Q&A: Neversoft talks Tony Hawk's Proving Ground

By Randolph Ramsay, GameSpot AUPosted Sep 12, 2007 11:20 pm PT

Neversoft Project Director Chad Findley on wrapping up Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, making videos within the game, and striking a balance between realism and fun in a skating sim.

Neversoft's latest stab at its long-running Tony Hawk franchise, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, is just weeks away from release. GameSpot AU caught up with Neversoft project director Chad Findley at Activision's Activate Asia conference earlier this week to quiz him about the new features being introduced in Proving Ground and much more.

GameSpot AU: How's development going on the game?

Chad Findley: We're wrapping it up. It's been a year and a half--the longest we've ever been on one of the Tony Hawks. That's one of the coolest things about this one--it all really came together. The big thing is all about being who you want to be and being able to skate the way you want within the game, and be able to do that with videos and cameras and films, and to have all the stories come together, and it all really works together.

GS AU: What's that extra time allowed you to do?

CF: The reason we were able to start working on this one so early is I was working on Gun as project director. Brian Bright was working as project director on Tony Hawk Project 8. I finished halfway through Project 8, so I got an early start on this one. And with that early start, that's why we chose to do such a big game, because we knew we had the extra time and therefore we did this thing with choice. Now we have over 300 goals, and 83 cutscenes, and a video editor finally--all these things that we never had a chance to do before, now we could finally do.

GS AU: Project 8 introduced nail the trick, and in Proving Ground you're expanding that to include nail the manual and nail the grab. Why did you decide to add those two?

CF: I just really wanted to do it. I wasn't working on Project 8 and I saw them do nail the trick, and I thought that was one of the coolest things I've seen. You got to control your board in any way, and there was a lot of gameplay in it too. We had these three different career paths going, and we thought it would make perfect sense to do [add nail the grab and nail the manual]. The addition of the two new elements really allowed you to control in a whole different way that you could never do before.

GS AU: Another major addition this year are video editing tools. Why did you add it?

CF: Now that we finally have hard drive space in consoles, we were able to add this video editor. This is a huge thing because video is a huge part of a skater's life, whether they're a hardcore, rigger, or whatever type of skater. We wanted to give players the ability to record your skating while you're playing. So you can just skate along, and as soon as you do something cool you can save your edit. You can do this as many times as you want, filling up your hard drive with as many edits as you want. Then you can create new edits with all these clips you've saved, and you can increase the length of them, you can trim them, you can change the camera angle. Then you can add effects and overlays on the top of them.

And then we've got this challenge within the game which asks you to do the best videos in our three different cities--Philly, Baltimore, and Washington, DC. The game will judge it for you depending on how you skate it. We've also beat mapped our songs so it can see if you've done tricks in time with the songs, and if you've edited to the beat. If it's good enough and it beats enough people's scores, it'll make it onto the Xbox Live leaderboards, and others can download them and check them out.

GS AU: How important is building a dedicated gaming community to a game like Tony Hawk?

CF: It was really important for us, particularly for this game as it was about who you are and how you want to skate and how you choose to build your career. We wanted to let you show that off to other people, and there's no better way than to do it online, really. That's why we added this video editor--to show how you skate and how you direct your videos.

GS AU: What are your plans for downloadable content?

CF: There's nothing that I can speak of right now. Our goal for this one--because we wanted you to really feel that you had the choice to play the game the way you want--we really wanted to put everything in the box we could to make this feel like a worthwhile game to you.

GS AU: You've got some competition this year in the form of EA's Skate, which seems to be going for a more realistic experience. Overall, would you say Proving Ground is more realistic than previous Tony Hawk games, or even more fantastical?

CF: There are two parts to that. One is that you can play the game in a sim mode, where you can record your video and make it look like a real skate video. Also at the end of the day we want to make a great game. It's fun for people who skate and people who don't skate. We always walk that line--it's a game, but it's about skating. We want to make sure that the skating audience and skate culture is adhered to, but also is a lot of fun.

GS AU: Chad Findley, thanks for your time.

31 Comments

  • neal_douglas

    Posted Oct 7, 2007 7:07 am PT

    Has anyone heard how many of the cool features of Proving Ground are in the Wii version?

  • chaos-is-me

    Posted Sep 16, 2007 3:11 pm PT

    played the demo. it seems worse than project 8 in almost everyway. it feels clucky and horrible. i have played the skate demo to death and i have to say i'm most excited about that, but i might pick up proving ground to, just to check out the new ideas.

