Frictional Games

Thomas Grip, the co-founder of Frictional Games, at the 2016 Game Developers Conference

Frictional Games was founded by Thomas Grip and Jens Nilsson.[1] Before founding the company, both had little professional experience in the video game industry, having only had done some freelance jobs.[1] The two began co-operating when Nilsson joined Grip on Unbirth, a hobby project that was later cancelled.[2] They subsequently collaborated on other projects and formally established Frictional on 1 January 2007.[2] The company was established in Helsingborg, Sweden, although most members worked remotely from other parts of Europe.[3] Frictional's first game was Penumbra: Overture, based on a tech demo titled Penumbra and released in 2007.[4][5] It was originally planned to be the first episode in a trilogy, however, due to problems with publisher Lexicon Entertainment, Frictional shifted to a partnership with Paradox Interactive.[5][6] Under Paradox, the two remaining games in the trilogy were released as one game under the title Penumbra: Black Plague in 2008, followed by an additional expansion pack titled Penumbra: Requiem the same year.[5]

Over an exactly three-year-long timespan, Frictional created and self-published Amnesia: The Dark Descent.[7][8] The game was released on 8 September 2010 to generally favourable reviews, however, Frictional noted that it expected the game to struggle becoming popular and profitable given its lack of a third-party publisher.[9] Amnesia: The Dark Descent sold 36,000 copies within its first month of release,[10] and a total of 1,360,000 copies within the first two years, earning the company a total revenue of about US$3.6 million in contrast to their US$360,000 development budget.[11] According to Nilsson, the Frictional team did not know how to continue the Amnesia series and feared that a misattempted Amnesia game would "fail miserably".[12] Instead, the team opted to draft The Chinese Room as a third-party developer to develop a second game, giving them advice on the horror aspects, while The Chinese Room was responsible for the plot and gameplay development.[12] The game, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, was released by Frictional in 2013.[13]

During the time of A Machine for Pigs' development, Frictional itself started working on a new game, which eventually became Soma, announced shortly after the release of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.[14] Soma was self-released by Frictional on 22 September 2015 to generally favourable reviews and initial sales higher than those of Amnesia: The Dark Descent within the first days: Soma sold 92,000 units within ten days (in contrast to the 20,000 first-week sales of Amnesia: The Dark Descent),[15] and 450,000 units in its first year (in contrast to the 390,000 first-year sales of Amnesia: The Dark Descent).[16]

In 2016, Frictional Games announced that it began the production of two new, yet unannounced games, as a result of the high profitability of Soma.[17] By 2019, it also planned to start pre-production on a third unannounced game.[3] In August 2017, Frictional moved from Helsingborg to new offices on Stora Nygatan in Malmö.[18] Around this time, the company had 16 employees.[19] The Malmö offices housed half of its 25 staff members.[3] Amnesia: Rebirth, a follow-up to The Dark Descent, was announced with a trailer in March 2020 and was released in October 2020.[20]

The HPL Engine is Frictional's in-house game engine. It is named after writer H. P. Lovecraft.[21] The first iteration of the engine, HPL Engine 1, was used for the Penumbra series. This iteration was released as open-source software on 12 May 2010, with most of the code licensed under the GNU GPL-3.0-or-later licence.[22] HPL Engine 2 was used for Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, as well as prototype versions of Gone Home.[23][24] It was also released under the GNU GPL-3.0-or-later licence, on 23 September 2020.[25]

• Official website