Arkham Asylum â??exemplary use of a franchiseâ??

Crackdown lead designer Billy Thomson believes that Batman: Arkham Asylum has shown the game industry “what can really be achieved” with the correct use of lucrative IP.

“In the past, games based on movies have almost always been poorly received by the games industry,” said the Ruffian co-founder.

“This year The Chronicles of Riddick was released to decent if not great reviews which showed the games industry that good games could be made from movie franchises, but it wasn’t until Rocksteady released the excellent Batman: Arkham Asylum that the industry stood up and took full notice of what can really be achieved if the right decisions are made during the design phase of the game,” he added.

“When I look at Arkham Asylum, one of the things that strikes me is it’s not based on any of the massively successful movies. Rocksteady based its game in the Batman universe rather than tying it directly to a movie. While the game is undoubtedly a fantastic gameplay experience, I still believe it was a brave decision to forego the option of a movie tie in.”

Writing in his monthly Develop Blog, the Ruffian co-founder went on to explore the development balancing act of building a game around movie IPs, listing the opportunities and risks in tying games closely to movie releases.

Go here to read Thomson’s monthly column.