BioWare is a Canadian video game developer based in Edmonton, Alberta. It was founded in 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk, alongside Trent Oster, Brent Oster, Marcel Zeschuk and Augustine Yip. As of 2007, the company is owned by American publisher Electronic Arts.
Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited, and in 1999 became a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media. In its first fifteen years, it was a video game developer and self-published its titles. In 2001, Bethesda spun off its own in-house development team into Bethesda Game Studios, and Bethesda Softworks retained only its publishing function. As such, Bethesda Softworks acts as the publisher for all games developed by ZeniMax's development studios.
Fallout is a series of post-apocalyptic role-playing video games created by Interplay Entertainment. The series is set during the 22nd and 23rd centuries, and its atompunk retrofuturistic setting and art work are influenced by the post-war culture of 1950s United States, with its combination of hope for the promises of technology and the lurking fear of nuclear annihilation. A forerunner for Fallout is Wasteland, a 1988 game developed by Interplay Productions to which the series is regarded as a spiritual successor.
Interplay Entertainment Corp. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Los Angeles. The company was founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by developers Brian Fargo, Jay Patel, Troy Worrell, and Rebecca Heineman, as well as investor Chris Wells. As a developer, Interplay is best known as the creator of the Fallout series and as a publisher for the Baldur's Gate and Descent series.
Troika Games was an American video game developer co-founded by Jason Anderson, Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky. The company was focused on role-playing video games between 1998 and 2005, best known for Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.
Frank Brian Fargo is an American video game designer, producer, programmer and executive, and founder of Interplay Entertainment, inXile Entertainment and Robot Cache.
Black Isle Studios was a division of the developer and publisher Interplay Entertainment that developed role-playing video games. It published several games from other developers.
Chris Avellone is an American video game designer and comic book writer. Avellone worked for Interplay and Obsidian Entertainment before working as a freelancer. He is best known for his work on role-playing video games such as Planescape: Torment and the Fallout series.
Obsidian Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Irvine, California. It was founded in June 2003, shortly before the closure of Black Isle Studios, by ex-Black Isle employees Feargus Urquhart, Chris Avellone, Chris Parker, Darren Monahan, and Chris Jones.
Feargus Urquhart is a Scottish video game designer and CEO of Obsidian Entertainment.
Josh Sawyer, is an American video game designer, known for his work on role-playing video games.
Leonard Boyarsky is an American computer game designer and visual artist. He is one of the key designers of the video games Fallout and Diablo III.
Van Buren was the codename given to what would have been Fallout 3, a role-playing video game that was being developed by Black Isle Studios before the parent company, Interplay Entertainment went bankrupt. This resulted in the company shutting down Black Isle, which in turn laid off the PC development team on December 8, 2003, effectively cancelling the game.
Darren Monahan is Chief Information Officer and producer of Obsidian Entertainment and one of Obsidian's founders.
Tim Cain is an American video game developer best known as the creator, producer, lead programmer and one of the main designers of the 1997 computer game Fallout. In 2009 he was chosen by IGN as one of the top 100 game creators of all time.
Jason D. Anderson, usually credited as Jason Anderson, is a video game developer. He started out as a contract artist for Interplay on the USCF Chess project. He was later hired to work on Fallout for which he became Lead Technical Artist, working on the original game design, interface, and quests. After working on the prototype design for Fallout 2, Anderson left with fellow developers Timothy Cain and Leonard Boyarsky to found Troika Games. After Troika Games collapsed, Anderson left the game industry for a short time to sell real estate.
Snowblind Studios was an American video game developer located in Kirkland, Washington. They were founded in 1997, specializing in role-playing video games. In 2009, Snowblind Studios was acquired by Time Warner, through its Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment division. In 2010, the studio was physically relocated to Monolith. After the release of The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, the team was merged in with Monolith Productions to develop Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, which was released in September 30, 2014.
Patrick Wyatt is a game programmer and one of the three co-founders of ArenaNet. He was the leader of the Network and Technology teams and a programmer for Guild Wars. Before the founding of ArenaNet, he was working in Blizzard Entertainment where he was the Vice President of Research and Development and a senior programmer. Wyatt was the leader of Battle.net gaming network's programming and a major contributor on the multiplayer parts of Blizzard's popular games including StarCraft, Diablo and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness. Having been in Blizzard for more than eight years, his work also includes earlier Blizzard games like Lost Vikings and Rock N' Roll Racing.
Western role-playing video games are role-playing video games developed in the Western world, including The Americas and Europe. They originated on mainframe university computer systems in the 1970s, were later popularized by titles such as Ultima and Wizardry in the early- to mid-1980s, and continue to be produced for modern home computer and video game console systems. The genre's "Golden Age" occurred in the mid- to late-1980s, and its popularity suffered a downturn in the mid-1990s as developers struggled to keep up with hardware changes and increasing development costs. A later series of isometric role-playing games, published by Interplay Productions and Blizzard Entertainment, was developed over a longer time period and set new standards of production quality.