  • Jedilink109

    Posted Sep 15, 2007 10:07 pm PT

    Yeah I was playing the demo for this last night AND the demo for "Skate". Skate is ok but the camera angle is annoying. I can't move it to a more...productive place meaning that I can't aim my character very well what with the camera always being off to the side and so close to the ground. Plus it seems like it would be REALLY hard to just go back and forth and skate in a pool as opposed to Tony Hawk which is highly intuitive. "Skate" has a LOT of realism and the animations are extremely good. VERY VERY good animation. However it's just harder to control my guy and to easily pull of combos or just single tricks in general. I'll probably give it a chance (and maybe there's a different...as in HIGHER camera angle option in the final game) though. I think it looks fun but Tony Hawk has always been very intuitive and simple. It's not realistic by any means, but it's more arcady and the sensationalism adds to the fun I'd say. I'd pick Tony Hawk over Skate any day, but that doesn't mean I think Skate is a bad game. They're just different. Tony Hawk is just much easier to pick up and play for longer periods is all.

  • pacerfan1231

    Posted Sep 15, 2007 3:54 pm PT

    I pick this over SKATE anyday. I just finished playing TH and the gameplay is much better than SKATE!

  • Cody13_2012

    Posted Sep 14, 2007 7:23 pm PT

    This game looks awesome but SKATE looks better, but i will get this game for sure because SKATE is not going to come out for PS2, PSP, or PC that I have heard of.

  • Cody13_2012

    Posted Sep 14, 2007 7:23 pm PT

    This game looks awesome but SKATE looks better, but i will get this game for sure because SKATE is not going to come out for PS2, PSP, or PC that I have heard of.

  • Saluu

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 11:32 pm PT

    i didn't care too much for Project 8 because they took out auto-kick. everything else was pretty good, character models, nail the tricks, i could even deal with the random goals AGAIN... but ive always tried to stick with as much 'realism' as i could. when they took out auto-kick i was like, man.. i can't play this crap. look, he keeps pushing and pushing, you can't even control it.

  • boobush

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 8:04 pm PT

    Tony Hawk series are dying. They need more games like the Underground ones, because they were funner to play.

  • Ghost0240

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 7:51 pm PT

    I played the demo, i think its ok. I dont like how u can barely get speed. I hate the haggard push. Because if u mess up then u lose yur speed and cant do any thing. But i like the build skill, its cool. I'll rent it, but i pre-orded SKATE. Thats my main thing.

  • judge__judy

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 5:47 pm PT

    Ok so does anyone favour tony hawk over skate?

  • yencanwasu

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 3:54 pm PT

    i played the demo same old crap they need to change it up ill be getting skate.

  • Sp1tfire88

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 3:09 pm PT

    I played the demo and its not bad, not as good as THUG but nail the grab/manual is really cool, animations are kinda bad unless you are in nail mode. I like SKATE. better but its probably because I skate in real life.. I can see why someone that doesnt skate would prefer to play THPS. Itd be nice if people would stop fighting over some games Both have strong and weak point.

  • popplayer22

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 3:03 pm PT

    I'll be picking up Skate this year instead of Tony Hawk. Tony had a good run. But frankly I haven't liked a Tony Hawk game since THUG. In my opinion Skate is much more fun that PG. So I'll be picking up Skate.

  • Pete5506

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 12:56 pm PT

    I didnt find the demo to fun

  • ElHypno

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 12:51 pm PT

    The PG demo was wack, it was worse than Project 8 which I loved. It just doesnt feel right. It was like they tried to make it more realistic by making it feel clunky and awkward. Hopefully the deck selection is better than P8. All of the Powell decks were these cheap completes they sell that nobody other than your five year old brother would ever be caught dead skating. I have enough tony hawk games. I don't wanna talk about the competetion on here but I will only be buying one Skateboard game this year and it wont be PG.

  • lamprey263

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 12:03 pm PT

    I just got the demo downloaded, now I just need time to try it

    though, I'm worried that it won't be as good as Project 8 as that's what many have been saying

  • andrewhateme

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 11:01 am PT

    Chad this is Chad. Tony Hawk is a bad ass, but the games you make with his name on it are anything but that.

  • Kidtuf

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 10:44 am PT

    The game is plain ugly and it adheres to the culture of skateboarding about as well as Hour Of Victory adheres to WW2. Out with the old and tired, and finally in with a game that respects the culture and art of skateboarding. I'm talking of course about Skate.

  • StonyShred420

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 10:05 am PT

    jbaird1981,
    Go back to EA fanboy, no one cares about your rude comments about saying TH sucks and blah blah blah. If Tony Hawk sucks, then why has there been so many Tony Hawk games out there and why do people keep buying them, oh wait, because most of them are good (Down Hill Jame did suck). I hope TH Proving Grounds end up being better than Skate, honestly...EA are a bunch of money grubbing, marketing whores. They used to release good games, but now they release a lot of crap, and here and there, they stick in a good game. EA is not what it used to be.

  • jbaird1981 posted Sep 13, 2007 8:23 am PT (does not meet display criteria. sign in to show)

    jbaird1981

    Posted Sep 13, 2007 8:23 am PT (hide)

    this game sucks. same as every other Tony Hawk game. go for SKATE.

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