Clayton Kauzlaric

Clayton Kauzlaric joined the game industry in 1992, starting as a production artist at Seattle-area developer Manley & Associates. There, Kauzlaric worked as a background artist and animator on a number of PC, Mac and console titles, the latter being largely for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis. Among these games were Pink (Panther) Goes to Hollywood (for publisher TecMagic), My Own Stories (for MECC), as well as interface art and backgrounds for Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure (although Manley's subcontractor role in the product is largely uncredited).

Kauzlaric went on to Squaresoft, Inc., a Redmond, Washington-based subsidiary of Square Company Limited. Square, Inc. was responsible for localization and marketing of Squaresoft's popular RPG's during the SNES era, but the studio was allowed to build its own product, namely Secret of Evermore. He continued his work as an artist, creating both backgrounds and character animation for SOE. After SOE, the Squaresoft, Inc. studio engaged in concept and prototype work for its next title, including a real time strategy title.

Following Squaresoft, Inc.'s closure in 1996, Kauzlaric went on to work for Humongous Entertainment at their mainstream game development studio, namely Cavedog Entertainment. Serving as Lead Artist, he worked closely with Ron Gilbert and Chris Taylor during Cavedog's formative days, and was closely involved with the creation Chris Taylor's RTS masterpiece, Total Annihilation and it's expansion pack, Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency. After Taylor's departure, Kauzlaric remained to lead Cavedog's next title, Total Annihilation: Kingdoms and it's expansion pack, TA:Kingdoms - The Iron Plague. Changes to the basic theme and design of TA were not well received by TA's fan base and many critics. In spite of this, the Kingdoms did sell reasonably well, grossing more than its predecessor.

Cavedog was dissolved by Humongous Entertainment in early 2000. Kauzlaric remained for a time but left in May of that year to found Beep Industries, a first-party developer for Microsoft's Xbox console. Beep's first game, Voodoo Vince, which was completed in the Fall of 2003. Since that time Beep has completed several downloadable PC games.