All Amped Up For Amped 3; Story Director Aaron Connors Takes Us Through His Xbox 360 Launch Title

by Louis Bedigian

 

“We wanted to put the player into the environment.”

 

“One reason why we took [this game] in the direction that we did is because of Amped 2,” started Aaron Connors, Story Director for Amped 3. He was the guy in charge of directing today’s conference call. His mission: to get us stoked about Amped 3. “[Amped 2] got a loyal following from hardcore snowboarders but obviously didn’t perform as well as the first game. So we sat down to take a look at what we’d need to do to revitalize the franchise.”

 

“We decided to take an experiment here and take it in an entirely new direction. The things that we were really focusing on this time was trying to make it more fun. One of the comments we got from a lot of people regarding Amped 2 was that it was really critically good but didn’t have the life, it didn’t have the energy that you really wanted from the title.

 

“Then we wanted it to have a little more variety. We wanted to mix it up and try different styles of gameplay in addition to gameplay. And also we wanted to make it less frustrating. We didn’t want it to be quite as difficult to get through the game, and also take out some of the negativity. There was a lot of negativity toward the player’s performance in the audio and so on. 

 

"Wow, the view is awesome from up here. Hey, I can't move. Oh no, not crazy glue! AHHHHHHH!" 

 

“So the basic things that we worked on: first of all we wanted to introduce a story mode that wouldn’t really dominate the game but would be a fairly user-friendly way to get casual gamers through the experience and encourage them to actually get through the game. And then use it as a way to make rewards that are entertaining for the gameplay. It’s not really the focus of the game, we’ve said all along that it’s like the chocolate chips in the ice cream – it’s not the whole ice cream it’s just little flavor enhancers.

 

“And we also wanted to use the story to get into snowboarding culture. We wanted it to reflect some of the sense of humor, so we had people coming in, snowboarding pros, to kind of gauge their interest and see if we were hitting the mark and we felt like we did that.

 

“Then we worked on the gameplay, kind of taking a different approach to it. Not changing it, because of all of the things that people loved about Amped 2 and Amped 1 are still in there, but we added things to it to give it more of a variety in options.

 

“The Park Builder for us was a way to introduce some new and really exciting elements that would allow people to kind of geek out, have a chance to play around, and sort of put their virtual stamp on the game. But we also integrated it into the gameplay, so we feel like that’s real value added. 

 

 

 

“The focus really this time around is on surface tricks and on stringing together combos. What it does is kind of balance out the fact that we made the controls a little more accessible, a little easier for people. So to balance it out we said, ‘Okay, if you’re an experienced Amped player and you really know how to work the controls and perform big-scoring tricks and so on, we’re going to test you by making you string those together.’ It’s something that beginning players are going to have no concept of how to do it, but in this particular place we use butter as a way to continue tricking so it doesn’t ever get interrupted.

 

“And in the meantime you string together riding on rails, doing jumps, doing style tricks, pretty much anything that you want to do and almost anything that we’ve done in the previous games. That’s really the focus on this: stringing together the combos and racking up the biggest single score you can.”

 

Storytelling

 

Aaron put his heart and soul into Amped 3’s storyline, but he knew the risks of player alienation. He knew that he had some hurdles to overcome.

 

“I’ve been in this business for a long time, and I love creating a story that people like that, even when they come into the game the last thing they want is a story. That’s kind of the way I felt coming into this project. I’m going to guess that 99% of the people who play snowboarding games could not care less about having a story. So that was kind of my approach coming in: how do I create something for people who don’t want it?

 

“I’m absolutely convinced that the reason why people resent stories in games is ‘cause they suck. And because the quality of the writing is bad, the voice acting is bad, it’s obtrusive, it interrupts your experience of gameplay. So I’ve gone out of my way in this story design to create something that’s super-entertaining, that is unobtrusive and is something people can bypass if they don’t want it. But I think the quality is good enough that people are going to want to see all these bits and pieces and they’re going to find that it’s really an exciting new feature that doesn’t get in the way of what they bought the game for. 

 

Look at that sunset...gorgeous. 

