Black Isle Studios was a division of the developer and publisherInterplay Entertainment that developed role-playing video games. It published several games from other developers. Black Isle was based in Irvine, California. The division was formed in 1996, adopting the name "Black Isle Studios" in 1998. The idea for the division's name came from the Black Isle in Scotland - founder Feargus Urquhart's ancestral country. Black Isle Studios is most famous for working on the first two games in Fallout series as well as the critically acclaimed . They achieved success with the Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate series of role-playing video games, though they only published the Baldur's Gate series. In 1999, IGN's RPG Vault gave it the award for a Developer of the Year. The company was closed in late 2003, when Interplay went bankrupt. Interplay revived the Black Isle name in August 2012 with the intention of producing new role-playing games under that label. Black Isle ceased to exist once more, without having produced any new games, when Interplay sold off all of its video game assets and intellectual property in 2016.
History
Created in 1996 by Feargus Urquhart, the studio was named Black Isle after Urquhart's homeland. The studio, although credited for the creation of Fallout was, in fact, not responsible for the game. Rather a key portion of the original studio came from the team that made Fallout. When developing Fallout 2, the studio's first official game, several employees left Interplay to form Troika Games after they "were unable to come to an agreement with Interplay as to how next team should be structured." The remaining team would go on to release such critically acclaimed games as Fallout 2, ', Icewind Dale and produce the critically acclaimed Baldur's Gate and ' in conjunction with BioWare. In the years leading to the closure of Black Isle, Interplay's financial difficulties would worsen, leading for the team to cancel anticipated games as Black Isle's Torn and Stonekeep 2: Godmaker, releasing only Icewind Dale II, publishing ' and developing '. On December 8, 2003, in the midst of serious financial difficulties, Interplay laid off the entire Black Isle Studios staff, which also resulted in the cancellation of ', ' and the original Fallout 3. In 2012, Interplay had been trying for several years to get the troubled Project V13off the ground. Originally conceived as an massively multiplayer online game set in the world of Fallout, the project suffered a significant setback when Interplay lost all rights to use the Fallout brand. As part of their efforts to restart the project anew, Interplay revived Black Isle Studios with two of its original team members and began a crowdfunding campaign to fund a prototype in 2012. The campaign did not raise sufficient funds to develop a playable prototype, and communications from Interplay and Black Isle about the project had ceased completely by early 2014. By the end of 2015, the Black Isle website had been taken offline.
Games
Developed
Fallout
Fallout 2
'
Icewind Dale
'
'
Icewind Dale II
'
Published
Baldur's Gate
'
'
'
'
'
'
Compilations
Two compilations bearing their name were also released:
