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Troika Games

Fallout's makers on their own, 1998–2005

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Troika Games was founded in April 1998 by three of Fallout's makers, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson, after they left Interplay. In seven years it made three role-playing games for three different publishers: Arcanum (Sierra, 2001), The Temple of Elemental Evil (Atari, 2003) and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (Activision, 2004). Each found admirers among critics, and each was criticised for its bugs. Troika could not find a publisher for a fourth game and closed early in 2005; its founders went on to Blizzard, Obsidian and inXile.

Troika Games lasted seven years and made three role-playing games, each for a different publisher. Each found admirers among critics, and each shipped with serious bugs. The studio was founded in 1998 by three of the people who had made Interplay’s Fallout, and it built its games the way Fallout had been built: big worlds, many ways through every problem, and characters who could talk, sneak or fight their way to the end. What it never managed was a hit. Early in 2005, unable to find a publisher for its fourth game, it closed.

Fast facts

Leaving Interplay

Cain had led Fallout as its producer and lead programmer; Boyarsky and Anderson had worked on its art and design. Early in 1998, as work on Fallout 2 was starting, the three left Interplay. Boyarsky later told The Escapist that Interplay “had been a great place to work, and we felt that it was losing a lot of what we felt was great about it”. Anderson said they “were unable to come to an agreement with Interplay as to how our next team should be structured”. Sierra’s newsletter InterAction recorded that Troika Games LLC was founded in April 1998.

For months there was no game to make, only a search for someone to pay for one. “Over the course of six months I looked at a lot of different publishers,” Cain told InterAction. “I went with Sierra Studios for one reason—trust.” According to The Escapist, the Sierra contract let Troika grow to a team of 12.

Arcanum

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (2001) put a fantasy world in the middle of an industrial revolution. Elves and wizards shared it with steam engines, railways and pistols, and a character who leaned towards technology found magic harder to use, and the other way round. PC Zone called it “Jules Verne meets JRR Tolkien”. Computer Gaming World’s preview saw the Fallout team’s hand at once, from the view from above to the row of action-point bubbles in turn-based fights.

The reviews were mixed. Edge found the steampunk setting “a refreshing change”, but thought the game had missed how far Baldur’s Gate and Planescape: Torment had raised the bar, and complained about its “sprawling” rules, its awkward inventory and its fights. PC Gamer in America liked it enough to name it the best role-playing game of 2001.

The Temple of Elemental Evil

Troika’s second game, for Atari, adapted a famous Dungeons & Dragons adventure module, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and used the tabletop game’s then-current 3.5 edition rules. The player built a whole party of first-level characters and led it through the village of Hommlet and down into a huge dungeon, in fights that were turn-based. Australia’s Hyper thought Troika had done “an exceptionally great job with the character creation, levelling up, and the deep, deep strategic combat”, but found little else in the game to do.

The bugs overshadowed everything else. Computer Gaming World’s Jeff Green called Troika’s team “hardcore RPG fanatics” whose “dedication shows”, then described “innumerable game-stopping crashes” on two different PCs and broken pathfinding that left party members “hopelessly stranded”. A patch made by fans had not fixed the crashes. “With just a little more time and care, Temple of Elemental Evil could have been great,” he wrote, and called it “yet another poster child” for publishers that release games before they are finished.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines

For Activision, Troika made a game in the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop setting, built on Valve’s new Source engine, the technology behind Half-Life 2. It was, PC Gamer noted, Troika’s first first-person role-playing game. The player was a newly made vampire in a night-time Los Angeles, bound by the “masquerade”, the rule that vampires hide what they are from humans. According to The Escapist, Troika worked with a prototype of the engine, and Activision, “fearing their license was in jeopardy”, advanced it more money in 2003. The game came out on 16 November 2004, the same day as Half-Life 2.

Computer Gaming World’s Robert Coffey loved the world it built, “a nightmarish hell lurking just beneath the seedy surface of nighttime Los Angeles”, and its character building. He also found “so many rough edges you could use the CDs as saw blades”: loading times of close to two minutes, frame rates that could fall to about one a second, and enemies running on the spot. His verdict was that it “might go from ‘really good’ to ‘great’ once they patch it”. Troika’s last patch for Bloodlines, The Escapist noted, was the last code the studio ever released. Its players kept it alive: Wireframe wrote in 2020 that the game “withers on the vine, but lives on through community support and intense fandom”.

Closing down

By then Troika was running out of work. In 2005 Boyarsky told Hyper that the studio had a new post-apocalyptic role-playing game, isometric and with a new 3D engine, but no publisher, because publishers were “looking for successful titles in terms of sales and not just positive reviews”. “Being original is risky,” he said. Before the article went to print, Troika had closed. The Escapist reported that two rounds of layoffs had left only the founders by the start of 2005, and that the company shut in February. Anderson’s explanation was blunt: “Publishers aren’t interested in games from developers that consistently turn out B titles.”

