# Episode 47 - Street Level + Loot Crates = Profit?

**Source:** Eclectic Gamers Podcast  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2017-11-05  
**Duration:** 137m 5s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://soundcloud.com/user-465086826/episode-47

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## Analysis

In this November 2017 Eclectic Gamers Podcast episode, hosts Tony and Dennis discuss pinball tournaments, Highway Pinball's Alien machine issues (including shaker motor crashes and missing setup instructions), Stern's new Guardians of the Galaxy announcement, and conduct a deep-dive research segment on Gottlieb's 'street level' budget pinball games from the late 1970s-1990s, exploring why manufacturers struggle with cheaper game pricing models.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Highway Pinball's Alien game has widespread shaker motor crashes when enabled; disabling it is the only confirmed workaround — _Dennis reports firsthand accounts from Pinside users; suspected power draw issue; multiple user reports confirm system reboots with shaker enabled_
- [HIGH] Highway Pinball shipped Alien machines without setup instructions, creating buyer confusion about proper assembly and connections — _Multiple Pinside users reported the issue; Dennis characterizes it as poor operational practice reflecting 'shoestring' operation_
- [HIGH] Highway Pinball removed promised LE features without explanation or compensation; LE owners cannot downgrade to standard edition at original SE pricing — _Dennis reports LE owners 'totally in the dark' about missing features; cites specific policy that downgrade requires full repurchase at new higher price_
- [HIGH] Guardians of the Galaxy is designed by John Borg and described as similar to Kiss Meets Metallica in design approach — _Tony identifies designer; both hosts compare to previous Stern designs; community described similarly on forums_
- [HIGH] Stern Pro versions ship with shorter ball times and harder difficulty compared to Premium models due to removed safety features (ramps, flippers) affecting gameplay balance — _Dennis explains mechanic differences (Aerosmith right ramp flipper, Game of Thrones upper playfield trap); audits would show longer premium ball times_
- [HIGH] Gottlieb street-level games were designed with simpler single-level playfields without ramps to reduce manufacturing complexity and operator servicing costs — _Dennis cites designer John Norris interviews; games are flat like early 1980s games; targeted remote location operators with captive audiences_
- [MEDIUM] Street-level games were discontinued because Gottlieb ultimately failed as a company; cheaper game strategy did not prevent business failure — _Dennis states Gottlieb 'was full of failure' and went out of business in 1997; implies street-level was unsuccessful but doesn't detail direct causation_
- [MEDIUM] Stern Guardians of the Galaxy is expected to ship starting this month (November 2017) — _Dennis reports rumor: 'Rumor mill is they're going to start shipping this month.' No official Stern confirmation provided_

### Notable Quotes

> "Games have arrived to the end consumers. There do seem to be a lot of problems with these games, but the problems by and large seem to be very minor in the grand scheme of things that go wrong with pinball."
> — **Dennis**, ~15:00
> _Summarizes Highway Alien reception; establishes that quality issues are expected in early production runs but Highway's communication failure is the real problem_

> "Highway Pinball has been terrible about communication. Absolutely terrible."
> — **Dennis**, ~17:30
> _Characterizes Highway Pinball's biggest failure as management/communication rather than game quality; directly impacts customer relations_

> "The pro, as is usually the case with Stern pros, comes across as more brutal, a more brutal game with shorter ball times than the premium models tend to be."
> — **Dennis**, ~45:00
> _Explains Stern's three-tier pricing strategy mechanic: Pro/Premium/LE tiers are intentionally balanced for different player experience levels_

> "You go from a model where there really was only one manufacturer, and then you go to the present-day model where it's really mostly just a bunch of boutiques."
> — **Tony**, ~50:00
> _Articulates the structural shift in pinball industry from monopoly (Williams/Bally) to competitive boutique manufacturers; rare explicit industry observation_

> "Gottlieb is a company that was full of failure. So there's all sorts of fun stuff to explore."
> — **Dennis**, ~55:00
> _Frames Gottlieb's history as inherently tragic; positions street-level research as case study in failed business strategy_

> "The goal was to have games that would avoid ball hangups and to be easy for servicing."
> — **Dennis**, ~70:00
> _Direct quote from John Norris interview; articulates design philosophy behind street-level games; simplification was primary goal_

> "If anyone knows anything about pinball history, when I see references on Pinside and the idea comes up of someone needs to make something cheaper, there need to be cheaper pinball machines...they usually cite [street level] and say, won't work. Gottlieb tried it. It was a disaster."
