Leonard Boyarsky

Leonard Boyarsky is an American computer game designer and visual artist best known for being one of the key designers of the video games Fallout and Diablo III.

Early life

After he earned a Bachelor's Degree in Illustration (at Cal State Fullerton) and a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Art (at Art Center College of Design), he worked as freelance artist for Interplay and Maxis in 1992.

Interplay Entertainment (1992-1998)

After some freelance work for Interplay (Rags to Riches: The Financial Market Simulation and Castles II: Siege and Conquest) he was hired as art director, lead artist and designer/writer.

His first work was as lead artist in 1995 was Stonekeep. Two years later, in 1997, he finished his work as art director on Fallout, where he set the recognizable 1950s future graphics style, the humorous Vault Boy Traitcards and also the unusual ending. He also did some polishing on the dialogs for the game. Before leaving Interplay to form Troika Games with Tim Cain and Jason D. Anderson, he designed the overall gameplay refinements and main story arc/quests/areas/characters for Fallout 2 in 1998.

Troika Games (1998-2005)

Boyarsky had different roles at Troika Games, among others he was project leader, art director, designer/writer and CEO.

On their first project, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, which was released 2001, he filled similar positions as in Fallout, doing the art direction, dialog writing/editing and story/quest design. He was the project leader and art director on Troika's last released game in late 2004, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. He worked also on an untitled post-apocalyptic game which was never released due to financial trouble. Though, a demonstration video of the engine was later released for the public.[1]

As Troika closed down in early 2005, he took a year off due to burnout syndrome. He was later asked by Blizzard Entertainment to work on the story and RPG elements on Diablo III.[2]

Blizzard Entertainment (2006-present)

Boyarsky is currently working as lead world designer on Diablo III at Blizzard Entertainment.[3]

Quotes

When later asked why he left Interplay, Boyarsky commented that

“ Interplay had been a great place to work, and we felt that it was losing a lot of what we felt was great about it, and that they were making a lot of bad decisions that would destroy the company. We were about five or six years early on that, but we saw the writing on the wall. If Baldur's Gate hadn't hit big, Interplay might well have imploded much earlier, but we left about a year before BG was even released.[3] ”

After the Fallout IP was bought by Bethesda he said (in 2004):

“ To be perfectly honest, I was extremely disappointed that we did not get the chance to make the next Fallout game. This has nothing to do with Bethesda, it's just that we've always felt that Fallout was ours and it was just a technicality that Interplay happened to own it. It sort of felt as if our child had been sold to the highest bidder, and we had to just sit by and watch. Since I have absolutely no idea what their plans are, I can't comment on whether I think they're going in the right direction with it or not.[4] ”

References

  1. ↑ PA Engine Demo on YouTube
  2. ↑ http://www.gamebanshee.com/interviews/diabloiii1.php
  3. ↑ The Escapist : The Rise and Fall of Troika
  4. ↑ Interview with Duck & Cover

External links