Black Isle Studios

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Black Isle Studios

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legal form Division of Interplay Entertainment
founding 1996 Spin-off from parent company Interplay
1998 Renaming to Black Isle Studios
2012 re-establishment
resolution December 8, 2003
Seat Orange County , California , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
Branch Software development

Black Isle Studios is a division of the US computer game manufacturer Interplay Entertainment that specializes in the development of computer role-playing games . It was founded in 1996 and was based in Irvine, California , near Los Angeles , until it closed in 2003 . The company became known for its work on the computer role-playing games Fallout and Planescape: Torment , as well as its collaboration on the Baldur's Gate series. In 2012 the studio reopened.

history

Black Isle was founded in 1996 by Feargus Urquhart as a spin-off of the internal role-playing game development department Interplay Entertainments ( The Bard's Tale , Wasteland ) . At this point in time, Interplay had acquired two software licenses for the role-playing game set of rules Dungeons & Dragons , on the basis of which the team should develop new computer games. As a studio initially nameless, the post-apocalyptic Fallout became the first title of the newly formed developer. It was a spiritual successor to Interplay's classic Wasteland , whose naming rights were retained by Interplay's then publishing partner Electronic Arts . Fallout turned out to be a surprise success, so a sequel was commissioned, which should appear in 1998. Also in 1998 the name Black Isle Studios was adopted, after the Black Isle peninsula from Feargus Urquhart's native Scotland . In the same year, however, three key Fallout developers - Timothy Cain , Leonard Boyarsky and Jason D. Anderson - left Black Isle Studios to found Troika Games after project manager Tim Cain was unable to come to an agreement on the team structure for Fallout 2 . Despite these departures, Fallout 2 appeared as planned a year after its predecessor.

In addition to its own developments, Black Isle produced and supervised the role-playing commissioned work by external developers for Interplay, including BioWares Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate 2 . In fact, Interplay's order was placed with BioWare based on a recommendation from Urquhart, who was presented with a prototype of BioWare's new game engine Battleground Infinity as part of his production activities for BioWare's debut Shattered Steel . Between 1999 and 2002 Black Isle published the games Planescape: Torment , Icewind Dale and Icewind Dale II based on this engine used in Baldur's Gate - officially called the Infinity Engine . However, work on a new development called Torn , which lasted several months , was stopped in 2001 due to ongoing technical problems and a significantly exceeded schedule, and 56 employees were laid off as a result.

In April 2003, studio manager Feargus Urquhart left the company after he was unable to come to an agreement on the direction of the studio with the interplay management that had changed in the meantime. Interplay has been operating in deficit for several years. At the end of 2002 / beginning of 2003 Interplay lost the D&D license, so that Black Isle had to stop the work on Baldur's Gate 3: The Black Hound (internal working title: Project Jefferson ), which had been ongoing for two years . According to Urquhart, Interplay began to focus more on the console market, and although Black Isle had produced Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, the company's most successful console game, the studio played a subordinate role in the strategic planning of Interplay management and received increasingly less support . As a result, other leading employees left the company. On December 8, 2003, in the midst of serious financial difficulties, Interplay fired the entire remaining Black Isle Studios workforce. Many former Black Isle employees quickly found jobs with other developers after they left. Much of the workforce found employment at Obsidian Entertainment , which was founded in 2003 by a former core team at Black Isle Studios led by Feargus Urquhart and Chris Avellone .

Due to Black Isles closure, the already advanced work on a third Fallout title (code name: Van Buren ) remained unfinished. Interplay sold the license to Bethesda Softworks , where the series was continued with Fallout 3 . Some concepts for Van Buren finally found their way into the game universe through Fallout: New Vegas , a commissioned work Obsidian Entertainments for Bethesda under the direction of the Van Buren developers Joshua E. Sawyer and Chris Avellone.

The use of names of former US presidents as code names for unannounced titles followed the usual naming scheme of Black Isle Studios.

In August 2012, Interplay announced a revival of Black Isle Studios, but without giving any details about future projects or the staffing of the studio.

