I'm one of them people you like to call a newcomer.
I started playing OG at my friends ps3 every now and then when I was around, same with S2.
But my first own skate game, was S2, and I bought it about 2-4 month's before the release of S3. I actually bought my xbox the same day. Before that, I played games on my PC.
So during my first couple of month's I didn't even bother to look for a skate community to hang around with. I just kept on doing videos since I've always enjoyed making videos (Edited a few CS 1.5 videos back in the days).
The guy I looked up to the most during that time was EaSkateVideo which made me get into making skate videos. Also did 2 colabs with him which was pretty sweet. These days I look up to most people that put out interesting videos and is generally just a nice bloke, but mainly Roke, E and Kush, great chaps! (they paid me to say that)