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PS2 | Action | Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure

Boxart for Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure
Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure 48 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 3.0
  • SOUND: 3.0
  • CONTROL: 2.5
  • FUN FACTOR 2.5
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.8
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.7

Feature: Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure

Feature by GameGirl | 07/29/2005 | 15:21:02 PM PST

Is hip-hop a new game genre? We asked fashion-turned-game designer Marc Ecko himself.

Marc Ecko is gliding from fashion to game design this fall. Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure celebrates and validates street culture with a mix of themes from graffiti to music, prompting us to ask if there is a new genre blooming here--a hip-hop game? We took the questions to Marc Ecko himself.

GamePro: The way that hip-hop music and hip-hop icons are being used in games, where's the line between authentic and fake, and how do you land on the side of authentic?

Marc ME: Well I don't try to concern myself with that, because I'm not here to be a critic of other titles. I can only do me...to be as authentic and sincere with whatever it is I do. So I can't necessarily comment on those other games. I know that I'm excited that they're coming out in that they open up opportunity for other people.

And we are in a market cycle right now where there's a tolerance for this genre, if you will, this new genre that has to prove itself, and there hasn't really been a success story outside of, say, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, which is really more about Grand Theft Auto then it was about San Andreas. So it's still too early to tell.

Any time urban culture and black culture are brought to a new medium, there's always that awkward phase of outsiders coming in and using it as a device to inform the new entertainment medium. There's always the possibility that people are going to screw it up. It happened in film, it happened in music, it happened in TV. But there are people who get it right.

Being sincere...that's not in code, you can't code that. It's visceral, it's sniff, it's feeling, it's chi, it's instinct. And in a market cycle that's exploring that narrative--some people get it right, some people get it wrong.

GP: Does it make sense to talk about this as a new genre, can we call this a hip-hop game?

ME: I don't think so. First of all, my game's so completely different from everything else that's coming out that's coined "urban," so for me, it's important to communicate that. This game isn't about a character who's on the streets and he's got to make good on the streets, and he's got a gun, and he avenges something that's gone wrong or busting up a drug ring...it's not playing to that thread. This is much more about street art and graffiti, which is something that's a much different kind of phenomenon that, from a storytelling point of view, hasn't been told in a mass way. It's kinda still underground, largely.

Hip-hop...is undoubtedly the most entrepreneurial force in American culture. I've never met or worked with a more entrepreneurial group or have had peers that have come from such disparate backgrounds and have achieved so much just on the hustle of wanting to win. The hustle of not having anything drives people in hip-hop to want to try new things and go into new businesses.

When I started Ecko Unlimited, my clothing brand, 13 years ago, I used to get pissed off at retailers who tried to say, ... it's "Urban" or "Young Mens." You know...[laughs] It's the American way, unfortunately, to put labels on things, and this is America. It can only be born from America. And to me, it's just a pop culture thing. Labels...I don't get hung up on it anymore.

So, is it a new emerging genre? I don't know. I'm not clairvoyant. The truth is, it depends on how all these things sell. [Laughs.] It's only emerging if there's going to be a version two, three, and four. That's pretty much the gaming industry's formula, to try to build up an engine and polish it and polish it and polish it over multiple iterations of that one brand.

So... I don't know if I answered your question or not. But I tried.

GP: You totally did. I wanted to talk a little bit more about this outsider perspective.

ME: Story of my life.


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