How Batman Killed Pandemic AU
Something many of you may have noticed this year was the lack of a tie-in console game for The Dark Knight this summer. Well, there's a reason for that. Turns out the game was in development but got canned because of problems, and as a result, most of Pandemic AU was closed down.
- It seems that it took several months before the team was informed that the Batman game they were making had to be based on the upcoming Dark Knight film. This not only meant they were tied to a very specific vision of Batman - and that several months worth of planning had to be scrapped - but they were now tied to an even tighter deadline: the theatrical release of the movie.
- With the Batman game now officially a Dark Knight game, Pandemic decided to make an open world Gotham City despite none of the senior members of the team having experience in making open world games. (Mercenaries was made in LA, not Brisbane.)
That's just for starters. Kotaku AU has a fantastic piece on how it all went down, which I highly recommend as a read for anyone who is interested in the behind-the-scenes work that happens in the game industry. From the sound of it, mistakes were made by both the developer and the publisher EA, dooming the game pretty early on.
How Pandemic's Dark Knight Turned Into A Nightmare [Kotaku AU]
Sgt. Sausagepants
Posted to Video Games on 16 January 2009
Other stuff like this: Batman, Brisbane, Dark Knight, Pandemic
