new, DEI version of character Mrs. Freeze
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is pushing forward with a new depiction of a classic character.
The game was released in May 2024 by Rocksteady Studios, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Games, and was a $200 million disaster. The studio later said revenues for the entire parent company went from a reported $607 million in Q1 2023 down to just $184 million in Q1 2024, a 70% decrease.
However, the studio has seemingly taken zero cues from its audience.
Shortly after the game’s freefall, Warner Bros. Games launched a leadership program for women and non-binary individuals aimed at making the video game industry less male. Announced by startup and tech community Built In, the Women and Non-Binary Leadership Program had the stated goal of upending the gaming industry’s allegedly male-dominated characterization.
‘They perceive femininity and female anatomy as threats to society.’
Weeks later, the Suicide Squad game is moving forward with Season 2, despite fewer than 500 people currently playing the game on the Steam platform, according to PC Gamer. These concurrent gaming stats are absolutely abysmal figures for a project of such a magnitude.
It seems at least one new character is ready for launch in the new season, and it is Mrs. Freeze — not Mr. Freeze — but his wife, whose character name is Nora Fries.
Mr. Freeze was typically portrayed as a bald man with varying degrees of scientist looks and was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1997’s “Batman & Robin.”
At the same time, there exist near limitless depictions of Mrs. Freeze as a classically beautiful blonde woman. The character was played by model Vendela Kirsebom in the aforementioned 1997 flick.
It seems the video game studio decided not to go with anything in the vicinity of the usual portrayal of Mrs. Freeze. In previous iterations, she was cryogenically frozen by Mr. Freeze in hopes of finding a cure for her illness. Now, she is seemingly portrayed as taking over her husband’s role.
One gamer even took it as far as to describe the new character as looking like a “non-binary Karen they/them.”
The same account, with over 20,000 followers, suggested the studios sees feminine attributes as a threat.
“I predicted this before the game’s release, and the backlash was intense. They perceive femininity and female anatomy as threats to society.”
The short-haired depiction is actually so far off that outlets have theorized it must be from an alternate/timeline or universe.
The character art follows the recent revelation from a video game artist that it is very difficult get studios to depict beautiful women in modern games.
Del Walker, an artist who has worked on Star Wars and Batman games, said that “after 10 iterations the concept or model comes back without a speck of the original beauty I pitched.”
Walker added that it wasn’t only the faces of the characters that have been changed but their entire likenesses, ages, and attitudes.
Gamers have pointed out the many examples of dampening beauty, such as Star Wars Outlaws character model Humberly González.
A recent remake of the classic Perfect Dark video game was also dragged for hardening the jawline of beloved hero Joanna Dark.
This appeared to be a similar instance with Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, as the studio has seemed unwilling to depart from the diversity, equity, and inclusion parameters it set for itself during its production by involving diversity consulting company Sweet Baby Inc.
The game has faced significant backlash and calls for boycotts throughout its time on the market.
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