Mike Wilson (above) recently stood for president of the ESA, even though the appointment wasn’t actually open to a vote, and gave his mission statement while urinating behind a gravestone. Is this the kind of behaviour you expect from the chief executive of a publishing company? Wilson says it most certainly should be. We caught up with Gamecock’s founder to ask him if and when his behaviour will be overshadowed by a line-up of great games.

When people visit Gamecock, they come back with tales of human wheelbarrow races and large numbers of bruises.

These happen a lot at our events. I don’t know why or how. At our launch party in San Francisco our two investors had a billionaire-on-billionaire wheelbarrow race. I barely knew these guys back then. I was the wheelbarrow with the one guy and the other main investor was the wheelbarrow on the other team. The whistle went off and I was like, “I’m kicking his ass!” Then I looked back and saw that he was being pushed across the floor on his face. It was fantastic. He’s probably training for next year. He’ll have wheels built into his head.

How did your presidential bid work out?

There will be a very interesting film about it online soon. It was a tough race in LA, especially since my competitor refused to acknowledge that there was an election, or even a job opening. Stay tuned – it’s not over yet!


Mushroom Men

Is there a risk you’re getting known for your antics rather than your games?

Maybe we are right now – because, well, over [in Europe] we haven’t shipped much of anything yet. In the United States we’ve shipped a few small games. I think this autumn we’re going to turn the corner and start releasing our big games and then through the next year. And then – and this is the whole point of Gamecock with its stupid name – our name shouldn’t even matter. It should be about the developers and the games they make. It’s been pretty hard getting to that. In America, people have a pretty negative opinion of us, and it’s largely because they’ve heard so much about us and they’re like, “Where are the fucking games?” Well, I don’t know if you know this, but it takes a while to make a good game! I think people will understand. It’s much funnier being called Gamecock when you have some really good shit, right?