Smash Talk
In this post, I want to discuss on how Smash Talk came to be. The main core of the idea for Smash Talk was focused on gaming. We wanted to somehow incorporate all of us having fun playing party games, so we decided to do something with lets plays. I know, I know there are many lets plays on youtube and it's an over-saturated market that everyone does. But hear me out as nerds and gamers we really wanted games to be involved into our channel since it was already involved in our daily life but of course, we knew we had to be different from the rest. The first step in this journey we began by brainstorming on what we liked from youtube and youtube. Out of 20 YouTubers, we narrowed it down to JkNews, The Hot Ones, and NigaHiga Segment “I Dare You!”. Combining JkNews and The Hot One’s Basically allowed us to about discuss a trendy topics while gaming, for example, “Is Lootbox considering gambling?”. This was to have the players focus on two things at once, which is a great way for distraction while playing the game and not to mention we believed it would help keep our viewers tune in throughout the whole video as they would want to hear on what we had to say about the topic. We imagined this was supposed to create a vibe where a serious topic is introduced while keeping it fun with gameplay. With everyone into the idea, we knew we needed rules to keep the flow of the game and conversation going. We decided with 5 of us involved 1 has to be moderator while the other 4 can be players, we would then rotate every Smash Talk on who is going to be players/moderator. So after that was established we needed incentives for players to actually win the game. This is where the “I Dare You!” segments and the strike system comes in. If you finish the game as 4th you get three strikes, 3rd gets two strikes, 2nd gets one strike, and first gets no strikes. Players who gets the 2nd most strikes get a light punishment, the player with the most strikes gets a harsh punishment, player with the 3rd most strikes have a 10% chance to take the light punishment of the 2nd most strikes place, and the least amount of strikes being completely free. Having challenges created two things for us: One it bought stakes to the table if you lose, and two it has brought entertainment for the viewers to enjoy for sticking it throughout the entire video. Proceeding forward we felt that players needed something like a boundary where they cannot cross and be held accountable for not staying on topic (for example basketball out of bounds zone). This is where the moderator comes into play, other than asking a question they need to moderate and keep track of the rules(Kinda like a referee). What are the rules you say? Here is the List: Players cannot swear, Players must answer the question within 5 seconds of their turn, Players answer must have a reason to it (basically no 1 worded answers), Players cannot go off topic. Each time you break the rule the player will get a strike. These rule helped created a wild card for the players. Let's say for that week the chosen game by the moderator, you suck really bad at. You lose first and get three strikes, but with the rules, there is potential whoever gets first could have four strikes by the end of the game. So in a sense, if you get knocked out first you still have hope of them breaking the rule. At this point with all these things being though out, we believed we had a really good system. We started a testing phase to see if everything work.... sadly we ran into hiccups. The biggest issue we faced was the news segment. When we were playing the games when asked about a serious topic everyone answers more or less was the same. It created no diversity and quickly became stale. But after a couple of discussions we found a solution and honestly it was sooo simple it was just to ask basic questions. For example by having to ask what is your favorite anime everyone answer is completely different that can create a colorful conversation. like if I said, “ I like One Piece because of the creativity....” It creates some sort of impressions on the viewers and each individual players. Right now this is currently how we are running Smash Talk. As it evolves I will be posting the progress and how things are working on this site. If you have read through all of this, first off let me say thank you for your time and consideration. If you have any questions or input please feel free to comment, I would love to see what you guys think about this concept.
If you wanna see a round of smash talk click here to go to one of our youtube videos
Thanks!
~Han