 

“The fact that the story is not the focus of the game does not mean it’s optional. What it means is that it’s relatively simple. The thing to keep in mind is that because Amped 2 was not as successful as Amped 1, and I don’t mean creatively or anything like that, it’s just the bottom line is that fewer people were interested in Amped 2 than were interested in Amped 1.What we wanted to do was make a game, especially being a launch title with a limited number of titles, that would look to be a lot more accessible to the average user. We wanted to bring people in and give them an opportunity top play it. I think you’re going to find that novice and experienced players really like what we have here.

 

“The story mode works primarily as a tutorial mode for the first 30% of the story. If you’re just playing the story mode and you’re an experienced game player, you should be able to blow through it in six to eight hours if you’re a really good snowboarding game player. But for the average person just coming in, was never really interested in a snowboarding game but kind of liked the look of this one, for them it’s going to be probably a 15 to 16 hour experience.

 

“What I’m trying to get to is that for those who already know the Amped series and are experienced players, the story mode is going to be a very [big] part of their overall experience. What it’s going to do for people who aren’t experienced is bring them up to speed, to learn all the different things you can do in the game, to be entertained, and to give them a reason to get from the beginning of the game to the end of the game.

 

“The first story challenge that you go into is a homemade terrain park that one of your crew members has created. It’s very ragged and rusty and is made up of leftover stuff. When you’re there you get to ride with your crew and you learn how to do the basics, like jumps, you learn how to grind, and you learn how to go down the sled run. Those are three basic things which now you can go out into the snow box, which is the open gameplay area, and you now know how to do those basic things. You learn more complex things later on.” 

 

HUGE environments! 

 

It’s Combo’n Time!

 

“The fact that we’re focusing on the combos as one of the principle gameplay features means we put a lot more work to the balancing on that. It’s tricky. I’m a novice snowboard gamer. I played around with Amped 1 a little bit but I hadn’t really played until this time around. It took me a little while to get comfortable with the butter – and I’m not a big gamer, so I’m speaking for the casual gamer population here – once I picked it up it wasn’t too bad. What it became was kind of the default move if you don’t have anything to do to keep extending your comb. Once you get good at it it’s pretty satisfying to see the points total up. They don’t go completely wacky out of control the way they used to. You can tell that what you’re doing is generating an appropriate score.”

 

Artistically Correct

 

“If you look at snowboarding magazines or MTV or anything that sort of hits that age demographic, there’s a similar sense of humor. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that we have a little crossover [with SSX On Tour]. Their style is similar to one part of what we do. I’d say the crossover is about 5%. Once you actually get into the game and see the wide variety of the stuff that we do, we were going for the kitchen sink. We threw in tons of ideas, whatever came into our heads we’d throw out there, whereas SSX On Tour has a much tighter vision of the artwork, of their creative content. They were going with one particular style, which is pretty cool, I think it’s great. But the crossover is pretty minimal between their game and our game.”

 

Live-Enabled?

 

“We decided because we had limited resources and a limited amount of time to get ready for [the launch of Xbox 360], we really needed to focus on the single-player experience. While there is an online presence – you can see the people you’re riding against. You have online leaderboards for every single challenge in the game. Every single thing you can do in the game there’s an individual leaderboard for. Outside of that we do not have online multiplayer.”

 

 

I can't find my half-pipe anywhere. I wonder if Weezer has it... 

 

All Amped Up

 

Intrigued by the information presented, GameZone took some time to ask Aaron a few questions regarding the game and the new hardware it was designed for.

 

Can you manually tweak or enhance the tricks in any way?

 

Aaron Connors: What you do – this is where the Park Builder comes in. The actual tricking that you do is only enhanced by your skills as you level up. But what you can do, this is the fun part I think about Park Builder, is that there are some really challenging gameplay sequences in the game that you can make a lot easier by strategically placing your own jumps and rails on the mountain. We incorporated that into the whole design. So let’s say you’re going for a high score challenge where you have a certain amount of time to rack up X number of points, you can kind of scout out the area and figure out what sort of things you can hit to get those points. If it’s just too tight and you’re not able to get the points needed in time, you can actually go into the Park Builder and plant a bunch of jumps wherever you want and string together a score that will actually beat the challenge.

