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SANTA MONICA, Calif.--The luxury suites housing the E3 Media and
Business Summit provide a professional atmosphere, polished demos and
catered hors d'oeuvres. Down the road at Gamecock Media's
"anticonference," things couldn't be more different.
Here
at the Hotel California, a combination indoor-outdoor beachfront lodge
popular with the surfer set (and fans of the Eagles), the uniform of
choice is flip-flops and a T-shirt. The stereo is playing a steady
stream of Led Zeppelin, the grills are serving up hot dogs, and the
coolers are packed with cans of Bud Light and trendy energy drinks. But
it's more than an afternoon party by the Southern California coast. For
independent game publisher Gamecock, which has rented out the entire
hotel, this is business.
When the Entertainment Software
Association, organizer of the sprawling E3 confabulation at the Los
Angeles Convention Center, announced that the 2007 edition would be restructured
into a quieter, invitation-only affair, many game industry insiders
expressed relief that they'd no longer have to deal with the
60,000-plus attendees and over-the-top marketing displays.
But
there were plenty of skeptics, too, and the Austin, Texas-based
Gamecock was one of the most vocal. The young company, formally
established last September, was so critical of E3's more stoic
reincarnation that its team decided to create a "shadow" conference in
protest.
The
reason, according to Gamecock chief operating officer Rick Stults (he's
also the chief financial officer), is that the new E3 focuses entirely
too much on the biggest names in gaming--and their allegedly
unfortunate tendency to forsake original and innovative games for
repetitive sequels and movie tie-ins that were created to be sure sells.
"We feel that E3, what it was, is no longer," Stults said, "which from
our perspective is the games and the developers. You don't need to have
this stuffy, corporate kind of invite-only event."
Gamecock
has titled the gathering Expo for Interactive Entertainment,
Independent and Original, or E.I.E.I.O. for short. Showcased in the
Hotel California's suites are nine upcoming console and PC titles and
the developers behind them, and they're a colorful bunch. Gamecock
considers itself the industry's equivalent of an indie record label or
film distributor, so the games understandably tend to be a little bit
edgy, a little bit artsy, and potentially controversial. And Gamecock
distinctly avoids publishing anything with a II or a III in the name.
"We take a little bit of a risk by going for original titles," Stults
said, referring to sequels' reputations as lower-quality stabs at
making a few extra bucks. "(In big-publisher gaming) and even in the
movie industry, it's a little too sequelized."
"Thank God Gamecock came around," said Chad Barron, a producer for Red Fly Studio, whose game Mushroom Men,
an artistically inclined title depicting a war between edible and
poisonous mushrooms, will be released by Gamecock. "The first thing
they said is, 'We don't want something that's a sequel. We want
originality.'"
According to Barron, the company's hallmark is
its willingness to let developers guide themselves by creativity rather
than rolling out prefabricated successes based on industry trends.
"Gamecock's just like, 'Hey, we love this idea, you guys run with it.'
We're not handheld by big publishers."
The end results, as showcased at E.I.E.I.O., are hardly your typical first-person shooters and car chases. There's Insecticide, a detective action-adventure game in which all the characters are bugs; Hail to the Chimp, which is sort of like Mario Party
with a distinctly political slant (one level of the game is all about
which player can stuff a ballot box the fastest); and fantasy
role-playing game Dungeon Hero, which takes place literally underground.
Indeed,
considering the criticism of the "new E3" as lacking in new
announcements and exciting developments, the gaggle of offbeat titles
at E.I.E.I.O. has been a breath of fresh air for some E3 cynics. Mushroom Men even elicited a nod in Thursday's edition of USA Today. "I think people are excited about our lineup just like we are," Stults said.
The
free-hot-dogs-and-beer setup has also turned some heads. "We always try
to do something where we find a venue that our company and our
development teams can have fun, but also the kind of environment that
they can properly talk about their games. (The developers) got their
own suites, their own rooms," he said. "People can kind of go in at
their own pace, grab a burger, have a drink."
That's not
all. As another means of promoting their game developers Thursday
night, the company has rented out a local dive bar for a late-night
rager that will likely be quite different from the evening receptions
at sushi restaurants and wine bars that some of the bigger publishers
have planned. Then, on Friday afternoon, at the counterculturally
significant hour of 4:20 p.m., Gamecock will hold "E3 Up in Smoke," a
mock funeral procession for the original, more inclusive conference of
yore. Following that is, naturally, another party.
Big game
publishers and E3 insiders might find the Gamecock guys and their "Up
in Smoke" antics irrelevant, irreverent, or just plain irritating. The
indie developers at E.I.E.I.O., however, point to the diversity and
depth that independent film and music have provided to their respective
industries over the past few decades.
Anyone, they said,
can consider the tongue-in-cheek "anticonference" to be a sign of the
video game business' maturation. "Gamecock's not just taking a few
risks, they're taking all the risks," said Red Fly Studio designer Ryan
Mattson. But ultimately, he said, it helps the little guys. "Where we
are right now is a sign of that (success)."
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