EIEIO 2008: One day of concentrated Gamecock weirdness
Last year, Gamecock held their "E3 alternative" EIEIO event in Santa Monica during E3. This year, they moved the party to Austin, and in true Gamecock (read: bizarre) fashion, they elected to hold the event at Stubb's Bar-B-Q. Well, it's not as bizarre as it sounds. Stubb's is a large establishment that serves as a live music venue as well as a barbecue restaurant. Still, it was quite a different environment from, say, the Moscone Center, where GDC was held last month. The only problem with the venue: we were outside a lot, and today was unseasonably cold. And rainy. And also cold.
The morning started off with a breakfast at Jaime's Spanish Village across the street. After that, we were rounded up and sent over to Stubb's, where we broke into groups and rotated through presentations and demos. Descriptions and impressions of actual game content are coming later (Wednesday, to be specific, when I am allowed to post those), but here's what I saw: the downloadable meme-off Pirates Vs. Ninjas Dodgeball, the PC/DS action-adventure game Insecticide, the sentient-mushroom tale Mushroom Men (Wii and DS), the newly-christened WWII stealth game Velvet Assassin, the RTS expansion Stronghold Crusader Extreme, the hacking, slashing Dungeon Hero, the fantasy-monster FPS Legendary, the sci-fi FPS Section 8, and the animal-based political-satire party fighting game Hail to the Chimp. They were in various stages of playability, from "not even pre-alpha" to "shipping." Be sure to visit our gallery and enjoy some of the strangeness of the scene for yourself!
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After we finished shuffling from demo station to demo station, we were served dinner (barbecue? Wow, really?) and the concerts started. EIEIO then changed dramatically as the doors were opened to the public and it became less of a press event and more of a festival. Concertgoers were able to mess around with all the playable games even while they enjoyed the live music. A couple of times, I walked outside to find a burlesque performance taking place. That's pretty weird for a video game show! Of course, this is from the company perhaps best known for its weird chicken-head costumes. Speaking of which, there was a mechanical bull with a chicken head. Obviously, right? Also, haircuts -- which, surprisingly, I was prepared to see. These haircuts, of course, featured the shaving of the Gamecock logo into (out of) the hair.
While rock bands played outside, Rock Band played inside, as Gamecock PR guys hooked the game up to the restaurant's PA system and performed (in Gamecock-logo-emblazoned capes) before handing the game off to eager showgoers. It was probably the most effective PR for a non-Gamecock game I'd seen at the show.
