Interplay Entertainment | Code Like It's 198x

In 1988 Brian Fargo had a hit series, a post-nuclear role-playing game just out and no publisher of his own. His company, Interplay Productions, had written adventures for Activision and The Bard’s Tale and Wasteland for Electronic Arts, and other people’s labels were on the boxes. That year it declared itself an independent publisher, and its first game under its own name was a chess program in which the pieces fought each other. Ten years later Interplay was selling Fallout and Baldur’s Gate, two of the games credited with bringing the computer role-playing game back from the dead. Five years after that its offices were closed by state officials over unpaid wages.

Fast facts

Founded: 1983, by Brian Fargo, in Irvine, California, as Interplay Productions; Interplay Entertainment from 1998.
Early games: text-and-graphics adventures such as Mindshadow and Borrowed Time for Activision; The Bard’s Tale (1985) and Wasteland (1988) for Electronic Arts.
As publisher, from 1988: Battle Chess, Neuromancer, Dragon Wars, The Lost Vikings, Descent, MDK, Fallout, and, under its Black Isle Studios label, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale.
Owners: public from 1998; controlled by Titus Interactive from 2001.
Founder’s exit: Fargo left in 2002 and founded inXile Entertainment.

Adventures for other people

Fargo’s first game, the text adventure Demon’s Forge, came out before Interplay existed. The One reported in 1989 that he founded the company in November 1983; he was 25 when that article appeared. Interplay began, as the Australian Commodore and Amiga Review put it in a 1992 profile, by building “on Fargo’s adventuring roots”: Mindshadow, Borrowed Time and Tass Times in Tonetown, adventures with pictures and a parser, all released under the Activision label. Interplay was early to the Amiga, with versions of Borrowed Time and Tass Times.

Then Michael Cranford wrote The Bard’s Tale (1985), a dungeon game in the style of Wizardry in which the bard’s songs worked as spells. Electronic Arts published it, and the series ran to three games and a construction set; by 1992 the three games had sold, the same profile said, “over half a million copies”. Interplay turned from adventures to role-playing games, and its next was Wasteland (1988), set in the American south-west after a nuclear war, which the review called “another huge success both critically and commercially”.

Publishing its own games

In 1988 Interplay left Electronic Arts’ distribution and joined Activision’s affiliated publishers. Computer Gaming World reported in April 1988 that its first project under the deal would be a role-playing game based on William Gibson’s Neuromancer, with a soundtrack by Devo. The first game out under Interplay’s own name was Battle Chess (1988), whose pieces walked across the board and fought when they took each other, and which became, the same profile said, “another major seller”. Neuromancer followed, produced by Fargo, and in 1989 Dragon Wars, a role-playing game Fargo described to Zzap!64 as “our best ever, definitely”.

Interplay also published other developers’ work. It brought Delphine Software’s French adventures to America, among them Future Wars and Another World, which Interplay renamed Out of This World. It published The Lost Vikings (1993) by Silicon & Synapse, the studio that became Blizzard, and Descent (1995) by Parallax Software, a 3D shooter in which the player’s ship could move in any direction, not just along a floor. Computer Gaming World thought Descent “the first look at what the next generation of 3D action titles will be like”. Interplay bought David Perry’s Shiny Entertainment, the makers of Earthworm Jim, and published Shiny’s MDK (1997). Edge thought the purchase had “gained it a lot more kudos”.

The role-playing years

Interplay returned to the post-nuclear wasteland with Fallout (1997), developed and published by Interplay itself after about three years of work. In 1996 Interplay had split its development into divisions, among them Black Isle Studios, set up under Feargus Urquhart to make “RPGs and only RPGs”. Black Isle’s name went on Fallout 2 (1998), on BioWare’s Baldur’s Gate (1998), which Interplay published under the label and which sold more than a million copies, and on the division’s own Planescape: Torment (1999) and Icewind Dale (2000). “Remember when everyone said that RPGs are dead?” Computer Gaming World asked in 1999; after Baldur’s Gate, it said, the genre was “hotter than ever” (see Western RPG).

Titus

The role-playing games sold, but Interplay lost money. It went public in 1998, when Computer Gaming World found its share offering meeting “less initial excitement” than hoped. In 1999 it joined its European distribution with Virgin Interactive’s, taking a stake of about 44% in Virgin, and the French publisher Titus Interactive, best known for Titus the Fox and the Blues Brothers games, began buying into Interplay. Edge reported that Titus had paid $35 million, and Computer Gaming World complained about “the French invasion”.

In August 2001, Computer Gaming World reported, Titus “wrested control of Interplay”, taking its stake to 51% by converting a $20 million loan into shares. Interplay had just lost $12.4 million in a quarter, laid off 60 staff and cancelled the role-playing game Torn, and its games would now be published in America by Vivendi Universal. Fargo left in 2002. Eric Caen, a founder of Titus who later ran Interplay, told Edge that Fargo “wasn’t good at managing budgets, but he was the spirit of the company”. In 2002 Interplay sold Shiny to Infogrames for $47 million; in December 2003 it laid off the whole of Black Isle, while the division was working on a third Fallout.

In June 2004 Interplay’s Irvine headquarters were closed. Computer Gaming World reported that California state officials had acted on complaints from unpaid employees and found the company had no workers’ compensation insurance, and that Interplay also faced back taxes and lawsuits, among them a claim by BioWare for $156,000 in Baldur’s Gate royalties. The magazine reported that on the same day Titus declared bankruptcy.

