Amped 2 Snow Park Designer

One thing the Amped 2 team definitely wanted to include in their revolutionary snowboarding title was the sort of realism that boarders look for: real mountains, real slopes, and the sort of pipes, jumps, and challenges that snowboarders love to see in real life. To that end they enlisted the aid of famous snow park designer Chris "Gunny" Gunnarson and tasked him with the daunting responsibility of helping to make Amped 2 the most realistic snowboarding game ever. Xbox.com recently had a chance to sit down with Gunny and ask him how he went about making the virtual real.

Xbox.com: Can you briefly break down your responsibilities on Amped 2 as well as how you were contacted to work on the project?

Gunnarson: After working on the originalAmped, the design team had us (Snow Park Technologies) back for round two. Our role has been to work with the game designers to make each level of Amped 2 realistic from a design, layout, and build standpoint that is consistent with the type of jumps, parks, etc. that we build in real life, while still being fun to play as a video game.

Xbox.com: Having worked on the first Amped and now the sequel, can you describe any new things you were able to do that weren’t possible in the first game? If you had to bring attention to just one aspect of Amped 2 that adds a lot to the franchise, what would it be?

Gunnarson: Well, Amped 2 is superior in just about every way that I can think of, but my favorite new aspect to the game is the ability to snowskate. From what I’ve played on the latest build, you can do every snowboard trick during snowboard play, but you also have every skate trick as an option … It’s skateboarding in the snow. Sick!

Xbox.com: Snow park designer is a very unique job. How did you get involved with it, and what was your “break?”

Gunnarson: How I got involved was also my "break." I took a job at my local mountain, Snow Summit, and worked my way up to being in charge of all things related to the terrain parks and beyond. At that time, the whole park thing was still pretty new, so it was an exciting time to become involved and help it evolve. Snow Summit was the leader in the whole park development realm, so when the first Winter X Games was held there, I guess you could say I got another "break." Actually, I’ve had a lot of good breaks in my life so far, and I consider myself really fortunate to make a living and a career out of something that I love. One great part about working on Amped 2 is that whenever my wife says I need to quit playing video games and do the dishes, I tell her, "Nope, I’m working."

Xbox.com: When designing a preexisting course, are you more concerned with duplicating it just as it is, or is capturing the "spirit" of the resort more important?

Gunnarson: It varies depending on the course or level and what we are trying to achieve in gameplay. For example, Bear Mountain has such a great top to bottom layout in reality that I really wanted to see that duplicated in the game as closely as possible … of course there are a ton of additions that we still made to make the rest of the level more fun, so it’s not a complete duplication by any means. Then, there are other levels in which we recreated the look and trail layout of the mountain, but completely started from scratch on the design of the features and parks.

Xbox.com: What has been your proudest moment as a designer?

Gunnarson: Just off the top of my head, I would have to say it was the Nixon JibFest in 2002 at Sierra Summit. The course was as perfect as I’ve ever seen: The snow was new and still in the trees. All of my friends were there and just stoked. Plus, I had worked on designing the course with my good friends (pro snowboarders) JP Walker, Jeremy Jones, and Dave Downing. I was up really early one morning to take some pictures and the whole scene down below me made me feel proud—a sense of achievement.

Other than that, it would be every single Winter X Games. The magnitude of those events are so big and getting bigger every year. Plus, my crew and I put in so much work to make it good that we are always proud when we're done, and we get to just kick back and watch the show.

Xbox.com: What would you say is the biggest difference between designing for a video game and designing a real course?

Gunnarson: Creatively it's pretty similar as far as coming up with designs and stuff. Obviously, there are a ton of things that you can do in a virtual world that you couldn't in real life. The biggest difference is that when it comes to actually building this stuff, it takes us a ton of time and a whole lot of hard physical work. When I’m at Microsoft, there’s a whole team of super gnarly graphic and design dudes doing all of the real work. I get to point my finger or do some sketches from a comfortable chair, but they truly kill it on the whole execution side.

Xbox.com: If we took a look at the games in your personal collection right now, what would we find?

Gunnarson: That's a pretty big collection, especially since I get sent a lot of games for free, but of my favorites … the whole Tony Hawk series is at the top of the list, Vice City of course, Halo. I don’t know—to be honest, the majority of game playing time I've had in the last couple years has been working on Amped and Amped 2. The good news is that I haven't gotten sick of playing Amped 2 no matter how long I've been working on it.

Xbox.com: What are some of the challenges in bringing a sport like snowboarding to the Xbox? How do you capture the experience?

Gunnarson: You can't truly capture the experience of actually snowboarding unless you are actually snowboarding!

The cool thing for me is that playing a game like Amped or Amped 2 gets me even more stoked to go ride, and hopefully it will do that for everyone else. The biggest challenge is showing people who don't snowboard what the consequences are when you don't land a big trick. In Amped 2, the snowboarder always gets back up.