Where’s Batman?

I’m a dork. That’s a fact that you probably could have guessed from the fact that I write an anonymous video game blog. As a dork, I do a good deal of thinking about things like this summer’s big blockbuster movies. It also mean I spend a similar amount of time thinking about said movies’ tie-in games. There are a lot of them this summer, too: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Wall-E, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones*, The Dark Knight…

Wait, scratch that last one. Last time I checked, Batman was conspicuous in his absence.

There are rumors kicking around that Pandemic is developing a new Batman game (which, for the record, would be sweet), but so far there has been no official announcement of a game based on The Dark Knight. Not only is this incredibly odd, it’s too late for one to be announced. EA still controls the rights, and they’re not exactly ones to shy away from the easy money of a movie tie-in. What gives? There’s a lot more going on here than you might expect.

Electronic Arts obtained the rights to make Batman games from Warner Brothers before Batman Begins. As a condition of the deal, EA also had to take the rights to the Catwoman movie, hence the terrible 2004 game based on the equally vomit-inducing film. Unfortunately, the dumbed-down Splinter Cell clone that was the Batman Begins game was nearly as bad, and Warner Brothers was not happy. The Superman Returns game didn’t help matters either, as it was both a turd and late, missing its planned launch alongside the movie.

Warner Bros. Interactive was, at the time, more of a licensing group than a true publisher, making deals with publishers like Atari and EA for franchises like The Matrix and Harry Potter. But the company’s plan was to become a major publisher in and of itself by leveraging properties like Dirty Harry, DC Comics, and, um, Friends. WBI began buying up developers like Monolith and tried to make a splash with games like Justice League Heroes (the name Justice League of America was scrapped to curry international sales) and 300: March to Glory.

Long story short, WBI hasn’t found its footing as a publisher yet, as evidenced by its reliance of co-publishing deals with Sega and Eidos. But you can be sure that the lack of a Dark Knight game is a result of WBI exerting tighter control over its intellectual properties. The aforementioned Pandemic/Batman game was, in all likelihood, a deal signed by WBI before the developer was purchased by EA in an attempt to remove the mega-publisher from the equation. If and when this game does see the light of day, you can be certain you’ll see both an EA and a WBI logo at the start of the credits, and if WBI’s plans continue, expect to see franchises like Harry Potter and Batman taken out of EA’s hands forever. The absence of a game based on The Dark Knight movie means that someone has finally figured out that Batman is too valuable a property to not be leveraged in the video game sector, and quickie cash-in titles are simply not going to cut it.

*Indy’s only game around the launch of the new movie will be in LEGO form.