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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. 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.
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.
Grandmort and I are testing out and discussing some features of the game. I can't remember whether I was posing or not.
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. |
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. 
