Cavedog Entertainment

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Cavedog Entertainment
legal form Division of Humongous Entertainment
founding 1996
resolution 2000
Seat Bothell , Washington , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
management Ron Gilbert
Number of employees approx. 20 (1997)
Branch Software development

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

Company history

Cavedog entertainment was founded in 1996 as a division of Humongous Entertainment , a company for children computer game of Ron Gilbert founded and Shelley Day to Mainstream - computer games make for adults.

Total annihilation

Many former developers of the Square department in Redmond, which closed in the same year, were hired to build Cavedog in 1996 , including Jeremy Soule and graphic designer Clayton Kauzlaric, who designed the company logo. Project manager and game designer of the first project was Chris Taylor , who was able to convince Ron Gilbert of the idea of ​​a large-scale RTS game .

Cavedog Boneyards Logo (1999)

During TA development, Cavedog's parent company, Humongous Entertainment, was bought by GT Interactive , a video game publisher , in July 1996 for $ 76 million. This was acquired in 1999 by Infogrames , later the Atari . The purchase of Humongous did not have a negative impact on TA's development and after a successful presentation at E3 1997 TA was published on October 25, 1997. However, Taylor left the company shortly before the release of the first TA expansion Total Annihilation: Core Contingency to start his own development company, Gas Powered Games . Despite this loss, Cavedog released another expansion, Total Annihilation: Battle Tactics , as well as many other freely downloadable improvements such as maps and additional units. This resulted in a strong online community with its own online service called Boneyards (no longer active) for online matches between TA players.

Variant of the Cavedog logo

TA: Kingdoms

In 1999 the long awaited Total Annihilation: Kingdoms was released. TA: Kingdoms based scale predominantly on the TA - game engine , replaced the science fiction -Spielwelt but with a fantasy -Background. TA: Kingdoms response from players and press to this offshoot was not as positive as the original title. Even so, an expansion, The Iron Plague , was released. On 1 April, as April Fool announced that for trademark issues cavedog entertainment in Frozen Yak Entertainment was renamed. An associated website was published under “frozenyak.com”, on which all previous games were given new names. In contrast to the official website cavedog.com, this website is still online.

Unfinished projects

The end of Cavedog began when the game industry saw a decline in sales, which the parent company, GT Interactive, was not spared. In addition to the TA series , Cavedog had three other ambitious projects in development, but only Total Annihilation and TA: Kingdoms made it into stores, albeit with sales figures that did not match the much wider number of users.

The unfinished projects were Amen: The Awakening , a first-person shooter ; Elysium , a fantasy adventure game , and Good & Evil , an adventure game by Ron Gilbert. When GT Interactive slipped more and more into debt and no release dates were foreseeable, all three were terminated in autumn 1999. GT Interactive was bought by Infogrames and the Cavedog brand was not pursued by Humongous Entertainment in 2000, which now focused again on children's computer games. Cavedog therefore declared bankruptcy in 2000. Humongous Entertainment, however, was also closed in 2005 by Infogrames (now Atari). Cavedog's developers later played significant roles for development studios such as Gas Powered Games and Beep Industries .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b GT INTERACTIVE LAUNCHES CAVEDOG ENTERTAINMENT, A NEW INTERNAL SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT STUDIO ( English ) gtinteractive.com. February 5, 1997. Archived from the original on May 30, 1997. Retrieved January 7, 2011.
  2. ^ Geoff Keighley: TA Team . gameslice.com. June 9, 1997. Archived from the original on January 21, 1998. Retrieved March 26, 2011.
  3. ^ Greg Kasavin : Armed to the Core: Total Annihilation ( English ) In: GameSpot : The Greatest Games of All Time . March 26, 2004. Archived from the original on May 25, 2011. Retrieved June 22, 2010.
  4. ↑ John Keefer: Supreme Commander Interview - Chris Taylor opens up (a little bit) speaking about his new RTS and the future of the genre. ( English ) gamespy.com. July 8, 2005. Retrieved April 3, 2011: “ Total Annihilation was not a runaway best seller, but it and the two subsequent expansions sold more than a million units. The game developed a strong community with mapmakers and mods that is still thriving today. To many is arguably the best RTS of all time. "
  5. ↑ a b Geoffrey Keighley: The Total Annihilation: The Story So Far ( English ) gamespot.com. 2007. Archived from the original on August 7, 2007. Retrieved January 8, 2011.
  6. ^ Andrew Langerman: The Soule of Gaming, Talking with Jeremy Soule ( English ) UGO Entertainment . 2002. Archived from the original on June 16, 2011. Retrieved November 19, 2009.
  7. ↑ John Keefer III: Cavedog: Annihilation, Aggravation and Anticipation ( English ) GameSpy. Archived from the original on March 10, 2010. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 31, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / archive.gamespy.com
  8. ↑ a b Clayton Kauzlaric: TA-ncient History # 4: Dogs, Yaks & Boron ( en ) Ton of Clay. October 2, 2006. Retrieved March 26, 2011.
  9. ↑ Geoff Keighley: GameSlice's Interview with Ron Gilbert . gameslice.com. June 16, 1997. Archived from the original on January 21, 1998. Retrieved March 26, 2011.
  10. ^ GT Interactive Company History
  11. ↑ a b Gas Powered Games Interview - Part 1 ( English ) PC Gameworld. September 30, 2003. Archived from the original on March 20, 2005. Retrieved January 8, 2011.
  12. ↑ Frozen Yak Entertainment , accessed July 12, 2018.
  13. ^ John Bye: The Death Of the Celebrity Studio . Eurogamer. June 25, 2001. Retrieved November 27, 2007: “ One by one their other projects were canceled as it became obvious that the games were simply far too ambitious, until in February 2000 the company was closed down entirely and its remaining staff absorbed into parent company Humongous. "