Smosh, founded by Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla, is one of the most popular YouTube channels, period. Ian and Anthony define comedy entertainment for a young generation, and the two have decided to make a larger, much more involved video game than their previous release, Super Head Esploder X. Food Battle, based on a video the two create annually where they battle with a donut and an assortment of foods, is an action RPG coming to mobile devices this year. We got a chance to speak with Ian and Anthony about making the game, their comedy influences, and the sort of games they play when they’re not making goofy videos.
Game Informer: Is this something you’ve wanted to do for a long time? Your channel is not entirely video game focused, but certainly a big part of it.
Anthony: Yeah, we’ve always wanted to make a game. I know for me, and probably Ian too, growing up we were obsessed with video games. We were kind of obsessing over this idea of, “What if we could make our own game? What would we be able to add into it? Let’s make a game that’s actually funny.” Our viewers love when we create stuff that has video game references, or even a whole video game parody. Two of our most popular videos ever are music videos about video games. There’s our Assassin’s Creed 3 song, and then our Legend of Zelda rap. It just seemed to really make sense for us to make a game.
How did it come about exactly? Did someone approach you guys? Or did you guys have an idea you took to developers?
Ian:Food Battle is a long-running series that we have on our channel. It goes back to 2006. We do an annual video called Food Battle. It’s something our viewers are very familiar with. They’re always asking, “When’s the next Food Battle?” We’re big fans of gaming. A couple years ago we came out with a game called Super Head Exploder – it was a side-scrolling shooter. We really enjoyed that and the viewers really enjoyed it so we always kind of wanted to make a mobile game that was deeper than that. We started pitching ideas, and we’d gone through a bunch of different concepts before we landed on Food Battle the game. We’re loosely using the Food Battle name to make the game, but we’re really excited about it.
I did get a chance to play Food Battle a little bit. It’s an action RPG. Is that a genre you guys are particularly interested in?
Anthony: I’m a huge fan of that. I love the Legend of Zelda series. Basically N64 was my favorite era of gaming. All the action games – Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie – all those games were my favorite where you’re trying to get to the end of the quest but you’re collecting things and learning new weapons and powers. That’s something that’s influenced me.
Ian: Yeah, and I’m kind of a fan of more of the recent actions RPGs, like Mass Effect is my favorite franchise. I really had a lot of fun with the Witcher 2. That kind of translates over, using different weapons for different enemies, changing up your strategy with how to approach certain enemies.
How involved are you guys in the actual development of the game? Are you doing writing? What is your role in the game other than the inspiration?
Anthony: We’re heavily involved in every single aspect of the development. First there was the concept. One of our biggest hurdles was first we had this huge idea for the game. It was basically more of a free-roam game but then we were looking at it on touch-screen devices and it was really difficult to control a character without finding a brand new way to do it. That was our first hurdle, and that really helped us solidify the actual style and the way we play the game. We have involvement in basically every build. Every Wednesday I’m downloading a new build, playing through it, almost the entire game, giving notes on how I feel things are working. So basically every aspect of the game, and the writing. There’s a lot of dialogue in there. The guys at Roadhouse wrote most of it but then we went through and gave it a Smosh-y voice and made sure it really stood out as something funny to us, too.
Could you tell me in great detail what Smosh-y voice is?
Ian: [laughs] I don’t really know what that means either.
Anthony: It’s something you know internally in your soul that you don’t know what it is.
Were there any surprises in developing a game that you guys weren’t expecting?
Ian: we’re not game developers, so we didn’t know the limitations of making a game. When we first thought of making a game we thought, “Okay it’s going to be 3D platformer, open world, RPG, do all this. And then they’re like, “Okay, that’s going to cost you $100 million.” So yeah, I get really crazy just going super creative with all these ideas for the game, and sometime they’re so far-fetched and out of the realm of possibilities that it literally would cost $100 million to make, to add some of these things in there that I think of. I think that was the hardest thing to cope with, was being like, “Okay, we’ve got to keep it in the realm of what we can actually do at this point.”
Coming Up Next: The surprising influence of the Smosh YouTube channel and Ian and Anthony's feelings on their notoriety...