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"Doug Jacobs" <djacobs@shell.rawbw.com> wrote in message
news:11dqua8qtn1b0f3@corp.supernews.com...
> don <don@no.spam> wrote:
>
>> I'm just hypothesizing that the same thing will happen to the urban,
>> gangsta, hip-hop based games. I think that after a few really bad ones
>> the fad will pass.
>
> The music may change, but the scene will remain the same...
>
>> > TV Shows: Good Times, What's Happening and Sanford and Son are the
>> > only 3
>> > shows I can think of that ever took place "in the hood" and those are
>> > all
>> > classics. Come to think of it, New York Undercover was top 10 during
>> > its
>> > initial run. There was also Chico and the Man and Welcome Back Kotter.
>
>> I'm not familiar with NY Undercover, but the rest of the shows were
>> sitcoms that had nothing to do with gangsta rap or urban crime. Did
>> Kotter even have any blacks in it?
Oh my gosh, you never watched Welcome Back Kotter? The only black character
was Lawrence Hilton Jacobs of Cooley High (the movie not the tv show) fame
but it was clear that they had embraced the whole "urban" vibe of that era.
What's Happening dealt with urban issues and they featured rap and break
dancing. As a matter of fact, I think their episode of with the Doobie
Brothers was the only show I have ever seen about bootlegging.
>
> Good Times may have had its funny moments, but it also had its dramatic
> and downright tragic moments as well. It's still a sitcom, like M*A*S*H*
> was a sitcom. Were you to make Good Times today, you can be sure that it
> would have rap and gang related topics in it. But those didn't exist back
> when the show was being made in the early 70s. You still saw stories
> about poverty, racism, predjudice, and crime. Other issues like alcohol
> and drugs were there too, though not as strongly. I think there was still
> a lot of reluctance to have a TV show discuss these sorts of issues.
> After all, who'd want to tune in every week to watch a crack whore degrade
> herself over and over again for a rock?
Great points. The same can be said of The White Shadow and the boys of
Carver HS.
>
> I'd still consider Welcome Back Kotter an urban show even though the
> characters were mainly White. I think there were a few Blacks on the
> show, but again, I don't think color is a requirement for being "urban" or
> not.
>
>> > All this actually proves is that "in the hood" movies and TV shows are
>> > rare
>> > and do make money.
>
>> And the fact that they are rare only goes to prove that it's not a
>> popular genre in spite of the popularity of the music. Until there are
>> 10 or 20 urban based games that are bona fide hits, it's not going to be
>> a major force in video gaming like futuristic sci-fi or medieval fantasy
>> is.
>
> I don't know about you, but the majority of the so-called "urban based"
> games that feature minorities have bordered on the horrible blaxploitation
> flicks of the 60s and 70s. Think about it - if they made "GTA:Shaft!"
> where you got to play rogue cop, Shaft in an open GTA-esque environment,
> it'd immediatly sell another million copies.
Only to people old enough to know the real Shaft. The youth would be
wondering why the character doesn't sound like Samuel L Jackson.
One thing I find humorous about the whole thing is that Samuel Jackson is a
voice actor on GTA and yet he speaks out against rappers as actors quite
openly. I wish they could have come to terms with Dave Chapelle to play CJ
because that would have made the game that much better.
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