After an interview with Gamasutra, I feel like I finally understand the true essence of Mike Wilson, co-founder of indie game publisher Gamecock and the now defunct GodGames. He succinctly summed it up when he said, “We’re street hustlers, you know?”

Inflicting pain on the enemies: the consumers. After I ran headfirst into a wall several times and finally hit a stud, it all suddenly made sense. Mike Wilson is a street hustler. He’s out there on the figurative block moving his product, fighting against the oppressive powers of massive corporate publishers, a.k.a. The Man. He’s just trying to make a little paper and he does it by any means necessary, including publishing Jazz Jackrabbit 2 when he was at GodGames. Jazz Jackrabbit 2? Damn. If that doesn’t show that he’s serious about doing just about any kind of crazy crap, I don’t know what does. He’d give his dog herpes or name his company Gamecock if he thought it would help games sell better

Straight up gangsta. It’s hard to initially see his hustler spirit, mainly because it’s hidden behind a pasty white exterior. He’s not exactly what pops into mind when you think of a hustler. He’s also not what pops up when you type “hustler” into Google image search. It’s mostly a bunch of half-naked ladies, but they’re pretty much all white, so it’s a step in the right direction.

Even if he’s not synonymous with street hustler, as people who read books say: you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. A true hustler, like Mike Wilson, would respond to that by asking, “What the hell’s a book?”

Mike Wilson is out there on his grind at all times, always scheming and looking for a new angle. It’s a difficult life, but that’s what separates Mike Wilson and Gamecock from all those fake-ass pretenders to the indie publisher thrown. Listen closely to what makes a hustler different from the rest of us:

It’s that I do toss and turn at night, really, wake up thinking about: “Oh my God, what if we had done this? I wonder if we could have communicated better about this aspect of the game.” And it’s really annoying, Tom. It is. Because I like to think I have a life outside of this, and, uh. Yeah, I don’t.

If you didn’t know that Mike Wilson was a hustler you might think, “Damn. That sounds pretty sad. He should probably take some medication.” The truth is he just has the hustler mentality. He’s got his hustle on his mind at all times. You can’t just turn it off and on. There’s no “I ain’t a hustler no more” switch. When an average person is eating his Quaker Oats in the morning thinking about how bad his day is going to suck, Mike Wilson is thinking about how he can turn eating breakfast into a way to push more games. He’s thinking: maybe, Gamecock can do a cross promotion with Quaker Oats on their next game, tentatively titled Killing Some Dudes. Quakers love that kind of stuff.

If you need further proof that beneath the appearance of a pasty white man from Louisiana ticks the soul of a true hustler, check out this quote about getting Warren Spector on board as his last great hustle before leaving the now non-existent Ion Storm:

And he was in danger of losing his team, because we brung him in — we BRUNG ‘IM. ‘Cuz we brung ‘im in t’Eye-On Sto’erm, he wuz able t’keep’is team’gether, an’ make a li’l game call Deus Ex.

You may think this sounds like some cracka-ass honky bitch talkin’ crazy, but you’d be wrong. That’s hustler speak, a code of such complexity you might as well be a Nazi trying to crack Navajo. Fortunately, that’s pretty much the only hustler speak in the whole interview, so average people like you and I can actually understand what he’s talking about, which is mostly how a lot of things he’s worked on have failed.

Taking risks is part of the territory when you’re a hustler but if things go south you just have to keep getting back on the horse. To make your mark you have to take a few risks. Sometimes those risks ends up making you sound like a bona fide retard, but that’s a consequence a true hustler is willing to accept. At the end of the day, In Hustle We Trust.