Dark Horse Comics Starts A Gaming Division

Dark Horse Comics has formed a games division named Dark Horse Games. The division is responsible for the games and digital division of Dark Horse, working to bring the company's portfolio of comics and IPs to video games. The division will be headed up by Johnny B. Lee, who previously worked at Improbable.

On the company's website, it states that Dark Horse Games will be looking to partner with video game developers in order to turn its IP into video games across "mobile, PC, console, and cloud." Dark Horse Games is also looking to make internal games as well for its lesser-known IP, so it can roll out multimedia projects alongside the games.

"We have evergreen properties, like Hellboy, where there will always be interest in making games and doing collaborations," Lee told GamesBeat in an interview. "We and our partners can really evaluate if a story IP and character universe would be a good fit for games that they're internally designing and developing. I think most triple-A devs that I've talked to prefer their game dev team to build core gameplay and then fit an IP to it, versus shoving an IP down their throats. We're sensitive to that."

Lee also said that Dark Horse Games is very deep in talks with developers, both indie and AAA, and if everything goes well, people could start hearing about games based on its IP next year. He said that Dark Horse plans to take lessons from larger comic companies that have worked on games, like Marvel and DC, and plan multiple projects across different mediums together for synergy.

Video games based on comic books have been mostly successful, with games like Spider-Man: Miles Morales and the Batman Arkham series having both critical and commercial success.