 |
Gamecock Media Group is one of those names you see a lot in the gaming press but aren't quite sure what they actually do.
You've probably heard about the Austin-based company when they held a funeral for E3 in 2007. Or when its employees rushed the stage at the 2007 Spike Video Game Awards during Ken Levine's acceptance speech. Or maybe you remember its CEO's candidacy for president of the Entertainment Software Association earlier this year.
But perhaps what you haven't heard is that they also publish games. Formed in 2007, the company put out "Dementium: The Ward" on DS and "Fury," a now defunct PvP-based MMO. This year, they've published "Insecticide," "Stronghold Crusader Extreme," "Hail to the Chimp," and "Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball." And before the end of 2008, they'll release FPS "Legendary" and hyped action-adventure title "Mushroom Men."
I recently spoke with CEO Mike Wilson, not about the publisher's antics, but about how the company is doing.
Here is his candid summary of the company's first year:
MTV Multiplayer: How is Gamecock doing?
"We don't want to be thought of as just guys who do some DS and XBLA stuff."
Mike Wilson, Gamecock CEO: It's been a rough first year. We've had to ship kind of our smaller games that could be done in a year or less, "Dementium" worked out really well, and the rest of them not as much. [laughs] We're now just getting to our big games, the ones that took 18 months or more to make. And so hopefully, "Legendary" and "Mushroom Men" and "Velvet Assassin" will be the start of sort of the beefier games that we want to be known for. We don't want to be thought of as just guys who do some DS and XBLA stuff. But realistically, these games take a while to cook. People forget that.
So we've taken our lumps but we have a fully operational battle station now. We have our office set up in London so we can publish all our own stuff in Europe and make sure that the same principles of putting the developer first out there remain the same instead of having to give it to another publisher there. So we are definitely ready to have some success, and I think people are ready to see something good come out of us instead of just hearing about us all the time. [laughs]
"We haven't put out anything horrible but we haven't hit one out of the park yet either."
The stuff we put out -- we haven't put out anything horrible but we haven't hit one out of the park yet either. So we're ready. There are a few things to learn, especially since we're doing all platforms at once. And working with independent studios, everyone works so differently. It's been a real challenge, but you know, we didn't get into this thinking it would be easy.
Related Posts:
'Mushroom Men' Aiming For Most Interesting Audio On The Wii
Blowing Away Werewolves And Minotaurs, Hands-On With Gamecock's 'Legendary'
Is Hail To The Chimp' Funnier Than 'The Colbert Report'? We Count LOLs
Gamecock Endorses Stephen Colbert For President
Comments