Volition (Volition Games, LLC; formerly Volition, Inc. and Deep Silver Volition, LLC) was an American video game developer based in Champaign, Illinois. It is best known for its Red Faction and Saints Row series. Mike Kulas founded the company in November 1996 when he and Matt Toschlog split up Parallax Software, the developer they had founded in June 1993. At Parallax Software, Kulas and Toschlog had developed Descent (1995) and Descent II (1996) for Interplay Entertainment, which Volition followed with Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War (1998) and FreeSpace 2 (1999), while Toschlog's Outrage Entertainment developed Descent 3 (1999). Volition's Descent 4 was canceled and reworked into Red Faction (2001). The game, as well as Summoner (2000), was published by THQ, which acquired the studio in August 2000.
Following its 2004 move to downtown Champaign, Volition expanded rapidly from 80 employees to 175 by November 2006. With this increased headcount, the studio created the Saints Row series in 2006 and developed two further entries in the Red Faction series in 2009 and 2011. Kulas left the company in May 2011. During the development of Saints Row IV (2013), THQ filed for bankruptcy in December 2012, with Volition and the Saints Row intellectual property (IP) acquired by Koch Media for its Deep Silver label in January 2013. Embracer Group acquired the Summoner and Red Faction IPs, while Interplay obtained FreeSpace. The studio developed the Saints Row spin-off Agents of Mayhem (2017) and the series reboot Saints Row (2022) to no commercial success. Embracer Group, which had since acquired Koch Media, subsequently transferred Volition to Gearbox Entertainment in November 2022 and closed it in August 2023.
History
Parallax Software and Descent (1993–1995) The programmers Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog first met in 1986 at Sublogic, a software company developing flight simulators. Kulas, originally from Morton Grove, Illinois, had moved to Champaign, Illinois, in 1979 to attend the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He had considered video game development to be more of a hobby than a career but, after dropping out in 1981, learned about and joined the Champaign-based Sublogic. Toschlog had grown up on the East Coast and attended Christiana High School before joining Sublogic in 1986. Toschlog left Sublogic in 1988 to work on Car and Driver on a freelance basis, being joined by Kulas in 1990. In April 1993, they drafted a two-page sketch for an original game, but their pitch to LookingGlass Technologies was turned down as they sought to retain full ownership of their products. Believing that running a company would not be difficult and assured that returning to other employers was a feasible fallback, Kulas and Toschlog decided to quit their jobs and pursue the development of their game. They established Parallax Software on June 1, 1993.
The nascent company pitched the game with the two-page draft to Apogee Software, known for publishing games by id Software. Apogee Software liked the idea and provided Parallax Software with a $10,000 check for hardware purchases before a publishing agreement was signed. The studio subsequently hired John Slagel as a programmer and Che-Yuan Wang, who, although also a programmer by trade, worked mostly on level design. It moved into an office in Champaign's Huntington Towers, which also housed Sublogic. Toschlog worked remotely from Boston before joining Kulas in Champaign to lower his cost of living. The team developed a concept for a game called Inferno, which they formally pitched to Apogee Software for a publishing contract. While the development was ongoing, Kulas felt that Apogee Software wanted Parallax Software to create a clone of id Software's Doom, which the studio did not want to do. After seven months, in January 1994, Apogee Software backed out of the contract after seeing an early prototype. Parallax Software had just hired Adam Pletcher, a graduate of Purdue University and the company's first out-of-town hire, having previously lacked an artist. Furthermore, Kulas's wife Karen was five months pregnant at the time. Without a publisher, the studio could only afford to continue operations for two more months, prompting the five-person team to assemble a demo within a few weeks and pitch it to several publishers. Parallax Software received offers from Accolade, Interplay, and Trimark Interactive, with Interplay viewing the game as a potential Doom killer. The studio chose Interplay and signed a publishing deal "just in time". Jasen Whiteside soon became Parallax Software's eighth employee, working on level design while studying industrial design.
The shareware version of Inferno, now titled Descent, was released on December 23, 1994. The free portion featured seven of the game's thirty levels and was distributed online, including over Apogee Software's Software Creations bulletin board system. It was Interplay's first shareware release. Kulas and Toschlog observed the game's positive reception while staying with their respective families over the Christmas break. Interplay viewed the response as validation of its expectations. Descent cost roughly $400,000–$450,000 to develop. These costs exhausted Interplay's advances, yet Parallax Software declined to request additional funding, instead investing personal funds. The game was completed in February 1995 after twenty months of work and released in March. By this time, Parallax Software comprised nine full-time employees, five of whom were programmers. Interplay subsequently agreed in April 1995 to publish Parallax Software's next four games and license Descents game engine for up to six titles.
