AustralianGamer breaks news on Pandemic Brisbane rumour

Company
Pandemic Studios

AustralianGamer has posted a news item which reveals a bombshell about Pandemic Studios in Brisbane. The rumour is that Pandemic Studios Brisbane has been working on The Dark Knight movie license for the past few years, and it's reported that the title has just been cancelled due to development delays and the development team made redundant or relocated to other projects.

While it was known that a Dark Knight game was in development somewhere after actor Gary Oldman mentioned that he did some voice acting work for it, no studio has been linked to the game until now. Analysts have predicted that the license holder, Electronic Arts, missed an opportunity to cash in on the box office breaking movie release to a tune of $100 million dollars.

More details at AustralianGamer.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 11:26 AMPermalink

Ouch. Would they really cancel it, though? I imagine that they must be pretty far along even with delays - even if they missed an enormous opportunity with the game not making the movie release, it would make more sense to just finish it off in time for the DVD release, right? They ought to be able to recoup SOME of their expenses. Although I suppose with Lego Batman and Arkam Asylum coming out now... :/ I guess we'll have to wait for confirmation, even if that 'no comment' is a little ominous.

There's a story there, and I'd be curious to read a post-mortem here or on Gamasutra about it sometime. Clearly something Went Wrong in a pretty spectacular fashion for an established studio like Pandemic to stumble this badly. Was this the Brisbane studio's first next gen title?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 28/08/08 - 1:31 PMPermalink

Hopefully Pandemic doesn't start laying off staff and they can simply be shifted over into other projects in production. Although with EA owning Pandemic we all know how quickly they have been in the past to lay off staff whenever the bottom line isn't loking as rosy as they like. :(

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 30/08/08 - 12:40 AMPermalink

The scuttle butt is that the studio in Australia is in danger of closing, how accurate that is who knows.

Bit weird considering that pre-EA Pandemic Brisbane have always been a well run studio hitting milestones etc.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 31/08/08 - 11:58 AMPermalink

This has nothing to do with EA as a whole. By all accounts, if the word leaking it's way out of Pandemic is true. The cancelled title has been in trouble for a long time. This is rumoured to be due to a serious internal problem directly related to the management of said title. Just in case that was not already completely obvious by the game missing the movie launch.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 31/08/08 - 4:06 PMPermalink

Wasn't blaming the publisher, just a bit weird.

I have mates who work for both Pandemic and EA Melbourne so I don't have any biase against EA.

From what I've heard there is only one development team now, working on a WII title.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 31/08/08 - 3:06 PMPermalink

From what I gather, it's nothing to do with Pandemic or EA. The blame lies at Hollywoods feet. I don't profess to know much about the gaming industry, but it would seem to me that movie licence titles are more trouble than they are worth. Whenever movie based games don't have their plug pulled by the higher-ups, sacrificing jobs in the process, the game is almost always a flop due to the ridiculous deadline developers must adhere to. Personally, whenever I see a movie-game, I hiss and throw holy water at it. Does ANYONE buy those games?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 09/01/09 - 3:38 PMPermalink

It was Warner Brothers who pulled the plug due to wanting its own start up games division to take over. From what I hear they are using all the great art and code which was generated over the two years of developement.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sat, 10/01/09 - 10:49 AMPermalink

What a tough license to develop for - you really want to do it 'right'

Perhaps there was some conflict about the vision of the game between all relevant parties?(developer, publisher, Hollywood)

Pandemic have a strong, mature, professional track record - hope this story will end with some kind of good news...

Marty

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 12/01/09 - 1:21 PMPermalink

Bit behind the times there - there was no happy ending to this. :/ Sometimes, it really is just a tragedy.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 12/01/09 - 9:13 PMPermalink

I can't say I'm surprised by this. Bit disappointing that it's happened, but, not surprised at all. I wonder how bad things will get with the growing recession in 2009.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 06/02/09 - 7:09 AMPermalink

The Bris studio finds out TODAY if it will close or be picked up by a new publisher.

Anon