While Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series has been the dominant skateboarding game since the late 1990s, EA's Skate series carved out its audience by delivering a more free-form, laid-back skating experience, allowing players to build their cred in a semi-open world. Full Circle, the developer behind Skate's upcoming free-to-play reboot, see its comeback as a long time coming – but has other ambitions in mind as well.
With many of Skate's original developers involved, the upcoming Skate reboot – now simply called Skate – brings the series to an online, shared world experience where players will complete global challenges and modify the cityscape with new skating opportunities. Ahead of its early-access launch later this year, I played the opening hours of the new Skate game and spoke with head of creative Jeff Seamster and senior creative director Deran Chung about remaking Skate and how the growing Skate fandom on social media prompted the original developers to revisit the series.
