game publisher . for other uses see interplay disambiguation . interplay entertainment by gamers for gamers type public traded as otc pink iply industry video games founded 1983 founder brian fargo troy worrell 1 jay patel 2 bill heineman 3 headquarters beverly hills los angeles california 4 united states key people herve caen chairman and ceo products baldur s gate series battle chess clayfighter series descent series earthworm jim series fallout series icewind dale series mdk series planescape torment stonekeep wasteland number of employees 10 january 2014 divisions black isle studios interplay discovery website www.interplay.com interplay entertainment corporation is an american video game developer and publisher founded in 1983 as interplay productions by brian fargo troy worrell jay patel and bill heineman . as a developer interplay is best known as the creator of the original fallout series and as a publisher for the baldur s gate and descent series . contents 1 history 1.1 interplay productions 1.2 interplay entertainment 1.3 disputes 1.4 kickstarters 1.5 2016 intellectual property sale 2 games 3 studios 4 references 5 external links history edit interplay productions edit the company was founded in october 1983 5 as interplay productions in southern california with brian fargo as ceo and programmers jay patel troy worrell and bill heineman all of who had previously worked with fargo at a small video game developer called boone corporation . 6 the first projects were non original and consisted of software conversions and even some military work for loral corporation . 5 after negotiations with activision interplay entered a us 100 000 contract to produce three illustrated text adventures for them . 5 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 . 7 these adventures built upon work previously done by fargo his first game was the 1981 published demon s forge . 5 8 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 . 9 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 1990s 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 mdk and wild 9 . interplay entertainment edit by 1998 the financial situation at interplay was dire and the company was in bankruptcy court . to avert bankruptcy interplay went public in order to raise capital and pay off debt . interplay was successful in its public offering and avoided bankruptcy . shares were sold on the nasdaq stock exchange and the interplay changed its name to interplay entertainment corp. interplay continued to endure losses under brian fargo due to increased competition less than stellar returns on interplay s sports division and the lack of console titles . this forced interplay to seek additional funding two years later with an investment from titus software a paris based game company . titus agreed to invest 25 million dollars in interplay and a few months later this was followed up by an additional 10 million investment . 10 despite releasing critically acclaimed games such as descent 3 and freespace 2 the company then reported several additional quarters of losses . by 2001 titus software completed its acquisition of majority control of interplay . immediately afterwards they shed most of interplays publisher functions and signed a long term agreement under which vivendi universal would publish interplay s games . interplay founder brian fargo eventually departed to found inxile entertainment as fargo s plan to change interplay s main focus from pc gaming to console gaming failed . 11 herve caen took over the role of ceo to perform triage and made several unpopular but arguably necessary decisions to cancel various projects in order to save the company . interplay then sold shiny entertainment and several game properties while closing bluesky software . due to a low share price interplay s shares were delisted from the nasdaq in 2002 and now trade on the over the counter otc market . 12 on december 8 2003 interplay laid off the entire black isle studios staff . 13 burdened with debt interplay faced bankruptcy again and was brought to bankruptcy court in 2006 . in order to pay off creditors the company altered its licensing agreement with bethesda software and then sold the fallout ip to bethesda softworks in 2007 . 14 15 interplay retained back licensing rights to fallout online and the rights to sell the original fallout games . interplay began development of fallout online in 2007 . following a lengthy lawsuit by bethesda softworks both sides agreed to a settlement where interplay would receive 2 million dollars and the rights to sell the original fallout games for a limited time . in september 2008 several games of interplay s catalogue were re released on the digital distribution service gog.com after being non available in retail distribution for years for instance descent descent 2 . 16 17 descent 1 and 2 were also released on steam in february 2014 . 18 19 in 2013 interplay acquired the remaining rights to the freespace franchise for 7 500 after thq went to bankruptcy court . 20 disputes edit in 2003 and 2004 snowblind studios and interplay entertainment were engaged in a dispute regarding the dark alliance engine for fallout brotherhood of steel baldur s gate dark alliance ii and the gamecube version of the original dark alliance . the dispute was resolved and interplay would be allowed to work with materials already using the dark alliance engine . for more details on the fallout lawsuits see fallout series . following the sale of fallout to bethesda softworks interplay was granted the rights to create a massively multiplayer online game based on the property under certain conditions . by april of 2009 interplay agreed to stop development on fallout online and pass on to bethesda the full rights in exchange for 2 additional million dollars while retaining the rights to sell and merchandise fallout fallout 2 fallout brotherhood of steel and fallout tactics . this agreement expired on december 31 2013 with bethesda now owning full merchandising capabilities of the aforementioned titles . 21 in 2010 topware interactive revealed that they were developing battle vs. chess to be published by southpeak games . interplay sued them and won an injunction to stop sales in the united states . in 2012 interplay won the case via default and a settlement for 200 000 plus interest was agreed upon on november 15 2012 but according to pacer 22 interplay has yet to collect . kickstarters edit following the victory over topware interplay began working on releasing a new version of battle chess for the pc . battle chess game of kings initially developed by subdued software marked interplay s first kickstarter with a goal of 100 000 . ultimately interplay failed to reach the goal and the project was placed on hiatus following the closure of subdued software . eventually after handing the project off to a different studio olde skuul the project was finished and released on steam . 23 interplay while also releasing the descent series to steam 24 25 26 27 28 then began to develop freespace tactics based on descent freespace . eventually creating another kickstarter to fund the project interplay once again failed and cancelled the crowd funding operation . 29 interplay s interest in the descent series eventually resulted in them licensing the name out to descendent studios . in march 2015 descendent studios launched a kickstarter campaign to make a descent prequel titled descent underground . on april 10 2015 descent underground s campaign finished successfully raising 601 773 on a goal of 600 000 ; this marked the first successful kickstarter for an interplay owned property . 30 2016 intellectual property sale edit on september 7 2016 a press release was published on nasdaq newswire reporting that interplay will be in the process of selling off their entire library of video game assets and intellectual property . this sale will include interplay s 70 titles and dozens of characters . interplay chose investment firm wedbush securities as strategic advisor for this sale . 31 games edit main article list of interplay games studios edit 14 degrees east 32 the strategy division of interplay located in beverly hills and founded in 1999 . 33 black isle studios in orange county california started in 1996 closed in 2003 due to financial problems . reopened nine years later in 2012 . bluesky software in california started in 1988 closed in 2001 . brainstorm 34 in irvine california . digital mayhem 35 an interplay development studio that ported giants citizen kabuto to the ps2 and developed run like hell . flatcat 36 interplay discovery a subdivision of interplay aimed at publishing games made by indie developers . interplay films a division of interplay entertainment was formed in 1998 and was supposed to develop seven of the company s most popular video game titles into movies including descent redneck rampage and fallout . its president was tom reed . interplay sports located in beverly hills was the internal sports division at interplay . the division was founded in 1995 as vr sports 37 but changed its name in 1998 . 38 macplay ported games to mac os from 1990 1997 . the brand was licensed to united developers llc in 2000 . shiny entertainment in laguna beach california founded in 1993 acquired in 1995 39 sold to atari in 2002 . it later merged with the collective inc. to form double helix games in 2007 . tantrum entertainment 40 references edit troy worrell s linkedin profile . list of founders . interview with rebecca . uspto entry for the descent game trademark 2008 a b c d rusel demaria johnny l. wilson high score . 2nd