With the game's first look trailer dropping this week, NBA LIVE 10 Visual Games Designer Ryan Santos gives us a closer look at how the game has become more culturally relevant from visuals such as tattoos and authentic gear that players will be wearing, to the soundtrack that you can expect to hear in this year's game.
Swagga Like Us was the infamous hook made popular by T.I., Kanye West, Lil Wayne and Jay-Z. It kinda sums up how I feel about NBA LIVE 10. I’m proud to say NBA LIVE is back in a big way.
For me, coming back to LIVE has been a great experience. As an artist, I was part of the LIVE team for years. At the start of development for NBA LIVE 2005, I moved off the team to work on our NBA Street titles. Now 5 years later, I’ve been lucky enough to take on a role as a game designer on the game that started it all for me.
A huge focus for us this year was to make NBA LIVE more culturally relevant. That meant a lot of things; from the revamping the visuals, to new game modes, and of course an all new soundtrack. All the decisions we made around those areas always took into account the culture of hoops. That’s really a huge part of my job as a designer. To take inspiration from the things that relate back to basketball and incorporate it into my design. How great is it that my research consists of watching NBA games/highlights, reading bball mags, surfing sneaker blogs and listening to music. Today I wanted to touch on a few things that make NBA LIVE 10 more culturally relevant.
For the visuals, things like updating tattoos; to having the freshest player exclusive shoes in the game was a must. We’re also bringing back a grip of NBA throwback and holiday/cultural jerseys. It may not seem like a big deal to some people when a guy like LeBron is missing some tattoos and his away color signature Nikes, but to our core audience this isn’t authentic. It breaks the reality of sim sports titles when details like that are missed… not this year. When you boot up NBA LIVE 10, it’ll look like a completely new game, where players and stadiums will look as authentic as ever. Below are some images showing you examples of the various visual improvements.
Player likeness:
Up to date tattoos:
The newest kicks:
Throwback and cultural/holiday uniforms:
As you can see the game not only looks amazing, but brings back the culture of hoops to our game. On that note, we’ve re-designed your experience upon entering the game for the first time. Last year, you were taken into an NBA practice facility…. “We talking about practice?” Don’t worry, the practice gym is still around, but we decided to take a fresh approach on the user’s first time in the game. Now you’ll enter an all new state of the art player’s gym. Internally we’ve dubbed it the “Hangar.” Much of the inspiration was taken from the Nike Commercial for the Air Force 1 25th anniversary campaign.
I also thought about the idea of these players building their dream gym. I looked at various architecture for direction on the interior of the space.
Here are some images to show you some of the inspiration and concept art:
Here’s the final look:
It went from feeling cold and empty, to warm and alive. The use of different materials gave us more contrast and interest.
In the Hangar, you’ll see the top players hanging out in cool gear like signature shoes and branded apparel. The soundtrack will be bumping while you practice some of the new gameplay mechanics. Overlays will appear to walk you through some of those new controls. We also kept the video screens on the walls to feed you ESPN content, and some video on demand content from our servers. Throughout the year we’ll be posting some cool videos for you to watch in the hangar. In addition, there will be dynamic on-screen messaging to keep you up to date on the latest NBA LIVE 10 news, like Dynamic DNA updates.
By now, most of you have probably seen our NBA LIVE 10 cover athlete reveal video:
It featured none other than superman Dwight Howard, along with the voice of hip hop icon Mos Def. Mos is one of the artists that came up many times when we started to talk about the soundtrack. With the help of our EA Worldwide Music Group in LA and our marketing team at EA Canada, we got Mos Def to do all of the voice over in the video. Using a voice as recognizable as his, was one of the elements that would really make this video tight. Obviously I’m a huge fan of his music, but more importantly, his influence on hoops. If you remember his song “Umi Says,” it was used in a Brand Jordan commercial for the Air Jordan XVI.
Then he went on to make a sick Converse commercial called "Invisible Game.”
He was the obvious choice when we started to brainstorm about the video. To me, his voice over is another detail that sets the tone for NBA LIVE 10. Stay tuned because you may just be seeing more of Mos Def and NBA LIVE 10.
To listen to some of the singles from our soundtrack, check it out here: NBA LIVE 10 Official Soundtrack
Well that wraps up my first blog post for this year. In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting more stuff to show you just how far NBA LIVE 10 has come visually. Thanks for following our blog, and I look forward keeping you guys up to date on the latest NBA LIVE 10 insider info.
Peace,
Ryan