A month ago we stumbled upon Skateboardle, a simple looking website where you can play a fun trivia game. It’s basically like the infamous Wordle that took over the group chats and Twitter this year, but with skate videos. Since then, it’s been impossible to go skating without someone asking if you played Skateboardle that day.
It turns out that the game was created by Sean Villars, who is currently the main guy running SkateVideoSite. Sean is a programmer by trade and clearly obsessed with skateboarding, so he combined the two for the benefit of all of us. SkateVideoSite is already one of the largest online skateboarding databases, and now Skateboardle is an essential part of skatenerdom next door.
First, would you consider yourself a skater?
Uhhh half way, yeah [laughs]. We always do that where you’re at the bar and you hear a song and you think, “Who skated on this?” I’m sure every skate group does this, so I definitely have a good knowledge of skate songs.
I know skate nerds who have a lot more knowledge than me and that’s great! I have a friend Dylan at No-Comply Skate Shop who can name every trick filmed on Clipper and by whom and what video. I’m not at that level [laughs]. I’m somewhere between the average skater and Dylan.
What was the story behind Skateboardle?
We have a Discord with a bunch of us helping out with skatevideosite.com and I don’t know how it came up, but we were like, “Wordle for skateboarding would be tight.” Then the idea just clicked. It’s been a few months since the Wordle craze, it peaked and all the spin-offs happened, but there was still no skateboard. So I thought, “Dude, I think I might have an idea that maybe no one else has done yet.”
I don’t really play too many mobile games and this is actually the first game I made. Usually I build much more boring software. This was a matter of just combining it with a subject I loved and I suspected other skaters would probably get a kick out of it. I’d say knowing the audience is definitely a big part of making something that’s going to be fun.
How long did it take to build out? What goes into making a game like this?
The actual game is quite simple. The basic game loop logic on the site probably took me less than two weeks to do. The big time sink is video curation. I want to try to keep this game playing for as long as possible, but choosing the video, searching through it and choosing the clips takes a lot of time.
For the videos, I will find or obtain a video source file, then I have a program that I will go through and it’s pretty crazy that the program can detect scenes and cut the video into clips automatically. So I walk through it and I spend about 30 minutes to an hour picking clips for one round.
Do you do that manually every day or do you queue them up for the week?
A little bit of both [laughs]. Sometimes I sit down and take a few out and sometimes I just do one for the day. I have a bit of a buffer, but not much. I really need to do something tonight [laughs]. Hanging the Skateboardle clips is always at the top of my to-do list – other than taking care of my kid, of course [laughs].
Can you not automate that part of the process as a programmer?
Yes, getting the whole video and chopping it up is basically automated. It’s choosing the specific clips, which is the hardest part. I don’t have an exact formula yet. I just went with how I feel right now because I’m trying to make the first clip a little hard. So sometimes it’s a guest clip or a stupid B-roll recording. I try to be attentive to the clips, while also trying to show off dope clips from the video.
I could completely automate it and have it pick literally six random clips, but that might not be a good game, right? Like the damn one trans world videos with all b-rolls, it could possibly choose six b-roll clips or something [laughs].
“It’s crazy to think and crazy to say, but there are people who haven’t seen Baker 3.”
What are the reactions to the game so far?
As far as I can see, pretty good. I actually just posted it on Slap and Reddit. I had a test from a friend for the past few weeks just before I released it. They probably also shared it on Instagram or something. It became more popular than I thought just from those two posts. Slap loves it [laughs]. People are constantly posting their results every day.
I’m not on Twitter, but one of my friends is and he sent me a lot of funny tweets about the game, which was cool. It’s funny because I didn’t know Skate Twitter was a thing until my friend showed me.
Have there been any negative reactions?
My friend sent me one or two funny messages. Maybe it’s a matter of age, but some people were upset because they just didn’t know the videos. I’m 31, so the ones I started with are the ones I grew up watching. For me they are classic and everyone knows them so maybe the younger people are having a hard time [laughs]. But I’m starting to put some newer videos in it.