> — **Dennis**, ~62:00
> _Identifies street-level as cautionary tale in community discussion of budget pinball; establishes that 'cheap games don't work' is accepted wisdom_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Tony | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; attended pinball tournament; played Highway Alien machine; competed in System 11 tournament voting |
| Dennis | person | Co-host of Eclectic Gamers Podcast; primary researcher and analyst; conducted street-level pinball research; owns Silver Slugger; sold Skylab to local collector |
| John Borg | person | Pinball designer at Stern; designed Guardians of the Galaxy; described as having designed Kiss and Metallica |
| John Norris | person | Gottlieb pinball designer; interviewed by Dennis regarding street-level game design philosophy; articulated servicing and ball hangup avoidance goals |
| John Trudeau | person | Gottlieb pinball designer; contributed to street-level games; interviewed regarding design history |
| Christopher Franchi | person | Pinball artist/designer; created artwork for Batman 66 and Guardians of the Galaxy; praised for visual design quality |
| Tim Arnold | person | Operator of Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas; created video documentation on street-level games (no longer readily available) |
| Don | person | Two-time guest host on Eclectic Gamers; provided information about Tim Arnold's street-level games video |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer; announced Guardians of the Galaxy; uses Pro/Premium/LE three-tier pricing strategy; expected to ship Guardians this month |
| Highway Pinball | company | Boutique pinball manufacturer; experienced significant shipping delays and quality issues with Alien machine; poor communication with LE customers; facing refunds and cash flow issues |
| Gottlieb | company | Vintage pinball manufacturer; exited business 1997 (last game 1996); operated street-level budget game line from late 1970s-1996; positioned as failure-prone company |
| Guardians of the Galaxy | game | New Stern Pinball machine; John Borg design; based on first film only; features Groot head and hands; Pro/Premium/LE tiers; colorful artwork by Franchi; expected to ship November 2017 |
| Alien | game | Highway Pinball game; shipped with shaker motor crashing issue; missing setup instructions; improper wiring connections reported; LE features stripped without compensation; described as having good rules and interesting shot selection but mediocre layout |
| Silver Slugger | game | Gottlieb street-level game (1990); first street-level game; owned by Dennis; used for testing and research; visually appears mid-1980s despite 1990 release date |
| Skylab | game | 1974 Williams pinball by Steve Kordek; sold by Dennis to local collector at tournament; collector changed settings from 5-ball to 3-ball for increased difficulty |
| Taxi | game | Williams System 11 game; #3 seed in tournament; beat Elvira and the Party Monsters (57.7%); facing Whirlwind in finals; praised for shot quality |
| Whirlwind | game | Williams System 11 game; #1 seed; beat Space Station (65.4%); facing Taxi in finals; Pat Lawler design; some shots feel poor compared to Taxi |
| System 11 | product | Williams pinball platform; era of games featuring ramps; used as reference point for street-level simplification contrast; tournament voting ongoing |
| Pinside | organization | Online pinball forum community; users reported Alien shipping issues; platform for discussing cheaper game manufacturing; street-level cited as failed precedent |
| IPDB | organization | Internet Pinball Database; limited source of street-level documentation; note sections used for research |
| Pizza West | event | Pinball tournament; scheduled later in month; uncertain attendance from hosts |
| Head2Head Pinball Podcast | organization | Australian podcast; hosts recently played Silver Slugger and noted its aged appearance despite 1990 release date |
| Slam Tilt Podcast | organization | Pinball podcast; featured brief street-level discussion in manufacturer comparison segment; guest host unfamiliar with street-level concept |
| Eclectic Gamers Podcast | organization | The podcast being analyzed; hosted by Tony and Dennis; covers pinball and video games; episode 47 dated November 5, 2017 |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Highway Pinball Alien machine quality and customer service failures, Stern Guardians of the Galaxy announcement and design, Gottlieb street-level budget pinball game history and design philosophy
- **Secondary:** Pinball tournament play and System 11 bracket finals, Pro vs Premium vs LE pricing and feature differentiation strategy, Cheaper pinball game manufacturing viability and historical precedent, Pinball operator economics and maintenance concerns
- **Mentioned:** Industry structure: Williams monopoly to modern boutique manufacturers

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (0.35) — Positive on Guardians announcement and Stern's operational approach; negative on Highway Pinball's failures and customer handling; analytical/neutral on street-level research. Tone is critical of Highway but not harsh, appreciative of Stern's professionalism, and academic regarding Gottlieb history.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Highway Pinball's communication failure and LE customer handling creating negative perception; LE owners stripped of promised features without explanation or pricing adjustment (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'Highway Pinball has been terrible about communication. Absolutely terrible.'; LE owners forced to choose between locked LE or repurchase SE at new higher price
- **[event_signal]** Eclectic Gamers System 11 tournament bracket reaches finals between #1 Whirlwind and #3 Taxi; voting through show notes; recap discussion of System 11 era planned for next episode (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'So in terms of round four...the final matchup is the one-seed Whirlwind versus the three-seed Taxi'; voting link in show notes
