Tony Hawk considered backing a more realistic skating game before signing with Activision
Tony Hawk has discussed how his partnership with Activision on its billion-dollar skateboarding game series might never have been.
In an interview with The Diary of a CEO podcast, Hawk was asked if there were any “close calls” that might have scuppered the deal he eventually signed with Activision.
Hawk said he may have chosen to endorse a more realistic game had Activision not come knocking when it did.
“There was another group doing a game that had contacted me and I went down the road with them a little bit,” he said. “I realised that what they were trying to do was so much more, it was more technically difficult to play because they were trying to truly emulate skating.
“I felt like I understood that approach, but at the same time skating wasn’t that big when we released this game or when we were going to release this game, and I wanted something that would be more friendly to the non-skater to play, to understand, to be able to just pick up and start doing tricks.”
Hawk said Activision’s vision and an early demo easily swayed him to endorse what would go on to become 1999’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
“When I saw what Activision had, they had a very early version of a skater doing tricks, the way it moved, and to me it was intuitive, it was perfect, it was like right away I started playing it, I started doing tricks, it was almost like it was it was an extension of my body to start doing this on that screen with that skater, and something innately felt right about it to me.
“And so, was there a close call? I would say if Activision maybe had called me a month or two later, I might have already inked a deal, so um, but I felt very lucky.”
Following positive preview coverage and a growing buzz about the product, Hawk claimed that
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