Comic book publisher Dark Horse is opening a new division focused on games and digital entertainment.

As reported by GamesBeat, the imaginatively named Dark Horse Games is going to be licensing its IP to games companies. The outfit is being headed up by Johnny Lee (pictured), who was previously business development lead at Improbable's Shanghai branch.

Dark Horse has published comic IP including Sin City, 300, Hellboy and Umbrella Academy.

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

“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.”

He continued: “We are speaking to all types of developers and we are open to all kinds of creative ideas, even some indie studios with cool ideas around our IPs. We right now have spent a lot of time on finding the rights in game collaborations at the triple-A level where the stories and the characters fit. We are in late-stage discussions with several of them. And so if those go well, you’ll see pretty big Dark Horse Comics characters in live triple-A games no later than the end of Q1 next year.”

Disclosure: Alex Calvin has an ongoing working relationship with Dark Horse as a writer.