I’ve been playing EA skate a lot lately. I’ve been a fan of the EA Skate games since the first one came out in 2007. I don’t remember exactly how or why, but I got into skating young. Let me caveat and say my ass can’t even Ollie. I can ride decently well, but it’s also been at least 3 years since I hopped on my board. So Tony Hawk and Skate were the only ways I could vicariously live my skate dreams. I’ve spent endless time on Skate 1, 2, and 3. Now, here’s the 4th installment, the long anticipated Skate 4. But things have changed significantly. In the 15 years since Skate 3 came out the landscape of the world, skating, and our future is now altered. We are in a period of change, big change. Change so monumental that it threatens to be the end of all that we know. And I believe that this is all represented in this new EA skate game.

Reactions to the game have been mixed to put it mildly. Younger and newer players are enamored with the gameplay, the extensive amount of content available in a free-to-play game, and the easy-going nature of it. Older and veteran players lament the lack of depth, lack of “skate” culture, and the overall vibes being off. Why I feel weirdly compelled to talk about this is I just got done watching a video from Gifted Hater on Youtube (https://youtu.be/kRSiYP9p2oQ?si=hwLVKCGkxOU21Wg_) about the old titans of skating and how they’ve gone off the deep end. People who were in the first 3 Skate titles. Guys like Eric Koston (who has ties to EDGLRD which donates massive amounts of money to Israel, to feed the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians), Paul Rodriguez (with his ongoing association with the Austin Comedy scene/right-wing/Christian media), and Andrew Reynolds (with the weird circumstances behind his coverage in his old age). It had me thinking a lot over a critique from a lot of veteran Skate gamers on this new EA skate game. They tend to lament how “skate” culture isn’t represented in this game. They claim the game feels sanitized, sterile, and corporate. The old games used to have a corporation called MongoCorp that was the “boogieman” of the series. Most times you ran into a restricted skate area or had obstacles put in your way it was most likely planted by MongoCorp. In the new game, the name has been changed to MCorp (as Mongo carries a negative connotation now, I guess) and their presence (outside of one hulking tower in one of the districts) is pretty much erased. I contend that this “lack of skate culture” isn’t tied to the game specifically (all the voices of the main cast of characters are all pro skaters and real brands are included), but more tied to the overall change in the skate culture.

The titans of the industry, the Tony Hawks, the Danny Ways, the Rodney Mullens have all been somewhat involved in the money-making machine that is capitalism. For a lot of skaters, the real money is in marketing yourself and starting a brand. Tony Hawk started Adio, Birdhouse, and leveraged his celebrity into the Tony Hawk games (what a coincidence). Danny Way took ownership of DC Shoes, Plan B, and found his way into the EA Skate games. Mullen founded Almost Skateboards and became an owner/investor into World Industries and Globe Footwear (along with appearing in the Tony Hawk games). These guys have become multi-millionaires. So it was no wonder their younger compatriots followed their footsteps.

The new age of skateboarding is probably most epitomized by the inclusion of the sport in the Olympics. Skaters had long been against the potential addition of the sport. Even the phrasing of calling skateboarding a sport offends a lot of skaters. But once Rob Dyrdek established Street League Skateboarding (SLS) and created a consistent rulebook/ format it was over. That’s all that was needed to create a place for skateboarding in the Olympics. The skating is good I’ll admit, if not very technical and clean. But watching the skaters lineup on pristine, white courses, built for optimized skating was strange to say the least. What happened to game I love?

This new Skate game includes a lot of elements of the new skate culture. Plazas built with perfectly skate-able obstacles. No one is there to stop you from skating, not even pedestrians or cars. They even got rid of the aspect of seeing your skater break their bones or get cuts/scrapes through a new feature from the in-game company Imperva-Tek. The aforementioned characters you meet voiced by pro skaters all explain directly to the player “skate lingo” as if they’re children (including the infamous “footy is short for footage”). Because, ostensibly, it is. This game is supposed to be built for the newbies and the children to introduce them to skateboarding. However, so were the previous games. So what is the sauce we’re missing from this game? Honestly, to me it isn’t missing much. I recognize the goals of the game, this isn’t meant for the hardcore skater. It never was. But to me, it made skateboarding as a whole unrecognizable to me.

In year’s past, much has been said over one of the new potential titans of skateboarding, Tyshawn Jones. His aggressive ability to market himself and create generational wealth should honestly be studied by marketing students. He’s a very talented skater, no doubt about it. But lately, he doesn’t really do that. Instead he goes about his days doing photoshoots and meeting up with fashion moguls. Now he is the one young skaters look toward for inspiration, further shifting the expectations of a skateboarding career away from what they used to be.

It’s tough to talk about all of this when the average pro skater makes significantly less money than in year’s past. Independent skater brands and companies are going by the wayside every year, even big ones like Lakai or Enjoi. Former staples of the industry. Big brands like Nike, Adidas, and Vans are now at the forefront of skateboarding, gobbling up the top pros for their brands in sponsorships. When the inevitable Nike or Adidas box/products drops in the EA skate shop, people will buy em up with the SV bucks (that are all bought using real currency). It’s no wonder why this problem proliferates. We all need to stay complicit in it. From the company making the product, to the skater riding for the product, to the consumer buying the product. It’s all part of this viscous cycle that repeats endlessly over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over…

I wrote this trying to talk myself through this game’s reception. I think that EA skate isn’t a cause of why skate culture is dying. I think it’s just mirroring it to the veterans and I think they just didn’t like seeing it in the mirror. It’s happening with everything. Every subculture we used to hold dear. It’s now just… a formless blob of everything. Nothing fulfills a specific niche, it’s now for everyone because it has to be. Otherwise it is doomed to be misunderstood, misappropriated, and shuttered into a box away from everyone else. It’s sad in a way. I miss it being simple. I miss playing skate for an hour and then going outside to try a trick. I miss even being able to sit still for an hour to play. That doesn’t happen anymore.