Descent II and split of Parallax Software (1995–1997) Following the completion of Descent, Kulas and Toschlog agreed that they did not wish to remain in Champaign in the long term. However, they could not decide where to relocate the company and instead chose to set up a second office. Toschlog, alongside three designers, moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he hired two additional programmers. His wife began attending graduate school at the University of Michigan. The office was established on the outskirts of the city, near Packard Street and East Stadium Boulevard, and cost $1,000 per month to rent. Travel between the two studios took five hours. The two offices began developing Descent II simultaneously. Interplay devised the second game as an enhanced version of the original, including additional features and more levels, while marketing it as a sequel under the terms of the original contract. The development was planned to take four months but ultimately lasted a year. Like its predecessor, the game was commercially successful. Combined sales reached several hundred thousand copies.
Despite this success, the teams found it difficult to manage game development across two distant locations. In 1996, Kulas and Toschlog agreed to spin off the two studios into separate companies. Kulas asked his employees to suggest names for the Champaign studio before postponing the decision. When he realized that he needed a name to file the required paperwork, he disliked all of the approximately fifty suggestions and instead began searching through the books in his living room. He found "" defined as "an intense, active will to accomplish something", which he likened to team-driven software development, and thus settled on it as the company name. To create a logo for Volition, Kulas handed the definition to his employees and asked for their designs. Although he was not impressed by any of them, most staff preferred a logo featuring a black-and-white face superimposed on the capital letter "V". The logo was designed by Whiteside, inspired by that of Wax Trax! Records, and Pletcher created the accompanying font for the company name. The design was retained permanently. Kulas founded Volition, Inc. in November 1996 and hired all thirteen staff members from Parallax Software's Champaign office. The Ann Arbor office, which had since been moved downtown, became Outrage Entertainment by December 1996. The studio had 10 employees in August 1997. Parallax Software continued as a shell company that held the copyright to the Descent series. Following the split, under the agreement with Interplay, Volition and Outrage were each to create two games for the publisher. While Outrage developed Descent 3, Volition began work on a spin-off, Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War. The split and both games were announced on December 1, 1997.
Early years as Volition and acquisition by THQ (1998–2003) FreeSpace was heavily inspired by Star Wars: X-Wing and Star Wars: TIE Fighter. During its development, the team doubled in size, requiring existing members to spend significant time training new employees. Meanwhile, Kulas split his time between programming and managerial tasks, halting the former when he had to attend to business matters. FreeSpace was the last Volition game to which Kulas significantly contributed programming. Interplay released FreeSpace in June 1998, followed in October by the expansion Silent Threat. With FreeSpace complete, Volition began working on four games simultaneously: FreeSpace 2, Descent 4, Summoner, and Tube Racer. The latter was canceled six to nine months into development, while the others were in early production when they were announced in December 1998. FreeSpace 2 was overseen at Interplay by Darrell Jones, with Jim Boone as the producer. It was completed in roughly a year, though development was cut short by two months just three months before the intended finish. Kulas believed that Interplay, which had recently become a public company, sought to release the game in an earlier fiscal quarter to publish better returns. Although the game was one of Volition's best-received titles, it underperformed commercially, which Kulas attributed to Interplay's failure to adjust its marketing strategy for the advanced release date. Boone attributed the lack of sales to the declining popularity of joysticks.
Summoner was Volition's first attempt at a role-playing video game, a genre in which the team had no experience. As Descent 4 would fulfill the studio's obligations to Interplay and the publisher already had sufficient titles in that genre, Volition pitched the game to several other publishers. THQ ultimately agreed to publish the game in July 1999. The two companies also briefly worked on a role-playing game based on the Harry Potter books, which was unsuccessfully pitched to its rightsholders. Meanwhile, Outrage Entertainment and its twenty employees, having finished their work on Descent 3 by late 1999, began pitching two non-Descent games to publishers. Toschlog stated that he was "ready for something new" after working on the series for six years. Interplay took on Rubu Tribe, an adventure game for the PlayStation 2, which it later handled through its Digital Mayhem division. THQ picked up the other game. Summoner was Volition's largest project to that point, with thirty to forty people working on it at once. The publisher eventually began discussions to make Volition an internal studio, acquiring it on August 31, 2000. THQ paid 890,100 shares of common stock, plus 109,900 shares in options, while assuming $500,000 in liabilities from the studio. Kulas remained the studio manager. Despite initial concerns, the developers retained creative freedom under the new ownership. Summoner, originally designed for personal computers (PCs), became a launch title for the PlayStation 2, which launched in October 2000.