Cavedog Entertainment

Total AnnihilationVorlage: Infobox Company / Maintenance / products

Frozenyak.com ( Cavedog site from 1 April 1999, April Fools Version) cavedog.com ( archived version of 2000 )

Cavedog Entertainment, or Cavedog was a game developer in Bothell, Washington. Cavedog Entertainment was founded in 1997 with the publication of real-time strategy game Total Annihilation ( TA), which earned many awards, including The Greatest Games of All Time by GameSpot, and sold with extensions over a million copies.

History

Cavedog Entertainment was founded in 1996 as a division of Humongous Entertainment, a company for kids computer game from Ron Gilbert and Shelley Day to make mainstream computer games for adults.

Total Annihilation

For the construction of Cavedog 1996 many former developers of the agreements concluded in the same year Squaresoft department in Redmond were engaged, including Jeremy Soule and graphic designer Clayton Kauzlaric, who designed the company logo. Project manager and game designer Chris Taylor was the first project that Ron Gilbert was able to see the idea of ​​a large-scale RTS game.

While the TA- development, the parent company of Cavedog, Humongous Entertainment, was in July 1996 by GT Interactive for $ 76 million Situated Buys, a video game publisher. This was itself acquired in 1999 by Infogrames, now Atari. However, the purchase of Humongous influenced the development of TA non-negative and after a successful presentation at the E3 1997 TA was published on 25 October 1997. However, Taylor left the company shortly before the publication of the first TA extension Total Annihilation: Core Contingency to found his own development company, Gas Powered Games. Despite this loss, Cavedog yet published a further extension of Total Annihilation: Battle Tactics, as well as many other free downloadable improvements such as maps and additional units. This had a strong online community to follow, with its own online service, called Boneyards ( no longer active ) for online matches between TA players.

TA: Kingdoms

In 1999, the long awaited Total Annihilation was: Kingdoms published. TA: Kingdoms technically based primarily on a TA game engine, but the science fiction game world replaced with a fantasy background. TA: Kingdoms praised by players and press on these offshoots, however, was not as positive as for the original title. Nevertheless, an extension of The Iron Plague, was published. On April 1, April Fools was announced as the had renamed Frozen Yak Entertainment for trademark problems Cavedog Entertainment. A dedicated website has been published on the frozenyak.com all previous games were given new names. This website is in contrast to the official website cavedog.com still online.

Unfinished projects

The end of Cavedog began as the games industry a decline in sales experienced by the also the parent company Warner, not spared. In addition to the TA series, Cavedog had three more ambitious projects in development, but only Total Annihilation and TA: Kingdoms made ​​it into the stores although with sales figures did not correspond to the much broader user base.

The unfinished projects were Amen: The Awakening, a first- person shooter; Elysium, a fantasy adventure, and Good & Evil, an adventure game from Ron Gilbert. As Warner ever slipped into debt and no release dates was foreseeable, all three were completed in autumn 1999. GT Interactive was acquired by Infogrames the Cavedog trademark of Humongous Entertainment 2000 is not pursued, which is now focused again on kids computer games. Therefore Cavedog declared bankruptcy in 2000. Humongous Entertainment was, however, also 2005 by Infogrames closed ( now Atari ). Cavedogs developers later played significant roles for development studios such as Gas Powered Games and Beep Industries.