Last February, Gamecock Media Group made itself known to an unsuspecting gaming public. While game publishers are typically content to stick behind the scenes, Gamecock was anything but your typical game publisher. Company brass, wearing caped rooster costume and boxing gloves, lampooned the staid atmosphere that's permeated the gaming industry, with a focus on unrelenting showmanship. At E3, the company held its own independent event, EIEIO, even organizing a mock funeral procession and eulogy marking what it considered the death of E3.
The company grabbed possibly the most headlines - and notoriety - during the 2007 Spike TV Video Game Awards, where costumed Gamecock reps bum rushed BioShock creator Ken Levine's game of the year acceptance speech. Though the company later apologized for the incident, it illustrated a point that critics had repeatedly made - Gamecock could create hype with the best of them, but hadn't yet backed up its strutting with a noteworthy stable of games. In 2007, the company released two games-Dementium: The Ward for the DS and Fury for the PC. While Dementium fared relatively well both critically and commercially, Fury landed with a thud. After getting brutal reviews (its Metacritic score is at 50), developer Auran moved it from a subscription model to a free-to-play system.
Game Informer spoke with one of Gamecock's founders, Mike Wilson, about the company's first year, and he candidly spoke about perceptions, expectations and failings in 2007. He's confident that, now that Gamecock has more to show, 2008 will finally be about the games.
