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Brian Fargo
Brian Fargo during his keynote at the Game Developers Conference China 2011.
Born	Frank Brian Fargo December 15, 1962 (1962-12-15) (age 49)
Occupation	Game designer, producer

Brian Fargo (born December 15, 1962)^[1] is an American video game designer, developer, producer and executive probably best known for his company Interplay Entertainment.

Career Overview

Fargo started his career in the video game industry in 1982 and founded Interplay Productions in 1983. His first games included The Bard's Tale and Wasteland.^[2] Interplay grew to over 600 employees at its zenith in the mid-1990s when it was designing and developing or producing such games as Descent, Baldur's Gate and Fallout. Fargo, like many other entrepreneur CEOs, had a hand in the development of most games produced by Interplay.^{[citation needed]}

In 1994, Universal/MCA bought a 45% stake in the company which later went public in 1998. In 2000, Titus Software, a Paris-based game company, exercised a majority control of Interplay, and as a result, Fargo resigned his position with the company. Fargo started a new company, inXile Entertainment in 2002.^{[citation needed]}

Early life and education

A descendant of the family that created the banking giants Wells Fargo and American Express, Fargo was born in Long Beach, California, United States and grew up in Whittier and Newport Beach, California. The only child of Frank Byron Fargo and Marie Curtis Fargo, he attended Corona del Mar High School, where he participated in track and field and developed a desire to create video games after his parents bought him an Apple II computer in 1977.^[1]

Career

Fargo started his career in the video game industry with his first video game called The Demon's Forge,^[3] a game he designed and marketed himself,^[1] and educational games for World Book Encyclopedia.

In 1983, Fargo founded Interplay Productions prior to landing his first game contract in 1983 with Activision. The game he created, Mindshadow,^[4] a graphic text adventure for the Apple II and Commodore 64, achieved moderate success.^{[citation needed]}

After the release of Mindshadow, Fargo hired an old high school friend and started work to create a role-playing video game for the Apple II and Commodore 64 for a then-new publisher, Electronic Arts. The game turned out to be the original Bard's Tale, blending an RPG with music and color graphics. The game proved to be a huge critical and commercial success, the first many over the next four decades.^{[citation needed]} Fargo’s Interplay subsequently released Bard's Tale 2 and Wasteland,^[2] an RPG that was inducted into Computer Gaming World’s Hall of Fame. For its time, Wasteland was an immense game, where players could go anywhere and the effects of their actions could be felt throughout the game play universe.^{[citation needed]}

Interplay at the time was utilizing small development teams of 1-3 people to produce games for other companies to publish, which only allowed Interplay to break even at best. Fargo decided in 1988 to make the transition from a development house to a developer/publisher, adding the additional costs of production and marketing, with both the risk and possible reward of producing successful games. The first title produced by Interplay in this era was Battle Chess, a computer game version of chess in which the chess pieces come to life and battle one another when capturing each other. Battle Chess proved very profitable for Interplay.^{[citation needed]} Subsequently, the company released Castles, which became a #1 selling title for Interplay. The company was also experimenting at the time with new ideas and products including a quirky little RPG based on the novel, Neuromancer, by William Gibson, which included the contributions of the band DEVO and the late Dr. Timothy Leary.

By 1992, Interplay contracted with an old friend of Fargo's, Ayman Adham, and his partner, Michael Morhaime,^[5] to create the game RPM Racing. This was Adham and Morhaime's first contract to produce a game as Silicon & Synapse (name of developer), and was one of the first of many such finds for Fargo, who had an eye for recognizing talent in small development teams.^[6] Adham and Morhaime eventually changed the name of their company to Blizzard Entertainment, developer of the huge MMORPG World of Warcraft.

Interplay continued to expand in the mid-1990s, adding licensed titles to its own intellectual properties (IP), by acquiring rights to the original Star Trek and creating a series of adventure games that achieved critical and commercial success. Fargo continued to find talented small developers designing innovative games. One was Parallax Software, whose demo game eventually became the #1 hit Descent. Parallax, now called Volition, eventually was bought by THQ where they went on to produce Red Faction and Saints Row.

In 1996, the company expanded again, adding a division focusing on sports games, called VR Sports, and by buying Shiny Entertainment, creators of the Earthworm Jim series. Fargo's goal in the acquisition of Shiny was to help Interplay transition into the console business, in addition to its successful PC game releases. The addition of Shiny with the games MDK and Sacrifice and the expansion into sports games met with some success for Interplay.^{[citation needed]}

However, one of the most successful groups within Interplay was also formed during this period: Black Isle. Black Isle focused on role-playing games and eventually included the games of a new developer called Bioware. Initially Bioware was contracted for a game called Shattered Steel for Interplay, which was less than a hit game. The next game they developed for Interplay, through the Black Isle division, was Baldur's Gate, which proved to be an amazing hit. Interplay's Black Isle then released an original IP, Fallout, that took some inspiration from Wasteland, yet was unique in its own right as a post-apocalyptic RPG. Fallout was a personal project of Fargo's, who served as Executive Producer and was involved in setting the tone and sensibilities of the game.

In 1998, Interplay filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of stock to fund future development and retire debt the company held. At the time, the market for IPOs had started to slow from the boom years of the early and mid-1990s, yet the need for capitol drove Fargo to file the offering. Increased competition, less than stellar returns on Interplay’s sports division and the lack of console titles forced the company to seek additional funding two years later with an investment from Titus. In 1999 the relationship between Fargo and majority shareholder Titus deteriorated, according to Fargo, due to a "different ideology of management"^[6] and in 2002, Fargo exited the company.

Post-Interplay: inXile

After leaving Interplay, Fargo looked to find outlets for his creative drive and founded inXile Entertainment in 2002, a video game developer and publisher that includes many former Interplay employees. The name inXile is possibly a pun for his post-Interplay career, as Fargo’s title at the company is "Leader inXile".

inXile Entertainment released a re-imagination of the classic Bard's Tale game as one of its first titles, but has found success in a new category of downloadable games. Initially with the award-winning web game Line Rider and then more recently with the highly successful Fantastic Contraption,^[5] Fargo’s inXile entertainment has found critical and commercial success with iPhone and Flash games continuing Fargo's string of hit games into a fourth decade. The company also serves as a developer, and has released a major title for Bethesda called Hunted: The Demon's Forge.^[7]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Brian Fargo

• Brian Fargo's profile at MobyGames
• InXile Entertainment page with bio on Fargo