Sucker Punch Productions

Sucker Punch Productions is an American video game company founded in 1997 and based in Bellevue, Washington. They created Rocket: Robot on Wheels, the Sly Cooper series, the Infamous series and Ghost of Tsushima. They have worked exclusively with Sony Interactive Entertainment since 2000 and were purchased by Sony in 2011 following the release of Infamous 2.

Beginning
According to the company's website, Sucker Punch "started at the roots of Microsoft, where the co-founders all worked in a variety of productivity and software development applications. All shared a love for video games, yet only one had game development experience." The group decided to leave Microsoft in 1997 and became an independent company. The company name came as one of several proposed by the company that they would not have been able to use at Microsoft due to that company's policies. Co-founder Chris Zimmerman showed the list to his wife for her opinion, and she responded that she didn't care "as long as it isn't Sucker Punch." Considering the opinion of a middle-aged woman would be completely contrary to the demographics of their target audience, they selected that name for the company.

Rocket: Robot on Wheels
In 1999, Sucker Punch released their first game, Rocket: Robot on Wheels, for the Nintendo 64, a platformer featuring a robot named Rocket.

Sly Cooper
After signing a new deal with Sony in 2000, the company created Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus in 2002. After the success of the game, the company developed two sequels: Sly 2: Band of Thieves in 2004, and Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves in 2005.

Infamous
A few months after releasing Sly 3, Sucker Punch started preparing ideas for the new game. They went to Sony with several different game ideas and Sony decided to start the development of Infamous. In 2009 and 2011, Infamous and Infamous 2 were released, respectively. Infamous: Festival of Blood was also released in 2011, but only as a downloadable title. A few years later, they released Infamous: Second Son in 2014 for the PlayStation 4 console. They also released Infamous: First Light the same year, but it is only available via a digital download.

Ghost of Tsushima
Following the release of Infamous: Second Son and Infamous: First Light, Sucker Punch began working on Ghost of Tsushima, a stealth-action game taking place in 1274 during the Mongol invasion of Japan. Players take control of Jin, one of the last living samurai as he defends the island of Tsushima from the invaders.

Behind the scenes
There have been some appearances of the Sucker Punch name or logo throughout the Sly Cooper series. In Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, the newspaper shown after every episode is called the Sucker Punch Daily. Also in the same game, a Sucker Punch sign appears in Mesa City, during the racing mission "At the Dog Track." In Sly 2, upon smashing Rajan's desk in his office, papers with the words "Sucker Punch" written on them fly out.