Bohemia Interactive Studio (BIS) came to prominence in 2001 with the first in a number of acclaimed Flashpoint titles which they created for Codemasters. Operation Flashpoint, their debut title, won many awards and became the No. 1 selling game in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Australia, Czech Republic and other countries.

BIS's main studio is based in Prague, Czech Republic, and currently employs approximately 35 people. Of these there are 6 programmers, 8 designers, 15 artists and a number of other people that work in different areas covering the broad spectrum of game development with production on forthcoming title Armed Assault well underway. There is something like a 90-10 split of Czech and non-Czech nationalities.

There are two other studios, one in Australia, where their main military simulation wing is situated, focusing on the development of VBS1 and now VBS2, which is the military simulator used by numerous militaries around the word (including USMC, IDF, ADF and many others). Their other studio, in the South of Prague, develops and programs the engine itself which is at the heart of everything; also in progress in this studio is the currently unnamed next generation PC game (Game2 for short).

BIS is a privately owned company, although there could be some confusion, some believing that they were partly owned by Cenega, who in turn were taken over last year by 1C, which is not the case. BIS will soon be incorporated and cease to be a limited liability partnership. There is no Initial Public Offering planned for BIS at the moment and the present partners will simply become shareholders.

The core mission objective/statement is to work hard to accomplish the goals set for their games and to achieve that vision, to make the games they create stand out for their quality, their depth and substance, to give gamers high quality games to play which don't compromise on game play, content or integrity.

In a short period of time the Flashpoint brand has become iconic in both innovation and gaming ideas and the gaming community look towards BIS with respect and interest. Many could easily say that BIS has a reputation for being overly meticulous, although the end results appear to be worth it with BIS countering this point by saying it may be perceived that there have been long development times for a couple of projects but those development times are completely separate to the amount of work which went into creating such high quality games. If you trace the history of Operation Flashpoint, the engine, as we know it, started development in 1997, was signed to a publisher then the publisher went bankrupt, so publisher issues can be blamed as much as anything for the delay of the original game until it was published in June 2001 by Codemasters.

The release of Operation Flashpoint in June 2001 was followed one year later by the expansion pack Resistance, which was a quality expansion that added a great many things to the original game: a new island, a new campaign, new units, new vehicles, new weapons, enhanced graphics, enhanced game play, enhanced multiplayer, etc. This, BIS believes, clearly shows that when there are no external issues the team works very well at creating a very high quality product in an appropriate amount of time.

Of course putting new games on shelves is what brings money into the company, and BIS has never been about churning out weak, barely improved, annual games for the sake of making money. "Of course money is nice but for BIS it's as important to retain the sense of integrity and honour that comes with creating a game that is truly special and ground breaking. Operation Flashpoint smashed the genre of "first person shooter" wide open, we set a very high benchmark for ourselves with a debut game of this type so we must work as long and as hard as is necessary for our future products to match and even exceed such a benchmark," concluded Paul Statham, PR manager for BIS.

Having gained such a good reputation on the PC with their titles and in house technology and innovations, last year they released Operation Flashpoint: Elite for Xbox and have commented that they would like to utilize their experience in developing for the Xbox 360; but the PC will always be the main platform for them, not least because it's a technical leap ahead of consoles.

Presently BIS is focusing on three projects announced as being in development; two are PC games - Armed Assault due Q2 2006 and their currently unnamed next generation PC game due Q2 2007. Also being developed is their army simulator VBS2 - an updated version of their Virtual Battlefield System, used by the US Marine Corps and the Australian Defence Force. Whilst they would not rule out working on projects for other systems; they don't at present have anything planned.

With great innovations, top selling games usually go hand in hand with a very extensive Research and Development department, and BIS believe this is high on the ticked chart. They do however say that their main resource is the highly skilled, intelligent and motivated people who work at the company. They do of course create their own engine and tools and as technology develops they can make their tools, develop and adapt to that technology, rather than having to acquire and learn new tools. Working this way allows them to be both efficient and effective.

Statham added, "Whilst we certainly have a reputation as specializing in realistic large scale military combat games we feel our company has much more to offer than that. Although our current projects are large scale military combat games we definitely have areas away from that genre that we plan to explore in the future."

Broached on the subject of the spiralling development costs as being a major threat to independent developers, this was very much a concern for the team and they have already taken the first steps towards responding to this growing problem in today's PC games market. Together with ALTAR games and Black Element Studios they have established a network of independent game developers called IDEA games.

IDEA games is an open organization of 3rd party developers who would otherwise have less chance of reaching worldwide publishing agreements for their products. They believe that being united will make it easier to move their games from the design boards onto store shelves worldwide, easier not just for the developers, but for publishers also. It's much easier to search through their portfolio of games than contact each developer directly.

Although it's only just beginning IDEA games has made its first successful achievements in finding the appropriate partners for projects on its books, so anyone interested should visit website idea-games.com for more news. If there are any independent studios out there don't be afraid to send them a proposal!

It does appear that the philosophy behind BIS titles is to take the time to get it right, however it could have repercussions when it comes to dealing with publishers; and BIS has long been working with Codemasters. Paul Statham: "At the end of a day we are all companies, whether we are a company that develops games or a company that publishes games we have books that must be balanced, bills that must be paid, babies that must be fed, games on shelves equates to revenue. Therefore developers and publishers have to work together to get games onto shelves. Sometimes a publisher may have to respect a developer enough to wait until a game is truly ready, rather than compromising on the vision and quality for the sake of expedience. Sometimes a developer has to bide their time whilst politics outside their control means that the game cannot be published when it is believed ready, so they can either be bitter about it and gnash their teeth or they can use that time to work some more to add to the experience that the gamers will get, when they can finally buy the game!"

BIS is proud that the PC version of Operation Flashpoint and the expansion pack Resistance were published by Codemasters and pointed out that it wouldn't have been possible to sell more then 1.5m units of a debut game without there being a good relationship.

With war games becoming so popular and with BIS's focus on this genre it was interesting to find out if the team can maintain its high standard and lead the pack; even how the genre would evolve, especially with next gen hardware. BIS's philosophy was very much to the point in that as long as there are was interest in games the war genre will continue to remain constant. "Whilst there is a number of war themed games on the market they generally fall into the category of unrealistic arcade shooters, played over small scale "corridor" type maps. For gamers who want realistic combat played over large areas there really isn't any competition," commented Statham.

Already BIS's titles in development are starting to shape up and 2006/7 could well see the team creating more media excitement.