It's been about a week since 2K Sports announced Jay Z as Executive Producer for NBA 2K13, this year's installment of their annual basketball game.
There's been a lot of hype surrounding Hov and his new role, but not everyone is quite sure what it means. 2K did say Jay Z's "artistic vision and style will permeate the experience, from the overall look and feel of the game, to the hand-picked soundtrack, interactive in-game menus and more," but that's just jargon for many fans. We know he had a role in selecting the game's soundtrack, but is that all the Executive Producer does?
"You've probably seen over the last several years that we've focused a lot more on building out more of an experience than what just happens on the basketball court," began 2K’s VP of Marketing Jason Argent when asked about Jay Z's role with NBA 2K13.
"If you look at the NBA, the product as a whole, basketball is obviously at the core, but it's a lot more than that. It's music, culture and entertainment. We wanted to have that feel injected into our game," he explained. "When we launched 2K12 last year, we sat down and talked about how we could make the next one better. We wanted to take some of that music, culture and entertainment and put it into the game. Whenever we all talked about it, one name kept coming up, Jay Z."
"One thing that we liked was that we heard he was a fan of the game. That's very important to us. Jay is also very entrenched in the NBA, as him being part owner of the Brooklyn Nets," Argent added. "More than that and also being a music icon, his influence in art, culture and creativity is a package we felt would be an amazing addition to the game this year."
"I don't know if anything this big has ever been done with a video game, but this is really just the beginning of a lot of stuff we have to talk about in the next few weeks," he concluded.
As for his involvement in promoting the game, Argent confirmed Jay Z is going to be involved in a "very streamlined capacity".
"This isn’t about Jay Z promoting himself or us promoting him. It’s about his involvement from a creative standpoint. You won’t be seeing him in the center of any of our ad campaigns or anything like that."
One thing you definitely won't see is Jay Z as a playable character on the Brooklyn Nets.
"The key focus with us was to not make this gimmicky, it had to be real and authentic. Jay Z's involvement had to be the same way," Ardent assured fans. "Seeing him as a playable character and all that wasn't necessarily something we were trying to achieve in this game. It was the bigger, general artistic vision of what he wanted to bring and what we wanted to bring to NBA 2K13."
You can check out Jay Z's first Executive Producer decision – the NBA 2K13 soundtrack – on the game's Facebook page.
