So you’re kind of using the environment to tell a story?
Yeah, yeah. Funny things are going on all the time. And it’s definitely your job to take down The Ministry, who’ve been telling everybody what to wear and how to think and how to go through your life. When you do that, parts of the world in the game come back to life.
Speaking of the Ministry, where did the idea of a oppressive big brother organization like that come from?
It was kind of a mixture of The Matrix and V for Vendetta. But, also, there’s still the fact that we’re not really allowed to skateboard in a lot of places. I mean, you get in trouble all the time. If you go to a building to skate, or if you go to these places to skate, you’re told it’s against the law in some cities. It’s definitely a bummer. It’s unfortunate. There’s a whole skill-set that goes into this sport, and we’re not, like, daredevils. So, being able to go against that mentality in the game, that’s cool.
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I think people still have the conception of even pro skaters as being really reckless, when, really, there’s a huge emphasis on safety nowadays.
Yeah, we’re not crazy. Like, oh, I’ve got to got risk my life today! Things have changed and the old outlaw mentality that skating was about isn’t there anymore. It’s definitely more like, “Cool, I’m going to work on this trick or I’m going to hang out with my friends.”
Yeah, it’s funny that you say that because you see so many more people skateboarding now as you did even like five years ago. And, you would figure that public attitudes would change a little, but they really haven’t.
And skateboarding’s so accessible. Snowboarding’s tough, because you ‘ve got to go to the mountains. For me, I love the skateboard season because I get to hangout at home and still be skating. I don’t have to travel to Norway or Japan or these crazy places to be snowboarding.
Now, this is your third game. What have you learned about the development process up until this point?
The first time around with this game, I just assumed everything was cool and it was easy to create. You could have this monster show up and then this crazy sequence of, like, flying through the air. It was video game land. And I just thought anything was possible. Truth is, anything is possible but it takes a certain amount of programming and time. And let’s face it, some things are more important than others. There’s no point in putting a monster in the game if the skating doesn’t feel right. So, now that we’ve gone through a couple versions of the game, I’m able to go in there with a better idea and be creative in term what’s actually possible. So, I could be like, “Look, I know from the last game that a certain idea is impossible but, with the changes in the technology, totally looks like something we could accomplish.” So, we’d work on it.
So you’re actually throwing design ideas in there?
Absolutely. And being able to change the landscape while you skate was such a big maybe, like we didn’t know if we were going to be able pull it off. It’s like, I’m not a programmer, dude, but I do know that processing that change has to be intense, you know what I mean? To have things changing while you’re going through doesn’t happen in a lot of other games.
Watching the technology evolve has been cool. The first couple rounds [of development] had it where the rails only bent a certain direction. I was like, well that doesn’t really accomplish what we’re going for. That’s basically like the rail’s already there but it’s just invisible until you get on it. That’s not a lot of creativity. Then, over time, we got to the point where you actually create your own lines now. So, I’m excited to see what happens when people really start getting into the game and like creating their own lines that we didn’t even think about.