- **[sentiment_shift]** Street-level games widely cited in community as failed business model precedent; 'won't work, Gottlieb tried it, it was a disaster' narrative established in Pinside discourse (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'commonly speaking, if anyone knows anything about pinball history...they usually cite [street level] and say, won't work. Gottlieb tried it. It was a disaster'
- **[design_philosophy]** Highway Alien criticized for acceptable rules design but weak playfield layout; gameplay execution questionable despite design intentions (confidence: medium) — Dennis/Tony after playing: 'The gameplay itself was okay...I don't think the layout's good'; Tony: 'I even argue that Full Throttle has a better layout than Aliens does'
- **[design_philosophy]** Stern intentionally designs Pro models with shorter ball times and harder difficulty by removing safety features; balances operator economics (higher coin drop) against player experience (confidence: high) — Dennis explains Aerosmith/Game of Thrones examples; Pro versions lack ramps/flippers that extend ball life on Premiums; 'operators would rather the ball times be shorter because they would like more money'
- **[market_signal]** Stern Guardians announcement positioned as low-key vs competitor hype cycles; executive decision to announce with immediate shipping timeline rather than prolonged marketing campaign (confidence: medium) — Tony: 'I like how some of the stuff is laid out'; Dennis: 'they're like, eh, it'll be out next month' with praise for lack of 'hype-heavy, crazy' marketing approach
- **[personnel_signal]** Christopher Franchi credited as artist for both Batman 66 and Guardians of the Galaxy; represents consistent visual design approach across major Stern titles (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'I think they had Christopher Franchi do it, who did the Batman 66...And I think this one looks really good, too.'
- **[market_signal]** Street-level case study reveals tension between manufacturer desire for cheaper entry products and market dynamics; budget games historically fail as strategic approach (confidence: medium) — Dennis frames street-level research as context for 'cheap games and pricing in the present day'; cites community belief that cheaper pinball manufacturing doesn't work
- **[product_strategy]** Highway Pinball facing delayed production and refund demands; cash flow issues forcing focus on standard edition over LE production (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'they may need to just because they need cash to come in because there were so many refunds that were demanded, and processed when the new money flowed in'
- **[product_strategy]** Stern Guardians Pro/Premium/LE tiers show minimal gameplay differentiation (only Infinity Stone egg feature exclusive to Premium/LE); cosmetic artwork primary difference (confidence: medium) — Dennis: 'it doesn't seem like you're giving up a lot of features'; notes Star Wars had more differentiation with hyperspace loop affecting gameplay
- **[product_concern]** Highway Alien shipped with systemic issues: missing setup instructions, improper wiring, and universal shaker motor crashing affecting all units with that option (confidence: high) — Dennis: 'Games have arrived to the end consumers. There do seem to be a lot of problems with these games'; multiple Pinside user reports of wiring issues and shaker crashes

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## Transcript

 Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is November 5th, 2017. It is episode 47. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we have an interesting show for you today. Full of all sorts of deep dive research oriented content and a variety of updates across the spectrum in video games and pinball both. But before we go into all of that, it's introduction time. Tony, introduce yourself. What's going on? I'm Tony. You already said that. Yeah, I know. You said it again now. I'll say it again a couple more times. I just want people to remember. No, it's been a pretty good couple of weeks. I've been real busy. I spent two days volunteering at the school with my kids, so that was interesting. It wasn't terrible. It was a fun time, and the kids are happy, so that works really well. Played some games, not a whole ton, but enough that I scratched my game an itch. and we had a game night. Just, yeah. Yeah, it was last week, wasn't it? Yep, last weekend. Last weekend that we got, like, no gaming done. I even got games set out. We didn't actually play any of them. We just chatted the whole time. And more importantly, I actually attended a pinball tournament for the first time in over a month. And I did pretty okay. Yeah. Yeah. That was yesterday. So you're still riding that pinball thing. I'm riding that high. I think I was like, last time I looked, I was tied for like 13th or something like that. There were a lot of people there. There were a lot of people there. I mean, it was a really good turnout. There were a lot of people that we don't see very often. I was real happy. It was a great night. Even without playing well, it would have been a great night. Yeah, because I don't know if we're going to be able to make the Pizza West tournament later this month. