The App Store's Bias - A Balad For Hip Hop
My name is E.A. Gray, creator of the iOS game/future cartoon Hip Hop Berserker. If you haven't seen the game in action, you can catch a brief glimpse of what the gameplay looks like here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYE1RIkDtCM
Anyway, Hip Hop Berserker has been a passion project of mine for over two years now. It is my homage to this beautiful genre of music that has dominated and largely influenced today's pop culture. Unfortunately, "the powers that be" do not share my affinity for Hip Hop. I pitched the concept of Hip Hop Berserker to various, popular cartoon studios over the past two years. I was even given the opportunity to be a "ghost" creative consultant for one particular studio, which was a great opportunity; not only could I help improve the passion projects of other creative individuals, but inspire faith in Hip Hop Berserker as well. Tragically, I was given the same response when dealing with many associate/executive producers: "We just don't think our audience will respond well to Hip Hop." This unbelievably, ignorant statement would piss me off, especially since some of these studios have developed programs which contain numerous Hip Hop/pop culture influences that currently air on Cartoon Network/Adult Swim . My response to this statement was always the same: "You're wrong and I'll prove you wrong. Go f*** yourself."
Twelve months ago I began my mission of proving these detractors wrong. I started my own mobile game studio (FourTwoThree Studios LLC), gathered a team of creative individuals (all who share my affection for Hip Hop), and began creating the rhythm/action game that is now known as Hip Hop Berserker (exclusively on the App Store). Orian Livnat of LivGames, a very successful mobile game developer, consulted on the project and DeStorm Power, YouTube-Vine celebrity/Rapper, instantly became a fan and agreed to appear in the game and promote it as well. After 10 months of arduous work and many sleepless nights, Hip Hop Berserker was released on the App Store on January 9th, 2014. The user reviews have been amazing and although the game was largely ignored by most major mobile gaming websites, the few that have reviewed the game responded very positively. This immediately crushed the fear that we had created an App Store bomb...
...Which is why we were absolutely SHOCKED with Apple's App Store response or lack thereof. Hip Hop Berserker was not featured ANYWHERE, not in the "Best New Games" section or even the "Music Games" section. This was extremely shocking primarily because within 48 hours, Hip Hop Berserker was charting better than most of the games the App Store chose to feature (Lyne, Lost Toys, BBBBombs!), which was impressive considering the lack of a feature in the App Store and the lack of reviews from major sites. Our team was even in contact with an App Store representative who confirmed receiving our press release. To add insult to injury, the App Store chose to feature another rhythm game: Sega's Rhythm Thief & The Paris Caper. Not only was this game not well-reviewed, at the time of this writing, it's still charting WAY beneath Hip Hop Berserker. So our team was left scratching their heads and saying, "What the hell?!" How does a game which is charting well above competitors, has great user reviews, AND is being promoted by DeStorm Power, a guy with over 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube and over 2 million Vine followers, NOT get a feature? When speaking with a fellow mobile game developer his answer was simple: "The App Store reviewer(s) probably hates Hip Hop." As much as I'd hate to believe it, it is the only piss-poor excuse that makes sense. Apple takes 30 percent of the revenue generated from developers, why would they make a conscious decision to NOT feature a game with so much going for it?
Please, do not get me wrong, I am not delusional enough to believe that Hip Hop Berserker will win any Game of The Year awards, especially with the plethora of great mobile games available (Republique, Stellar Wars, Oceanhorn, Device 6), but I firmly believe this game deserves to be appreciated and judged based on it's content. The artwork and soundtrack alone are worthy of praise, but of course I am extremely biased. Still, I can't believe that the words "Hip Hop" were powerful enough to evoke a sense of dread from the App Store's reviewers. If you are one of those individuals, you should be ashamed of yourself...and you can also suck the collective balls of the Hip Hop community. Hip Hop will never die. No matter how much of a conscious effort you make to suffocate it, Hip Hop Will Never Die.
At the end of the day the question really is: What's with the bias against Hip Hop?
CEO/Animator/Voice Actor/Producer
FourTwoThree Studios LLC
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