Jump into a vibrant slice of suburbia as an up-and-coming skater on the amateur circuit in Tony Hawk's Project 8!
THP8 was my first start-to-finish AAA project. Taking advantage of the fact it was a complete overhaul of the Tony Hawk Skate engine, I was able to advocate for some key design improvements, namely:

• Having all basic tricks unlocked at the start of the game
• Getting rid of selecting difficulty at the start of the game
• Adding "opt-in" difficulty for each mission by letting players go for better results (and thus progressing faster)
• Building missions on a separate layer, rather than embedding them in the levels (taking a lesson learned on GUN)
• Using inspiration from our online community by adding "get there" goals (taking a line from point A to point B in a single combo)

Project 8 was a fantastic lesson in raw game design, giving form and goals to highly-polished core mechanics of movement and expression. My contributions included the Film Goals, zone unlocks, and a number of Pro Challenges, including Tony Hawk's. Along with mission dialog and monologues, I had the chance to write the ending of the game. In this case, the producer popped his head in the door and said "Tony will be here in an hour, can you write the ending?" Game development is rad.