It would’ve been hard for Plymouth, MN-based Destineer Studios to have chosen a better song than Atmosphere‘s “Smart Went Crazy.” for upcoming snowboarding game Stoked. Minneapolitan hip-hop phenom Sean Daley‘s elegantly shambolic runination on fame perfectly matches the developer and publisher’s do-it-yourself, anti-anybody’s-establishment stance.
“Never sold coke and I never had to hold a pistol/Civil and simple, but set the freakshow,” the artist still often known as Slug.proclaims over long-time partner Ant’s harmonica-enhanced capsule history of American music, ambivalent as ever In a genre where artists often wear questionably checkered pasts like sandwich boards, Daly hews to strict reality, not so much playing the angel he isn’t as refusing to play a devil he’s not. Now, in this post-Skate world, he gets to refuse to preach to an entirely different congregation in a completely new church.
“…the greatest thing that could have happened.”
Anybody who’s played last year’s Tony Hawk 2:1-outselling Skate will be on familiar (albeit snowier) terrain in Stoked. Both games feature elegant and rewarding thumbstick-based controls, open-world play, and a career mode centered around gaining notoriety. Calling Stoked the snowboarding version of Skate wouldn’t be entirely correct, but it wouldn’t far from the truth either. Destineer’s director of product development, Tony Chiodo, is up front with the similarities, admitting “Skate was the greatest thing that could have happened.” Even though their tech was developed before many had even played or even seen anything on Skate, the game’s eventual release, and subsequent success, “de-risked,” as Chiodo puts it, the game’s market viability.
That viability met its first major challenge last April when Ubisoft announced the release of Shaun White Snowboarding this winter. Destineer’s new competition featured the world’s most media-friendly snowboarder and was backed by one of the industry’s largest publishers. To pre-salt the potential wound, Ubi turned their use of the Assassin’s Creed engine into a highly marketable bullet point. “At that point it was kind of like ‘run and duck for cover,’” says Ced Funches, director of creative marketing at Destineer. But nobody panicked. “I looked at it as an opportunity to say ‘what are we doing and what are they doing?’” says Funches. Being a smaller company, even self-proclaimed “mavericks” (it’s cool, they used it before dude), gives Destineer more wiggle room for innovation than their publicly-traded competitors stand a chance of mustering in these overcautioua timea. “When you’re the underdog, you have less to lose,” says Funches.
“We’re doing things in Stoked that have never been done in a snowboarding game,” says Chiodo as he hands me the controller. Before he explains what exactly that means, and while I’m still reeling from such a hyperbolic statement, he tells me to take note of the game’s menu. Sunlight is desperately looking for an opening in the clouds and high winds are scattering snow across the screen. Destineer may not have the Assassin’s Creed engine, but the mid-afternoon blizzard looks gorgeous. After I take it in, Chiodo makes good on his promise and describes the game’s dynamic weather and time of day systems. “Those things will change the way you ride in the real world,” he says, adding “They change the way you ride and even where you can go.” Ten minutes of explanation later, I turn to the TV and see the blizzard has passed; leaving a snow-covered mountain bombarded by sunlight. Chiodo clarifies that such rapid and drastic changes won’t happen so quickly in real play.. They happen here only to show people like me what he’s talking about without without our having to wait three days for dresh snow.
When he says days, he literally means days. While connected to the net, everybody playing the game will experience the same weather in the same areas. “We want the weather to matter,” he says. “We want people to take a look at the in-game forecast for the week and anticipate the changes.” Chiodo acknowledges some people’s limited time to play games and sympathizes, saying “we’re definitely taking that into account.”
Don’t worry, you won’t need to rely on this guy and his Doppler radar for your in-game weather report.
With a controller in my hand and a license to drive, I finally get the opportunity to take the game for a spin. After choosing the mountain, I’m greeted by a helicopter pilot who takes me to my destination while spewing random tidbits about that specific part of the world. (Chiodo and Funches tell me this idea came from pro boarders who discussed their affinity for one particular pilot.) When my escort finished educating me, I chose not to be taken to a specific location, instead taking control of the vehicle and exploring my new playground. While navigating, I tried to remember particular locations to access in the future, feeling very much like some kind of a prospector. Feeling a little disregard for my character’s life, I proceeded to a mountain’s peak. After jumping out of the helicopter and proceeding down the mountain, I was surprised to find myself barely executing any tricks. It was refreshing not being pressured into playing a certain way and not being constrained by any sort of a time limit. But if that’s what you want to do, challenges and races abound
If one thing dominates this project, it’s authenticity. Chiodo says the developers are all snowboarders and extremely passionate about their work. Additionally, Funches is quick to point out, with the help of popular snowboarding film company Absinthe Films, Stoked is getting the support of pro boarders Travis Rice and Wolle Nyvelt–exactly the kind of engine Ubisoft’s game game doesn’t, and may never, have. With all the similarities between Stoked and Skate, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the new underdog on the incline take its genre’s throne.
