The Revelation
As the artists perfected every polygon on the unit models, the map designers carved new mountains and valleys into their terrain, and the musicians tuned their instruments to record the score, Total Annihilation wasn't even an officially announced title. This was in keeping with Ron Gilbert's long-time philosophy of keeping game development top secret until a title is nearly complete. "You get so much overexposure if you announce things too early that when the product finally comes out it risks being old news," he says. "One of the ways you can avoid slipping a release is to hold off on announcing a product until you are sure of a release date." Hence, when the team was confident September was a realistic goal, the publicity and marketing engine was let loose to inform the world about Total Annihilation.
The never-before-seen test logo for Frozen Yak Entertainment, which was never used.
First and foremost, the new company name had to be decided. Kauzlaric designed two logos for the two names under consideration: Frozen Yak Entertainment and Cavedog Entertainment. After much debate, the latter was chosen as the name for the new game division of Humongous. Now, the TA developers had a unique identity and would be safe from snide comments asking how a credible strategy game could possibly be produced by the company best known for a talking yellow fish named Freddi.
"We were flying by the seat of our pants."
- Clayton Kauzlaric, commenting on the last-minute marketing for Total Annihilation.
Total Annihilation was officially to the press in the spring of 1997. That didn't leave Cavedog much time to put together a huge marketing campaign for the game. "We were flying by the seat of our pants," says Kauzlaric, referring to the marketing of Total Annihilation. The company took out spread ads in major gaming publications that simply displayed a huge (but detailed) screenshot.
The now-famous Cavedog Entertainment logo, the brand under which TA was published.
It was an uphill battle for the publisher to get noticed, but a number of innovative strategies helped. Two of the most important were the creation of animated screenshots and an online unit viewer, both of which helped spike the online buzz surrounding the game. The animated screenshots showed off the 3D nature of TA's terrain and units, something a static screenshot could never do. In addition, Cavedog's TA web site quickly became a popular destination for gamers when it was discovered both Taylor and Gilbert frequently responded to user questions.
But the final and perhaps most important part of Cavedog's innovative marketing for TA would come after the game's release. The secret weapon? Online unit downloads.