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see what happens. Yeah. The game nights, monthly game nights, it's looking like the one we thought was going to be after it might get rescheduled to that date. So we'll have to see. But that's life. Yeah, that's what you're trying to get a bunch of people to working together to get their schedules to work together. It doesn't always work out. Sometimes things have to be dropped. That's why I didn't go to pinball at all last month is because there was always something else that I had to take care of. That's right. Progress requires sacrifice. so well I was at the pinball tournament yesterday as well I did not do nearly as well as you did but I did play I had a bye that's my only win so I'll take it any way I can get I had some close games so there was that it wasn't like a total shellacking as they say in the easier parts sold Skylab my 1974 Williams pinball Steve Kordek classic local collector I listed it amongst the kind of tournament group first, and he expressed interest within, I think, 15 minutes or so. So he was finally able to come by and pick it up, and he was at the tournament, so I asked him if everything was going fine with it, and he's like, yeah, they like it. They put it down to three ball to make it harder because I had it still in its classic five ball setting. So I'm glad it has gone on to a home where it is getting played. And yesterday, after the pinball tournament, I finished playing Mafia 3. I finished the campaign up. So I think it's going to be shadow war door time. Got to replace one sandbox with another. You know how it is. Got to keep that sand. Even though I don't like sand because it's gritty and it gets everywhere. Bad memories with that. Bad memories. Well, I think that's it for introductions. So let's go ahead and start getting into all of this content. And as usual, we'll start with the pinball segment. This time, let's go ahead and start with the System 11 tournament. I know we normally end with that, but I want to end with the research segment I'm doing. So let's go ahead and get this one out of the way. We're going to enter into round five now, which is the final round. So in terms of round four, there was a quote-unquote upset. Taxi, which was the three seed, did beat out Elvira and the Party Monsters, which was the two seed. So very closely seeded, but still technically the underdog won. It had 57.7% of the vote. And the other vote was between Whirlwind and Space Station, which was also the largest margin of victory, unsurprising in, I think, anyone's view. Space Station, as the 13th seed, finally fell to Whirlwind, which came in at the first seed. And Whirlwind had 65.4% of that vote. So, by logic, you have probably already deduced that the final matchup is the one-seed Whirlwind versus the three-seed Taxi. So I thought maybe we should just give some thoughts on that. I'm torn on this one still. I don't know which I'm going to pick. Whirlwind is one of my favorite Pat Lawler games, but I really like Taxi. And I, so I'm still struggling with which one I want to go with. I really, really like a lot about what they did with Whirlwind. But there's some aspect, I think some of the shots kind of don't feel great. Whereas I think all of the shots in Taxi feel great. So I guess I'm leaning towards Taxi, but two days ago when I tallied up the vote, I was leaning towards Whirlwind. So I don't know. What do you think, Tony? What's the right answer here? The right answer is that I've already called up our voting, and I have already clicked my answer, and I just submitted Taxi. Because as good as Whirlwind is, Taxi is just a fun game that I can sit down and play and play and play. So, for me, it's Taxi. There's no debate. Whirlwind's fine. I put Whirlwind over a lot of the other games it faced with no problems, but not over Taxi. Hmm. Okay. Well, it helps. I mean, the issue for me is Whirlwind and Taxi are both top five System 11 games for me. Mm-hmm. And as everyone knows who has listened to prior episodes, Pinbot's my number one System 11. So these are, I mean, we're in the rarefied air here with these particular games. But, yeah, I am leaning towards Taxi. I haven't, I have not decided yet, and obviously I haven't cast my vote yet. Vote link is in the show notes, of course, for people to be able to go and vote, and we'll run it for just under two weeks, as we always have. And then on the next episode, we will announce the winner, and we will go over just some basic discussions of System 11. We had that requested in person from one of the area players, and it makes a lot of sense to kind of do a recap of our thoughts on the system because I think System 11 games are very interesting. They were very pioneering in a lot of ways, so maybe a little debrief on them. Not a full-fledged research dive or anything. System 11 is well-researched already, well-vetted, and a lot of people already know more than will probably ever know about those games. Yeah, definitely. Go and vote. We need as many votes as possible so that it is as accurate as possible in terms of what reality is. Don't forget to vote. Okay, next thing. A minor update on Highway Pinball's Alien game. I know we've been kind of reporting in on things about, you know, there was that container that got shipped to the United States. I heard there were some games that also got distributed to other countries as well. I don't know how many. Man, when you say it that way, it makes it sound all creepy. There was a container shipped to the United States that might have aliens in it. That's right. Well, the whole saga is sort of creepy, really, in a way. No, not really at all. I'm just trying to make it work. But it could be creepy. I don't know if this is a positive or not. I mean, games going out is essentially always a positive, you would think. Yeah. Yeah. But as my veiled cough mumble indicates, it's not always true. So here's the situation as I understand it. Games have arrived to the end consumers. There do seem to be a lot of problems with these games, but the problems by and large seem to be very minor in the grand scheme of things that go wrong with pinball. So one of the glaring things that I thought was odd that everyone who's mentioned anything seems to have reported in on is there were no setup instructions, and you have to attach the backbox. Now, if you've ever set up a pinball machine before, this is probably not a particularly big deal because they all pretty much just sort of go on in similar sort of manners. They have different systems in terms of how you can drop the head and everything. So they're not all identical, you know, a Gottlieb to a Williams to a Stern. They're not identical, but it's close enough. But still, it's odd not to have even a little, I mean, when you buy a little stupid desk, it tells you how to put it together. It's weird not to include a little set