Black Box's wall of autographed boards
Co-Optimus: So, what’s your favorite area of Port Carverton to skate in?
Cuz: It changes… I am reticent to say it because, you know, I skated the Chan Center, which is where we do our demo, so much… and I was sick of it. Then I was skating there just yesterday with friends, and the way they approached suddenly made it, “wow, this is my favorite place!” So it really will depend on the situation and who I’m with. I’m partial to Downtown because there’s a lot of handrails and I’ve got my favorite bowls there… but then you’ll see somebody’s video clip from the demo of them skating the suburbs and the university and you’re like, “wow, I should go back there.” Then when you go back there you realize, I just didn’t skate it this way, so for that day it becomes your favorite spot.
Co-Optimus: Now that the game’s done and so close to release, what’s been the biggest challenge in developing this game as opposed to Skate or Skate 2?
Cuz: From a tech side, integrating the on-line to be better and seamless. Also, the create-a-park feature has a huge range of technical challenges that, from a technical side, that stuff was tough… From a producer level, just letting people know that the game’s not as hard as you think it is, and part of the difficulty or challenge that I think people had was more legacy controls from other games. But now, after we’ve already done two games, [I think] we’ve sort of become that default control scheme.
Co-Optimus: Is there a specific feature that you wish you had more time for to be able to put in the game, or something that didn’t quite make it that you wish was there?
Cuz: If anything, it would have been pretty small little things. For me, personally, we have new difficulty modes, which is basically tweaking the physics, and it was always my dream to have sliders for those things, you know, really let people customize it. For example, “I want no assist on my grinds, I want full auto-pump”… but that’s kind of a like a game geek or skate nerd world. [laughs] “Would you like more time…?” Yeah. Yeah, I would like to build a bigger world, always, but that’s just selfish of me cause I want more places to skate. [laughs] I don’t know if we’re ever going to get to make another game. And it’s always like that, you know? Who knows what the future holds, so if this is the last game, I hope the world is big enough.
Co-Optimus: Any plans for DLC?
Cuz: We cannot officially talk about it, but it would absolutely make sense that there would be DLC. We’ve done it in the past, and it’s performed fairly well, and, uh… yeah, it’s a great idea. [laughs] I’ll just say that I’m still working on Skate 3 and the game launches in a week so I must be doing something right.
We'd like to thank Chris again for sitting down with us and answering all our questions, as well as community managers Shirley Chu, Reed Askey, and Josh Kline for inviting us out to the EA Canada studios to check out Skate 3. Skate 3 hits store shelves next Tuesday, May 11, for the Playstation 3 and XBox 360.