Interplay entertainment
| Interplay entertainment
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|---|---|
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| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1983 |
| Seat | Beverly Hills (United States) |
| management | Herve Caen (CEO) |
| Branch | Software development, publishing |
| Website | www.interplay.com |
Interplay Entertainment (from its founding 1983 to 1998 Interplay Productions ) is an American game developer and publisher .
history
1983 to the mid-1990s
Interplay Productions was founded in 1983 in Southern California by former employees of the computer game manufacturer Boone Corporation . Brian Fargo was the president . The development studio first became famous for the computer role-playing games The Bard's Tale and Wasteland . In 1988 Interplay began selling games from other manufacturers. Interplay became well known in 1995 as the publisher of the 3D spaceship shooter Descent . In the same year, Interplay acquired the licenses for the campaign worlds Forgotten Realms and Planescape of the role-playing game rules Dungeons & Dragons , on the basis of which internal development teams designed several games. Since 1998, Interplay's role-playing division has been called Black Isle Studios .
Decline from the end of the 1990s
In 1998 Interplay went public on the NASDAQ US stock exchange . Despite some successful games like Fallout and Baldur's Gate and trying to break into the movie world with Interplay Movies , it failed to make long-term profits. For the next seven years the company recorded only losses.
Brian Fargo later cited the main reason for Interplay's decline that the company had not managed to position itself in the console market in time. Accordingly, the company had missed the cycle for the 5th generation of consoles , so that entering and building up the corresponding development skills before the successor generation appeared, did not seem very promising. At the same time, revenues in the core PC games market continued to decline, and revenues from successful D&D games such as Baldur's Gate were significantly reduced by the contractually agreed license payments to TSR and developer BioWare. After all, Interplay lacked an attractive franchise compared to other publishers, which could also be implemented on consoles after the gameplay of the most popular title, Baldur's Gate, was heavily tailored to the PC platform. The takeovers of Shiny Entertainment and the three-year development of Wild 9 represented at least an attempt to gain some foothold in the console market, but it did not pay off financially. The sum of the causes ultimately led to the company getting increasingly into financial difficulties. The takeover of Shiny took place successively. In 1995 Interplay acquired 91% of the company from owner David Perry for $ 3.6 million; the remaining 9% was acquired in 2001 for $ 600,000. In April 2002 Interplay sold Shiny for 47 million to Infogrames and its subsidiary Atari (formerly GT Interactive ).
In 2001, the French publisher Titus Interactive became the majority shareholder of the ailing company, but without taking it over completely. January 2002 Brian Fargo left the company due to disagreements with the new majority owner. Titus founder Hervé Caen then took over the management. Also in 2002, Interplay largely ended its activities as a publisher and from then on had its games distributed by Vivendi Universal Games . In the same year, Interplay was removed from NASDAQ due to its low company value. At the end of 2002 / beginning of 2003 Interplay lost the D&D license, so that the development studio Black Isle had to stop work on Baldur's Gate 3: The Black Hound (internal working title: Project Jefferson ), which had been ongoing for two years . In the course of 2003 Interplay finally ordered the discontinuation of the advanced development work on a successor to Fallout 2 in order to concentrate on the development of console games in the future, which ultimately led to the closure of the development studio " Black Isle Studios ". In July 2004, Interplay granted a license to develop Fallout 3 (and the option for parts 4 and 5) to Bethesda Softworks , but the trademark rights remained with Interplay. On June 8, 2004, Interplay was closed due to wages not paid by the state for over a month, but reopened soon afterwards.
In August 2004, Interplay majority owner Titus filed for bankruptcy and was broken up. As a result, Interplay was threatened with closure, for example the Interplay website was immediately taken offline. The website was only online again on July 4th, 2005, this time with an independent Interplay behind it.
Development from 2006
At the end of 2006, Interplay announced that it had found an investor and was now fully focused on developing an online version of the Fallout series with the working title Project V13 . In order to be able to finance this, Interplay sold the Fallout trademark rights to Bethesda Softworks in April 2007 for 5.75 million US dollars and while retaining a development license for a Fallout MMO , thus changing from licensor to licensee. There were contractual requirements for this project, which Bethesda believed had not been met, which is why a lawsuit was sought in 2009. Interplay, on the other hand, went to court and accused Bethesda of violating the contract by blocking Project V13 . This lawsuit was settled out of court in January 2012 when Bethesda paid Interplay two million dollars and received the rights to the MMOG and, from January 1, 2014, also for Fallout , Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics .
On August 22, 2012, Interplay announced the revival of the in-house Black Isle Studios . In June 2013, Interplay acquired the trademark rights to the space flight simulations Conflict: Freespace and Freespace 2 from the insolvent game publisher THQ for USD 7,500 .
Developed video games
The following list shows the video games developed by Interplay in alphabetical order.
