Recruiting Interplayers

Irvine-based Interplay Productions has signed the creative team behind the blockbuster video game “Tomb Raider” to produce an undisclosed number of titles.

Artist Toby Gard and programmer Paul Douglas were a multimedia dynamo at London-based Core Design and the lead duo behind one of this year’s most successful video games.

Since its release last fall, analysts say consumers have grabbed more than 2 million copies of the PC and Sony PlayStation versions of “Tomb Raider.” The sales boom was generated, in part, by the game’s Indiana Jones-meets-Pamela Anderson Lee protagonist, Lara Croft.

Earlier this year, flush with the success of the action-adventure game, Gard and Douglas started their own software company, Confounding Factor. As part of the exclusive publishing deal between Confounding Factor and Interplay, which is being announced today, the Orange County firm will have a minority interest in the British start-up.

Interplay staff declined to discuss financial specifics.

“ ‘Tomb Raider’ was huge, absolutely one of the biggest things to happen in the game industry this year,” said Bill Zinsmeister, a multimedia and games analyst for International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass. “It’s a franchise, from plans to turn it into a movie to [rock band] U2 commissioning the developers to produce footage of Lara Croft for their current tour. If this development team can repeat its success, Interplay could do extremely well.”

Confounding Factor has already started to work on its first title: “Leviathan,” an underwater action-adventure game slated for release in 1999.

“There are so many areas that game properties can exploit, from film to television to books,” said Brian Fargo, Interplay’s chief executive. “We’ve done this with some of our other titles, and we’re hoping to expand into these arenas with [Gard and Douglas’] new projects.”

P.J. Huffstutter covers high technology for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com