Interplay Entertainment - History

History

The company was founded in October 1983 as Interplay Productions in Southern California with Brian Fargo as CEO. The first employees were the programmers Jay Patel, Troy Worrell, and Bill Heineman who had previously worked with Fargo at a small video game developer called Boone Corporation. The first projects were non-original and consisted of software conversions and even some military work for Loral Corporation. After negotiations with Activision, Interplay entered a $100,000 contract to produce three illustrated text adventures for them. Published in 1984, Mindshadow is loosely based on Robert Ludlum's Bourne Identity while The Tracer Sanction puts the player in the role of an interplanetary secret agent. Borrowed Time which features a script by Arnie Katz' Subway Software followed in 1985. These adventures built upon work previously done by Fargo: his first game was the 1981 published Demon's Forge.

Interplay's parser was developed by Fargo and an associate and in one version understands about 250 nouns and 200 verbs as well as prepositions and indirect objects. In 1986, Tass Times in Tonetown followed. Interplay made a name for itself as a quality developer of role-playing video games with the three-part series The Bard's Tale (1985–1988), critically acclaimed Wasteland (1988) and Dragon Wars (1989). All of them were published by Electronic Arts.

Interplay started publishing its own games, starting with Neuromancer and Battle Chess, in 1988, and then moved on to publish and distribute games from other companies, while continuing internal game development. In 1995, Interplay published the hit game Descent, developed by startup Parallax Software. Interplay published several Star Trek video games, including Star Trek: 25th Anniversary for computers and for Nintendo and Star Trek: Judgment Rites. These games had later CD-ROM editions released with the original Star Trek cast providing voices. Interplay also published Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy games, and Starfleet Command series, beginning with Star Trek: Starfleet Command. Another game, Star Trek: Secret of Vulcan Fury, was in development in the late 1990s but was never completed and much of its staff laid off due to budgetary cuts prompted by various factors. In 1995, after several years of delays, Interplay finally published its role-playing game Stonekeep. Other PC games released during the mid-to-late 90s games included Carmageddon, Fragile Allegiance, Hardwar and Redneck Rampage.

In 1997, Interplay developed and released Fallout, a successful and critically acclaimed role-playing video game set in a retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic setting. Black Isle Studios, a newly created in-house developer, followed with the sequel, Fallout 2, in 1998. Another successful subsequent Interplay franchise was Baldur's Gate, a Dungeons & Dragons game that was developed by BioWare and which spawned a successful expansion, sequel and spin-off series. The spin-off series started with Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance; the game's success forged a sequel as well. Aside from Dark Alliance, Interplay published a few notable console series such as Loaded and the fighting game series ClayFighter and the games by Shiny Entertainment, Murder Death Kill and Wild 9. Its successful Black Isle-made games included Planescape: Torment and the Icewind Dale series.

Interplay went public, with shares sold on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange, in 1998, changing its name to Interplay Entertainment Corp. The company then reported several years of losses, as titles such as Descent 3 and FreeSpace 2 had lackluster sales, despite being critically acclaimed Interplay's shares were delisted from the NASDAQ in 2002 due to the company's low share price.

In 2001, French publisher Titus Interactive completed its acquisition of majority control of Interplay. Immediately afterwards, they shed most of its publisher functions and signed a long-term agreement by which Vivendi Universal would publish Interplay's games. Interplay founder Brian Fargo eventually departed as Titus had changed Interplay's main focus from PC gaming to console gaming. However, Titus went through financial and legal difficulties, culminating in a close of business in 2005 after unsuccessfully trying to sell Interplay. Titus left many of its employees, both local and the international wholly owned developers, without redundancy or owed back-pay, and left creditors with large debts. Titus CEO Herve Caen then assumed the same capacity at Interplay. On December 8, 2003, Interplay laid off the entire Black Isle Studios staff.

Following the release of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II, Interplay reportedly shut down its operations, licensing the rights to create three Fallout games to Bethesda Softworks. However, in 2005 Interplay reemerged, only to cancel Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance III, as well as their MMO-RTS game Ballerium, which was in development by Majorem. Interplay was threatened with bankruptcy and sold the full Fallout franchise to Bethesda, but kept the rights to the Fallout MMO through a back license in April 2007 and began work on the MMO later that year.

In 2008, Interplay published Earthworm Jim for re-release on the Wii Virtual Console and announced that in collaboration with Masthead Studios they would continue work on Fallout Online. Interplay also licensed out to Gameloft the rights to create Earthworm Jim HD. In 2010, Interplay launched its own program to publish indie development games, Interplay Discovery, through Discovery they launched their first game in years, Pinball Yeah!, which was followed by Tommy Tronic. Interplay then re-released Prehistorik Man on to the DSiWare being their first direct game on the Nintendo DS, as Earthworm Jim HD was developed and published by Gameloft. Interplay's second DSiWare game was a similarly themed dinosaur game, Legendary Wars: T-Rex Rumble. In 2011, Interplay released MDK2 HD. Continuing their Discovery program, Interplay released Death and the Fly and Homesteader, ported Legendary Wars: T-Rex Rumble from the DS to the iPhone and iPad, and released another Discovery title, Crazy Cats Love. In 2012, Interplay Discovery ported Crazy Cats Love on to the OnLive system while releasing Stonekeep: Bones of the Ancients on the Nintendo WiiWare.

Following the cancellation of Fallout Online in 2011, Interplay listed PV13 for an unknown release date on their website. In 2012, to help promote their upcoming release of Battle Chess, Interplay launched its Facebook and Twitter accounts. Interplay then revealed financial issues occurring at Subdued Software which would require crowd funding via Kickstarter for the multiplayer aspects of the game; the Battle Chess funding was unsuccessful leaving the future of the game in doubt. Soon after, though, Interplay announced the re-release of MDK2 HD on Steam; it was re-released on July 30, 2012. Soon after Interplay announced the relaunch of Black Isle Studios and launched a website and Facebook and Twitter accounts for the resurrected studio.