Troika Games

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2006)

Troika Games

Type	Privately held
Founded	1998 (defunct 2005)
Headquarters	Irvine, California
Key people	Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky & Jason Anderson
Industry	Computer and video games
Products	Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, The Temple of Elemental Evil & Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Troika Games was a computer game developer focused on computer role-playing games. It was founded in 1998 by three key members of the team behind the RPG Fallout -- Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky and Jason Anderson -- after they left Interplay.^[1]

Troika, from a Russian word meaning "three of any kind", released three games, all RPGs, before going out of business in February 2005: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. Bloodlines was also the first game to license Valve Software's Source engine, released on the same day as Half-Life 2.

While Troika's games were lauded by critics and die-hard gamers for their storytelling and open-ended game design, the company had been often criticised for the large number of bugs in their games, particularly Temple and Bloodlines. Nonetheless, the company enjoyed an excellent reputation among serious RPG gamers, who considered their games to be classics.^{[citation needed]}

Arcanum, Troika's first release, was launched in Fall 2001. The company attempted to leverage positive critical reviews to promote the game, but the mainstream public did not respond well to the game. This inability to appeal to mainstream gamers would plague the company up until its eventual demise.

In 2003, the company would follow up with The Temple of Elemental Evil. With Troika's name brand and the Dungeons & Dragons license, the game built substantial word of mouth during its development. When the title was released, however, the game was generally regarded as both incomplete and loaded with bugs. Some fans speculated that the game was prematurely released by its publisher, Atari, as an attempt to recoup development costs and/or shore up their quarterly financial reports. Several official patches (and several unofficial ones) have been released since, but much of the game's missing content remains untapped.

In 2004, Troika released Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. Promising Bloodlines to be a deep and engrossing RPG, the game was critically derailed as failing to fully utilize the Source Engine's unique traits (the physics engine for example). Like Troika's past games, Bloodlines was also panned for its bug content. After the demise of the company, and the halt of official patches being released, the Bloodlines community took up the reins of supporting Bloodlines.

In early 2005, Troika ran into financial trouble^[2], and was eventually forced to lay off all its staff and begin selling assets. Troika's founders have stated, however, that it is possible that the company will eventually "regroup", but is unlikely to do so.

Ex-Troika staff have been picked up by the following companies: