Work for hire is ‘no way’ to do business – Gamecock

With his firm continuing its ramp up in Europe, CEO Mike Wilson has reaffirmed Gamecock’s commitment to new IP saying the ‘developer-friendly’ publisher is not interested in commissioning ‘work for hire’ deals, which are a staple of the games development business.

Specifically in the UK, ‘work for hire’ deals are popularised by publishers looking to hardness talented studios for quick turnaround on games using licensed or already established IP.

Gamecock, however, is only looking to sign up original ideas created by developers as it continues to grow its publishing slate.

Said Wilson in an interview with Develop published today: "My thinking is that there is enough of that [work for hire[] business out there – if a studio wants to work on a safe sequel or licence, that’s fine.

"Strangely, a lot of developers have come to us thinking that we might have some licence that we want turned into a game – but we really don’t. We’d like to tell the development community that is not the case, and that’s no way to go about dealing with a publisher."

Wilson said everything the publisher signs up is "original IP and independently produced". He added: "One of the key things that’s different about us compared to other independent publishers is that we’re only getting into something when we have the wherewithal to do it."

He also added that in time, the industry will hear less and less from Gamecock talking about itself and pulling its notorious stunts as the company starts to push its development partners in the spotlight.

"The first year has been an awful lot of noise about Gamecock, but that’s because we didn’t have a game to put out! So there will be a natural transition point to where we’re only talking about the games and the developers – before we were just explaining to the world what Gamecock was about, what our philosophy was, and that we wanted to have fun," explained Wilson.

"I think that noise has helped teach a lot of people what we are about. And now we’ll move on from that – we’ll soon be making sure it’s the developers stood here talking about their companies and their games, none of this ‘producer putting on a dull rehearsed or autopilot demo’ stuff that goes on."

Read the full interview here.