Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming: Why Gamecock's got me smiling ...

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Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Why Gamecock's got me smiling ...

First (and probably most repeatedly), it's the name. Seriously, Gamecock's going to have the double entendres flowing.

Second, the Gamecock Media Group is pretty important to the Austin scene. As arguably the third publisher of note in Austin (joining Aspyr, Inc. and NCSoft), they're a serious shot in the arm to Central Texas creativity.

Third, they're funny. Seriously, check out their site. Sure, it's a bit frustrating for getting any concrete content about the company or people, but it's an entertaining diversion, and has a lot of Wideload-like humor (I'm still trying to get a handle on the whole Wideload / Gamecock thing).

Finally (and most importantly to me, since I'm on this whole integrity / do-the-right-thing mission), Gamecock sounds like they're going to "do it right" -- Interesting, original properties, crediting and supporting the developers, and so on. I'm just hoping from a business model perspective it works out for them.

Gamecock Media Group is founded by Mike Wilson and Harry Miller, two of the three guys who founded Gathering of Developers ("G.O.D" for short, which became GodGames, which became Gathering). Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. forced a purchase of Gathering of Developers in 2000, and Wilson and Miller left shortly thereafter (with Wilson doing a couple of missionary stints back to Take-Two in the intervening years).

As an aside, Wilson and Miller (and Doug Myres, who sadly died unexpectedly in 2001 from asthma) got a financial shot in the arm (evidently with strings that forced the acquisition) from Take-Two's founder Ryan Brant, who recently plead guilty to stock option backdating, and can no longer be in a controlling position in a public company.

But that was then.

Now, Gamecock's ready to make a splash and do games right -- with Wilson and Miller driving the business, branding developers before themselves as a publisher, and getting solid venture funding from outside the game industry -- which avoids some of the pressures of publishers pushing for favors (or acquisition) down the line.

And the titles and genres in Gamecock's first wave(s) are pretty promising:

Hero (Firefly Studios) -- A high-def RPG/dungeon crawler. Miller sez, "All the things I don't like [about dungeon crawlers] they were changing or improving upon."
Insecticide (Crackpot Entertainment) -- Described as "a hard-boiled, fast-shooting detective game set in a festering future city where bugs have evolved as the planetÂs dominant race." Think A Bug's Life with a layer of pulp noir, and more of an Antz kind of sensibility.
Mushroom Men - The Spore Wars (Red Fly Studios) -- There's a war going on between "Mushrooms, cacti, kudzu and other formerly-normal plants", and I can't tell for sure, but think this'll be a combination of action/adventure, kind of like the Oddworld stuff for which I'm jonesing. Miller describes it as "Earthworm Jim and Abe's Oddysee" (though I think it looks more like Stranger's Wrath).
Fury (Auran) --MMO + RPG = "the ultimate competitive online RPG".
Hail to the Chimp (Wideload) -- This game's got me most excited, because of Alexander Seropian (Bungie founder), Stubbs the Zombie: Rebel Without a Pulse (wicked hilarious game), and because an inside source tells me, "It's a total gas" (and I've learned to not ignore my inside sources; or references to gas). This game will have Gamecock pushing 4-on-4 action (online and offline), a la a beat-'em-up / party game that will probably take over my Monday night group gaming session for weeks on end. (I struggled with whether to pair "Gamecock" with "4-on-4 action" or "beat-'em-up".)

Seropian's also the guy behind Oni, one of my favorite (and under-rated) games. Gathering of Developers published Oni, which probably created the recent Wideload / Gamecock relationship.
Unnamed game (TBA) -- There's another slot for a game on the Gamecock Website, so I expect something about it soon.

Good, encouraging stuff, great for Austin, great for gamers, great for people with a skewed sense of humor.

Adam Creighton, Computer and Video Gaming (Subscribe)

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Why Gamecock's got me smiling ...

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