Skate’s Flick‑It Is Back — So Complex It Invented New Tricks and Left Pro Skaters Baffled
Skate’s signature Flick-It control system is back in the new Skate, which arrives in early access on Sept. 16 as a free-to-play live service set in an open world. The team rebuilt the system for modern tech, and that work unlocked new trick possibilities and animation and physics updates.
- Technical challenge: moving to Frostbite
- New and invented tricks — the mocap story
- Animation and physics changes
- Live-service plans: more tricks after launch
Release and format
Skate will enter early access on Sept. 16. It will be released as a free-to-play live service with an open-world structure, according to EA’s announcements.
What Flick-It is and why it matters
Flick-It is Skate’s analog trick system that uses the right joystick to perform tricks by flicking in various directions. It creates a fluid, improvisational skating experience rather than long button combos.
Developers and fans consider Flick-It the core mechanic of the series, and the new game restores that system while expanding its range and responsiveness.
Technical challenge: moving to Frostbite
The original Skate trilogy was not built on EA’s Frostbite engine. Frostbite was first used to power Battlefield: Bad Company in 2008, so bringing Flick-It into a modern Frostbite-based build required a ground-up effort.
Senior creative director Deran Chung explained the difficulty in resurrecting the old code: “The old skate engine was insane. It was Frankensteined of all this crazy stuff. There was no way of resurrecting it.”
New and invented tricks — the mocap story
The team reconstructed Flick-It and then added new motion and input possibilities that produced trick variants not common in real-world skateboarding.
Chung said, “The first time some of these tricks were ever done was at our mocap stages.”
He also described how the control scheme led the team to try moves that pro skaters had never practiced: “We went to mocap and we’re like, ‘So who can we possibly ask to try these things?’ And so we picked the best dudes in the world, some of our pros from the previous games, and said, ‘Have you ever thought about trying Nelly 360 inward heel flip?’ And they’re like, ‘Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?’”
Animation and physics changes
Rather than simply copying the original system, the team built new features around Flick-It. That work includes variable speed flips, more extensive late-flip options, and nollie versions of moves.
Chung noted the broader trick flexibility: “We had late flips, late kickflips, and late heel flips before. Now we have late basically everything,” and he added that players can do slow-held versions and combinations like a slow held kickflip followed by a late flip.
Animation approach changed too. Previously, the series used blended animation sequences; the new game uses more uninterrupted takes to capture nuanced motion.
Physics systems were also rebuilt with input from engineers who worked on the originals. The team added improved scene prediction for interactions like wallies, allowing the character to react to objects in front of them rather than forcing unnatural motion or late slams. Chung said, “We’ve got way better ways of predicting what’s in front of the skater now than we ever had.”
Live-service plans: more tricks after launch
Because Flick-It was rebuilt as a flexible system, the team plans to add tricks across future seasons. EA and the developers have announced that darkslides and impossibles are planned to arrive in later seasons.
Overall, the work combined a rebuilt engine, new animation capture practices, and physics updates to expand what players can do with Flick-It inside the game’s free-to-play live-service framework.
