|
Black Isle Studios was a division of the computer and video game developer and publisher Interplay Entertainment, created specifically for the development of computer role-playing games. It was based in Orange County, California, USA.• The division was formed during 1996, adopting the name "Black Isle Studios" during 1998.• The idea for the division's name came from the Black Isle in Scotland - founder Feargus Urquhart's native country.• Black Isle Studios is most famous for working on the Fallout and Baldur's Gate series of computer role-playing games, though it only published the Baldur's Gate series. On December 8, 2003, in the midst of serious financial difficulties, Interplay laid off the entire Black Isle Studios staff.• As of 2005, Interplay has neither explained the move nor clarified what the future holds for Black Isle Studios, but considering the fact that Interplay itself is now a company in serious financial straits, the future of Black Isle is grim indeed. Many former Black Isle Studios employees now work at Obsidian Entertainment, a video game development company.•
Products In addition to games developed in-house, Black Isle Studios has aided in the development of several computer role-playing games published by Interplay; the most notable being the ''Baldur's Gate'' series for Windows and Mac OS, and for PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube. Because Black Isle Studios is the role-playing game developer which published the Baldur's Gate series, many people mistakenly believe that Black Isle Studios developed the Baldur's Gate series. This is false; the Baldur's Gate series was developed by BioWare, a company that is sometimes erroneously credited with developing the ''Icewind Dale'' series. Project code names The studio used to code-name its projects after U.S. presidents and vice-presidents. The system was reportedly created by Josh Sawyer (aka JE Sawyer), who joined the company in 1999. A list of some BIS projects with their code names: Notes | |||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
| |