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The SSX 3 Weekend |
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Released on: Fri May 08, 2009 7:43 pm from: gondee Viewed: 3264 |
Introduction to the SSX 3 Weekend If you've just come to the SSX Community in the last year or so, many of you may have heard the term "SSX 3 Weekend", or heard certain people referred to as "Weekenders." Here is an article to explain this in-depth so that you can catch up on what was one of the coolest little happenings for Merqurycity.com and the SSX Community as a whole.  Back in late July 2003, I (gondee) received an e-mail that I initially thought was a hoax. It came with the simple heading "SSX 3" and was very inconspicuous. After I read it though, I freaked out, because it was from an Electronic Arts representative (!), though I didn't believe it until I read the e-mail address. I hastily wrote back, wondering what in the world EA would to talk to me about. After conversing through e-mail, I called and talked to Electronic Arts in person, whereupon they informed us that they would like to fly us down to Vancouver to game-test SSX 3 before it was released to the public to give them feedback about how to make it better. In the span of less than a week EA selected five hardcore fans from the SSX Community, primarily based out of the Gamefaqs SSX 3 bulltin board at the time, to fly up and meet in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and meet at EA BIG's Vancouver headquarters. Those 5 people were the (now legendary) SSX community members
So we all cleared our schedules in the span of a week and boarded planes to Vancouver... click on the next page to view pictures of the trip! (56K Warning - Major Download times if you're on modem ahead.) Arrival and heading to EA Canada Once we arrived at the airport, we were all picked up in a limo and driven to EA Vancouver.  Our showfer.  EA BIG Building Here is the Electronic Arts Building in Vancouver. The actual building itself is on a big compound with security at the entrances and everything. The design inside is the building itself is very futuristic, all metal and glass. The EA Lobby Here is the lobby for the EA building. Very cool and futuristic. We all met in those chairs you see there, and as you'll see in the next picture. The SSX 3 Weekenders meet and playtest SSX 3 Needless to say, we were all crazy excited to get this amazing opportunity from EA! I took my camera (as did the others) and we documented all that we could. The weekend took place from August 1-3, 2003. First meeting of the Group. Here is the first official meeting of the SSX 3 Weekenders. From left to right it goes: gondee, grandmort, FirebrandX, Krispy24, Dolphingirl and happymachines. This meeting took place in the lobby of EA. After we all got acquainted, we were given security badges and taken upstairs. The Room This is the ROOM, a heaven full of televisions and modified PS2's that can play the still in-production copies of SSX 3. EA told us to play each of the events and then fill out surveys that basically asked us what were our favorite parts of the courses and what we thought needed improvement. Taking Notes Grandmort and I teamed up right away (as is befitting the heads of the main SSX Fan Site) and the other folks played and took notes on each particular track they were playing. FirebrandX was extremely lucky in that he got to play on the big screen at the front of the room. Analyzing Grandmort and I are testing out and discussing some features of the game. I can't remember whether I was posing or not.  Meeting Larry Lapierre and the other programmers This is one of the coolest portions of the whole day - Larry LaPierre, producer for SSX 3, came down along with a few other creators and answered questions for the Weekenders. After that, he took us on an hour long tour of the building, even sitting down in his office for 15-minutes to show us the programming tools they use to program the game. It was amazing and the highlight of the entire trip, for which we are eternally grateful. We stayed in the ROOM for about 9 hours, from 9:30 in the morning until about 6 PM at night, playing SSX 3 on every track and giving our feedback to various things we wanted to see in the game and see corrected in the game. We played each other head-to-head, joked around, ate pizza and basically had the time of our lives as any uber-fan of a video game series would have. :D Behold, the Weekenders.  The Afterparty - watching fireworks on the boat After we closed up shop on our day of gametesting, Electronic Arts treated us to a free dinner (and open bar!) on a yacht that sailed out into the harbor at Vancouver. It was a holiday in Canada that day complete with a fireworks display in the middle of the harbor, and the boat was amazing, huge and immaculately designed. Us on the boat Here we are on the boat, enjoying our free dinner and drinks. FBX got buzzed on pink foo-foo martinis.  