of instructions. Yeah, that's definitely messed up. I think it's a testament to just how, in a way, shoestring highway pinball is running at this point. I think they were desperate to get games shipped, and they should be. So that's good. But, I mean, a lack of instructions, that's pretty poor. A lot of people on Pinside who got games have reported a variety of improper connections, like wires that weren't hooked up correctly. There's mostly stuff that just sort of, like, affected lighting. So maybe a button was supposed to glow, but it wasn't glowing. But then they're not sure if it's supposed to glow. It looks like it's supposed to, you know. It's odd because, again, there's not exactly a guide that tells you exactly how everything is supposed to go because the software has continued to be worked on, so not everyone knows exactly how things are supposed to run. I'd say the biggest issue that appears to be universally reported is anyone who bought the game with a shaker motor, they have to disable the shaker motor. Shaker motor crashes the game. Really? Is it like, like, like, is it an electrical issue or is it just not known yet? The, I don't think it's entirely known. The initial suspicion, and I imagine still the primary suspicion, is that it's the power draw that's going on. So, because the initial suggestions from the programmer, I believe it was the programmer, it may have been someone else, I apologize if I'm incorrect, were to turn the settings down. Like, you can't run the shaker motor at 100%, turn it to 70%, but that wasn't enough. So, it's something about it. If you disable the shaker motor, you're okay. Always okay. But the shaker motor, no one has reported settings for the shaker motor that allow it to shake that doesn't result in the system rebooting. So, I don't know if it's a power draw or if the – I would think so because otherwise everyone has either the same weak connection that's getting shaken or what I would think would possibly be an issue that I experienced with my virtual pinball game was with a hard drive, but they're not running a hard drive. I have a hard drive in the virtual pin. I really should have used the solid state drive. But my shaker motor was so powerful and so close that the computer would sometimes shut itself down to protect itself. And I had to turn down, but in my case, I turned down the shaker motor, put the hard drive on shocks, and then that problem went away. so yeah, that's weird so overall the new owners are talking up the game quite a bit well, I mean, they're confessing all these problems obviously, but they're saying that the game's really really good, some might really think it's the best game in terms of rules and layout ever made, I personally suspect this is mostly a newness factor coupled with the fact that a lot of them had to wait a long time to get it, and it is a dream theme for a lot of people because you and I both played this game and we were not particularly impressed. No. The theme, I think the theme was good. I don't necessarily think it was executed as well as I could have hoped. The gameplay itself was okay. I mean, I didn't hate it, but it's not like I fell in love with it. Yes, same. I liked a lot of how the rules were set up with shots you're supposed to hit and shots that you shouldn't be hitting and the idea of punishment for hitting wrong shots. So I like what the programmer has done with it. I don't think the layout's good, though. I don't think it's a bad layout, but it's not a good layout. I even argue that Full Throttle has a better layout than Aliens does. But, you know, it is what it is, and everyone has different tastes on layouts, so that is fine. The only other thing I wanted to note, though, is that Highway Pinball has been terrible about communication. Absolutely terrible. The most glaring instances, there were a lot of people who were in on the limited edition models. They appear to be totally in the dark about what's going on. The last thing that I've seen, and again, I don't follow this as closely as those with money on the line have been, is that certain aspects of the game that the LE owners were expecting have been already confirmed as being stripped out. Like, we're not doing this. I don't remember if it was lighted ramps or I forget what it was. But they've removed features that were going to be in the LE. They haven't explained if those are being replaced with anything or if there's going to be a price adjustment for that or if there's not going to be anything but it's still going to be an LE. They haven't said anything. And as near as I can tell, anyone who is in on an LE who has asked if they could downgrade to a standard edition has been told that if they want to do that, it's like buying a brand new standard edition. You have to, they'll cancel out the LE and you have to buy the SE at the new price, which is higher than what they bought the LE at. Really? Yeah. So even the LE owners that, oh, wow, that's terrible, terrible PR for them. So it's either hold at your LE and have your locked in price or cancel your LE, get your LE price refunded and then buy the SE, but you end up not saving any money. They won't let you have the SE at the locked in SE price. if you had locked in when you locked in the LE. It's either stay with the LE or buy the SE at the new price. That's the rule. And I find that misguided, but especially because it sounds like New Highway, as a lot of people call it, doesn't seem to really want to be doing LEs. That's my takeaway. They're so concerned about pumping out SEs, and they may need to just because they need cash to come in because there were so many refunds that were demanded, and processed when the new money flowed in. Was it more than they expected? Maybe. I mean, if I had money in, I definitely would have canceled that. Oh, yeah, a long time ago. But anyway, no word on when the next set of games are shipping, no word on that LE thing, no word on any real solutions regarding Shakergate. We won't call it Shakergate. There aren't enough games shipped to make it a gate. I just want to put a G on