 

Amped has had some great courses in the past – what can we expect from the game’s Xbox 360 debut?

 

AC: The one thing I really wanted to make clear to all you guys is that there are things on the form about how this is like SSX and it it’s become an arcade game. That’s not true at all. What we’ve tried to do is implement more fun in the way the challenges are presented. But the actual meat of the challenges is exactly the way it’s always been. These levels are wide-open, and not only are they wide-open the way they’ve always been, they’re HUGE! Some of them are three times bigger than any of the levels in Amped 2. You have gigantic mountains to explore, and there aren’t these little tracks and paths and shoots that you have in SSX. You can go anywhere and do anything you want on the mountain [in Amped 3]. The levels are a huge value and the openness is to me what’s really exciting. 

 

 

 

How were you able to take these levels and expand them so greatly?

 

AC: The biggest change to the levels I would say is that we just did more of them. When you go out on the mountain you have some main runs, the areas where most people will go to ride. Then you have some that are out of the way, and maybe there’s a lot of trees there and a lot of stuff there, so the actual riding area isn’t quite as big. A lot of the games will take the important part and develop that.

 

What we did was develop more of the overall mountain experience. You’ve got tons of tree runs and even more importantly you’ve got a lot of backcountry. The thing about backcountry is that they’re just this huge powder field. And the powder riding, the carving is something we added for this version, which is one of the coolest modes we’ve ever had in an Amped game. If any of you ski and especially if you snowboard [in the real world], the whole feeling of the powder carving [in the game] is amazing. It’s one of those things that I think that will really appeal to people who go out and ride.

 

One of the great things about the Amped series is the music. Does Amped 3 follow suit and have a massive collection of indie rock music, and if so, what can you tell us about it?

 

AC: It does! We have over 300 tracks from unsigned bands that I don’t think are going to stay unsigned for long because some of the music is so incredibly good in this. We hired a company called Rumblefish to basically go out and scout for a bunch of, you know, as many of the up-and-coming bands they could find. What they did was come back with somewhere around 60 to 70 different bands and brought multiple tracks from each of them.

 

Do you plan to sell these tracks in any way? Maybe over Xbox Live as a download?

 

AC: We’ve talked about the possibility of it but we haven’t made a decision on it right now.

 

So there’s no way to buy these songs right now, no indie albums are available?

 

AC: Nope, there’s no independently released album release to my knowledge. Right now the only way you can get them is through the game.

 

I know the story mode is not supposed to be the main focus, but what is it going to be about? Does it center on a specific character?

 

AC: What we wanted to do, ‘cause we have a pretty interesting amount of player customization. Obviously you can create your own character and make that character look how you want, male or female. We wanted to put the player into the environment.

 

We have a program that allows us to basically run little cinematic scenes that are just little short cuts that are sprinkled throughout the game where the character that you created appears and interacts with their friends or the crew members or whoever’s around. It’s really kind of a neat experience to have created this character from scratch and suddenly they’re appearing in a movie scene.

 

That was really important to us that we actually give the player some control over that. One of the things we do is allow you to choose your voice, so the dialogue changes depending on which character voice they chose. The basic gist of the story is that it’s very much a fable or a fairytale. It’s not meant to be taken seriously; the emphasis is on humor and just having a good time. But the story is basically about your player and you have four friends who are crew members. Some of the people have aspirations to go pro and they’ll do anything to do that, and others just want to hang out and have a good time.

 

Something comes up and you get separated from your crew. You don’t know what happened to them so you go off and try to find out and come across a bunch of crazy things that happened and that’s one of the reasons why you progress from one resort to another is trying to find your crew. It was just basically a way to unlock new levels, create entertaining videos, and it’s not meant, again, to be a story game. We’re not trying to say that. The story is just the spice, it’s the flavoring that hopefully for a lot of people will be entertaining.

 

 

 

 

A lot of Xbox games had short load times, but there were some that didn’t load much faster than a PSone game. How does Xbox 360 compare?

