Obsidian Entertainment

Obsidian Entertainment is an American video game developer known for making sequels of well-known franchises including Neverwinter Nights 2 and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords.

Official Site: obsidian.net Company Size: 200+ Region:  United States Year Founded: 2003 Phone Number (US): +1-949-379-3300 Email: support@obsidian.net

Obsidian Entertainment was founded in 2003 by Feargus Urquhart, Darren Monahan, Chris Parker, Chris Avellone, and Chris Jones, all previous employees of Black Isle Studios, a subsidiary of Interplay Entertainment known for creating the Fallout series. The company initially operated with seven employees, including the company’s five founders, and an estimated capital of $100,000 - $125,000 which came from Parker, Urquhart, and Monahan’s own pockets. In order to secure more capital the company approached several well-known publishers including Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, and Take-two Interactive but was unsuccessful. The company’s big break came when LucasArts president Simon Jeffrey commissioned them to create a sequel to Bioware’s Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Upon its release, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was positively received by the gaming community in spite of technical issues that plagued it due to time constraints. In order to achieve the company goal of being able to develop multiple projects simultaneously, the company started to expand their team with previous employees of Black Isle and other well-known game companies such as Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Treyarch, and Troika.

Since Obsidian Entertainment was established, they have worked with several other big-name companies including Atari for Neverwinter Nights 2, Bethesda for Fallout: New Vegas, and Sega for their first original game Alpha Protocol, which was well-received by gamers but was ultimately a commercial failure for Sega. Almost a decade after its establishment, the company almost went bankrupt due to numerous cancelled games and games not meeting publisher standards. This prompted the company to turn to launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund their project Pillar of Eternity a successor to Baldur’s Gate. The campaign was a huge success and was able to raise $4 million. Pillars of Eternity was released in March 2015 with Paradox Interactive as its publisher and received positive reviews. Chris Avellone, one of the company’s co-founders announced his departure from Obsidian in 2015. In August of the same year, the company partnered with inXile and Double Fine to launch a new funding website called Fig which focused exclusively on video-game related campaigns. Obsidian plans to use Fig as its crowdfunding platform for future projects.

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