Black Isle Studios
Black Isle Studios was a role-playing game developing company, in fact a division of the video games developer and publisher Interplay Entertainment. That division made games that are now recognized as some of the best role-playing game, such as Fallout, Fallout 2, Planetscape: Torment, Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate...
Founder
Black Isle Studio's founder was Feargus Urquhart, that took the division's name from the Black Isle in Scotland, his native country. There are references to Feargus in most of BIS's games, and has he was the main director of the division during Fallout 2's development there, two references to him can be seen into the game - Feargus, a villager in Arroyo, and Feargus, spy-codename of the NCR's spy.
History
Black Isle Studios was founded in 1996, and began to develop Fallout 2 by that time. In 1998, several key members also responsible for the division's first title (Fallout) left Interplay to form Troika Games - that would eventually create Arcanum. Those members said to be unable to come to an agreement with Interplay about the future of the division, and how the next team should be structured. On December 8, 2003, due to its financial difficulties, Interplay had to close some of its divisions, including Black Isle Studios. By then, most of BIS studios remaining members have moved to found Obsidian Entertainment, the studio that released Fallout: New Vegas in 2010.