As Jim highlighted in his hands-on preview of Skate 3, the focus for the latest game in the Skate franchise is on teaming up with your friends. While at the Skate 3 Community Event, we had the opportunity to talk with Chris “Cuz” Parry, producer for all three Skate titles and a skater himself, about how the co-op came about, the rewards for building a team, and how you can still enjoy co-op with your friend even if he or she isn’t around.
Co-Optimus: At the beginning of the event you talked about the progression of the Skate franchise: Skate was about making a name for yourself, Skate 2 was earning that back, and Skate 3 will be about establishing a franchise. How did that transition happen?
Chris Parry: For us it paralleled with this team concept, [which] comes together in a variety of ways. One, it’s a logical progression for the skater’s career because once a skater hits a certain level… some of them make their own companies. Mike Carroll started Girl with his friends, Danny Way did Planet B with Colin McKay… it’s just sort of a natural evolution of a career… So it made sense that way. The other way it made sense is that we were looking at what people did with Skate 1 and 2 and they were making their own teams – crews, clans, call it what you will. In skating, you know, your company gets a team of skaters that goes and promotes your brand. So all the challenges you do in [Skate 3] promote this fictional brand that you create and we want to help you create it and show it off. But if you want to do that online and say, “I skate with these 6, or 12, guys,” our community’s already doing that. [So we thought] why don’t we just help them and make it easier to enable them to do it? And reward and recognize them better than we have in the past!
Co-Optimus: So how has it worked in the past, and how will it work going forward?
Chris: Right now it’s like “yay, I posted a video and it went on the message board and it’s in the [Skate community] blog!” Some of them are psyched, but how can we do more? Well you know, you just killed yourself for a couple weeks [designing a skateboard in the Skate.com creator], people downloaded [your deck], and the more [it’s] downloaded, the more boards you sell in your single player experience.
Co-Optimus: How would this tie in with the co-op aspects of the game?
Chris: So we as a group created this piece of work – we created this skate park, we created a graphic – and if everybody starts downloading it? If your brand takes off? You [all] get credit for it in your game. Instead of going out, [doing all this work], and not having something tangible.
Co-Optimus: What are some of the rewards people are going to be able to see by doing this?
Chris: You can hit a lot of the milestones in your [single player] progression and just be playing on-line… racking [things] up and doing different things on-line. Then when you come back into single player – the goal is to sell a million boards – then because I’ve done so much stuff and had so much success on-line, I’ve already sold, say, half a million boards and I really haven’t [even] done a lot of the single player challenges yet!
Co-Optimus: So can you experience the whole game multiplayer, barely touch the single player, then go back into the single player and see you’ve opened everything up?
Chris: You will have advanced yourself, yeah. Now, you may not have done all the challenges, and [when you go in] you [will see you] have unlocked X number of challenges and opportunities [by completing things on-line]. Whereas if [you] just stayed offline and played single player, [you] would go through the progression of the game and go through it that way. [With the multiplayer on-line portion], when you get back [into the single player mode], it’s like “oh yeah, you got invited to so-and-so contest, or so-and-so wants to shoot photos with you.” Why? Well, because you’ve started becoming famous and you’ve started spreading your brand.
Co-Optimus: Skating as a whole is pretty much individual experience, so how did you approach this co-op/team based aspect and what were you all thinking about?
Chris: Part of it is, when we talk about the different teams that are out there in skateboarding, you know, Flip releases a video, or Zero is going to release a video – that’s a team. As a team, as a whole… you look at their work of art, and this girl does [this] and a guy does [that], you look at what they did and you’re just like “holy cow!” That’s a sick video and that’s a team producing art together… We had this one thing called “Freeskate Activities.” We had Freeskate in Skate 1; Skate 2 we said “let’s give people some goals while they’re freeskating around, no pressure, just give them some achievement points for it.” As we were playing those Freeskate Activities, we were yapping at each other the whole time anyways and it was like “yeah! I finished first!” “But… it’s co-operative.” “Yeah, but I finished first!” [With] the co-operative [parts of the Freeskate Activities]… one of the aspects of this list of tricks was that [some players] can’t do them. So you call-in your buddy and [have them do it]. We just let that evolve naturally and said “ok, let’s turn that into a competitive mode with the teams”… It’s the same sort of thinking, same set of goals, but now it’s who can finish first.
Co-Optimus: Will there still be non team vs team co-op challenges in the Freeskate mode for Skate 3?
Chris: Absolutely! You could also be playing the single player, and [maybe] there’s this team contest with challenges you may not be so good at, and you can call your buddy in to be on your team to help you with those challenges.
Co-Optimus: So will there be drop-in/drop-out co-op?
Chris: We already have something like that [with Skate 2], so absolutely.
Co-Optimus: We’ve heard some talk as well about being able to add your friends’ Skate 3 avatar to your game as a member of your team. Any more details about that?
Chris: That’s something I am so psyched for! So, if you’re playing with [your buddy] and you like him… you’ll get to a point in single player where it’s time to add a new person to your team. We’ll give you a default skater, or you can create a new skater from scratch, or you can import his “recipe.” You can import him as an avatar. He comes into your game as long as he’s on your on-line team or your on-line friends list so he becomes an AI skater in your world and on your team. So you go into a contest, and he doesn’t even have to be on-line, and… you and [your buddy] are going to be playing together even though he’s not there! Obviously he won’t have his voice, but he’ll skate with his tendencies, and we’re going to stat track and bring those things in so if he’s always doing [certain tricks], he’ll do those.
Co-Optimus: What are some of the co-op games your team is looking at as you build out the co-op for this game?
Chris: Everyone on the team has different ones, so I can’t speak for everybody else. But honestly? I played our game. I’m the dude on our team that plays our game incessantly; play [Skate 3] all day at work, go home at night and play Skate 2! I like seeing where the sports games are going, I play NHL all the time, I’m Canadian so I have to play NHL – and I like the fact that four or five of us can be on a team and go against four or five other guys… Call of Duty, the new Battlefield, Grand Theft Auto. Grand Theft Auto we had a lot of fun with; what they did was brilliant… And Burnout Paradise.
Co-Optimus: One final question: how many players will you be supporting on these teams?
Chris: I’m not the on-line producer so I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard 12 slots on a team. Now having said that, [with players] playing at the same time, we’re also limited by XBox and Microsoft so it’ll 6 in a Freeskate area and in competition mode it’ll be like 3 on 3. But it could be like 3 [players] are representing their team in one match, and another 3 are competing somewhere else.
We’d like to thank Chris again for sitting down and talking with us about this upcoming title, as well as thank Ron Yatco and Josh Kline for setting up and inviting us to the Skate 3 Community Event. Be sure to check back at Co-Optimus.com for additional news and details about this title that takes the co-op beyond the confines of your console and into the virtual domain.