I asked the Skate devs how much Ska is in EA’s new open-world game, and they laughed at me

As a child of the 90s, Skating and Ska music go together like cheese on pizza. The infectious, almost triumphant, blast of trumpets and horns are synonymous to me with pulling off a sick grind and nailing a skate line I’ve spent hours preparing. But with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 abandoning the music genre, I’ve been left wanting. Will EA’s Skate fulfil my needs?

In an anonymous round-table Q&A ahead of the Skate release date reveal, I asked the developers behind the upcoming open-world skateboarding game how much Ska music we can expect to see in the game. With players able to capture songs around the world and turn them into a personal playlist, could I theoretically achieve a playlist of trumpet-blasting hits from the likes of Reel Big Fish?

“Will there be a high percentage of Ska music in the soundtrack,” I innocently asked Skate head of creative Jeff Seamster, senior creative director Deran Chung and executive producer Mike McCartney, only to be met with laughs.

“Wait… I don’t… it feels like a baiting question,” chuckled Chung. “Because I know Ska is really polarising. I love Ska, I love Rocksteady, so I don’t know how to answer this. I’m also bad at math, so I’m gonna say it won’t be a high percentage but I won’t rule out Ska being on the soundtrack.”

“Someone out there desperately wanted a ‘yes-or-no’ answer to that question,” Seamster added. “They were like, ‘Please tell me it’s all Ska, or please tell me there’s no Ska’.” No Ska? No one in their right mind would hope for that.

As for how much Ska music actually is in Skate 2025, I can’t tell you. In my ten-hours with the recent press build, I hunted around the city of San Vansterdam for those blaring horns and jovial beats, but found none. That doesn’t mean there isn’t Ska—I believe Chung’s statement that he is a fellow enjoyer of the arts, but it was lacking in my experience.

If anything, the steep reduction in the music genre in this modern return to skating shows a huge shift in skateboarding culture since I was learning to ollie back in the early 2000s. Even the “Skate Punk” bands of Blink-182, Sum41, Goldfinger and Bad Religion are no longer synonymous with modern skating culture, and that’s fine. Culture evolves, right?

At the end of the day, music is still an integral part of the skating experience, no matter how much that genre of music metamorphosises as time goes on, and there’s a lot of music in EA’s upcoming free-to-play experience. A skating game without music would be like a pizza without cheese, or even without sauce, and while I’m missing my big brass, celebratory-punk (and my 90s punk rock as well, if we’re meandering), I’m content with what we do have.

However, and this is where hopes and dreams take over, Skate 2025 is a live-service, free-to-play game with seasons and events. If Call of Duty can bring in Nicki Minaj and Seth Rogan for post-launch slop, Skate better bring in Aaron Barrett for a season of Ska and blare Sell Out all across the city. I might even pay money for that… probably not.