A Rapper’s Tribute, By Unlikely Partners
By CHRISTOPHER KEOUGH
Staff Reporter
Culture clash, meet convergence.
When a bunch of Chinese-American techies meet straight-out-of-Compton rappers, something interesting is bound to happen. In the case of Ruthless Records and Univessence Digital Studios Inc., it’s a video game based on the musings of the late rapper Eric “Eazy-E” Wright.
The game, “Hittin’ Switchez,” is included on a musical CD released by Ruthless as a tribute to Wright, its co-founder and member of the seminal gangsta rap group NWA.
The computer game, a celebration of low-rider car culture, puts the player in the role of a rapper cruising in a car, getting points for picking up women, pagers and cash.
The themes are consistent with the gangsta image portrayed by Wright and are hard enough to warrant a “Teen” rating from the Electronic Software Ratings (strong language, suggestive themes and violence).
If unapologetic, Julian Chan, chief operating officer at Univessence, sounded a bit abashed by the content, explaining, “We don’t distribute the game, we are reflecting the standards the distributor wants us to have.”
Those are the standards of Tomica Woods Wright, Eazy-E’s widow and president of L.A.-based Ruthless, who is unconcerned about the appropriateness of the content. It is an Eazy-E release, after all. “There’s no car-jacking. It’s not to the extreme of ‘Grand Theft Auto,'” Wright said of the popular but violent console game.
Strange bedfellows
If making a game work involves pulling together action, graphics and challenging game play, the two companies should have plenty of pedigree to pull it off.
Univessence, a Culver City producer of Web sites, Internet-based learning programs, marketing promotions and, now, video games, counts among its backers Daniel Kwoh, co-founder of Gemstar Development Corp. (now Gemstar-TV Guide International) and co-inventor of the VCR Plus+ system.
Founded in late 2000, Univessence went the conventional route in building its business, landing between $8 million and $12 million in funding. That includes angel funding from directors Dominic Chan (Julian Chan’s father and a former Bell Labs employee), Kwoh and Wilson Cho, chairman and president of ChinaLink Networks Inc. Also included is venture capital investment from Asia Internet Venture Capital in Hong Kong and JPW Opportunity Fund in Dallas.
Ruthless had far more humble beginnings.
Eazy-E, a high school dropout, bankrolled the business with money he claimed to have made hustling on the streets. Funding the recording of a few rap songs, the business grew out of a grassroots movement.
Ruthless is credited with blazing the trail for other rap labels, including Suge Knight’s L.A.-based Death Row Records and Sean Comb’s Bad Boy Records.
Cultural research
To make the game authentic, Chan’s crew went to Compton, Crenshaw, Inglewood and Watts and took pictures of the neighborhood streets. The shots were sent to the company’s production studios in China where the game was animated.
Chan wouldn’t disclose the value of the deal, but said Univessence got a one-time fee to develop the six-level game, considered comparable in complexity to a demonstration game. PC or console games have as many as 40 levels and can cost as much as $20 million to develop. Ruthless paid closer to $1 million for “Switchez,” Chan said.
The company cut costs by producing the content in China, where the pool of talent is less expensive. “We’re leveraging a larger workforce in China and I could put a larger number of workers on it, pay them a good wage in China and get basically the same quality of work,” Chan said.
Typically, game makers pay rights holders a licensing fee to develop and distribute a game and pay royalties based on the number of units sold. Univessence’s deal with Ruthless, Chan said, contains no provision for licensing or royalty fees, since Ruthless is acting as distributor.
Wright said the game concept came from sketches Eazy-E left upon his death from complications of AIDS in 1995. The game on the CD is a demo, but she said she is pitching a long form of the game to Sony for its Playstation platform.
She said she has plans to use games to promote other artists when it fits their style and following, and Chan said he hopes to be included in future Ruthless-related game releases, although there are no agreements in place.
The upside, said Chan, is in using “Hittin’ Switchez” as a calling card to what he expects will be a much larger market.
Steve Koenig, senior analyst at market tracking firm NPD Techworld, was amused to hear about “Switchez.”
“I think it’s an interesting idea and it’s possible it could be well-received in the marketplace,” Koenig said.
Koenig said that while music CDs have become more interactive in recent years, the ultimate success of a game bundled with one would depend on the interests of the performer’s audience. If the people who listen to the music don’t play video games, the games will go unnoticed and not serve as incentive to buy the CD.
That’s why, Koenig said, some games would have a better chance of success if compatible with console games. Games featuring rap artists would be particularly suited for a console platform because the consoles (Sony’s PlayStation 2, Microsoft’s Xbox, Nintendo’s GameCube) are red hot with teens, the predominant demographic of rap music.
Univessence and Ruthless were introduced by a former Univessence artist who worked on music Web sites. What started out as a pitch to work on the Ruthless Web site turned into “Switchez,” Chan said.
