Marc Ecko: What a Newcomer and a Nobody Has to Say About Gamers and the Industry

Marc Ecko, best known for urban-fashion clothes, has recently put out a (you guessed it) urban graffiti-based videogame called ‘Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure’. His game has been getting mixed reviews thus far. What does Mr. Ecko have to say about this?

“I would say there are gamers that have a predisposition to have a bug up their ass for anything urban. The fact that there was a black character on the cover of this game, right away there was a dismissive ness that this was just another “GTA: San Andreas,” that’s number one. Number two; this is the end of a console cycle when there is a law of diminishing returns. The code is as polished as you can make it on a no-hard-drive console like the PS2. So, there are technical limitations that people just can’t understand. There are guys that have a predisposition to be slaves to the code, rather than be slaves to the branding, products or experience. At the end of the day, it’s going to be the consumer who decides and not whether the camera makes a difference”.

And then the man went on to call gamers ‘pissy’ in the same NY Metro article:

"It’s totally different. It’s completely the opposite. 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."

Marc Ecko has a lot to learn about the video game industry, besides his claims being inaccurate and false. I never once in a preview of review heard it being claimed as just another “GTA San Andreas”, and if he’s going to blame this games future sales (if they’re poor) on having a “black character in an urban game”, then he needs to take a look at the sales charts.. Why would another urban hippity-hoppity game called ’25 to Life’ sell well with three African-American characters on the cover?

I personally think this whole ‘urban game’ trend needs to stop. Every month there’s some new ‘hip-hop inspired ‘hood’ game being released. Maybe Marc Ecko’s game is better than most of the other urban games out there, but to the average impulse-buying mall shopper (who he claims to be targeting) this will make no difference because all the urban games will look the same to them in the store.

Also, not to mention, maybe it’s not a good idea insulting the target demo graph of your product (especially if you’re a newcomer and a nobody to the game industry). As the old saying goes, ‘Don’t bite the hand that feeds’.