Interview | June 8, 2008 11:32 pm

By zoboa

I received an invite to attend a developer conference call for the upcoming 2K Sports title Don King Presents: Prizefighter. The interview was moderated by Chase, the Media Relations Director for 2K Sports' PR firm and was with Matthew Seymour (Executive Producer, 2K Sports). In addition, Don King and Larry Holmes also joined the call.

The interview lasted just under an hour with Chase asking several pre-submitted questions from the audience regarding the upcoming release of Don King Presents: Prizefighter. The interview focuses solely on the Xbox 360 version of the game. I have transcribed and posted several of the questions from the interview, but there are many questions that were not transcribed. At the bottom of this piece is a link to download the complete interview. All questions and answers are paraphrased unless direct quotes used:


MOD[/u]: Chase asking the question
MS[/u]: Matthew Seymour
DK[/u]: Don King
LH[/u]: Larry Holmes

Don King and Larry Holmes joined the interview in progress at the 12:30 mark[/b]

To get the interview started, Matthew was asked to provide a brief overview of Don King Presents: Prizefighter.

MOD[/u] Matt, if you could take it away?
MS[/u] I thank every one for joining us. This is quite an interesting way to go about this. Im excited about it. The Xbox 360 of Don King Presents: Prizefighter is due out next week in U.S., just a few days following that in Europe and about another week or two after that in Australia. The overview on don King Presents: Prizefighter, well obviously we have some pretty big competition out there, so one of the things we wanted to do is to differentiate ourselves, but how can you do that with the competition out there Well, one is offering a real, huge dramatic experience, and we really focused on that with the career mode. We have done something that has never done before in any video game let alone a sports videogame, and that is to tell the story through a live action sports documentary. And this game play, and this career mode will take about 15 hours of play, and you are actually the subject and the star of this documentary. Where legends, Don King and ex-girlfriends, cut mans trainers etc, are talking about you as if you actually exist. And were quite surprised that no one has ever tried this before. Considering how kind of in sconce the sports documentary is in athletics. We hear it in the Olympics, and ESPN and in movies like Murderball, When we were Kings and Riding Giants all of that. These are all very hip and very cool sports documentaries and it has never been done before. So we have this massive career mode, not only that, but we have an exhibition mode so you can fight in the ring with your friends and you can choose between 40 licensed professional boxers, 10 of which are legends of the ring. Such as Larry Holmes, who will be joining us later, and others like Ken Norton who he fought in 1978. In addition to that, we have a pretty robust multi-player mode, that includes this sort of fight club sort of area where it is kind of best man wins pound-for-pound fighter. And also a single round elimination mode, and in this multiplayer mode you can also use up to five customized created characters in different fight classes and all of them will be ranked to leaderboards. So that, a multiplayer, a deep career mode, a good kind of quick bout mode, lots of unlockables. We think we have kind of a winning formula here in addition to kind of a fight mechanics and game play very similar to kind of a Street Fighter game that is much more responsive, quick and fast, much like the real sport of boxing and that is what Prizefighter is all about.


MOD[/u] How much has Don King been involved in the development process?
MS[/u] Don has been massively involved. From the get go, we met with Don a number of days, the writers and I, designers and spent three days with him straighthours upon hours. Don works crazy hours; he is just like us and the press and burns the midnight oil. So it kind of really began with hearing a lot of stories from Don. I mean, that can go on forever. But not only just Don, but the people that work for Don. Surprisingly enough, most of his Vice Presidents of Broadcasting and Operations are women so thats always nice and we kind of sat around and just exchanged stories and favorite moments in boxing history and jotted all those down and throw them into the kettle and figure out how we are going to use all of this stuff in the game. So there was that element, and there was the element of Don being in this mocumentary if you will, so Don was one of the stars obviously of this mocumentary, sports documentary and then he did tons of voice over work and we were always showing him stuff throughout the whole progression of the development cycle not only of himself, but what we were doing with the other boxers and then he was throwing in ideas on which of his boxers should be in the game and other boxers that we had so it was a lot of back and forth and give and take and then we used a lotDon has this massive, massive probably one of the largest boxing libraries in the world that exists today and then kind of looking at what we could use there and whats to tell the story and offer as unlockables as you progress through the game and career mode. I cant count how many times I have been on the phone or at Dons office at Florida working with him and it was really fantastic and a lot of fun because he is an extremely fun man so just a great time to be had.


