Troika Games

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.

History

File:Fallout 20 year reunion dinner.jpg

Troika founders Leonard Boyarsky, Tim Cain, and Jason Anderson in 2017

In 1997, Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, and Jason Anderson worked on the Fallout sequel at Interplay. Finishing the initial design for Fallout 2, they were unable to come to an agreement with Interplay about the future team structure. They formed their new company, called Troika Games (a Russian word "Тройка" meaning "three of a kind") since they were the three key developers behind the critically acclaimed Fallout,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> on April 1, 1998. They initially planned to do games exclusively for one publisher (Sierra Entertainment), but a different company published each game.<ref name=troikacite1>Template:Cite web</ref> After being unable to secure funding for future projects, they were forced to lay off their staff in late 2004 and later closed their doors on February 24, 2005.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Games

In 1998, Troika started designing a steampunk fantasy crossover role-playing video game named Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura and convinced Sierra Entertainment to publish it. The game was launched on August 21, 2001. While criticized for being unpolished and having a bad combat engine, it received generally favorable reviews, averaging 81% on Metacritic.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> With 234,000 units sold, it is Troika's best-selling game. In 2016 it was released on Steam, where as of March 2017, it has over 200,000 owners.<ref>Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura on Steamspy.com</ref>

After Arcanum was released in 2001, two teams started to work on two different games. One team created The Temple of Elemental Evil for publisher Atari which was released on September 26, 2003. It was lauded for the good implementation of the D&D 3.5 system, but overall it got mixed reviews due to gameplay bugs and a lack of a plot. With a 71% on Metacritic, it was the lowest-rated Troika game.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It sold about 128,000 units.<ref name="gamebanshee1">Template:Cite web</ref>

The other team worked for Activision on Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Using an early version of the Source engine, development was finished in October 2004. Due to contractual obligations with Valve, Activision was not allowed to release the game before Valve released Half-Life 2, scheduled for release in November 2004. Troika Games used the interim period to code a patch into the main program. Bloodlines was released on November 16, 2004 (the same day as Half-Life 2). Critics praised BloodlinesTemplate:' visuals, audio, and story but warned of bugs. It got a rating of 80% on Metacritic<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and sold merely 72,000 units on its original release. With the addition of the game to the digital distributors Direct2Drive and Steam in 2016, many units were sold digitally.<ref name="gamebanshee1"/> As of March 2017, approximately 550,000 people own the game on Steam.<ref>Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines on Steamspy.com</ref>

In 2004, Troika tried to find a publisher for an unnamed post-apocalyptic role-playing video game but was unsuccessful, leading to rumors in January 2005 that the company had already shut down.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Screenshots of the unnamed game were posted in 2004 to the Fallout fan sites "No Mutants Allowed" and "Duck and Cover". A tech demo video was released in early 2005, weeks before closing.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Tim Cain later confirmed that this was supposed to be a sequel to Fallout: "Leonard pursued Fallout 3, which ultimately went to Bethesda, who outbid us."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

List of games

Year	Title	Publisher	Platform
2001	Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura	Sierra On-Line	Microsoft Windows
2003	The Temple of Elemental Evil	Atari
2004	Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines	Activision

External links

• Official website via Internet Archive
• Troika Games profile on MobyGames
• The Escapist - The Rise and Fall of Troika