Pushed to the Edge #9: Is There An Ecko In Here?
Mar 8, 2006
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.
So as ridiculous as Ecko's comments are, they're a breath of fresh air. Until you actually stop to think about what he's saying, that is. I'd like to address his comments in the interview step by step. Take a deep breath. According to Marc Ecko, critics and the masses don't like his game (which is actually really, really great) because:
We're racist.
You got me. I hated College Hoops 2K6 as well, because it has a black guy on the cover and wasn't anything like GTA. When you boil Ecko's comments down to the word "racism" it sounds way over the top. But how else am I meant to interpret his claim that putting a black man on the cover automatically pre-disposed me to expect a different game? I can't even believe I've given such a desperate attention ploy its own paragraph. I will say that I proudly discriminate against one thing: lousy games. Make one that isn't, and we'll encourage everyone to buy it.
And for the record, loads of gamers don't like "urban," because it typically means cheap marketing cash-in. Ever play SRS? "Urban" usually means cliche storylines and characters*. Evidently, the caution of most buyers is serving them well.
* Not that those problems are by any means the sole providence of urban games.
 College Hoops 2K6 |
Consoles aren't powerful enough for Getting Up's vision.
There is a simple three step method for understanding how wrong that is:
A: Play Getting Up.
B: Play Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. (A three-year old game.)
C: Keep playing Prince of Persia.
Clear enough? We understand the limitations very well: with the right approach you can make it seem like there aren't any.
We're too bogged down in mechanics.
Might as well say that moviegoers are too distracted by sound editing. That ignores the obvious: when it's good, you'll never notice. But when it's bad, it makes the movie look cheap and amateurish. Same with gameplay mechanics.
The movie/sound analogy doesn't even go far enough. To be more precise: games ARE mechanics. It's impossible to separate the two. The experience of a game's narrative is directly transmitted through mechanics. If they're as lousy as the fighting system in Getting Up, or as superficial as the painting, the story suffers. That's precisely what makes games such a unique and challenging storytelling medium. Calling reviewers out for attending to that fact shows either a deep misunderstanding or a total disregard for the workings of games as a medium.
We don't understand graffiti.
 Graf Writing  Wild Style |
This is the one arguable point, since a lot of people probably don't, at least in the way Ecko means. (Even after playing the game.) To a lot of us, graffiti is a nuisance (even a crime) that occasionally allows a singular artist to do something new. It may be the voice of urban America, but to most people it's speaking in a totally different language. If it's rebellion, most of it is the rebellion of a 16-year old against his parents, not a downtrodden people against an oppressive regime.
And no matter how cool the classic stuff is, most is just noise. Give me a warehouse full of work by the best people out there and I'll show up. There's a reason museums aren't full of sketches and roughs by artists -- they're crap. That's what most of us see when we see graffiti: hackwork, doodles, and practice pieces by people who, if we're lucky, will one day have something valuable to present. Until they do, I'd be happier if they kept their ugly sketchbooks at home. Does that mean I don't understand graffiti? I'm willing to live with that.
Gamers all got wedgies in high school.
Guilty, but I'd totally forgotten about it until he brought it up. I swear.
Pushed to the Edge is a regular commentary covering elements of the video game industry that cause elation, dismay, outrage, or some combination of the above.