Larian Studios

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Larian Studios
legal form LLC
founding 1996
Seat Ghent , BelgiumBelgiumBelgium 
management Swen Vincke
Number of employees 250+ (as of March 2020)
Branch Software development
Website www.larian.com

Larian Studios is a Belgian computer game development company . It was best known for the development of the role-playing game series Divinity , but also developed children's and educational games, as well as games of chance for casinos, in cooperation with various European television stations and publishers.

Company history

Larian was founded in 1996 by Swen Vincke, who derived the name from the short name of his dog Pilar and refers to the Roman household gods of the same name ( Laren ). Vincke's goal was to develop a role-playing game that fascinates the player in a similar way to his own favorite game Ultima VII . When the initially four-person studio ran out of money to develop its first role-playing game concept called The Lady, the Mage and the Knight (LMK), within five months the studio developed the strategy game The LED Wars , which was published in 1997 by the Ionos company. At the same time as the publishing deal for The LED Wars , LMK entered into a cooperation with the German developer studio Attic . In the course of the agreement, LMK was changed into a game based on the role-playing game rules Das Schwarze Auge . When Attic went out of business in 1999, LMK was shut down and Larian had to develop games of chance for casinos to survive.

In 2002 Larian finished working on Divinity: Sword of Lies . The game was launched by the German publisher cdv Software Entertainment against Larian's will under the title Divine Divinity . Vincke also accused his publishing partner of withholding legitimate royalties from the studio. In 2004, an offshoot based on the same technical basis called Beyond Divinity was published via Ubisoft . To accompany the game, the studio released a short story called Child of The Chaos by Rhianna Pratchett , daughter of British author Terry Pratchett , who also worked on the game as a dialogue writer .

Also in 2004 Larian published the game Ketnet Kick with Ketnet , the Belgian children's channel of the public broadcaster VRT . It was a virtual online world with various games for one or more players, as well as the possibility of creating pieces of music, drawings, cartoons or your own small films and sending them to the broadcaster. This awarded the best submissions and presented them in its television program. In March 2008, a variation of Ketnet Kick called Adventure Rock was released for the BBC . Ketnet Kick 2 followed in October 2008 . In January 2009 another variant called Superia appeared for the Norwegian children's channel NRK Super , a channel of the state broadcaster NRK , and in March 2009 Gulliland for the French television channel Jeunesse TV . Also in 2009 was Monkey Labs , an educational game that was published with the mathematics books from Die Keure .

In July 2009 Larian published his next role-playing game for Xbox 360 and Windows , Divinity 2: Ego Draconis , the successor to Divine Divinity, in cooperation with the German publisher dtp entertainment . This was followed in 2010 by the expansion Divinity 2: Flames of Vengeance and, after the studio had separated from its publisher, a revised overall version called Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga . In 2011, the studio released the five-part math learning software Monkey Tales Games , which received the prize for the best professionally developed learning software and the audience award at the EU-funded MEDEA Awards 2011.

Larian then worked on two more games in the Divinity universe, the content of which was prematurely settled in Divine Divinity , the real-time strategy game Divinity: Dragon Commander and the role-playing game Divinity: Original Sin . Divinity: Original Sin was funded with the help of crowdfunding via the online platform Kickstarter , where the studio was able to collect over 940,000 US dollars from fans of the series, via other payment channels the amount increased to over a million.

In April 2015, Larian opened his third development studio in Quebec in addition to the headquarters in Ghent and a branch in Saint Petersburg.

Publications

Computer games

Children's and educational games:

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-02-27-larian-plays-dungeon-master-for-a-new-era-of-baldurs-gate
  2. ↑ a b The Lady, The Mage, and The Knight Interview ( Memento from May 22, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ a b c d http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/divinity-original-sin-review/
  4. ^ Educational number featuring a troupe of mathematical monkeys , gamesindustry.biz
  5. ↑ http://www.medea-awards.com/de/showcase/monkey-tales-games
  6. ↑ GameStar: Voices of Igromir 2011. Swen Vincke: "It won't be bad, to have an army ( Memento from July 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/27/4274832/divinity-original-sin-kickstarter-campaign-ends-all-stretch-goals-met
  8. ↑ Jeu vidéo: le studio belge Larian s'installe à Québec
  9. ↑ Divinity: Original Sin 2. Retrieved September 18, 2017 (English).