Products

In addition to developing its own computer games, Black Isle also contributed to the development of some of the computer role-playing games sold by Interplay. Because Black Isle had a big name as a role-playing game manufacturer and was involved in the distribution of the Baldur's Gate series, there are erroneous claims that Black Isle developed the Baldur's Gate series. This is wrong because it was developed by BioWare , the company that is in turn mistakenly associated with the development of the Icewind-Dale range . The titles Black Isle has contributed to include:

Two game collections were also published under the studio name:

  • Black Isle Compilation (2002), contained Baldur's Gate incl. Add-on, Icewind Dale incl. Add-ons and Planescape: Torment
  • Black Isle Compilation Part Two (2004), contained Baldur's Gate 1 + 2 incl. Add-ons, Icewind Dale 1 + 2 incl. Add-ons

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Richard "Jonric" Aihoshi: Planescape: Torment Special Report, Part 1 ( english ) In: RPGVault . News Corp . February 11, 2000. Archived from the original on July 25, 2006. Retrieved March 18, 2012.
  2. ↑ Shawn Schuster: Kickstarting the future of game publishing: An interview with Brian Fargo ( English ) In: Joystiq . AOL . March 15, 2012. Archived from the original on April 3, 2013. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 15, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / massively.joystiq.com
  3. ^ Ian Cheong: Game Info ( English ) In: Lionheart Chronicles . GameSpy . 2002. Archived from the original on May 7, 2006. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 25, 2006. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rpgplanet.com
  4. ↑ John Keefer: Black Isle Studios: We are not BioWare ( English ) GameSpy . January 2001. Archived from the original on December 11, 2004. Retrieved July 25, 2006.
  5. ↑ Joe Blancato: The Rise and Fall of Troika ( English ) The Escapist Magazine. December 26, 2006. Retrieved March 27, 2007.
  6. ↑ Trent Oster: Getting into the Games Industry ( English ) In: Baldur's Gate developer's blog . March 23, 2010. Retrieved February 16, 2011: “ After a lack of interest from most publishing partners around“ Battleground Infinity ”, it was shown to our“ Shattered Steel ”producer, Feargus Urquhart. Feargus looked at the demo and stated it would be a great fit with the Dungeons and Dragons license that Interplay had. Without much debate the title was signed and "Baldur's Gate" was into development. "
  7. ↑ Andrew Park: Heartbreakers - Feature at GameSpot ( English ) In: GameSpot . CBS Interactive . Retrieved July 13, 2012.
  8. ↑ IGN editors: TORN Officially Canceled ( English ) In: IGN . News Corp . July 26, 2001. Retrieved July 24, 2006.
  9. ↑ Tor Thorsen: Q&A: Feargus Urquhart, Part Two ( English ) In: GameSpot . CNET . January 6, 2004. Retrieved September 5, 2011.
  10. ↑ John "JCal" Callaham: Obsidian Entertainment Interview ( English ) In: HomeLan Fed . September 15, 2003. Archived from the original on February 5, 2005. Retrieved September 5, 2011: "Interplay has a direction that it wants to pursue concerning projects and I have a direction that I want to go."
  11. ^ Morgan Ramsay: Gamers at Work: Stories Behind the Games People Play . 1st edition. Apress, New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-4302-3351-0 , pp. 79-80 ( online view ).
  12. ↑ Jon "Buck" Birnbaum: The Black Hound Interview ( English ) In: Gamebanshee . UGO Entertainment, Inc .. February 13, 2007. Archived from the original on February 5, 2010. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 11, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gamebanshee.com
  13. ↑ Jon "BuckGB" Birnbaum: Obsidian Entertainment Interview ( English ) In: Gamebanshee . UGO entertainment. June 11, 2009. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
  14. ↑ Tor Thorsen: Interplay shuts down Black Isle Studios ( English ) GameSpot . December 8, 2003. Retrieved May 1, 2006.
  15. ↑ Vlad Micu: Obsidian's Josh Sawyer on Fallout: New Vegas, the Van Buren legacy and learning from mods ( English ) In: gamesauce.org . Gamesauce Media, Inc. September 8, 2010. Retrieved September 28, 2011.
  16. ↑ Patricia Hernandez: Interview with Chris Avellone ( English ) Nightmare Mode. July 7, 2011. Archived from the original on February 6, 2012. Retrieved on July 10, 2011: "We just picked and chose what elements still seemed to work and we were interested in resurrecting."
  17. ↑ Joshua E. Sawyer : Formspringmeldung in September 2011  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English). Retrieved October 6, 2011. "It was just their names, in order of inauguration. Obsidian's names are similar, US states in order of their incorporation to the union. We use this scheme because there is an order to it, but the names have no connection to the project itself. "@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.formspring.me  
  18. ↑ Sensation Black Isle Studios celebrate resurrection on pcgames.de
  19. ↑ Black Isle Studios site: Games ( English ) Black Isle Studios. June 4, 2003. Archived from the original on December 4, 2001. Retrieved July 25, 2006.