everything. I thought we should. Well, yeah, you know, Nixon just added all this. forever. Anyway, let's move on to more colorful news. Stern Pinball, Guardians of the Galaxy. Yay! It's been announced. Once again, Stern's giant well-kept secret. Yeah, it was incredibly well-kept. I never would have thought about Guardians. Tony, what are your, I guess, do you want to try and describe? It's a John Borg design. I don't know how I want to, do we want to call it Kiss Meets Metallica? I don't know. It's different than both of those. I don't know. I've heard a lot of people. I've definitely read a lot of people just calling it, just saying it's basically Metallica. And I don't think it is. I mean, I think it's got similarities. But everybody's games all have some similarities to stuff they've done in the past. So, I don't know. I think Kiss meets Metallica is probably a pretty good take on it. It looks interesting. I like how some of the stuff is laid out. I like the Groot head. And apparently on the really nice editions, there's giant Groot hands that block all of your views. But I haven't seen much of those yet. Yeah, I don't know if the hands are going to be a big eye sore, eye block, eye annoying. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of them. Yeah, the Groot head, I think it's kind of neat. A little Rudy throwback going on there with how he eats the balls. Yeah. I know the upgraded version has the Infinity Stone thing that kind of cracks open a la premium Star Wars with the Death Star egg, as people called it. So you want your egg action, you got to get your more premium model. overall though the Pro versus the Premium LE this it doesn't seem like you're giving up a lot of features this has always been an issue with Stern, some of the games it really feels like you see a major difference in either features that affect gameplay and or cosmetics it really varies quite a bit from game to game to game like I'd say Star Wars LE gameplay wise I don't know if it's wholly super different, but I think it's more different than this. Yeah, because, I mean, the only difference there really is that hyperspace loop. And have you, actually, I've never even seen or played one with a hyperspace loop. I don't know if you have. I've not played one. I've seen it when it was still on earlier code than it is now. I think it visually looks neat. And I believe there's some sort of diversion action that goes on in the premium that might make some of the shots a little easier or safer. But someone yesterday actually was talking to me about it because they seem to prefer the gameplay, how the gameplay feels on the premium. Because the pro, as is usually the case with Stern pros, comes across as more brutal, a more brutal game with shorter ball times than the premium models tend to be. But, again, your mileage may vary. What was that? I said your mileage may vary, but that's the general trend. Yeah, no, I think you're right, and I think it feels like on a lot of their pros that the pro ball times are shorter than the others. Maybe it's just how I play or how poorly I play. it just kind of feels that way a lot of times that on the premiums the little additions increase your ball life a little bit yeah i don't think i think you're actually i think it's real i think what you see is real i think if you were to look at audits from a premium game and a pro game you would see that the premiums last longer and when you think about things that they add it is stuff that typically slows up the ball getting back into a danger zone like aerosmith for example that right ramp gets a flipper on the premium, so you can keep the ball up there, whereas on the pro, it will just come around. There's nothing you can do to slow it. There's nothing you can do to keep it in play. Same with Game of Thrones. Upper play field, trap up, shoot at targets up there. On the pro, that ball is not staying in the upper left quadrant. It's coming back, and it's coming back quickly. So the pros tend to play faster, and that would fit with, I mean, obviously there's less maintenance concerns on the pro layouts. it would be easier for operators to maintain without risk of ball hangups and such. But it would also play in really well, I think, to the fact that operators would rather the ball times be shorter because they would like more money and you have the potential for more coin drops per hour. Yeah, that is a very valid choice for an operator. I mean, that's definitely the kind of thing they're going to want. But as a player, I don't know. They're both fun. Is this only based off the first movie? I think so, because I didn't see anything on it in any of the pictures that look like there's anything based off the second movie. I didn't find anything either. I thought that was a little odd, since the second movie's already out. And normally, they've based on, that I can think of on shows or movies, they base off of multiple movies or seasons, not just one. But, I mean, that's fine. I don't care in a way, except everyone wants a baby Groot somewhere. Yeah, I know. That was kind of, I mean, baby Groot's the thing. I mean, and Yondu has better hair in the second one. Well, a better fin in the second one. I like the fin better. Yeah, he has his classic fin, so that's. Yeah. But anyway, Guardians, overall, I don't think I really want to say much more. There's plenty of information on the Internet for anyone who wants to take a look. I would describe it as a fairly fan layout, which is not unusual for Stern. You know, it's a two-flipper design. All the shots seem to be mostly towards the back of the machine. So, yeah, it fits more fan layout than some of even their other kind of fan layout designs. But, you know, it's colorful. Our package looks great. I think they had Christopher Franchi do it, who did the Batman 66. He did an excellent job with that game's look, I feel. And I think this one looks really good, too. Yeah, it does look pretty good. Rumor mill is they're going to start shipping this month. See, that's one of the things I like about Stern. I like that they don't