Back in the early 2000s, surfing was one of several sports being well-served in the video game space. Treyarch’s Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer, published on Xbox, PS2, and GameCube under Activision’s long-defunct Activision O2 brand, is one high-profile example – but there were plenty of others. Krome produced Championship Surfer for PC, PlayStation, and Dreamcast in 2000, and also Sunny Garcia Surfing for PS2 in 2001. Angel Studios (which later became Rockstar San Diego) released Transworld Surf on Xbox, PS2, and GameCube between 2001 and 2003. The surf-obsessed may even remember Surfing H3O, although you might be better off forgetting that one.
And then, the tsunami of surfing games stopped. Waxheads were waiting for more, but the surfing sub-genre was sunk.
“Perhaps I need my head read,” jokes Bungarra Software CEO Andrew West when asked why he thinks it’s been effectively two decades since a sport-focused surfing game surfaced. Based in Fremantle, Western Australia, Bungarra is the developer of Barton Lynch Pro Surfing 2022 – an ambitious new surfing game bearing the name of 1988 ASP World Tour Champion and Australian Sporting Hall of Famer Barton Lynch, available now on Steam Early Access.
“We started back then and we were working on a version of surfing for a publisher, so we actually lived through all of that time,” says West. “It’s an interesting question. Back then it was a Tony Hawk and SSX-inspired gold rush of sorts.”
West attributes the wipeout to low sales and a perceived lack of depth in the genre.
“For a large, publicly-listed entity like Activision, the sales for games like Kelly Slater or Mat Hoffman were probably never going to see sequels because, for Activision, I guess the numbers for them didn’t stack up,” he says. “So perhaps the thinking among other publishers is that if games like KSPS, Sunny’s game, or Transworld don’t get sequels, then why bother?”
West concedes those are fair questions to ask, but also points out Bungarra doesn’t need to make “an Activision-like amount of money” to service its audience and survive.
“But to do that we have had to address that nagging question of gameplay depth and frankly, it’s taken us two decades to figure it out,” he says. “The other thing that has changed over the course is the whole digital and streaming thing – I can’t even begin to tell you how liberating that is compared to when we started. But as you point out it’s been 20 years between drinks, so we really hope that people will get behind us and support the game because, if I am brutally honest, the simple fact is that it just may not happen again anytime soon.”
With its expansive world tour mode, commentary, weather options, and a full character creator, Bungarra describes Barton Lynch Pro Surfing 2022 as a “truly sport-focused surfing game.” West confirms the team are surfers themselves who are truly passionate about the sport and the culture. Pressed on the best surfing movie, West himself can’t narrow it to a single answer.
“South to Sian, Rubber Soul, Billabong Surf into Summer ’87, Asian Paradise, and I love the Sessions series on Red Bull TV, in particular the Andrew Mooney East Canada road trip,” says West. “For anyone who’s lived out of a car – or a cave – hunting for waves, that seven-minute short movie just makes you feel so good and is sure to bring a smile to your dial.”
Of course, surfing credentials are just one part of the equation, but as an eight-person studio (four full-time, four part-time) West is philosophical about the question of balancing expectation with the realities of what’s possible for a small team making an ambitious, contemporary sports game of this type.
“That’s a really tough one,” says West. “We understand that people work hard and they expect their entertainment to be at a high quality, especially if they’re going to give you their time.”
“I mean if you’ve had a tough day, the very last thing you want to come home to, is a lousy piece of entertainment right? No one wants that, so we are upfront with people and hopefully they understand that we are not a large AAA studio with a massive budget. Once our audience realises that then generally the expectations are reset because most people are reasonable.
“At the same time the game has still got to be good, and you can’t hide behind the indie excuse either. So our aim is to create an offer that is solid visually, offers something new, has depth, and is largely bug-free at launch. The goal is to focus on the core experience – get the basics right, and then when the time comes downstream we can then try and build upon that and then add those nice-looking extras. For us, right now it would be pure folly to even try and compete with the likes of Electronic Arts on those beautiful cut-scene movies that you see in their sport games.”
Interestingly, Barton Lynch Pro Surfing 2022 isn’t Bungarra’s first surfing game; the studio previously had a little-known game called The Surfer launch on PS3 in 2017. No, not PS4, PS3 – a curious four years after the PS4 had arrived. West explains development of The Surfer was incredibly tough, but it taught them several valuable lessons.
“The Surfer was a mission and you wouldn’t be alone in not being familiar with it,” says West. “It was a super-tough project because we funded that ourselves, worked part-time jobs for years, and there were only three of us working for three days a week.”
“We literally crawled over broken glass to get that game to market and by the time we did the PS3 was already long gone. I think the development issues with the PS3 are well documented, and by the time we were finished we had no time or energy to look at any other platform. It was exhausting. I could be wrong but I think we were quite possibly the last game to release on the PS3 – or close to it. But perhaps that’s a story for another day.
“What we learned was how to develop a gameplay and scoring loop for surfing that actually made sense, and also just what it takes to get a console game to market – which is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life and nothing else comes close. So The Surfer informed us in many ways about surfing game design and the sort of production values people expect and deserve.
“It allowed us to understand what the design requirements are in regards to forming the basis for a larger project such as this one. It also allowed Bungarra to get this project off the ground, because as at least people could see that we actually had a game out on console. We came out on the PC via Desura originally, and then later on the Sony PS3. We are still learning and we certainly don’t know it all, but we owe everything to The Surfer and I’ll be eternally grateful to my colleagues Matthew Strickland and Jack Nelson for the work we did on that project.”
Barton Lynch Pro Surfing 2022 brings with it a large list of licensed gear and equipment (including Billabong, Quiksilver, Roxy, MR Surfboards, Lost, Pyzel, ONeil, Creatures Of Leisure, Futures Fins, and more), and West notes there was enthusiasm amongst them for a new sports-focused surfing game, “but it was understandably tempered.”