Celebrity Byte

Danny Way gets huge air in the Skateboard Big Air Final at X Games XII

What games did you play growing up?

I had the Atari and Nintendo when I was a kid. I've had them all, but my interest in games has depreciated as I have grown up. Other than the Skate game, I don't play videogames much. Even when I was a kid, I didn't want to sit around and play videogames all day.

Did you ever play 720 back in the day?

720 attracted me because it was fun to play a game about something you liked to do. Now it's the same situation happening over again with EA Sports and Skate. The game's so realistic that it's interesting and fun to play. I can relate to it.

What was it like skating in the motion-capure suit at EA Canada?

Skating on the vert ramp in a spandex suit with all of the white fuzzy balls on it was like being naked on the ramp. The ramp wasn't too friendly to begin with because it had a weird surface to it. And then wearing that tight suit and trying to do tricks that you can really take hard slams on was a challenge. I actually took a few hard falls and got beat up pretty good that day.

I went through a whole line-up of vert tricks, but I also did everything from grind tricks to board-flipping, 540 rodeo flips, and spin tricks -- whatever we could do to capture my style so gamers knew Skate was authentic.

Danny just before his attempt to jump over the Great Wall of China.

What do you think of the fact that EA Sports can take you physically and put you into a game?

I can't comprehend what they're doing with video games to begin with. Now it's getting to a point where it's just so hard to comprehend that I don't try to comprehend. What they do with games is almost like magic.

What kind of tricks did you do for the game?

I went through a whole line-up of vert tricks, but I also did everything from grind tricks to board-flipping, 540 rodeo flips, and spin tricks -- whatever we could do to capture my style so gamers knew Skate was authentic.

Did they have the screens set up that you could see the tricks in the computer?

Yeah. I checked out the computers after the tricks to make sure it was spot-on.

What was it about Skate that made you come back to gaming?

Just the fact that the mindset of EA Sports was the same as how I view skating and how I view myself in the world of skating. Skate is like a bridge between the mainstream and real skaters that EA has made that's good for the gaming world but also reflective and accurate with what the skating world today is about. That's where I think this game has such a strong advantage over Tony's game, per se, which is more driven by mainstream celebrities and fantasy-like skateboarding.

It's cool to make a game a little bit unrealistic but there's a point where it becomes so fantasy that it's hard to relate to. That's where Skate has nailed the ability to create something that's fun and challenging to play but at the same time it's realistic. All of the maneuvers and tricks that would be hard to do in real life are hard to do in this game, whereas in Tony's game you can do games that you could never be able to do in real life all day long. It's cool, but you're appealing to one crowd and not the other.

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