Bohemia Interactive

Bohemia Interactive is a developer and publisher.

Bohemia Interactive Webpage, Facebook

A Czech development studio based in Prague, creating games for personal computers, consoles, and mobile devices. The team first gained worldwide fame with Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, and their later projects - most notably the ArmA series - have also been widely popular. Bohemia Interactive also publishes some of its own games.

History

From Operation Flashpoint…

Bohemia Interactive Studio was founded in 1999. The company was founded by Marek Španel, Ondrej Španel, and Slavomír Pavlícek. The team’s first project was originally meant to be a shooter inspired by the classic River Raid, but its limited potential led to it being reworked into a realistic first-person shooter codenamed Poseidon. Meanwhile, the developers assisted Centauri Production in creating Fairy Tale: About Father Frost, Ivan, and Nastya.

Poseidon had a rocky development, changing publishers three times, and finally launched on PC in June 2001 as Codemasters' Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. Within three months of release, the game had sold over half a million copies, giving the developers the chance to start on their next projects.

The developers set out not only to add more content to their debut game, but also to create an Xbox port and work on a sequel. The Xbox port took four years to develop and was released as Operation Flashpoint: Elite. It struggled, mainly because the Xbox 360 was already on the horizon. At the same time, the developers were working on a Wild West shooter, but the project was eventually canceled.

After Elite launched, Bohemia Interactive turned its attention to a full-fledged sequel to their first game, codenamed Game 2. However, Codemasters was unhappy with the progress and started looking for outside help. After the team firmly objected, the two companies ultimately went their separate ways. As a result, Codemasters kept the rights to the Operation Flashpoint franchise, while Bohemia ran into financial difficulties.

...to the ArmA series

Bohemia Interactive avoided bankruptcy thanks to its next project. The project, built on the engine behind Operation Flashpoint: Elite, was called ArmA: Armed Assault. The studio self-published the game for PC in 2006, and it turned out to be a financial success. In 2007, the developers released an expansion called Queen’s Gambit, and then turned their attention to a full-fledged sequel.

ArmA II launched in 2009, going head-to-head with Codemasters’ Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. Both sales and reviews were strong, so in the following years the developers focused on expansions - Operation Arrowhead, British Armed Forces, Private Military Company, Reinforcements, and Army of the Czech Republic - as well as a smaller title, Take on Helicopters. Additionally, in 2011, a remastered version of Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, titled Arma: Cold War Assault, was released.

Fans were eagerly anticipating a third installment in the highly popular series. Curiously, the developers initially thought about setting the game in the future and adding RPG elements, but eventually scrapped the idea and stuck with a modern-day setting.

In 2012, two Czechs were caught on the Greek island of Lemnos photographing military installations - a crime that could have carried a 20-year prison sentence. It turned out that the two were employees of Bohemia Interactive. After 129 days in prison, an intervention by Czech President Václav Klaus, and a petition from players to the Greek government, the developers were released. Meanwhile, the studio released its next game, a strategy title called Carrier Command: Gaea Mission.

The events of 2012 led to Arma III’s setting being moved from Lemnos to the fictional island of Altis. The game debuted in August 2013, earning acclaim from critics and players alike. The creators weren’t done with the franchise - a tactical spin-off, Arma Tactics, came out in 2013 for PC and consoles, and in 2016 they released both a major Arma III expansion called Apex and another mobile game, Arma Mobile Ops. Another major expansion for Arma III, called Laws of War, was released in 2017.

More than just realistic shooters

Let’s go back to 2012, when Dean Hall, then at Bohemia Interactive, released a mod for Arma II called DayZ. The mod quickly became more popular than the studio expected, and Hall was tasked with turning it into a standalone game. DayZ launched in Steam Early Access in December 2013, and Hall left Bohemia Interactive a few months later.

In November 2016, Bohemia Interactive announced that under the Bohemia Incubator banner, it would be developing experimental games with input from the gaming community. In 2017, the studio released its next project, the simulation game Take on Mars.

Bohemia Interactive unveiled its next project in June 2018. It was a multiplayer shooter with survival elements called Vigor. The full version of the game launched on Xbox One on September 19, 2019, and in 2020 it was released on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch. Vigor received a lukewarm response, with the Xbox One version averaging a 61/100 on Metacritic.

Meanwhile, the developers released another Arma III expansion, Contact, featuring a new campaign about first contact with an alien civilization in Livonia - a fictional country inspired by Poland. Shortly after that, Livonia also made its way into DayZ through a major expansion simply called Livonia.

Also in December 2019, Bohemia Interactive released the full version of Ylands, a survival sandbox that had been in Early Access since November 2016. Like Vigor, the game failed to make much of an impact and ended up with only mixed reviews on Steam.

Finally, in May 2022, the developers revealed the future of the Arma series. As it turned out, the creators were working on two new games. The first was the full-fledged fourth installment in the series, while the second was Arma Reforger, an online shooter that served as a test of Enfusion, the new graphics engine powering both projects.

Arma Reforger was developed for personal computers, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5. The title debuted in Early Access on PC and Microsoft's platform on May 17, 2022. It quickly became apparent that the game was plagued by numerous issues, and the number of bugs was alarming. The final straw was its relatively high price despite its condition. Still, players were surprisingly gentle to the game, as it ended up receiving mixed reviews. Nevertheless, the developers quickly began working on patches, which were released regularly over the following months.