Alas, poor Krispy was too young to partake. On the Deck Eventually we all congregated on the front of the boat to view the amazing scenery and view the fireworks. It was great weather and lent itself to some amazing scenery. Taking Pictures We posed on the front of the boat in this great picture. This picture was used in a New York Daily News Article on our trip. The guy you see in the back was an EA intern who tagged along for the ride. Yarrrrrr! We were on a boat and the captain...well...I'll let you take a look at the picture. Yarrrrrr me mateys! FBX "I'm King of the WORLD!" Epilogue - Back to the Hotel Tired but Happy After the Fireworks, we headed back to the Four Seasons where EA had put us up for the weekend. We were all tired, but extremely happy about having such a great time. The next day was spent mostly tooling around Vancouver and waiting for our flights. Winding up the day We were so tired by this time, but we'd have done it again if we could. Heading Home. After that, we all just headed to the airport to wait for our flights. It was a once in a lifetime event and something we'll all never forget.  Special Section: Krispy the Pimp In this special section, I wanted to post pictures of Krispy the Pimp. Krispy's dad tagged along since Krispy was 15 at the time and took a bunch of pictures, some of which were so hilarious I had to display them here. Krispy the Pimp relizzaxes.  Awww yeah. Wizaterfalls, baby Don't go chasin waterfalls now Pimp Krispy.  Back to Nature My vote for funniest picture of the entire weekend.  SSX 3 Weekend Media: The added Benefits of the SSX 3 Weekend After we got back, FirebrandX and myself had a contact who we had previously worked with on the New York Video Game Film Festival at the Lincoln Center in New York. A few weeks later, we all were featured in an article in the Weekend edition of the New York Daily News!  Quote: Those lucky clickers []Developer reels in six expert fans to test-run snowboard game's next edition.[/size] The revenues and reach of the video-game business are already on par with segments of the movie and music industries, but more meaningful still is the quality of the interaction between game developers and gamers. Skim the myrian online fan sites and forums and you'll quickly see how candid and observant video gamers can be. Read further and you'll notice that their details picks and pans are not lost on the games' makers. Many games, in fact, are strongly influenced by the feedback from fans. Case in point: "SSX 3", the newest entry (due mid-October) in Electronic Arts' million selling snowboarding series. In August, EA Sports big plucked six unsuspecting "SSX" and "SSX Tricky" adepts off the Web and flew them to Vancouver for an intense weekend test of the hugely anticipated new title. The initial E-mail approach, to Chris Mast (aka Gondee), Webmaster of fan site http://www.merqurycity.com, came from out of the blue. "Dude, keep this secret!" he wrote to friend and master racer Laurent Daubas (Grandmort). "Do you think it's real?" It was. "SSX 3" producer Larry La Pierre follows online forums closely, and he hand-picked the group of world champions and tastemakers. "We wanted to get fresh opinions from the people who knew our games as well as we did, if not better - those fans who live for the details," he says. Mast and Daubas, along with Wolff Morrow (FirebrandX), Sarah Bratty (Dolphingirl), Kris Pakula (Krispy) and Zach Auburn (happymachines) - all legendary names with "SSX" cognoscenti - stayed at a luxury hotel in Vancouver and were treated to a cruise and fireworks display. "EA obviously does not have experience hosting hard-core video gamers," said Auburn. "I want to spend every moment that I'm here twitching on the floor of the EA HQ with a PS2 hard-wired into my brain, a controller glued to my hands and maybe a cup to pee in, should the occasion arise." The gamers spent 10 hours testing the untracked glories of "SSX3's" big mountains, discussing its minutae with the developers and filing lengthy reports on gameplay, controls, characters and environments. "[It was] a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," said Mast. "Pretty much a religious experience." "We know that to make great games we have to open ourselves to criticism during development," said La Pierre. "This group helped us fine-tune our approach to the game's controls. They gave us great feedback." EA involves fan communities in testing several franchises - car tuner groups for the upcoming "Need 4 Speed Underground," for example. To get full details on the "SSX 3 weekend directly from the participants, go to the "SSX 3" message board at http://www.gamefaqs.com Just in case you wondered what the inside of the EA building looked like, check out this SSX 3 Making of Documentary: (13.3 MB) http://www.merqurycity.com/ssx3/ssx3ima ... x3_doc.wmv In it you can see Rob Bucci, who is featured in a few of the pictures with us. He was an EA intern at the time. If you'd like to read our first hand reactions upon returning from the SSX 3 Weekend, I have archived all 500 posts from the original thread that was posted on the SSX 3 PS2 board on Gamefaqs. Please note that none of the links in this thread work - you have to return to this document to access the pages correctly. Hope you enjoyed the tour. It was a great time, as I'm sure you figured out by now.
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