go all hype-heavy, crazy, trying to put stuff out there. I mean, yes, we've known about Guardians of the Galaxy for six months, but at no point have they done anything big and officially about it. And then when they finally go official, they're like, eh, it'll be out next month. Yeah, it's almost like they're a real manufacturer with big boy pants on. I know. It's weird. I mean, I'm not used to that. No. Well, you know, I guess it's kind of an interesting scenario. You go from a model where there really was only one manufacturer, and then you go to the present-day model where it's really mostly just a bunch of boutiques. Maybe Jersey Jack will rise above that. I'm not thinking any of these other manufacturers are remotely close to making that claim other than them, but we'll see what happens. We will see. Okay, I think it's time to go to the final pinball segment. My research segment. Yes, it's... Okay, so here's the thing. We're going to be talking about one of the least popular solid-state-era manufacturers in pinball. That would be Gottlieb. And we're going to be talking about a very niche part of their operational model that they essentially had to adopt from the late 70s all the way until when they went out of business, I believe, technically in 1997, though the last game release may have been 96 with barbed wire. and that would be the street level game. Sometimes I've seen it referred to as the street series, but broadly speaking, it's called street level. I wanted to do this because I've been curious about street level. Well, look, tragedy is always more interesting than success. We feed off of the failure of others. And this is human nature. And Gottlieb is a company that was full of failure. So there's all sorts of fun stuff to explore. And I've been interested in street levels for quite a while. As a lot of longtime listeners know, I've been watching for a street level game for quite a while. And as more recent listeners probably recall, I did about a month ago, actually, was when I picked up Silver Slugger, which is one of these actually was the first street level game. So I've been planning to do this segment for quite a while. and the reason why I wanted to do it besides the glutton for punishment angle is I was having a lot of difficulty finding a concise compiled source of information on the internet about this. Now, two-time guest host Don wrote in to me yesterday actually and said that there was a video that I believe he said Tim Arnold who operates the Pinball Hall of Fame out in Vegas did on-the-street-level games. I never saw any reference to that online. I don't know what was in the video, like if he went into the gameplay and everything or if he was big into the history of it. Don's recollection was he talked about the designs, which is not really going to be the focus here. But regardless, that video doesn't seem to be readily available anymore. There are still some old videos that Tim Arnold sells, but that one wasn't listed. So aside from that, which I wasn't able to explore, I had to go and gather up this information from a variety of sources as limited as the note sections on IPDB to going back and listening to old interviews with designers like John Trudeau and Jon Norris, who helped to design some of these games. So anyway, I will attempt to summarize street level, and I want to talk about what Gottlieb was trying to do with this, how well it worked, and why they had to end it, essentially, because I think we've sort of answered the second question already. But if anyone knows the history of Gottlieb, even in the most basic strokes, you know nothing really worked out for them ultimately. so uh and before i get going i i thought uh let me i want to note a couple things one is uh some interesting coincidences i had already committed to doing this as of the last episode but right after the last episode we we had there was an episode of the head-to-head pinball podcast which is an australian podcast and i just thought it was interesting because they had noted they had both, I believe for the first time, it's a two-host podcast, played a Silver Slugger. And so they noted how old it looked versus when they found out what year it came out. And just sort of like, oh, it's an interesting game. But then, you know, they're thinking it's like a mid-80s, and then you find out it's 1990. And you're like, what? So we had a street-level reference on that podcast. And then the latest Slam Tilt podcast also briefly discussed street level. They were doing a contest or sort of a challenge segment. They have a game they do where their two hosts argue about which manufacturer had the better gains of a particular year and somewhat randomly assigned. Anyway, they were doing 1989. And so one of them was brought up the street level gains and their guest host had to be the judge. And he didn't know what street level was. So one of the hosts explained briefly what street level was, though that discussion is moot because 1989 is before street level. So anyway, final point before I dive into it is show notes. In the show notes, in the links section, I have a lot of links, numerous links. They're all labeled street level, and then there's a dash, and then they tell you what they are because you cite your research when you do it proper like. So my research is cited. I'm not going to be constantly saying which link goes where during the discussion because that's going to kill the flow of this. But if you want to learn more, I have provided everything that I exploited to put this segment together. So enjoy if you care. But hopefully I'll summarize it decently. Tony, do you have any basic familiarity with street level games? I played your Silver Slugger. That's it. And I mean, I know a little basic stuff from what you've talked about on other episodes. That's pretty much the entirety of my knowledge of them. Okay. So this might be somewhat new for you. At the end of this, I want to discuss a little bit about cheap games and pricing in the present day. I know I've brought it up a couple of times as a concept I think