Can you spell G.I.R.L?

Recently, i've been replaying EA's Blackbox "Skate" games, which is renowned to be one of the best gaming series of the 7th console generation...

In the second entry of Skate there is a challenge called "Can you spell Girl?" which is dedicated to promote a real-life company "Girl Skateboards". During the event, player is required to battle against Eric Koston and Mike Carrol, guest-appearing real-life skateboarders, in a game of "S.K.A.T.E" - a skateboarding game where skaters perform each other's tricks in succession until all but one player is eliminated. The caveat is that, unlike previous "S.K.A.T.E" challenges in Skate 2, this time player is competing against pros with tuned up AI, that makes winning such event a really hard task. Whatever the trick player is performing, it seemed as if AI was always one step ahead "killing" each and every trick you set... On average, it takes about 20+ minutes of a single try to finally notice the first bailed opponent... A couple minutes more into the round - and you'll probably win a challenge. Such a time-draining experience lead players into discussing a way to "cheese" their way to "spell Girl".

If you start googling, you'll notice the dedication put into such discussions. Turns out, there are a bunch of ways to cheat on this challenge: one of them is exploiting skaters AI. Bots in Skate 2 have a restricted set of moves that they can do. For instance, it was discovered that usually bots can't nail 540's. So player would be required to spin 360 in the air and then land in a footplant to spin another 180. Another way to cheese was to use a sandbox mechanic. 

In Skate 2 Blackbox decided to add a simple but a hefty feature - dragging objects. Basically, it allowed players to create their own gaps(skating spots) by dragging ramps, rails, garbage bins, boxes e.t.c. So by dragging a rail from another side of the map and by starting a challenge, AI will start acting stupid and be bailing all the time because of the second railing, allowing the player to easily win the event under 5-6 minutes.

But after all that hard work, after investing about an hour into either nailin' the challenge fair or either cheating their way through, players are rewarded with one of the most hellish thing on Earth EA Blackbox could have come up with ever: the Score screen.

This is the normal score screen you'll get in the end of every S.K.A.T.E game in Skate 2 with only one minor change, that appears only in "Can you spell Girl?" - Devs decided to swap Retry and Quit buttons. So when player subconsciously wanted to press A on 360's controller(or X on Dualshock3), instead of instantly quiting the challenge and saving the results, the player will be sent again doing the same challenge for 20+ minutes straight!

At first, when i got tricked and was sent doing the same ol' flips against Eric and Mike, i was furious, because I thought it was a glitch... Especially accounting the fact, that EA's Skate at some point got a second wave of popularity in 2014 thanks to its glitches and funny rag-doll physics... But the more I dived into the facts about Skate and into the developers themselves, the more i was convinced that such challenge was a result of Blackbox's passion. They really cared about the whole game, adding things that really weren't so necessary in the first place. One of the examples of such enthusiastic approach - are references to famous "The Shining" that can be found in every bit of the game. One are out there for the open, and the other - are reaching the level of UFO/Bigfoot conspiracies.

In the end, I believe that such small changes like swapping out controls may actually bring some kind of joy to certain games. After all, games are designed to be fun, and such trick - is a top notch level of saying "You like it? You are having fun? How about another dose of F.U.N?", which for me is - one of the best tricks from game designers I have ever seen...

Epilogue

I highly advise you, to comment out your favourite game designer's "tricks". I am sure be happy to learn more about this topic.

Stay safe!