According to Lou Catanzaro, the art director for the first Zoo Tycoon game and one of the founding members of Blue Fang Games, the company was founded to create a game titled Dragon Hoard (or Dragon World), a strategy and role-playing game which would have taken place in a full 3D open fantasy world where you'd choose to play as one of five types of dragons and upgrade their abilities. According to him, Blue Fang's initial logo was presented as "a little more spooky and edgy" to fit with the tone of this project. However, production on Dragon Hoard stalled out, and the development team had to switch to a different project to stay afloat, eventually leading to the creation of Zoo Tycoon.