Fallout goes to Bethesda

Later that year Bethesda Softworks won the right to make Fallout 3, and in 2007 it bought the series outright. In 2009 it went to court to stop Interplay making an online Fallout game. Interplay’s side was put by Eric Caen, then its president, in Edge in 2010. In his account, Bethesda had left Interplay a licence to make the online game on conditions it expected Interplay could not meet, and in 2009 sent a termination letter “saying: ‘You did not fulfil your obligation.’ But Interplay did. So all the litigation is about that.” The companies settled in January 2012. As Kotaku reported the terms, ZeniMax, Bethesda’s parent, paid Interplay $2 million, each side met its own legal costs, Interplay gave up its licence for the online game, so Fallout Online was abandoned, and it could sell the original Fallout, Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics until the end of 2013.

Later history

Interplay carried on as a small company living on its catalogue. In 2010 Caen described it as sitting on “a pile of IPs”, from Earthworm Jim to MDK, and planned to license them to other developers. In 2012 it revived the Black Isle name for a crowdfunded role-playing game, Project V13, which did not raise enough to be made, and in 2021 it re-released Black Isle’s Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance on modern consoles and the PC.

Its people went elsewhere. Urquhart and other Black Isle staff founded Obsidian Entertainment in 2003, and Fallout’s designers had already left to found Troika Games. Fargo’s new company, inXile Entertainment, made a new The Bard’s Tale in 2004, and in 2012 went to Kickstarter for a sequel to Wasteland. Fargo asked for $900,000 and raised $2,933,252 from players (see CRPG renaissance).

Sources

The One issue 5, February 1989, p. 95: Neuromancer preview (Interplay “founded back in November 1983 by Brian Fargo”; Fargo, 25, president; Troy Miles; Devo).
Australian Commodore and Amiga Review vol. 9 no. 3, March 1992, p. 72: Interplay at ten years (Demon’s Forge; the Activision adventures; the Amiga versions; The Bard’s Tale, Cranford and “over half a million copies”; Wasteland; the move from EA to Activision and independence in 1988; Battle Chess, Neuromancer, Dragon Wars; Delphine’s games and Out of This World).
Computer Gaming World issue 46, April 1988, p. 8: “‘The Bard’s Tale’ Developers Affiliate with Activision” (Neuromancer the first project).
Zzap!64 issue 56, December 1989, p. 18: Stuart Wynne’s interview with Brian Fargo on Dragon Wars and going independent.
Amiga Power issue 27, July 1993, p. 28: The Lost Vikings, Interplay and Silicon & Synapse.
Computer Gaming World issue 131, June 1995, p. 106: Descent (Interplay; designer Parallax).
Edge issue 39, December 1996, p. 12: “Interplay’s purchase of Shiny”.
Computer Gaming World issue 196, November 2000: Feargus Urquhart on Black Isle’s founding in 1996.
Computer Gaming World issue 182, September 1999, p. 32 and previews: “Remember when everyone said that RPGs are dead?”; “Titus invests big in Interplay”.
Computer Gaming World issue 169, August 1998, p. 34: Interplay’s initial public offering.
PC Zone issue 75, April 1999, p. 33: Interplay and Virgin merge their distribution.
Edge issue 73, July 1999, p. 13: Titus’s $35 million stake; Interplay’s 44% of Virgin.
Computer Gaming World issue 208, November 2001, p. 47: “Titus Takes Over Interplay” (51%; the $20 million loan; Vivendi Universal; the losses, layoffs and Torn).
Edge issue 214, May 2010, p. 16: Fargo left Interplay in 2002.
Edge issue 221, December 2010, pp. 74–77: interview with Eric Caen (Fargo; Titus; the sale of Fallout to Bethesda and the dispute over Fallout Online; Interplay’s catalogue).
Retro Gamer issue 111, February 2013, p. 42: Shiny sold for $47 million.
Computer Gaming World issue 236, March 2004, p. 34: Black Isle laid off.
Computer Gaming World issue 242, September 2004, p. 15: “Interplay-ed Out” (the closure in Irvine; BioWare’s claim; Titus’s bankruptcy; Hervé Caen as chief executive).
Computer Gaming World issue 243, October 2004, p. 30: Bethesda to make Fallout 3.
Edge issue 137, June 2004, p. 46: Fargo, inXile and the new The Bard’s Tale.
Edge issue 252, April 2013, p. 115: Fargo founded Interplay in 1983; Fallout; the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter ($2,933,252).
Retro Gamer issue 103, June 2012, p. 8: Wasteland 2’s $900,000 target and $2,933,252 raised.
Wikipedia, “Interplay Entertainment” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): founding in October 1983 in Irvine; Fargo’s resignation on 24 January 2002; the sale of Shiny to Infogrames in April 2002; the sale of Fallout to Bethesda in 2007; Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance re-released in 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplay_Entertainment
Mike Fahey, “The Great Fallout Legal Battle Ends Without a Fallout MMO”, Kotaku, 9 January 2012 (web, secondary): the settlement terms ($2 million from ZeniMax to Interplay, own legal fees, the MMO licence ended, sales of the first three games until 31 December 2013). https://kotaku.com/the-great-fallout-legal-battle-ends-without-a-fallout-m-5874561
Wikipedia, “Fallout Online” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): Bethesda’s suit in 2009 and the settlement of January 2012 cancelling Fallout Online, and the $2 million payment, citing IGN (9 January 2012) and Kotaku. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallout_Online
See the Black Isle Studios entry for the closure of the division and the 2012 revival of its name.