Role playing

Over the past two years, Chicago’s video-game industry has been anything but fun and games. In November 2007, software giant Electronic Arts (EA) shuttered its River North studio, and more than 150 people were left jobless. This past February, Roscoe Village–based game publisher–developer Midway Games, creator of the Mortal Kombat franchise, filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

But it’s not game over for Chicago just yet. From its headquarters downtown, new kid on the block Robomodo has been hard at work on the latest entry in the high-profile Tony Hawk franchise, Ride, which will be released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii this fall by Activision, the hot-shit publisher of Guitar Hero. With Ride, the tenth Hawk-sponsored game, Robomodo has game blogs abuzz about the addition of a “peripheral”: an external game controller, like Guitar Hero’s plastic ax. In this case, it’s a wheelless, motion-sensing skateboard deck that players use like a real board.

Robomodo’s story starts with the collapse of EA Chicago. EA invited competitors to a three-day job fair to soften the blow for its laid-off workers. Game studios as far-flung as Asia sent reps to Chicago to snap up the newly jettisoned talent. Developers David Michicich and Josh Tsui—Columbia College grads who’d worked at Midway Games in the ’90s and cofounded the defunct Studio Gigante before moving to EA—decided the job fair didn’t have what they were looking for. “So many companies were in town, taking people back to this city and that city. But Josh and I really wanted to stay in Chicago,” says Michicich, now Robomodo’s CEO and creative director. Michicich and Tsui convinced 27 other former EAers to take the leap, too.

Last August, EA’s fiercest rival, Activision, approached Michicich and Tsui asking if their upstart could “breathe new life” into the Hawk franchise as the two had done at EA with the Fight Night sequel.

Last Wednesday in a meeting room at Robomodo HQ, the 33rd floor of 20 North Clark Street, Tsui excitedly played Ride using the just-arrived final model of the peripheral skate deck, while Michicich talked about some of the Chicago talent mined to create the game. Local skate legend Stevie “Dread” Snyder tricked in front of video cameras; Mark Loffredo, who built the computer chips for Mortal Kombat, made circuits for Ride’s prototype boards; Northwestern University assistant physics professor and skateboarding lecturer Yung Tae Kim made sure the skateboarding followed Newton’s laws; Deluxe Tattoo inker Hannah Aitchison created tats for game characters; and local artist Rodrigo “Solo” Mireles contributed graffiti to city scenes.

“This game couldn’t have happened without Chicago,” Michicich mused as Tsui’s game character sped through “City Plaza,” a location modeled after Daley Plaza. “We got a lot of inspiration for the game just staring out the window,” Michicich added. “There you can see the El ride by,” he said, pointing at the screen, “and it’s probably running late, too.” The game’s other Chicago level is based on Lower Wacker Drive. “If we had it our way,” Tsui says, “every location in the game would be Chicago.”

To see Tony Hawk: Ride in action, visit thride.com.

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