In order to complete this photo challenge, you and your skating buddy have to perform the specificed maneuver
After you’re done creating the park you want, you can upload it to EA’s servers where it will be made available to other players to download. The more folks download your park, the more board sales you’ll receive in the campaign mode. It is possible through a combination of park downloads and board graphic downloads, which are created on the Skate 3 website, for a player to reach their campaign goal of 1,000,000 board sales without ever touching the campaign mode. These sales are only reflected in the creator’s game, however, which ties in to the interesting co-op conundrum that Skate 3 presents.
Skate 3 is a game that encourages players to “team up and throw down” in a variety of ways. Inviting friends to your game to complete film, photo, and a couple other challenge-types will add an “on-line bonus” to the number of boards sold when you complete that challenge, thereby allowing you and your friends to reach the board sale goal faster. Additionally, there are a couple of specific team-based challenges, like Own the Lot and Deathrace (which are also multiplayer modes), in which you can compete with your friends against computer opponents.
Some friends may get a bit too creative with the skater creator
In spite of this, skating is, at its core, a solo activity. Having your friends along when tackling any of the challenges makes it more fun, and can some times make it a bit easier as they can move objects around in order to ensure you clear them or land a jump, but they can’t hop on the same board with you to make you a better skater or complete a challenge for you. When you tackle a photo or film challenge, all players engaged in the challenge have to complete it on their own, which can make it a bit more frustrating if one player isn’t quite as adept at handling his board as his friends. The most your friends can do in a situation like that is show you how to pull something off, or offer some tips that might make the challenge a bit easier. Additionally, as previously mentioned, board graphic and skate park downloads are only credited towards the creator, other members of your team, if you’re on one, won’t see any of the benefits of those downloads.
While Skate 3 may not provide the kind of co-op experience we’ve come to expect, there is still a kind of shared experience when playing Skate 3 that’s unlike any other game I’ve played. Getting together on-line with your friends becomes less about completing certain goals or objectives as group, and more about seeing what kinds of crazy, inventive, or just downright silly things you can do; and really, that’s what the game’s developers are going for with Skate 3. I’ve heard countless times from them that their biggest goal for Skate 3 was to enable their community to easily do all of the things they were already doing in Skate 2, like forming, skating, and competing as teams. Based on what I’ve played, I’d say they’ve been quite successful at not only meeting that objective, but also making the entire offline/on-line experience a rather seamless one for you and your friends.