Interviews// Jay Balmer, Associate Producer, SKATE

SPOnG: And I heard you had someone on the team with a PhD in Physics? Who’s that?

Jay Balmer: Yeh, we actually got in a couple of people. We have one guy who was a rocket scientist! We’re talking high level physics theorists. As we’re entering into a place where we are doing something that hasn’t really been done before, we needed people who were thinking way beyond what people in videogames had done before. Some of the interesting things…we took the guy to a skatepark and I demonstrated ‘pumping’ [what skaters do to gain speed in parks, bowls and on ramps] and he came back and wrote a paper on it to explain how it physically worked – I mean, I couldn’t explain it in those terms, but I know what it is and what it feels like – but now I also know it’s called parametric resonance! [laughs] The same theory as to how you would pump a swing or how a pendulum would swing – that gave us the basis of a system we could use inside the game, so you can actually pump for speed… and it took someone with a deep understanding of the physics to bring this to life.

SPOnG: You mentioned earlier the music in the game – can you say what this is going to be yet?

Jay Balmer: Well, we’re not really talking about the music too much right now other than to say there’s two parts – the licensed music and then we’re also having DJs create custom soundtracks for all the different areas of the city… Tommy Guerrero is a good example of one of the DJs that’s creating one of our background soundtracks.

SPOnG: What the guy from the Bones Brigade?

Jay Balmer: Yep! [grins] Basically, Tony Hawks [the games] set the bar for soundtracks. So we basically need to equal that and then go beyond it – both in terms of our licensed music and in creating our new soundtracks.

SPOnG: Another one of the interesting new bits to the game is the ability to take movie footage from the game and then edit and post your movies on a website to share with friends? How is this going to work – do you edit your movies within the game itself or what?

Jay Balmer: Well the most important feature here for us to deliver was the ability to take that replay footage that you see in the game – which is kind of like your Tivo or in-game video recorder – and then create an ability to take that and make it into a video that can leave the console and be posted on a website for users to then edit and share as they like. So there’s going to be basic editing tools available through the website – so this is not merely something for hobbyists, everybody can get involved – and then you can also, should you wish, bring those videos onto your computer to use whatever video editing software you might have.

SPOnG: So basically you are sending the ‘raw footage’ from the game to be edited on the website or on your computer to show off to your mates?

Jay Balmer: Yeh. You can select what footage you want to send, what camera angles you want, the playing speed you want … then once you have it you can do what you like, potentially you can mix it with your real footage of real skating if you want!

SPOnG: Any plans for downloadable content for SKATE?

Jay Balmer: Well it’s a common question. Our focus and our goal is to give the player everything we can in the game, so we’re not focussed on downloadable content. Our focus is to put everything we’ve built into the game itself instead of holding something back to release at a later date. That said, if it turns out there’s something later that we want to add on, it wouldn’t be difficult…

SPOnG: So you might want to add on a park-building add-on or something along those lines?

Jay Balmer: Yeh, that’s probably more for the future. Our focus is on getting the skating right. Getting the core of the game right. And not thinking about add-ons and expansion features at this point! Our commitment is to delivering the best game we can.

SPOnG: Cool, thanks for that. I’m off to play it.

Jay Balmer: Enjoy!