Fallout - A History @ IGN

Starting with the creation of Interplay by Brian Fargo and the ensuing Wasteland, IGN has a detailed history of the Fallout franchise, through the Troika split, Van Buren and ultimately on to Bethsoft:

Regarded internally as something of a B-title, "V13" was passed off to a RPG-focused subdivision run by Feargus Urquhart. It wasn't long before the three project leads - producer/programmer Tim Cain, art director Leonard Boyarsky, and lead designer Chris Taylor - picked up a familiar Wasteland-ish vibe off their minor post-nuclear project. Urquhart shifted resources to it, more than doubling their eight-man team. Interplay let him, and then promptly forgot all about V13. Without any oversight from the home office, Urquhart let the project's scope expand at an exponential rate. He and Taylor both started at Interplay as part-time play-testers. Now they were re-igniting a legacy.