But with that criticism, I hope that aside from the frustration, they’ll start watching those videos they don’t know. It’s crazy to think and crazy to say, but there are those who haven’t seen it Baker 3. I mean, damn, that video is 15 years old now.
Were you playing when Wordle came out?
It was not me. I knew what it was, but I just didn’t play it that often. I think I got inspired because I saw all the spin-offs. I actually play it more than Wordle.
I’m playing this Heardle game running Spotify. That one is quite heavy. There is also a geography and that is pretty sick. You try to guess the country based on a small map image and it will tell you how far you were. I like that one because I like finding out geography.
What’s the weirdest version of this game format you can think of that hasn’t been invented yet?
Maybe pictures of fast food and chain restaurants without the wrappers or logos, you have to guess where the food comes from. I certainly know a few homies who can see spicy chicken nuggets from Wendy’s from miles away.
“I certainly know a few homies who can see spicy chicken nuggets from Wendy’s from miles away.”
Can you see the results of everyone’s answers?
Yeah, so I’m a bit of a sticky point with that. I have the data on the win percentages of all the games played. However, the problem, and this is only a problem with websites in general, you don’t need to create an account to play. So essentially you could use a different browser, or mess with your browser cache and delete all your data and play again.
I want to display the win rates because I think that would be nice, and people want to see that. However, I’m afraid people are going to mess with the numbers because there’s no authentication for how many times you could play it. I saw someone posting on Twitter: “How to win: lose the game, get the answer, clear your cache, play again and try the first time.” You’re just playing yourself at that moment.
The data is fun to watch. I made the first two Bag of suck and Baker 3 and they had a 95% win rate from 1,500 plays. Then there was Hollywood Promotion and it had a 25% win rate [laughs]. It’s pretty funny to see that. I want to share things like that with everyone who plays, but I’m trying to find the right way to do it.
Are there any videos you know you wouldn’t add?
Not that I don’t fuck with them, but I probably won’t be doing solo parts for a while. Another segment of videos I’m not sure about is the indie video era – late 2000 to early 2010. Like all videos from Arizona. There are so many indie videos that came out around that time and they are relatively well known but I still don’t know how people will react.
How hard is it to balance a kid, your job, SkateVideoSite and Skateboardle?
I’m definitely being pulled in many directions [laughs]. Skating has shaved the brunt of my time. I try to go out and skate at least once a week, that’s my goal [laughs]. Doing Skatevideosite and Skateboardle is hard because I spend so much time on my computer for work, so when I’m done I’m like, “Fuck, I gotta get away from this computer.”
At the moment I am re-dressing SkateVideoSite to make it look better. I know the UI has never been the best, and I’m not much of a front-end person, but I love what I did with Skateboardle’s design and look. I’m trying to make SkateVideoSite look a bit like this so we have some sort of theme to match. But sometimes I want to mess around on SkateVideoSite, but I’m like, “Fuck, I need to spend an hour at Skateboard Class”, and there’s my time for the night. I’ve made it work, but a lot of things are pulling me.
So you do SkateVideoSite and Skateboardle voluntarily, right?
Hell yeah, I spend money on it [laughs]. We thought about maybe adding a donate button to SkateVideoSite to help fund it. It’s not very expensive every month, but I want to make it a better experience on the other side of the world too. I could see how long it takes to load in SE Asia and stuff, and it’s not that pretty. The server is located in New York, so you get the best and fastest experience [laughs]. But that stuff costs money and we just want to do more and discover different things that we all want to do. We can add the donate button, but I don’t want people to think we’re trying to make money with it.
If the New York Times tried to buy Skateboardle, would you sell it?
[laughs] Uh maybe. Depends on the price. But a funnier scenario is if Berra ever tried to buy it. If anyone from the Berrics tried to buy it, I’d say, “Hell no. No thanks, Berra.” He would put a “Battle at The Berrics” ad on all three sides.
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