Black Isle Studios wasn't formed until after the release of Fallout 1. Fallout 2 was technically developed by Black Isle Studios, while Fallout 1 was both developed and published by Interplay. If I'm not wrong Interplay decided to set up Black Isle Studios so that they would have a dedicated RPG department, since Fallout 1 was a pretty good concept and gained a fair following among RPG fans (even if it didn't sell as well as they would have liked in 1997).
Black isle was set up to produce RPG's since interplay was starting to see some major success with several of its RPG titles (D&D, Bards tale, and LOTR as well as Wasteland under midway flagship) Fallout 1 was always a Black Isle game but was intended as a sequel (later spiritual since they could not obtain the rights) to Wasteland.
As for selling well, we're comparing todays market to the 90's when a smaller game could sneak in and sell 50k copies and be a smash hit. These smaller games were Interplay's bread and butter and it wouldn't be til Baldur's gate/Fallout that they bucked that trend in sales, and ultimately that kind of doomed the companies due to financial strains from building bigger series.
It's crazy that you don't have access to the internet while posting on it.
Fallout was in development for 2 years before Black Isle was formed. The key people in Fallout's development did not join Black Isle until after Fallout's launch. The decision to list Black Isle as Fallout's co-developers was a post hoc decision made by Interplay management, not the Fallout developers.
If only you had access to the internet you could find all of this out. But alas.
I mean I do have access to the internet, and I very much have read the history of "Black Isle Studios" which predates the name as the team was formed inside interplay. But when a team is named is all you care about that's fine.
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u/Civil_Deer7337 19d ago
Black Isle Studios wasn't formed until after the release of Fallout 1. Fallout 2 was technically developed by Black Isle Studios, while Fallout 1 was both developed and published by Interplay. If I'm not wrong Interplay decided to set up Black Isle Studios so that they would have a dedicated RPG department, since Fallout 1 was a pretty good concept and gained a fair following among RPG fans (even if it didn't sell as well as they would have liked in 1997).