Recently a fire at Blackgate Prison had forced many regular criminals to be temporarily housed at the asylum during reconstruction, and as Batman and the police prepare to put the Joker in his cell, he puts his true plan into action. Batman is naturally suspicious and accompanies the captured criminal as he is processed at the gothic island estate turned sanitarium for the criminally insane, Arkham Asylum. Batman has just captured his long time nemesis the Joker, the villainous clown oddly giving himself up with hardly a fight this time around. not only began its ascent to being a big name in the gaming space, but it showed the gaming world licensed games could be excellent if given the same love and care as other games, a lesson other developers would follow more and more in the coming years.īatman: Arkham Asylum itself is a combination of ideas tied to various incarnation of the Dark Knight, but the story itself is a wholly new one that begins in a rather familiar way. It would be an original story building off the Batman lore and world, and by giving the team freedom to make their own experience and the resources needed to ensure its quality, Warner Bros. Developer Rocksteady Studios was given almost two years to work on the project, plenty of talent with experience working on the Batman comics and media were recruited to help, and the budget was set well above the usual amount a tie-in typically gets, but Batman: Arkham Asylum was also not to be a tie-in to anything in particular. was looking to push their properties in the gaming space more, the owner of DC Comics wisely allowing experienced publisher Eidos Interactive assist in the creation of a Batman game. As video games evolved and pushed into the HD era, the cost of creating games began to grow and cheap tie-ins most people knew to be wary of became less and less common. There were a few good ones to be found for sure, but if a game was based on a movie, television show, or book, there was a pretty high chance that it was a rushed product aiming to cash in on a recognizable name rather than a game developed by a devoted and talented team.

By the year 2009 most gamers knew not to trust games based on licensed properties.

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