There were a few good Batman games from Ubisoft, and the tie-in game for Batman Beings was a respectable Splinter Cell clone, but none were what you would call great. Despite a new found resurgence in Batman’s popularity thanks to Batman Beings and the ground breaking The Dark Knight which landed in 2008, Batman had been floundering in the video game industry for quite some time. I was still largely skeptical that it was going to be any good though. The piece written about Arkham Asylum by author Philip Kollar said a lot of the right things: its gameplay was to be a mixture of brawling and stealth, the Batmobile could make an appearance which obviously didn’t happen, and most importantly Paul Dini, one of the minds behind Batman: The Animated Series, was crafting the story. I first became aware of Batman: Arkham Asylum in one of the last issue’s of Electronic Gaming Monthly, issue #235 that featured a Watchmen: The End is Nigh cover, before it was shut down in its original incarnation in early 2009. What helped me get through this tough time was a game that’s ten years old today: Batman: Arkham Asylum. Before I would even get to take calls though, I had to go through weeks of training that started at 4PM in the evening and lasted until 12AM at night. After failing to find funding to go back to school and missing out on a job that I desperately wanted at the time, I found myself right back where I started: at another company, with a headset strapped to my ear speaking to customers over the phone. It wasn’t until the end of the summer that I would land a regular job again. In many ways I feel like I’m still making up for that entire year. I pushed away someone who’s the most important person in my life today and I count myself lucky that I’m still still with them now. The rejections just kept stacked up on top of one another to the point where I became so insufferable even I didn’t want to be around me. I didn’t work throughout a large portion of 2009, but not for a lack of trying.
Early in 2009 I left my job, deeming it fate and the motivation I needed to go out and change my life and make things better. I was frustrated, angry, and, being a university graduate with a business degree under their belt, felt like I deserved more, not yet grasping the concept that I wasn’t owed or deserved anything. A co-worker and I joked while looking at our pay stubs that we could see the point where we stopped caring as our pay went down in contrast to our days calling in sick that kept going up. My first job out of university in 2007 was in the telephone customer service industry, and it paid the bills while also allowing me to afford things I never could afford before, but it didn’t take long for me to loathe going to work everyday. 2009 is not a year I look back on fondly.
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