Does snowboarding need to go underground?

If anyone reads my blog on a regular basis, they cannot fail to notice that I have not written anything in quite some time. I have been thinking.

I have worked online for a decade now and I have loved snowboarding for almost as long. I would like to think I carved out my own little niche, as small as that may be, reviewing snowboarding movies and snowboarding video games, especially on my old website Stoked On Snowboarding. If I could never do any of the tricks pro snowboarders can do in the real world, I could at least can do them in the virtual one.

I have blogged for MSN, worked on Xbox LIVE, I've run CompuServe's Games Channel and even spent half a decade on BBC Radio 1's website but my contribution to the online life of snowboarding has always been enthusiastic and completely voluntary. My enthusiasm for snowboarding remains undiminished but I have decided to stop blogging about it. Well, if I can!

I suspect it might be akin to giving up smoking for some people, after all I DO like to have an opinion and I do enjoy writing.

But the truth is there are people who do it better than I do and they need your support. In this world of ever increasing media choice and decreasing advertising revenues, I feel I should not be providing a distraction from the websites and magazines that I love. Instead I should be simply telling you to go read them instead and love them as much as I do.

The arrival of the (quite frankly disappointing) Shaun White Snowboarding game left me at a loss. A beautifully crafted sim that tries to reproduce the spirit of snowboarding with your friends and is headed by arguably the world's favourite snowboarder (though not mine... sorry Shaun) is something that should be welcomed and celebrated. So 3 months later I wonder why that is so hard to do so.

Well, the control system is terrible (maybe it's different on a Wii board but it's counter intuitive for Xbox players). The makers might know a lot about snowboarding and fancy graphics and games physics but seem to have little love of video games or video gamers.

Where is the buzz I felt when I played Shaun Palmer Pro Snowboarding, or the first 1080 game or the first Amped? I mean I really really LOVED those games. I want to love Shaun White's game and I keep trying but I just don't. Looking at the number of online players there are, it feels about as popular as a PS3. It makes me wish snowboarding would go back underground (if it never was then at least I'd like it to feel like it was).

I feel it has tarnished my love of snowboard movies too. Lately they don't leave me in the same awe that they used to. And don't leave me bitterly miserable that I'm not up in the mountains riding them myself instead of watching Travis or Jussi or Bjorn and wishing I could keep up with one of the Jones even though I know that I never could.

I couldn't even drum up the enthusiasm to review the new Absinthe movie, and I love Absinthe as a crew, and secretly want their new snowboarding game to renew my faith in snowboard sims.

So for now I implore you to read and support and love those centres of snowboard worship White Lines and Huck magazines. Both products of the UK and unique for their warmth and expertise and sense of humour and lack of cynical exploitation of the best pastime a boy (or girl) can enjoy both alone or with their friends.

Either one of you should be talking to Xbox and offering to make weekly streaming video content for Xbox LIVE in the same way that Inside Xbox, Official Xbox Magazine and IGN currently are. If you aren't, I bet Absinthe are already thinking about it. It could live in Video Marketplace (Xbox isn't only about gaming you know, it's a community). Anyway I digress...

White Lines is simply the best magazine on the planet and I think one day their website might be too when they stop jealously guarding their printed content. I consume both and I am sure most of their readers feel the same.

Huck is a beautiful website and an ambitious magazine that may indeed also cover skateboarding and surfing (amongst other things) but has a brilliant asset in the journalism and unrivalled access to the world's top riders in Zoe Oksanen, who wrote about snowboarding long before she became the wife of my favourite snowboarder Jussi Oksanen (sorry Shaun).

Enjoy:

whitelines.com

huckmagazine.com