Barking Dog Studios

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Barking Dog Studios was a video game company founded in May 1998 by several former employees of Radical Entertainment. Barking Dog, with publishing assistance by Sierra Studios, moved on to produce a sequel to the 1999 PC Magazine Game of the Year Homeworld entitled Homeworld: Cataclysm. Homeworld had been developed by Relic Entertainment but Sierra chose instead to use Barking Dog to develop the game, which angered much of the fanbase. However, Homeworld: Cataclysm was generally regarded as a good game, in many ways superior to the original. The name "Barking Dog Studios" is now owned and used by a Californian web development company.

Barking Dog was also retained by Valve Software for minor finishing touches on an early beta version of the popular first-person shooter Counter-Strike. Their legacy can be seen on the Counter-Strike map de_train where their cartoon dog logo can be seen on the side of a railcar.

Barking Dog also produced other games such as Global Operations, Transworld Skateboarding and Treasure Planet. They were acquired by Rockstar Games in August 2002, and became known as Rockstar Vancouver.

Many Barking Dog employees later split off to form their own companies, such as Kerberos Productions and Ironclad Games.