After years of fans trying to will it into existence, the planets finally aligned and Electronic Arts announced Skate 4. Developers Cuz Parry and Deran Chung confirmed that the Skate franchise is back at the tail end of the EA Play Live 2020 Press Conference.
For EA, this was an admission that the company has been listening to the fans, even if it hasn't moved as quickly as most would have liked. Skate 4 is still apparently in early development, with some insiders saying it has been recently rebooted.
Parry admitted that fans “commented [Skate 4] into existence,” which is a stunning achievement all its own. Through various hashtags and chat spam, the fan base showed EA that it wanted a new Skate game. The voices were so loud, in fact, that Skate 4 was a higher trending topic than many of the new games EA announced at past conferences.
In addition to the chat spam and trends, Skate fans used a ton of different memes to help force EA's hand, in a way. These memes showed EA both how desperate players were for a new game and how much of a long-running joke the lack of a Skate 4 announcement had become.
Some of our favorite Skate 4 memes focused around the idea that players were becoming increasingly more despondent every time that EA didn't announce a new game. Others mashup existing meme templates to fit the Skate 4 concept perfectly.
Now that Skate 4 (or a new Skate game) has been officially announced by Electronic Arts, there will likely be a new game to take on the role of meme king. Considering how EA announced and then didn't really talk about Dragon Age 4, it seems like BioWare's upcoming sequel is a strong candidate to take up the Skate 4 mantle.
However, there was something perfect about Skate 4 because the concept was so simple and the fan base was so voracious for another one. BioWare has had a few missteps in its recent tenure, and so its upcoming games might not work as well.
Maybe Skate 4 lives on as the meme game forever, or at least until the sequel officially releases. Either way, a new Skate is in development and that's all that most fans care about at this point. Who would have thought 2020 would give gamers a new Half-Life game and confirmation of Skate 4?