MOD[/u] So what did you find the hardest item or request to implement in the game while working with Mr. King?
MS[/u] I kind of touched on that, but let me just kind of hit it really on the head. It was all of these stories, it was all this stuff. I mean Don has been promoting for over 30 years now, so its like how do you implement all these grandtastic stories and some of them are a little too funny, or too crazy. He told me loads of stories about dealing with the boxers wives or girlfriends and some of them were a bit salacious so that we could never put in unless we were an M rated or even an AO game. That was probably the hardest part, just not having enough time and people in our development cycle in order to put everything in that we would have loved to.


MOD[/u] Speaking of development, what experience does the team have with boxing titles, or is this the first for many of them?
MS[/u] Great question! Well its Venom Games and these guys were ex-Rage guys and Venom Games is located up in Newcastle, England, and are a wholly-owned studio of 2K Games and 2K Sports and these guys did Rocky and Rocky Legends and this is one of the reasons why we bought them. It is because we wanted to get in through the boxing world and have that in our sports lineup. 2K Sports is all about bringing it to the audience and we arent afraid to take on the best and bring the action that we want to our audience and we are really key on game mechanics and game play and that is something that 2K sports is known for. So we bought the studio that knows how to make boxing game and these guys have quite a legacy because Rocky and Rocky Legends were terrific boxing games and lots of strength in regards story and minigames and all of that and people love the games, so we are just going to continue building that legacy.


MOD[/u] What inspired you to become part of this project and what did you feel you could bring to the boxing game genre?
DK[/u] Well, what inspired me to come to this project was a man named Steve Glickstein, who was wanting to be radical in putting a game together that would be exemplary of emulation and imitation of my life an what it is. So you have got a game of reality, so in other words it is a peoples game.


MOD[/u] So what is it like for you to work on this title and how much say did you have in the direction of the game and what part of it are you most proud of?
DK[/u] I had a lot to say about the direction of the game and I love the game because the game exemplified life, it exemplified being in it opening up new avenues of thought. I love the new innovative and imaginative using the information highway. Information is king, and King is information. So it was right down my alley to be able to on new wonders of the world and to be able to have a project involved where everybodys got a voice and say what they want to say.


MOD[/u] What do you think you brought to the game that an athlete couldnt have?
DK[/u] I am the teacher, let me tell you that it begins with thought and image then it is translated to the living reality. When I came in, I revolutionized the sport of boxing I changed the game from the beginning to the end. When I came in the money would be distributed in a factor of the game where you would get $1 million purse where all the attraction would be the money, the million dollar purse. I brought in the attraction, and the attraction means a sound business deal which means recouping your investment and profit. So I made the attraction the most important because that is why you are putting up the money. Money was not the primary factor, but the attraction was.


MOD[/u] How much do you think the game is fought on in regards to how much is dramatization or entertainment value?
LH[/u] You know a lot of it is geared for drama and entertainment. But you know, I have not played the game so I cant really tell you a whole lot about it so I think , but I think if it emulates Larry Holmes as Larry Holmes Heavyweight Champion of the world through the years it is going to be a heck of a game. You know with my call to Holmes, but you cannot forget one thing, that the right hand follows that. So if anyone plays the game you should have the advantage with the right jab. Whoever plays the game is going to want to be me. My record speaks for itself.


Feel free to download (right click and save as) the entire interview HERE and listen to an additional 40+ minutes of Q&A with Don King, Larry Holmes and Matt Seymour.

A special thanks to Chase, 2K Sports and Matt for taking the time to set up this conference call and interview with the media.

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