NEW YORK CITY, New York -- Shaun White has been busy preparing for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia. But he’s also keeping gamers busy with his second original Wii snowboarding game in two years. This fall, Shaun White Snowboarding:  World Stage adds another twist to snowboarding games by incorporating Wii Motion Plus and the Balance Board into the experience. Matthew Zagerack, international product manager at Ubisoft for the new game, took some time away from the slopes to talk about the new Wii game in this exclusive interview.

How have you worked with Shaun White on this new game?

I work in close proximity to all the producers and the creative directors, the game designers on the game, so I’m part of the entire process whenever Shaun comes into the studio. I’m right there with them on the meetings and all that kind of stuff. I could explain to you if you like how that goes down?

Sure. What’s the extent of Shaun’s involvement with the team at Ubisoft Montreal?

Shaun comes into the studio all the time and is really hands-on as to how the game gets made. Shaun is a huge gamer, so that’s a great thing for us because he really understands the process of how to make a videogame. He understands all of the terminology and what’s possible and what’s not possible to do in a game. We speak in the same language whenever we’re in meetings to make the game. He likes to get involved on every side of it.  I think the main thing that he wants to do is really make the game sort of feel authentic to what he feels when he’s snowboarding and to make the player get a little bit of feeling of what it is like to be a snowboarder, but within you own living room.

What’s new with this Wii game?

Last year we put out Shawn White Snowboarding:  Road Trip for the Wii, which players responded really well to. That was about showing a certain side of the lifestyle of snowboarding.  It was about getting your friends in the van together, going up on the mountain and searching for the best powder and that kind of thing.  This year with Shawn White Snowboarding:  World Stage, what we’re trying to do is show a new side of what the life of a snowboarder is like. It’s all about competing on the world stage basically. Snowboarders are never at home. They’re always traveling around the world getting to do all kinds of crazy stuff that people like you and I don’t really get to do very often. So that’s what we’re trying to let players experience -- what it’s like to feel like an elite pro rider.

What’s new with the gameplay experience?

One of the main things that we’re trying to bring into the gameplay this year is a whole host of really, really cool new locations and level design. We’re really basing the level design this year on realistic slopes that you would find in the top caliber competitions around the world. So basically if it’s in a real competition like the ones you’d watch on TV, that’s what you’re going to find in our maps this year. We have a whole host of other features as well.  We have character customization this year.  So whenever you go through your game play progression, you’re going to be constantly rewarded with all kinds of new items, all kinds of new unlockables as you progress through the game. And we have Wii Motion Plus features.

Can you talk about the Wii Motion Plus?

One of the coolest new features that we have in this game is the integration of the Wii Motion Plus, which allows the one to one recognition for movement. This allows for a really realistic depiction of the movements that you do with the Wiimote in the game. The way that we’re using that in the game is to allow the player to design their own tricks, basically from the ground up.  So anything you do with the controller, anything that you can think of at all, is replicated exactly by your character in the game and then you can add grabs to the trick that you design and add its own name to it. Then you can take all of these tricks and bring them over to a friend’s house and play them together.  We think that’s a really cool thing that people are going to have fun with.

How large was the team working on this title?

Well, making a game is a quite involved process. It involves a lot of different talents across a lot of different disciplines. For the game that we’re on right now, for Shaun White Snowboarding:  World Stage, we’re a team of about 70 developers working on this. We’ve basically been developing Shaun White Snowboarding:  World Stage since before Road Trip even came out.  We had a lot of ideas on the table that we wanted to bring into the second game right away.  The whole process began in 2008 and is continuing in 2009 until we release later this year.  So it’s been about a year’s development time from when we really gave the go to start working on the game until you see the game on the shelves.