The new mobile squad roleplaying game DC Worlds Collide sports a huge roster of playable characters spanning the DC Universe’s long history. With both heroes and villains alike within your control, it’s up to you to configure your team and level up, playing through storylines based on classic DC events like “Forever Evil” and “Convergence.” DC Worlds Collide is a game sure to please the most devoted DC Comics fans out there—something that’s not always easy to do. However, in this case, the game’s creative team had an ace up their sleeve.
A key writer behind DC Worlds Collide’s ambitious narrative is none other than Gail Simone, the longtime comic book scribe famous for her defining runs on titles like Birds of Prey, Batgirl and Wonder Woman. With the game now available for iOS, Android and Google Play Games for PC, we sat down for a fun and fandom-fueled chat with Simone, who shed some light on her process, while elaborating on her contributions in bringing the iconic characters of DC Worlds Collide to life.
DC Worlds Collide involves so many iconic heroes and villains from the DC pantheon of characters. What was your role in the game’s development, and was it challenging to work in the field of gaming?
DC Worlds Collide already had a framework when they approached me to work on it, wanting this to be more of a DC story from the DC Universe. That was my task in the beginning. Little did I know I would soon grow addicted to the game as it was coming together! As a DC fan, it’s so much fun. But they approached me to write dialog in the beginning and later extend the story to ensure that this felt cemented in the DC Universe.
Was it up to you to decide which versions of various characters would be included in the game? For example, Kid Flash is Wallace West in DC Worlds Collide.
That wasn’t up to me, but in the future, we might be making more of those decisions together. We began with a particular roster, with the idea that it would expand over time. For example, we’ve already added the versions of Superman and Guy Gardner from the recent Superman movie, and Mr. Terrific will also be joining the roster later this summer. The idea was to start off with over 70 characters within the game, only to continue with more.
But usually it was a team effort, because sometimes a character who is needed is in a different part of the game. In those instances, I would sit down and decide how the dialog between characters would carry out.
Out of curiosity, were you all given the chance to see the new Superman film ahead of time so you could develop those versions of the characters for the game?
I don’t know if the others were, but I wasn’t near any premieres when that would’ve been possible. However, I just saw the movie the other day and am so excited to see it again as soon as I can!
After playing the game for several days, what’s enjoyable to me is precisely what you spoke about—the characterizations. For example, Catwoman remarks on how she’s a bad girl trying to be good, and Batman expresses worry at the fates of the Justice League members. These speak to the needs of the characters, rather than solely being lines to just move the story along. Did you delight in keeping everyone faithful to the comics?
Yes, the goal was to make sure the game had richness to it—to truly have it be DC. Whenever I write dialog, I strive to make sure every character has their own voice, and like I do with the comics, I work to make sure this doesn’t feel like a generic superhero game. What we focused on was making sure this feels strictly like the DCU.
And it seems to have paid off! I was at an event recently, and fans came up and spoke about how they enjoyed putting different characters together, including their favorites, and having them interact with each other.
Several popular DC storylines are invoked in DC Worlds Collide. In fact, the very name “Worlds Collide” recalls the infamous crossover story with Milestone Comics, and you also have “Forever Evil,” “Trinity War” and “Convergence.”
My job, once I came on, was to make it all fit together and make sense. I got to steer the game a bit to focus on some of my favorite things in the stories, but the framework was already there at the start.
DC has long been associated with history and legacy. Was that aspect a priority in creating this game, showing off different versions of the heroes and villains that have existed over the years?
A lot of it was decided at the start, but there’s going to be a whole lot more added later. There is an approval process so everyone can agree on which version of which character can appear, but the bottom line is we aren’t going to run out of ideas. There’s so much we can bring into the game, from different stories to different characters. There are zillions of them at our fingertips for us to bring in.
DC Worlds Collide is now available in the App Store and Google Play. Click here to learn more.
