Mark Ecko to the videogame industry: "y'all a bunch of bitches"

[Dipstick]

The New York Metro recently ran a two-part interview with Mark Ecko regarding his new urban thuggin graffiti platformer, Getting Up... and either he or someone on his PR staff is not amused. Some choice quotes:

I would say there are gamers that have a predisposition to have a bug up their ass for anything urban.

If you think that the fashion industry is filled with divas, no, the worst divas are the guys who got wedgies in high school. Game divas are the worst divas than a guy reviewer in a Helmut Lang suit standing in the second row of a show. Those guys are easy compared to the pissy gamers.

The gaming community has a natural tendency to take anything cool and make it cartoonish.

In the IGN review [of GTA:SA], the guy says that any mechanic that exists in your game has to be as polished as the next mechanic. If that was the case, why would they give a 9.6 to “GTA” when the fighting sucks. It’s a one-button button masher. Why would they say that when the driving physics on the motorcycle suck? When you turn one corner you end up doing a 360. What are you building here? Are you building technology or an original intellectual property. When you’re reviewing, are you reviewing technology or gameplay?

Either he or someone on his PR staff is unusually on-point. If nothing else, it is a much more colorful interview than 99% of the sanatized crap that gets run through the PR machine that you see in videogame 'journalism' today. I also think the reaction the game has gotten throughout the industry is a bit much -- the game really is not all that bad (nor is it anything groundbreaking). I also do not agree with his point that comparing Getting Up to Prince of Persia is is silly is incorrect -- strip both games of their motifs and they really do share similar mechanics, which does matter at some level (he does address this a bit at the end of the interview).

-Dippy

[Kbu Chan]

How do retards like him get so rich...boyeee?

[kingoffighters]

His game sucks. The End.

[Diff-chan]

He's right though, lets be real, 95% of us completely wrote of Getting Up as soon as we heard the name. Its been getting solid reviews, though, but people will still ignore it in favor of Sonic Riders or whatever bullshit with favored IP is out there. Then in eight months we will whine because every game is a license or a sequel.

[James]

I don't have a "bug up my ass" for anything urban, I just don't care. I really enjoyed GTA:SA, and that's my urban gaming done for a while. I don't owe Ecko a sale just because his game is somewhat better than average.

James

[sethsez]

He's right that gaming audiences are picky about the dumbest shit, focus way too much on franchises even though they claim they don't, and that urban culture gets slammed for no apparant reason (apparantly it's "all image," while fruity j-rock themes are perfectly fine).

That said, the guy was involved in the creation of a single decent (not amazing, not wonderful, decent) game. That's not really worth all the attention it's been getting.

[frostwolf ex]

you know he is right about the gta thing, its something that i have wondered about for a long time, it gets 10 out of 10s and 100%s yet i dont think anyone can honestly say it has great or even good combat mechanics. I love morrowind, but even with the mods it still is not a perfect game nor woudl it deserve a perfect score, and that goes moreso for gta. overall he has points,and i still want to play the game, mostly because the collective developed it and buffy was one of the best 3d fighters this generation, but i think he maybe is using harsher language than he wants to, this is not going to get a lot of people on the fence to try his game.

[sethsez]

He also doesn't acknowledge that shitty clothes from an established designer are given a lot more leeway than shitty clothes from someone new to the scene. He's certainly benefitted from that (not saying his clothes are shitty, but that he's released things other people might not be able to get away with) so it seems a bit disingenuous to talk about this phenomenon as if it's the first time he's ever encountered it, or that it's unique to games.

[Compass]

He's right though, lets be real, 95% of us completely wrote of Getting Up as soon as we heard the name. Its been getting solid reviews, though, but people will still ignore it in favor of Sonic Riders or whatever bullshit with favored IP is out there. Then in eight months we will whine because every game is a license or a sequel.

I didn't necessarily write it off after hearing the name. I sure as hell wrote it off when I saw his "hard" mug in an ad or an interview or something, trying to look extra "hard" for the camera... as he promotes his spray-painting videogame. lol, please. Who would buy that thing? How does anyone take that kind of posturing seriously?

[ChaoofNee]

He's right though, lets be real, 95% of us completely wrote of Getting Up as soon as we heard the name. Its been getting solid reviews, though, but people will still ignore it in favor of Sonic Riders or whatever bullshit with favored IP is out there. Then in eight months we will whine because every game is a license or a sequel.

In my own defense, I haven't bought a new game near launch in a year-and-a-half.