What do you listen to when working on this game
This question is easy, I listen to the game. Probably the most important but overlooked aspect of a video game is the sound. Our sound designer, Chase Ashbaker brings the game to life. Watch an action movie with no volume and see how you feel about it. Then crank it up and you notice that it just pulls you into the experience. Our goal is to make the person playing feel like they are awesome. Sound is a huge aspect of that. In addition to the sound effects of explosions and breaking glass, the songs have to fit with the gameplay as well. Lucky for us we work with Activision who have made a few contacts with their Guitar Hero franchise. So getting good songs is pretty easy.
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How character ideas came to be
We have a really talented character team here at Robomodo so any character idea was possible. I worked with Aaron Krauss and the art director Chan Sarinyamas on fun character ideas. In other video games, unlocking characters by "finding" them in environments was always fun to me. So our brainstorming started from there. Let's think of fun characters that could exist in an Amusement Park, a Cargo Ship, a Parade, an Ice Cave, etc. No idea is ever questioned when first coming up with the list. Bad ideas always seem to spark good ones. The character team started making concepts for these characters and we got to see them come to life. Then we picked them out like a police line-up. We tried to think about which character we would want to play.
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My Favorite character
This game is full of fun characters to play as from professional skaters to aliens. And each character has his own unique set of special moves, effects, and voice to really bring out their personality. Stevie Williams cracks me up with the stuff he says. But with all that said, my favorite character to use is myself. I can barely do a kickflip in real life. So to see my avatar on screen do all these crazy skate tricks while jumping over an explosion just brings a smile to my face.
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Cool Skate and Snow videos
There are lots of cool videos that we use for inspiration. Each designer has their favorites by mine would be a tie between Cheese and Crackers and Lakai's Fully Flared. Cheese and Crackers is just so creative. I thought I had seen everything anyone could ever do in a halfpipe, but these guys found a whole bunch of new ideas including these Mouse Trap like contraptions. It inspires me to keep being creative no matter what space I am working in. Visually, nothing beats the first five minutes of Lakai's Fully Flared video. Slow motion skating with explosions is unbeatable.
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Working with Tony Hawk
Working with Tony Hawk is fantastic. We talk to him weekly over the phone about ideas and the current progress of the game. Tony Hawk has more experience working on skateboarding video games than anyone else in the world, so it is best to take his advice. Also, every now and then we will fly over to his place to show him the game. The first time we showed him the game and the board, he brought in his friends and told them "Wanna see the future of video games?" That made all of us here at Robomodo very excited. It is clear he is passionate about anything that has his name on it which drives us to make him proud.
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