Pushed to the Edge #9: Is There An Ecko In Here?

I love Marc Ecko. Why? Just read his response to the middling reviews garnered by Getting Up in an interview with the New York Metro's Robert Summa on Feb 27:

"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 dismissiveness 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."

After reading that, if the individual cells in your brain haven't torn each other apart like starving goldfish, you're probably wondering why I like Mr. Ecko so much. It's simple, really: no one who comes from within the games industry has the stones to come out with a statement so revealing, accusatory, and ludicrous.

Marc Ecko Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure

That's because gaming is almost a closed system. Aside from a few hotshots and loose cannons (feel free to picture Mel Gibson in a mullet while savoring that phrase) no developer would make the sort of comments Ecko did. You'll hear a lot of the same old thing about how much of a challenge and great time it was to make Shooter #425, but almost nothing brutally honest about how the team feels the game sits in the market. (Not until a couple years after the fact, at least.)

Corporate parents have such a hold on the industry that getting entertainingly inflammatory statements out of a voice from within gaming is stupendously improbable. Unless a journalist has a long-standing relationship with a producer or studio, the candor just isn't forthcoming. When it does fly, we're often asked not to print it.