Of all the things we expected to come from a conference about wireless technology, an interview with a two-time gold medal olympian was not one of them, but today, Betanews got an exclusive interview with professional snowboarder/skateboarder Shaun White about his first skateboarding-only videogame from Ubisoft.
Truth be told, running into Shaun was purely accidental. I was scheduled to talk to Marvell about its Armada 600 platform at the very same time the he was scheduled to do an autograph signing for the company. As a huge line amassed around Marvell's booth, I completely expected to have my discussion time bumped. Instead, Marvell invited me to ask Shaun a few questions.
"We've got a skateboarding game coming out that's been three years in the making," White said. "I've finished the soundtrack, voice-over stuff within the next little bit here. But it's amazing, it's one of the best games we've played. We had a writer from Family Guy to write the script. I mean...when I play a game, I wanna have fun, I want to enjoy it and also laugh, you know what I mean? It's got to be a mixture of things, so it's pretty cool."
As a skateboarder and snowboarder, I assumed White has played at least one of the long-running Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series. I asked him how this game compares.
"It's a mixture, obviously. You can't just deny the fact that Tony [Hawk]'s games are incredibly fun, and the SKATE game is a bunch of fun. But...I'm proud to say, it's not a re-do of their games in the slightest. We have certain elements, certain controller things that we kind of borrowed from SKATE -- trick styles, and the way the levels are built, it's like we got [ideas for] those things from Tony's, but it's definitely like a mixture of those two," White said.
"Basically, everywhere you go, everything changes. So as you skate, you create your whole world. It's like the whole world's black and white and you have to basically change the world through your actions. So you're only [at] this little stair, and then when you land, the shock wave goes out, and trees start sprouting, rails start growing. The whole thing changes, the music picks up, it's just really entertaining. It's just like you shaping the world, and you can actually get on rails and, like, shape the way they're going to go. You control everything."
Unfortunately, I didn't get to talk to White any more about the upcoming game, but he's very excited about it. White's talents as a professional skateboarder are sometimes overlooked by his domination in competitive snowboarding.
I was going to ask him what kind of phone he uses, but that was when I was actually bumped. Specifically by Marvell's COO, Weili Dai, who came in to meet the olympian, who she said "looks just like a UC Berkley student."
Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
