#smashpad

Because I’m terrible at posting consistently.

As of this writing, this week’s Day 0 Update has been recorded and the Patreon cat will be out of the bag in earnest once Fil finishes the edit.

We have big plans for the coming year, with new podcasts on the way and an expansion of both our site content and our existing media projects, all going on in an environment in which it’s more personally costly mentally and financially to stay the course than ever before.

Of course, quitting has never been a possibility. I personally live for this, and my colleagues are all quite invested at this point as well.

Patreon and other similar approaches have been discussed in the past, but has always had a shadow hanging over it in the form of the usual paradox, “we can’t justify asking for money from where we stand, but we can’t get to a place where we can justify asking for money without, well, money.” Kind of like how the job market is littered with so-called “entry-level positions” where employers still demand experience of their applicants - it’s a catch 22. In our case, though, how much of this was a reality of our particular field and how much of it was internal restraint (or mental block) could very well be open for debate. Ultimately, that cycle must be broken because it’s a stupid cycle, and a particularly unproductive one at that.

It is with that mentality that we’re taking these first steps into crowdfunding, in the hopes that something truly remarkable can be built from it. At the moment, it’s not about lofty or even very specific goals, but simply putting up the “online tip jar”, letting our readers/listeners/viewers who have always been our lifeblood decide what we’re worth, and using whatever we come back with to make our product stronger - more podcasts, more ways to experience our podcasts, improved production values (perhaps even with less narcolepsy!), an expansion of our site content, and so on.

In closing, I’m looking very forward to seeing what we can all build together in 2016, and just as I said on this week’s podcast, and to quote a legendary localization/publishing house (and one of my personal favorites), we’re nothing without you.

It’s a celebration of a pair of anniversaries as we mark 20 years of PlayStation in North America and the Dreamcast growing old enough to drive! Legacies will be discussed and memories shared as we look back on a pair of industry giants whose stories and fortunes couldn’t be more different.

Street Fighter V has its second newcomer in Rashid of the Turbulent Wind. The team goes over the reveal trailer of a character who just might be the game’s fastest yet, address the misguided controversy surrounding his timing of his unveiling, and take a look at how we might now know the full roster of 16 for the game’s launch.

Kickstarter’s growing pains are playing out in the courts, as the Washington State Attorney General is aligning with backers of a card game who had not seen rewards for more than two years after they were scheduled to ship. Some are calling this the beginning of the end for crowdfunding, but is it rather just a part of the process?

Square Enix has followed up their epic TGS lineup reveal not just with the implication that there might be one more game yet to be discussed, but the announcement of Final Fantasy V coming to Steam in a couple of weeks. Looking at their recent releases, this could well be status quo, and if so, it means that a true JRPG legend could be waiting in the wings.

Studio Liverpool may be no more, but many of its alumni have recently reorganized under the R8 Games banner. Now, thanks to Kickstarter, R8 is preparing to launch Wipeout’s spiritual successor, Formula Fusion. The Day 0 hosts, meanwhile, are wont to look at things in a “big picture” sense, and can’t help thinking that this is just the latest development in a “new game industry” being constructed right in front of our eyes. What’s old is truly new again.

Regardless of what corners of gaming you might come from, there’s no question that the BBC’s upcoming documentary, Game Changer, is a snapshot of one of the industry’s most controversial and contentious chapters: Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto franchise vs professional offendee Jack Thompson. Game Changer’s historical value notwithstanding, someone directly related to the events depicted in the film is now taking legal action to try and prevent its launch...but it’s not who, or why, you would think.

Nintendo made waves a couple weeks ago by announcing the return of the Nintendo World Championships, following a 25-year layoff, in the lead-up to E3 2015. Now that we know the details of the scope of the event, particularly the very limited availability of qualifiers (in all of eight US cities), it is apparent in hindsight that those waves probably should have remained ripples. Is there anywhere relevant this could now lead to, or will it go down in the history books as the insulting publicity stunt it now looks to be?

The Day 0 Update reported three weeks ago that Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata had taken criticism of the game’s demo, Episode Duscae, to heart, and even went so far as to declare his intentions of patching the demo if such an update would get the okay from Sony and Microsoft. Now, both parties have given Tabata and his team the go-ahead, and Tabata himself has stated that we’ll have our update sometime between now and E3. Just how much can possibly change from what we played back in March, though?

NHL 15 was one of the most divisive games of last year, with a woefully-incomplete eighth-generation version robbing its genuinely-outstanding seventh-generation counterpart of virtually all of the attention it deserved, making last year appear an abject failure for EA’s most celebrated sports franchise. This year, Sean Ramjagsingh and his team are coming out with all guns blazing, full disclosure proving from the get-go that NHL 16 will not be a repeat of the previous year. The crew takes a look on the show at the list of features that made it.

