Batman: Arkham Asylum has been a huge success for Warner Bros. and it's making the media company consider new games based upon its DC Comics licenses. A new studio called Warner Bros. Montreal has opened up to work on superhero games, among other things.
“We’re definitely working closely with DC on different titles, yet to be announced. It’s one of the reasons we talk to Geoff Johns and Jim Lee [the publisher's head honchos] on a regular basis. It’s interesting for our geeky side to be in touch with those guys, especially now that they’ve relaunched all the 52 [comics]. It’s a good time to be working with DC,” said studio head Martin Carrier to Canadian Business. “There’s so much energy going on there. So yeah, [we’re in] the triple-A space and the casual online space.”
“[We're targeting] three-hundred [employees] by 2015. It’s the target date. We’ll see how fast we get there but it’s been good going so far. We’re up to 150,” noted Carrier, who said they started with, “four and no office. It was like there’s four of us, here’s a laptop, go home and I’ll call you when I figure something out. Then it was the hotel conference rooms, where we had wi-fi for a good month."
Of course, creating a superhero game means reaching the high bar set by Rocksteady and their work on Batman. “We realize how good a job Rocksteady did with Arkham Asylum,” said Carrier. “They changed people’s perceptions and that’s why we’re not satisfied anymore with sub-par superhero games. Now, it’s like they should be better than all the other games. So what’s their secret recipe?”
“If you look over the past decade of superhero games, there were two. The first one was when Neversoft made Spider-Man—I think it was back on the PS1. People were like, ‘Wow, this is really good,' and then a couple of things came out that were okay,” noted Reid Schneider, vice-president and executive producer. “Then Rocksteady came out with Arkham Asylum and that again changed the expectations. If you look at the similarities between the two, they weren’t based on movies per se. They were just taking that really rich fiction from the comic books and exploring the characters. It’s not about hitting the movie date or some arbitrary date—it was giving the game the time it needs to be successful and really just concentrating on the quality of it.”
The interviewer noted that Warner Bros. is moving away from licensing games and instead making gamers on their own. “What’s positive is there’s a new-found respect for games. In 2007, Warner was just a licenser of [intellectual properties],” noted Carrier. “They didn’t think video games were important enough to have their own production studios. Now, it’s a case of, ‘Wait a second, this is a real entertainment business. We should have our own studios so we can really inject some quality into the products that get out there.’ To me, that was the message. It’s come into its own. How you make quality products is by working closely with production. There’s no barriers between us and them. We’re part of the same family, so it’s much more conducive to creating quality.”
“[Warner Bros. president of interactive entertainment] Martin Tremblay comes from the production side and he knows that when you have your own studio, you can make strategic moves much faster,” added Schneider. “So if we’re building a game and think we can do something differently, we can move on it quickly, whereas if we’re working with a contracted developer, it’s really, really challenging to be able to [do that] because there are contracts involved and the legal side of it. You never know when you’re working with a third-party group where their priorities are. We could be one of many projects that they’re building, whereas if we’re an internal studio we can really push and say this is the most important thing we’re working on and invest where it makes sense.”
Sounds like they have ambitious plans. What DC heroes do you want to see get a brand new game adaptation?
