Wilson has been a featured speaker at South by Southwest,[3] Reboot Red,[4] Reboot Blue, E3, the International Games Summit on Mental Health Awareness,[5]Game Developers Conference,[6] and many more, and is a vocal advocate for mental health in games, and self-care and unionization in the world of independent game development. In 2019, he called on the industry to start grappling with the reality of video game addiction and begin taking active measures to curb its effects through "being more intentional about the content we create."[7]
Wilson has served as a partner and frontman for Devolver Digital since co-founding the company in 2009 and concurrently served as Chief Creative Officer for Good Shepherd Entertainment from 2012 through 2020.[8] He also currently sits on the advisory board of Take This, a non-profit dedicated to raising awareness about mental health issues for video game professionals within the industry.[9]
In 2019, Wilson co-founded Transcend Victoria, a Victoria, British Columbia-based entertainment company dedicated to creating "immediate, interactive art" designed to bring people offline and together in shared physical spaces.[10]
Wilson served as the co-founder and co-chief executive officer of DeepWell DTx, a video game publisher and developer.[11]
Wilson left DeepWell DTx in 2023.[12][13] He currently serves as an executive officer at Medicinal Media, which he co-founded with Melissa Wilson.[14]
Following the platform's explosion in popularity, Wilson left DWANGO in 1995 to join Doom developer id Software to bolster the company's first forays into game publishing.[16]
id Software
Wilson joined id Software in 1995 to help lead marketing for the company's gaming catalog, and subsequently oversaw the launches of several prominent games in id's line-up, including new installments of the Doom and Heretic/Hexen franchises. Wilson also led the launch the retail shareware version of Quake through use of encrypted CD-ROMs (and later DVDs), making the titles readily available to all major retailers and, for the first time, 7-Eleven stores nationwide.
Ion Storm
Wilson left id Software at the beginning of 1997[17] to join John Romero and Tom Hall for the launch of the game development company, Ion Storm. Wilson served as chief executive officer from February 1997 to the end of 1997, overseeing the company's growth from 8 to 88 employees in under a year. Wilson and other executives exited Ion Storm following a public conflict[2] with another partner in the company, Todd Porter, who became chief executive officer after Wilson's departure. Before departing to found Gathering of Developers, Wilson joined Romero on his trip to Austin to recruit Warren Spector onto the Ion team,[18] subsequently leading to the creation of the Deus Ex franchise in the company's Austin development studio.
Gathering of Developers
In January 1998, Wilson – in partnership with Harry Miller, the chief executive officer of Ritual Entertainment, and several other independent development studios including 3D Realms, Epic Games, Terminal Reality, and PopTop Software – founded Gathering of Developers. Gathering was founded as an artist-friendly, developer-driven publishing operation which would brand its developers above the publishing label and permit them to own their intellectual property, thereby earning the highest royalty rates in the industry at that time. Funded through distribution and co-publishing deals by Take-Two Interactive, Gathering published several PC games including Railroad Tycoon 2, Stronghold, Serious Sam, Tropico, Darkstone, Mafia, and, finally, Max Payne following the company's acquisition by Take-Two in May 2000.
Following the sudden death of Gathering co-founder Doug Myres in the summer of 2001,[19] Wilson and Miller, along with the majority of Texas-based talent at Gathering, departed Take-Two to form SubstanceTV.
SubstanceTV
After leaving Take-Two in 2001, Wilson took the majority of Gathering's employees with him to a new start-up video-magazine on DVD called SubstanceTV.[20] SubstanceTV's focus was aimed at alternative, non-mainstream content such as music videos, short films, original short documentaries, and other content not available elsewhere. Unable to make the venture work commercially, Wilson winded it down in August 2002 after publishing seven issues.
Take-Two Interactive
In 2002, Wilson returned to Take-Two as Executive Vice President of A&R.[8] Wilson spent the next several years holding dual roles in the worlds of gaming and film, jointly shepherding projects for Take-Two and his own Gone Off Deep Productions film imprint, which released the documentary Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock in 2005.[21][bettersourceneeded] Wilson has continued to produce multiple feature-length and short-form film projects via Gone Off Deep in recent years, including 2011's Austin High[22] and 2016's Stand Up Empire.[23][bettersourceneeded]
In spring 2008, Mike Wilson rejoined Harry Miller, Rick Stults, and several other former partners to found Devolver Digital, a producer/publisher hybrid initially working with Croteam –creators of the Serious Sam franchise that Wilson and Miller helped establish while with Gathering of Developers. WIlson has served as a founding partner and spokesperson of Devolver Digital since its inception.