Mother’s Day on Sunday fast-tracks our iTunes debut by a day, and the team will be reintroducing itself - and the overarching idea behind its vehicle - for the influx of listeners. Why is it called the Day 0 Update in the first place? What determines what stories get covered on the show? All will be explained as the hosts summarize SmashPad’s flagship podcast for its new, broader audience.

The Konami/P.T. debacle continues, with the prototype not only having been delisted from PlayStation Network, but removed from the service altogether, while P.T.-loaded systems are being ordered pulled from eBay. It’s evident that something more severe is going on here, and Konami wants P.T. wiped off the face of the earth. The game had a real fan in Brandon who is mourning the loss appropriately, while Patrick, who never really cared about horror games to begin with, has other concerns investing him in the matter.

After the undeniable failure of the once-promising SoulCalibur V, Project Soul took a new leader and a free-to-play single-player installment of the Soul franchise into an extended period of silence. Now, that silence is broken, as they have launched a character popularity poll and stated their intentions that it is a lead up to something big. Hard to imagine it could be anything but SoulCalibur VI, but what shape could this game take?

Sony doesn’t want to wait for E3 to start talking about Project Morpheus. That’s according to their plans for Nordic Game 2015 in Sweden from the 20th to the 22nd. Project Morpheus looks to figure heavily in Sony’s presentation at the event, and if history is any indicator, we could be gearing up for yet another event that brings us up to speed on the hardware details so that E3 can be all about shoving games into eyeballs...somewhat more literally in this case. Meanwhile, ex-EA boss John Riccitiello has nothing but great things to say for the house that PlayStation built.

Finally, we revisit a story from last week from another angle. Hajime Tabata has strong feelings about the all-male main cast of his pet project, Final Fantasy XV, with some comments being met with no small amount of controversy (be it legitimately or due to the translation). GamesRadar recently provided an op-ed piece about why this could be a very positive thing for gaming, and the team will discuss the subject themselves.

Patrick and Filippo had the Hatred/Steam situation pegged as one of the top industry stories to watch in 2015, and now Hatred has a June 1 release date pushing the issue. Will Valve stay the course and allow the game to go up on the service as planned in a month, and will there be any unintended consequences if they do?

Valve started World War III with its mod marketplace on Steam, but now it looks like the experiment is over, and with it, the war. Is this the end for the overall concept of paid mods, or will there be other attempts at seeing content creators inside games’ fanbases get paid for their work? The team will speculate.

The small blaze at Konami has erupted into a five-alarm inferno. With Hideo Kojima on the way out and the big Silent Hill revival project discarded, the company has now removed itself from the New York Stock Exchange. In itself, that wouldn’t be cause for much concern, but the panel explains why this absolutely must be taken in context.

Clearly, Square Enix feel they are living and dying by the success of Final Fantasy XV, so it shouldn’t come as much surprise that director Hajime Tabata is taking the criticisms of Episode Duscae to heart. The extent to which he is doing this, however, is truly admirable, and worth looking at in detail on the podcast.

Day 0 Update Changes are coming, but not to the overall content of the show. With Filippo, Brandon, Theresa, Leigh, and myself, we’ve pretty well found our identity as a team and have started tapping into that Giant Bombcast energy (not to mention show lengths!) that I was always after for Day 0 Update. Background videos are, at least for now, being phased out, as they were simply there to provide a visual element for our YouTube offerings. That isn’t to say we’re leaving YouTube, but the background videos haven’t proven as essential in practice as they were in theory. We’re also hard at work getting RSS/iTunes feeds up and running, and those will be coming sooner than you think.

15 Minutes of [GAME] Less a show than a filler feature, but one we really believe in, we will be back featuring some different games in the weeks following E3. Some “season one” content was held back in order to diversify the genre selection, as well. (What can I say? We love our racing games.) You’ll be seeing that by the end of June.

Patrick Mifflin’s Voice of Dissent This one got nailed with something of a perfect storm. A wave of personal issues kept me from dedicating the time I needed to anything more than the Day 0 Update for awhile, and then the Nintendo/YouTube stupidity effectively cancelled the last four episodes of season one, which were intended to feature The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I’ll have the last Final Fantasy VIII episode hopefully soon. (I know I’ve said this before and I apologize.) After which point I’ll leave the eight existing episodes on our YouTube channel and rotate them on our main playlist once more, basing its continuation on how it’s received from there. Truthfully, I’m not too bent about the outcome one way or another. There are certainly games I could resume the series with, even without having Nintendo games available to use - the Tales series comes to mind - and I wanted to do something different than just another crop of Let’s Play videos. The idea of using the show to champion underappreciated games is also quite possible moving forward. Be sure to share your feedback!

On a more overarching point, with E3 right around the corner, we’re coming up on a critical point in time for our attempt to reinvent ourselves as a podcasting outlet. This is our best chance to grow our audience before the holidays, so if you’ve been enjoying our output up to this point, the grassroots, word-of-mouth approach is still far and away the best method of supporting us, and we appreciate all the help we can get.