 

AC: It really depends. Obviously we have one resort that is so massive that there’s no way we could have instantaneous loads with it. There’s just too much data there to get down the pipeline. In general though the load times are pretty quick. The times I played I was looking at maybe a 10 to 15 second load time. There are some that were longer, but in general that was it. One thing that we did do try to minimize that frustration is add load screen content. On every load screen you’re going to get something humorous that’s related to the game, backstory, or tips and tricks.

 

Is it nice being able to develop without the restraints of a hard drive? With Xbox I think you always had to develop your games to be compatible with it. With Xbox 360 it’s optional. Does that make it better and/or easier? Are you able to focus more on the game itself?

 

AC: With a launch title it’s just so tricky. We cannot stress enough the difficulty of designing a launch title. We didn’t get the final hardware until about a month before we were finished with the game. The trickiness of trying to develop for something you’re not certain of how it will work, it’s very difficult to do. The more options you have to weigh – load off the hard drive versus not load off the hard drive, all of these things kind of complicate the issue.

 

The games at launch hardly ever take advantage of what that console can do because the [developers] haven’t had enough time to work with it. It’s always the second wave of games that really start to exploit.

 

As much as we want people to love the game, we want people to think it’s next-gen, we want people to think they’re getting a great experience with this new console, it’s just a fact of life that you have to wait until you’ve had time to work with the hardware before you can milk it for what it can really do.

 

I know the game was designed to be accessible to users of all skill levels, but I’m curious to know if the controls have been changed at all? Is it easier to steer your boarder?

 

AC: When we say easier, I would say that, for example, we allow people to do the tricks with the buttons this time around. For the people that love to mash like crazy, that’s a whole element that’s there that wasn’t there in Amped 1 or in Amped 2. We have auto attach for the rails, and there was a huge debate here inside the studio whether we wanted to do it or not. Obviously the purists are saying, ‘No, we don’t want to do that.’ And the people that were wanting to make a game that was a little more friendly said, ‘Yes, we need to do that.’

 

Back and forth and back and forth, and we ended up deciding, since this was our experimental game, that we were going to go with the more user-friendly approach and just kind of see how it worked. Then to balance it out we made it that the rails and surface tricks were really tailored to the hardcore fans. So we said, ‘Yeah, we’re going to give, we’re going to throw a bone to the casual gamers to make it a little easier to get in.’

 

But once they’re in, there are all these different grades of difficulty. One thing I should mention too is that for all the individual challenges, and there are over 230 of them, we award three different levels of merit: bronze, silver and gold. The difference between what it takes to qualify for a bronze versus a gold is huge. The point of that was that we wanted to make it so that people who were just in there to kind of see the story and have a fun experience could get those bronze achievements fairly easily, and that took a lot of balancing. The gold achievements are incredibly difficult so there’s still that level of challenge that you got with Amped 2 that we hope people will enjoy. 

 

 

 

So has boarder movement been changed at all then?

 

AC: Very, very similar, just with a few minor tweaks. In general it’s the same.

 

Are there any triggered events? You mentioned something will happen and you’ll get separated from your crew – are there any moments where you’re actually playing the game and maybe all of a sudden an avalanche occurs? Any surprises like that?

 

AC: Again this was something up for debate. I love that personally. I come from the story background, I really like stuff that’s unexpected and takes people by surprise. But we were very conscientious about the Amped franchise, people who have played Amped 1 and Amped 2. We didn’t want to totally change the experience. One of the things that people love about it is that you can get on a mountain and just ride around, and you can totally do that in this game.

 

If we introduced things that would interrupt that flow I think we would risk people resenting it. That they’d say, “You’ve totally changed the experience for me, I don’t want to deal with that kind of stuff, I just want my Zen moment on the mountain.” That was a really conscientious choice. And with the story we never throw in a cut scene that interrupts your gameplay. Ever. That was absolutely intentional because we don’t want people to feel like we’re intruding on their experience. All we do is notify them that a new story challenge is available, and whenever they want to do it they can go to the map and find out where it is. Or they can explore and find it on their own, but it is completely up to them [the players] how they want to progress and at what speed.

 

And I would assume that any story sequences we don’t feel like watching – we can just press a button and skip them?

 

AC: Yep.

 

Awesome!

 

Thanks to everyone at 2K Sports and Access PR for having a wonderful conference call.