THIS IS THE REMARKABLE STORY OF HOW CRITERION’S DISASTROUS DEAL WITH EA TO REMAKE A CLASSIC SKATEBOARDING GAME SOMEHOW LED TO THE BRITISH STUDIO CREATING ONE OF THE BEST RACERS OF ALL TIME
Burnout 3: Takedown is one of the greatest sequels of all time. The first two Burnout titles may have been well received, but the third entry is in a league all of its own, offering thrill-packed, adrenaline-fuelled races where even crashing out is a joy, thanks to the inspired Aftertouch mechanic (see the Improving The Formula panel). And bizarrely, it came about as a result of a doomed attempt to remake a 1987 skateboarding game.
Fiona Sperry, who was studio director at Criterion at the time, recalls that EA had asked whether the Guildford-based developer would be interested in rebooting its Skate Or Die! series, and the team leapt at the chance. It made a lot of sense. Skateboarding games were huge in the early Noughties thanks to the stratospheric success of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, and Criterion had experience in the genre thanks to the 1999 Dreamcast hoverboarding title TrickStyle and its 2001 spiritual successor AirBlade for the PS2. The designer behind both of those games, Craig Sullivan was “big into skating” recalls Fiona “and it just felt like a good thing to do”. Fiona says Criterion’s game would have been very much in the vein of the Tony Hawk’s titles “but it would have added getting off the board and walking around, and more adventure elements”. However, around six months into development, problems began emerging. “They were putting more and more producers on it,” recalls Fiona. “And gradually, over the months, it became apparent that we didn’t have a huge amount of control.” EA would hold regular ‘franchise review meetings’, where “everybody would generally get together in Redwood Shores in California, and you present your game for five to ten minutes, and then pretty much get ripped apart by the executive team”, says Fiona. EA’s UK-based producers would typically present Criterion’s game at these meetings. “It became apparent quite quickly that every time they went to franchise review, they would come back going, ‘Oh, we need to change the game,’” she says. “We looked back and thought, ‘We haven’t worked on the same concept for more than two months now, because every time we get to franchise review, they change it.’”