After Troika

The founders stayed in role-playing games.

  • Tim Cain became design director on the online game WildStar at Carbine Studios, joined Obsidian Entertainment in 2011 and co-directed The Outer Worlds (2019) with Boyarsky. The Tim Cain entry follows his career.
  • Leonard Boyarsky went to Blizzard, where Edge interviewed him in 2012 as world designer on Diablo III. He left for Obsidian in April 2016.
  • Jason Anderson returned briefly to Interplay, then joined Brian Fargo’s inXile Entertainment as creative director in March 2009, and sat beside Fargo when publishers turned down the idea of a new Wasteland. He later rejoined inXile, and in 2023 was named principal designer of its steampunk role-playing game Clockwork Revolution, in the announcement, as one of the makers of Arcanum.

Bloodlines also got its sequel in the end. Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2, made by other studios, came out in October 2025.

Sources

  • InterAction (Sierra), Spring 1999, p. 20: Sierra to publish Troika’s first game; Troika Games LLC founded in April 1998; Cain’s quotes on the publisher search.
  • Joe Blancato, “The Rise and Fall of Troika”, The Escapist, 26 December 2006 (web, secondary): Boyarsky and Anderson on leaving Interplay; a team of 12 for Arcanum; the Source prototype; Activision’s advance in 2003 and the 16 November release; the last patch; the layoffs, closure in February 2005 and Anderson’s “B titles”. https://www.escapistmagazine.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-troika/
  • PC Zone issue 89, May 2000, p. 57: Arcanum preview (“Jules Verne meets JRR Tolkien”).
  • Computer Gaming World issue 203, June 2001, pp. 60–62: Arcanum preview.
  • Edge issue 101, September 2001, p. 71: Arcanum review (PC; publisher Sierra, developer Troika Games).
  • PC Gamer (US) issue 120, February 2004, p. 22: Bloodlines preview (“the makers of Arcanum, our pick for the Best RPG of 2001”; the Source engine; Boyarsky as Troika’s joint chief executive and producer).
  • Jeff Green, The Temple of Elemental Evil review, Computer Gaming World issue 234, January 2004, p. 124: publisher Atari, developer Troika; the party, Hommlet and the dungeon; the crashes and the fan patch.
  • Eliot Fish, The Temple of Elemental Evil review, Hyper issue 122, December 2003, p. 66: the 3.5 edition rules and the combat.
  • Robert Coffey, Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines review, Computer Gaming World issue 248, February 2005, pp. 82–83.
  • Valve, Half-Life 2 store page, Steam (web): release date 16 November 2004. https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/
  • Hyper issue 139, May 2005, p. 41, Fallout retrospective: Boyarsky on Troika’s unpublished game and the closure.
  • Retro Gamer issue 112, March 2013, p. 13: Troika “closes its doors for the final time after going bust”.
  • Wireframe issue 35, March 2020, p. 10: Bloodlines 2 interview (“lives on through community support”).
  • “Troika Games”, Wikipedia (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): founding on 1 April 1998 in Irvine, California; closure on 24 February 2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troika_Games
  • Edge issue 242, July 2012, p. 101: interview with Leonard Boyarsky, world designer on Diablo III.
  • Chris Kerr, “Diablo III designer and Fallout art director Leonard Boyarsky joins Obsidian”, Game Developer, 13 April 2016 (web, secondary). https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/-i-diablo-iii-i-designer-and-i-fallout-i-art-director-leonard-boyarsky-joins-obsidian
  • “Jason D. Anderson”, Wikipedia (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary), citing Game Banshee (2 December 2007): Anderson’s return to Interplay in 2007. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_D._Anderson
  • “Interview: Fallout Co-Creator Jason Anderson Discusses New inXile Post”, Game Developer (then Gamasutra), March 2009 (web, secondary). https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/interview-i-fallout-i-co-creator-jason-anderson-discusses-new-inxile-post
  • Edge issue 252, April 2013, p. 114: Fargo’s publisher meeting “with a co-creator of Fallout, Jason Anderson”.
  • inXile Entertainment, “Clockwork Revolution: Diving Deeper Into inXile’s Time-Bending Reveal Trailer”, Xbox Wire, 11 June 2023 (web): Anderson as principal designer. https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2023/06/11/clockwork-revolution-trailer-deep-dive/
  • Wikipedia, “Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): developed by Hardsuit Labs, then The Chinese Room; released on 21 October 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade_%E2%80%93_Bloodlines_2
  • See the Tim Cain entry for his career at Interplay, Carbine and Obsidian and its sources.

See also

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