Dark Horse Comics opens video game division, wants to work with 'top' studios

Dark Horse Comics has opened a new video game division called Dark Horse Games. 

As reported by VentureBeat, Dark Horse Games will operate out of two main offices in Oregon and Shanghai, and will look to create titles through licensing partnerships with third-party developers and its own in-house teams. 

The company said it wants to bring some of its 425 universes and characters -- which includes franchises like Hellboy, Umbrella Academy, Lady Killer, Sin City, and 300 -- to the world of games, and indicated it's already in discussions with some of the "world's top gaming companies."

The new division will be led by general manager Johnny B. Lee, who previously oversaw business development and commercial strategy across Northern and Eastern Europe, Korea, SEA and Hollywood at video game technology company, Improbable. 

Lee explained Dark Horse Games will take its time "finding the right game development partners for top properties," and indicated he expects plenty of interest in some of the company's flagship franchises. 

Internally, the company will task its first-party developers with breathing new life into older and less established series, while also producing multimedia projects to complement those games.

"We have evergreen properties, like Hellboy, where there will always be interest in making games and doing collaborations. 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," said Lee.

"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."