Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip for Wii gives gamers a reason to use the Wii Balance Board outside of Wii Fit.

There are still relatively few games that use the unique peripheral (around 30 currently released or announced wordwide), so we spoke with Ubisoft's Trent Ward, creative director for Shaun White Snowboarding, about the challenges and opportunities surrounding the controller.

For the Wii, Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip is essentially asking gamers to invest in a balance board if they don't have one already (as opposed to just a cheaper game). How much does this scare you?

Actually you can play the game entirely with either the balance board or the Wii Remote. We knew that we had to build the game to work for both people that had the balance board and those that didn't. The challenge that we saw in developing this game for the Wii is that we'd end up with a game that would either be an amazing Wii Remote title that had some basic balance board functionality as a gimmick added at the last minute or that we'd end up with a great balance board title that would effectively not work if you tried to play it with the Wii Remote. In order to keep that from happening we decided to assign two separate teams to control the game development. We established the vision - 'feel the snow' - for both teams and let them go after it in their own ways. The end result is a great gameplay experience with either the Wii Remote or the balance board.

In what way have you utilized the sensitivity of the balance board?
 
You'll feel it in a thousand little ways on the slope, but the bottom line is that the board reacts to the person standing on it in a very complex way. Based on your weight and center of balance, the board responds to your motion changes based on how long you've been holding a turn or where you are in a trick. The challenge sometimes isn't getting the sensitivity of the board to work for you, it's keeping it from working against you. There are times that we found that we needed to keep the board from over responding as players tended to put themselves into trees if they weren't used to the sensation of virtual snowboarding yet. Our basic algorithms take all of this into account and we believe that most players will get the hang of it during their first run. For the hardcore gamer, we've included a higher sensitivity setting in our calibration so you can tear it up if you want to.

Has the board's accuracy encouraged you to take more of a strict simulation route?

Yes and no. We had two primary goals here. First, the simulation had to feel like you were really on the snow, but second, it had to be fun. On the simulation part there were a couple of challenging areas for us. The board itself doesn't detect rotation - you can't swing your hips flatly and get a response from the board that registers in a consistent way, so we changed the way tricks worked to a system that mirrors the way players turn on the ground. We also found that this made new players a lot more comfortable. Second, there aren't any buttons on the board itself for us to detect grabs with, so we put the grabs as toggles on the Wii Remote. Players still push their turns on the balance board, but they use the Wii Remote buttons to hold the grab in place. The balance board experience is realistic enough that snowboarders are going to have a great time but the board will also be adaptable enough for players that have never snowboarded to enjoy the game.

To what extent has the board influenced the difficulty/forgiveness of the game? Turning left is obviously much easier with thumbs.

This has really been the weirdest outcome of the two control teams approach. Turning left really isn't easier with thumbs, especially when you're in a groove in the half-pipe or you're a board player. As we've watched people play the game, we've found that they tend to become fans of either the Wii Remote or the balance board for different events. The feedback has not been consistent. It's not like everyone in the world thinks that the balance board is better or easier or vice versa. Different people have different preferences by event and as a result, we don't have too many fights about who gets what when we sit down for a multiplayer game. It's kind of a cool by-product of a system that we were putting in place to combat a different challenge.

Tell us something that, throughout development, you wish the balance board had. (Surely rumble would greatly enhance the experience?)

There are three things I wanted for the board while we were making the game and a fourth thing that is more of a rule than an addition. As we were making the game I realized that all of them were really bad ideas from a manufacturing or liability standpoint. Still, here's the list. First, I would have loved it if the balance board had a rotational axis and could detect when players were trying to spin it in each direction. I'm pretty sure this would cause people to fall off all the time, but it would have been cool. Second, I would love it if there were four buttons around the outside of the balance board kind of where the power button is right now (the power button would need to move). This would let us do grabs in a really physical way. It would also make people hate doing grabs. Third, yes, rumble would be really cool. We've done a really good job of letting people feel surfaces, but it would be nice if they could feel them where they should. It would also make people uncomfortable on the board. If you're playing by Nintendo's rules (no shoes), a quick rumble is likely to tickle and make you fall off if you're at a lean. Finally, I really wanted for them to let players jump off the board, but I understand that you're going to end up with a lot of broken boards that way.