| Release date | title | Platform (s) |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | American Deer Hunter | PlayStation |
| 2001 | Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance | PlayStation 2 , Xbox , GameCube |
| 2004 | Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance 2 | PlayStation 2, Xbox |
| 1985 | The Bard's Tale: Tales of the Unknown | Commodore 64 |
| 1986 | The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight | Commodore 64 |
| 1988 | The Bard's Tale III: The Thief of Fate | Commodore 64 |
| 1999 | Baseball 2000 | PlayStation |
| 1994 | Blackthorne | Super Nintendo Entertainment System |
| 1995 | Boogerman: A Pick and Flick Adventure | Mega Drive , SNES |
| 1985 | Borrowed Time | Commodore 64, DOS , Amiga , Atari ST , Mac OS , Apple II |
| 1998 | Cesar's Palace 2 | PlayStation, Game Boy |
| 2000 | Caesars Palace 2000: Millennium Gold Edition | Dreamcast |
| Casino Fun Pack | Game Boy | |
| Casper | Game Boy | |
| Clay fighter | Mega Drive, SNES | |
| Clay Fighter II | SNES | |
| Clay Fighter 63 1/3 | Nintendo 64 | |
| Clay Fighter: Tournament Edition | SNES | |
| Clay Fighter Extreme | PlayStation | |
| Claymates | SNES | |
| 1996 | Conquest of the New World | Pc |
| 1997 | Conquest of the New World Deluxe Edition | Pc |
| Crime Killer | PlayStation | |
| Cyberia | Sega Saturn | |
| Descent maximum | PlayStation | |
| 2000 | Evolva | Pc |
| 2004 | Fallout : Brotherhood of Steel | PlayStation 2, Xbox |
| 1995 | Stonekeep | Pc |
| 1997 | fallout | Pc |
| 1998 | Fallout 2 | Pc |
| Gekido: Urban Fighters | PlayStation | |
| 2000 | Giants: Citizen Kabuto | PC, PlayStation 2 |
| 1998 | Heart of Darkness | PC, PlayStation |
| Hunter: The Reckoning | Xbox | |
| Incoming | Dreamcast | |
| 1990 | JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings Vol. 1 | Amiga, DOS, FM-Towns, PC-98 |
| 1997 | Jimmy Johnson 's VR Football 98 | PlayStation |
| Kingpin: Life of Crime | Pc | |
| The Lost Vikings | Mega drive | |
| Lost Vikings II: Norse by Norsewest | PlayStation, SNES | |
| Mechanized Assault and Exploration ( MAX ) | Pc | |
| MDK 2 | Dreamcast | |
| MDK 2 Armageddon | PlayStation 2 | |
| 1984 | Mindshadow | Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Macintosh, PC Booter, ZX Spectrum |
| Offroad outlaws | PlayStation 2 | |
| Out of this world | SNES | |
| Pocket GT Racing | Game Boy | |
| R / C stunt copter | PlayStation | |
| Re-Loaded | PlayStation | |
| Realms Of The Haunting | Pc | |
| Red asphalt | PlayStation | |
| Renegade Racer | Dreamcast | |
| RoboCop vs. The Terminator | Game Boy | |
| Rock & Roll Racing | Mega Drive, SNES | |
| RPM racing | SNES | |
| Sacrifice | Pc | |
| 1997 | Star Trek : StarFleet Academy | PC, SNES |
| 1992 | Star Trek: 25th Anniversary | MS-DOS, Amiga, Mac OS Classic, Microsoft Windows , macOS, Linux |
| 1993 | Star Trek: Judgment Rites | MS-DOS, Mac OS Classic |
| Super Runabout: San Francisco Edition | Dreamcast | |
| Stonekeep | Pc | |
| 1986 | Tass Times in Tonetown | Various |
| Tempest X | PlayStation | |
| The Lord of the Rings | SNES | |
| 1984 | The Tracer Sanction | Apple II, Commodore 64, PC Booter |
| Track Meet | Game Boy | |
| Virtual tennis | PlayStation | |
| Viva Soccer | PlayStation | |
| VR baseball 99 | PlayStation | |
| VR Golf 97 | PlayStation | |
| VR Pro Pinball | PlayStation | |
| 1987 | Wasteland | Commodore 64 |
| Wicked Surfing | Game Boy | |
| Wild 9 | PlayStation | |
| Wild Wild Racing | PlayStation 2 |
Distributed Games
- Atomic Bomberman (1997)
- Normality (1996)
- Battle Chess (1988)
- Buzz Aldrin's Race into Space (1992)
- Carmageddon (1997)
- Descent (1995)
- Dungeon Master II (1995)
- Stonekeep (1995)
- Neuromancer (1988)
- Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1994)
- Redneck Rampage (1997)
Web links
- Official website
- Interplay Entertainment at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ RPGPlanet.com: Lionheart Chronicles ( Memento March 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Matt Chat 91: The Fall of Interplay with Brian Fargo on YouTube
- ↑ Infogrames Snags Shiny - For $ 47 Million ( English ) In: Gamasutra . UBM, plc . April 25, 2002. Retrieved March 5, 2013.
- ^ Shane Satterfield: Titus takes over interplay . In: Gamespot . CBS Interactive . August 16, 2001. Retrieved February 16, 2011.
- ↑ LA Times : Titus Takes Control of Irvine's Interplay . FrictionlessInsight.com. August 17, 2001. Retrieved August 4, 2007.
- ↑ Trey Walker: Brian Fargo interview . Gamespot. February 19, 2002. Retrieved February 16, 2011.
- ^ 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 ).
- ↑ GameBanshee.com: The Black Hound interview. Retrieved July 18, 2020 .
- ↑ 1Up.com: Bethesda Picks Up License For Fallout 3 ( Memento December 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Commission File Number 0-24363 INTERPLAY ENTERTAINMENT CORP. (English)
- ↑ Tor Thorsen: Interplay offices closed by state officials ( English ) gamespot.com. June 4, 2004. Retrieved December 8, 2013: “ The Orange County Register reports that California labor investigators have shut down the publisher - something CEO Herve Caen disputes. "
- ^ Rus McLaughlin: IGN Presents the History of Fallout . In: IGN . News Corp. . January 28, 2009. Retrieved September 30, 2011.
- ↑ Julian Dasgupta: Receives Fallout MMO license back . In: 4Players . freenet AG . January 10, 2012. Retrieved April 1, 2012.
- ↑ Sensation: Black Isle Studios celebrate resurrection - Baldur's Gate 3 or Planescape Torment 2 possible? August 22, 2012, accessed July 31, 2020 .
- ^ Dave Tach: Interplay purchases Freespace IP from THQ and Volition for $ 7,500. June 6, 2013, accessed July 31, 2020 .