Devolver's first release, Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter, came out in November 2009 on PC and January 2010 on Xbox Live Arcade. Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter was released in May 2010 on PC and September 22 on XBLA. After the release of Serious Sam 3: BFE in 2011, Devolver decided to shift its focus from larger development cycles to the emerging indie gaming scene.[25] Using the Serious Sam series as a test bed for indie development and relations, Devolver worked with developer Vlambeer to release Serious Sam: The Random Encounter in October 2011. Since then, Devolver has gone on to release Hotline Miami with developer Dennaton Games, selling over two million copies on Steam alone as of October 2016.[26]
Since 2017, Devolver has released more than 50 new game titles, including Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number, Gris, Reigns, My Friend Pedro, and multiple installments of the acclaimed Enter the Gungeon and Shadow Warrior franchises. In 2020, the company, in concert with UK-based developer Mediatonic, released its biggest hit to date with Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, which sold more than two million copies on Steam within a week of its release. Heralded as “the perfect game for the coronavirus age” by USA Today,[27] the game's near-instantaneous success has been attributed to its non-violent, joyfully communal gameplay, which has been called “a salve to social isolation and an escape from the constant barrage of bad news”[28] during the 2020 global pandemic.
In 2020, Devolver announced its first television project with an adaptation of My Friend Pedro, to be written and executive produced by John Wick creator Derek Kolstad. Envisioned as an “R-rated, half-hour dramedy,” Wilson will serve as an executive producer on the series, alongside Legendary Entertainment, DJ2 Entertainment, and Deadpool 2 director David Leitch.[29]
Devolver Digital Films
At SXSW 2013, Devolver announced that they would be extending the brand to digital film distribution.[30] Wilson sperheaded Devolver's film distribution arm, bringing in partner Andie Grace as the company's VP of Acquisitions – a move prompted by Steam's then-new move into the distribution of films and videos. In 2019, both Steam and Devolver ceased its acquisition of independent films, due to Steam refocusing its efforts on VR.[31] Devolver had released more than 75 films on Steam and other various digital platforms before shuttering the division.
Good Shepherd Entertainment
In 2012, Wilson co-founded Good Shepherd Entertainment (formerly known as Gambitious Digital Entertainment) alongside Harry Miller, Paul Hanraets, and Andy Payne, where he served as Chief Creative Officer[32] until 2020. The company was founded to further Devolver's core philosophies of fairness and equitably for game creators but operate at a smaller scale with a focus on games budgeted at under $1 million, a stated emphasis on quality, and the ability to allow independent investors to invest alongside the label for each title.[33]
In 2019, Good Shepherd released John Wick Hex – its first game to be based on a major entertainment property – which was developed to fit canonically within the universe of Lionsgate’s John Wick film franchise and featured actors Ian McShane and Lance Reddick reprising their roles from John Wick: Chapter 2.
Take This
In March 2018, Wilson was appointed to the board of Take This, a Washington-based non-profit organization founded in 2013 by video game journalists Russ Pitts and Susan Arendt and clinical psychologist Dr. Mark Kline. The organization is dedicated to providing resources and channels for mental health discussions for professionals in the video game industry.[36] It also regularly publishes white papers addressing the industry’s controversial working conditions, such as “crunch time,” and provides AFK (“away from keyboard”) rooms for relaxation purposes at busy gaming industry conventions,[37] including PAX, in addition to other programs in person and online.
DeepWell DTx
In 2022, Wilson announced the creation of DeepWell Digital Therapeutics (DTx), a new video game publisher and developer dedicated to creating “medically therapeutic games” [38] that can be used to treat an array of medical and mental health conditions, including “depression, anxiety, and hypertension”,[39] while maintaining “best-in-class gameplay” [40] and entertainment value for players.
DeepWell was co-founded by Wilson alongside Ryan Douglas, a medical device expert [41] and former chief executive officer of international medical technology company Nextern.[42] As of March 2022, DeepWell had “more than 40 game designers, medical researchers, scientists, and creators” [43] – including Tom Hall (Doom), Zoe Flower (Hellbent Games), Rami Ismail (Nuclear Throne), Lorne Lanning (Oddworld), American McGee (American McGee's Alice),[44] and others – working toward the release of the company's first game, slated for a projected 2023 release.[45]
In addition to its own games, the company has also announced its intent to create and license “a suite of processes that follow FDA guidelines” [46] to assist other independent “developers in designing and repurposing games to bring out therapeutic value” [47] for new and other pre-existing game titles.
A video game developer is a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programmers, designers, artists, etc. Most game development companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support. Self-funded developers are known as independent or indie developers and usually make indie games.
SNK Corporation is a Japanese video gaming and interactive entertainment company. It was founded in 1978 as Shin Nihon Kikaku by Eikichi Kawasaki and began by developing coin-op games. SNK is known for its Neo Geo arcade system on which the company produced many in-house games and now-classic franchises during the 1990s, including Aggressors of Dark Kombat, Art of Fighting, Fatal Fury, King of the Monsters, Metal Slug, Samurai Shodown, The King of Fighters, The Last Blade, Twinkle Star Sprites, and World Heroes; they continue to develop and publish new titles in some of these franchises on contemporary arcade and home platforms. Since the 2000s, SNK have diversified from their traditional arcade focus into pachislot machines, mobile game development and more recently character licensing.
Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC (SIE) is an American video game and digital entertainment company, subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It primarily operates the PlayStation brand of video game consoles and products. It is also the world's largest company in the video game industry based on its equity investments.
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter is a 2002 first-person shooter game developed by Croteam and published by Gathering of Developers. It is the successor to Serious Sam: The First Encounter and the second game in the Serious Sam series. Taking place immediately after The First Encounter, it follows the soldier Sam "Serious" Stone, whose spaceship crashes back to Earth on his way from ancient Egypt to Sirius, requiring him to seek the Holy Grail to continue his journey. As Sam, the player traverses linear levels, either enclosed or set on open plains, and battles increasingly large waves of enemies with an expanding arsenal. The gameplay builds on that of The First Encounter while adding additional weapons, more enemy types, and platforming elements, and additionally contains the Seriously Warped Deathmatch mod by A Few Screws Loose.
Numerous video games based on the Jurassic Park franchise have been released. Developers Ocean Software, BlueSky Software and Sega produced various games in 1993, coinciding with the first film, Jurassic Park. In 1997, several developers, including DreamWorks Interactive and Appaloosa Interactive, produced various games for nine different platforms to coincide with the release of the film The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
Behaviour Interactive Inc. is a Canadian video game developer and publisher based in Montreal. The studio is best known for the multiplayer horror game Dead by Daylight.
Christian video games are a video game genre and a form of Christian media that focus on the narrative and themes of Christian morals and Christianity. The term can also refer to Christian symbolism, mythology, media franchises, and Christian media organizations within video game culture and industry.
Firefly Studios Limited is a British video game developer based in London. Formed in August 1999 by Simon Bradbury, David Lester, and Eric Ouellette, the company focuses on historic real-time strategy games for the PC and Macintosh systems. They are best known for their Stronghold series of games. In June 2021, the studio was acquired by Devolver Digital.
Kongregate is an American web gaming portal and video game publisher. Its website features over 124,000 online games and 30+ mobile games available to the public. The company also publishes games for PC, mobile, and home consoles. It was purchased by GameStop Corporation in 2010 before being acquired by Modern Times Group MT AB in 2017.
Gamecock Media Group was an American video game publisher based in Austin, Texas, founded in February 2007 by Mike Wilson, Harry Miller and Rick Stults, formerly founders and executives of Gathering of Developers. The company was acquired by SouthPeak Games in October 2008 and subsequently shut down.
An indie video game or indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. Because of their independence and freedom to develop, indie games often focus on innovation, experimental gameplay, and taking risks not usually afforded in AAA games. Indie games tend to be sold through digital distribution channels rather than at retail due to a lack of publisher support. The term is analogous to independent music or independent film in those respective mediums.
Devolver Digital, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Austin, Texas, specializing in the publishing of indie games. The company was founded in June 2009 by Nigel Lowrie, Harry Miller, Graeme Struthers, Rick Stults, and Mike Wilson, five executives who had been involved with Gathering of Developers and Gamecock Media Group, which published games on developer-friendly terms, but due to the high cost associated with releasing retail games saw themselves acquired and dissolved by larger companies. To avoid this, Devolver Digital instead turned to digital distribution channels.
Maximum Games, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Walnut Creek, California. Originally founded in 2009 as a publisher of family-oriented titles for the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii, the company shifted to publishing games of all genres for all ages across all platforms shortly after inception.
Video gaming in France is one of the largest markets in Europe. The French government gives special tax breaks to video game companies. In 2014, the French diplomatic service released a report which calculates the profit generated by the French video game industry at €2.7 billion. It states that there are 300 video game companies in France. It estimates the number of jobs directly related to the video game industry at 5,000. It estimates the number of indirect jobs created by the video game industry at 10,000. The report found that in 2013, around 8 out of 10 people had played a video game in the last 12 months. In 2018, the number of players was estimated at 32.8 million.
Flying Wild Hog Sp. z o.o. is a Polish video game developer based in Warsaw and founded in 2009. The company is best known for the 2013 reboot of Shadow Warrior, and its 2016 sequel, Shadow Warrior 2.
Good Shepherd Entertainment is a Dutch video game publisher based in Amsterdam. The company was founded in 2011 and opened its equity crowdfunding platform in September 2012. Gambitious' publishing label was opened in 2014, offering publishing services. In August 2017, Gambitious Digital Entertainment was rebranded Good Shepherd Entertainment whereas they ceased their crowdfunding activities and fully transitioned into being a publisher. Having been a consultant to the company prior, Brian Grigsby now became the CEO of the company.
The Electronic Entertainment Experience 2021 was the 26th and final E3, during which hardware manufacturers, software developers, and publishers from the video game industry presented new and upcoming products. The event, organized by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), ran as a virtual, online-only event with free access to all, from June 12–15, 2021.
Gemini Home Entertainment is a horror anthology web series created by Remy Abode and periodically released on a YouTube channel of the same name. It is regarded as a foundational analog horror series. The main series, also known as the Full Boxset, is ongoing. Further videos have also been released since as part of the spin-off series Library.
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