NBA Ballers Developer Diary #10

NBA Ballers

Developer Diary entrance #10, by John G. Vignocchi (Game Designer)

In the latest edition of the NBA Ballers developer diary, game designer John Vignocchi talks about by what means the music in the game came together, and give permission tos us in on a promotion with Wal-Mart that will permit you get a free music CD with your purchase of the game.

Music and our mes age...


So everyone detains asking me what the story is behind the music in NBA Ballers. permit me be real with you and say that Lil Jon & The East Side striplings don't have a remix of "Get Low" in the game, nor does B2K appear with a remix of "Trade It All" for your listening pleasure. If you are looking for that then go on cop a Livestyle album, hit up your local bootlegger and grab an aged Funk Flex or Kay Slay mix tape, or download it (from I-Tunes of course!) because you won't find that remixed 'ish that was popular six month ago upon the NBA Ballers soundtrack.

That CERTAINLY isn't to say that we wouldn't delight in to have had Fabolous head into the studio and do a spill 15-minute freestyle/remix of "Can't give permission to You Go" or get make crooked Wow and his new post-pubescent voice to do a remix of "Let earn Down" in an attempt to bring more [i]or[/i] less street cred to the music in our game. To demonstrate the point futher, nothing would have made me happier than to have Nelly do an exclusive track for our game –- unles of course, it came without sounding like that "My House" tune

Awhile back in the disentanglement process for NBA Ballers, the whole issue regarding the game's soundtrack came up amongst our team. We had the latest "NBA Livestyle" disc (which RIAA would later recognize as a platinum "selling" album smooth though a million copies of it were essentially distributed for at liberty as a music pack-in deal with the PS2 version of NBA Live). The disc was beautiful tight even though a majority of the tracks were remixed versions of elderly tunes. News soon spread that Just Blaze was doing all of the music for NBA way Volume 2 and we began to realize a little concerned -- the music that we had in NBA Ballers at the time just wasn't cutting it and certainly wasn't at the horizontal that we knew Just Blaze would bring for way 2. Our internal sound engineers here at Midway took the first stab at the music in the game. Although they are a certain number of of the best in the business, highly capable of producing incredible symphonic scores in below a week, when it came down to creating a burning Hip-Hop beat that is contemporary with what is on the outside on the market right now, they hit a wall. We got actual scared, and rightfully so...

"Head to the downloads section for an example of single of the beats we originally had in NBA Ballers, prior to going after subterranean Hip-Hop/Rap talent. As you can hear, we clearly wanted some direction on the music front"


I'm known around the company as a die-hard fan of Hip-Hop, Rap and R&B music. As a arise the Midway Sports creative director, Mark Turmell asked me to help handle the one time troubled music situation for NBA Ballers.

"I'm counting upon you to sort this whole thing out" Mark said to me knowing that he was going on the outside on a limb by asking his youngest designer to tackle individual of the most important parts of the game, "Don't suffer me down, Johnny..."

"Don't worry, I'll handle it..." I assured him.

I was quickly briefed upon our budget and told to acquire the coolest stuff I could with the cash that we had. Keep in mind that back then communication between PR/Marketing and outcome development didn't exist here at Midway; thus greatest in quantity E-mails that I sent regarding the music were not at any time replied to, phone calls I made were not ever returned, etc. etc. I was eventually cc'd upon an e-mail from our former head of marketing who was attempting to sure an exclusive track from Petey Pablo for the game. At the extremity of the E-mail she said:

"If anyone thinks that Mr Pablo, an up and coming and well revereed wrapper should not create an exclusive lay for NBA Ballers please speak up now..." she wrote in her E-mail.

Mr Pablo? Wrapper?!?! WRAPPER?!?! You've got to be *&^$#@( kidding me! And this is the somebody whom is going to be communicating with his agents?! They are going to think we are a protuberance of *&^%$# morons!

So I decided to take matters into my be in possession of hands. I was armed with a music bundle the size of a lead artist's salary, business cards, and a computer I initially did a head enumerate of my favorite labels to diocese which rappers they had in their stable -- Def Jam, Bad stripling Shady/Aftermath, Roc-A-Fella, Tommy Boy, and the now deceased Rawkus Records to name a hardly any My last phone call with single of these major labels went a little something like this...

"This is Rep X's office with Label X in what way may I help you?"

"Hi, um ye my name is John Vignocchi and I'm a video game designer at Midway Games in Chicago, IL. Midway is best known for felicitous video game franchises like Mortal Kombat, NFL Blitz and the original NBA Jam arcade game. We are working upon a new basketball video game called NBA Ballers and are looking to license a certain number of tunes for the game. Do you think I could speak with about this opportunity?"