manufacturers should be doing at this stage. And that's part of the reason why I was interested in this, because commonly speaking, if anyone knows anything about pinball history, when I see references, say, on Pinside and the idea, the notion, the scheme comes up of someone needs to make something cheaper, there need to be cheaper pinball machines than what are currently made. If someone is familiar with street level, they usually cite it and say, won't work. Gottlieb tried it. It was a disaster, destroyed the company, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So let's talk about what street level's goals were, because there were multiple goals. And the first one is true. Gottlieb did want to make a cheaper game. Not just cheaper for Gottlieb, but it was also supposed to be cheaper for the operators to buy. It was all the street level games are single level. So no ramps. They're flat like Firepower or a lot of the early 80s games. And this is obviously in an era where System 11 is around. and those were games that very much exploited the notion of using ramps. The games also are often referenced as being slightly smaller. Now, especially after I got Silver Slugger and put it in the lineup, I was confused about this one. I started looking at all the flyer dimensions, which aren't exact, but that's what Gottlieb advertised for the games. And the dimensions in the lineup weren't really different than anything else. I mean, they weren't different. There's some variance, but I'd find a full-featured game that was just the same dimension. So I was very confused about this. I actually asked on Pinside about the issue with the cabinets and everything. And as near as we ultimately were able to figure out, they probably saved a little bit of wood in the cabinet, not in the length or the width overall in terms of the lineup size, but because they didn't have to accommodate ramps, The play field doesn't need to be dropped deeper into the cabinet so it could sit closer to the glass. So they probably did save a little bit of wood there. But once you hook the legs on and everything, your dimensions are essentially the same. But still, save you a little bit of wood, I guess. And the final goal, simpler. And by that, I think it's probably best described in one of the interviews I found from Jon Norris, who was one of the pinball designers for Gottlieb. And he said that the goal was to have games that would avoid ball hangups and to be easy for servicing. And in his mind, the concept was one of niche appeal. He thought operators that were servicing remote locations with relatively captive audiences would be interested in street-level games because it would be difficult for the operator to get out there to fix mechanical issues. And the games would be in a location where the people couldn't really go and play other games. you know, Williams games, they're trapped. I don't know. An example that came in my mind would be like a ski lodge. You got the ski lodge. You're not going down off the mountain to go to an arcade or whatever. So you're going to play what's available to you. And the guy might not live there because of the seasonal business, the operator. So there. There's an idea where a market where street levels should have had high appeal, according to Norris. So because the games are simpler, what they do is they relied on traditional pinball features. We're not using ramps and stuff, but we're going to have our pop bumpers. We're going to do kick-out holes. We're going to have drop targets. Oh, Gottlieb, they love their drop targets. They love them. So they use very traditional EM-style features. The street-level games did all use the System 3 board set. That's Gottlieb's final board set. Not the very first game to officially use it. Lights, Camera, Action, which is a full-featured game. That's in the Pinball Arcade, incidentally, if you ever want to see what it's like. that game was the first official release on System 3, but then Street Level started. So, System 3 is often thought of with the DMD games because they were used for DMD, but they had alphanumeric games for a little while that were using System 3 boards. And a lot of people like, it's a fairly stable board set, I guess from a repair standpoint. Not perfect, but nothing is. And an interesting aspect that I noticed is that even though these were cheaper games, Gottlieb did not revert to using what I think was sort of the stereotype in the 80s of their cheapness with the photo trans lights and the fluorescent tube lighting in the backbox. All of the street-level games have bulbs, hand-drawn art. I mean, they're using trans lights, not back glasses, but it's interesting because they really tried to do flashy sort of gimmick stuff to attract people. Like Silver Slugger, for example. It's got a ton of flashers in the backbox. The backbox and the play field combined, I changed them all out to LEDs. It must have been over 25. It's the most I've ever done in terms of flasher bulbs. And they put in little features. Like on Silver Slugger you trying to score runs And so the little baseball players run the bases They run them on the backbox They have lights to do that They have lights to show if a home run was hit or if a pop fly was hit On Deadly Weapon, when you get kills, the gun on the backbox flashes when the kills happen to signify the shots happening. The CarHop has a light-based thermometer that kind of reminds me of an upgraded centigrade 37 sort of thing. So they tried to do things that would make them attractive, but were cheap, but were cheap to do. The Gottlieb and the Translites and the fluorescent tubes, Stern, incidentally, they do fluorescent tubes in the back boxes. They've done them for years and still do them. but that was a very System ADB thing that they did. And System ADB was the board set just before System 3. They didn't do them for all ADB games, but they did them for most of them. So all the way up through Hot Shots, I think from the game Rock in 85 to Hot Shots in 89, that's that era of phototranslite and fluorescent tube garbage. But moving on. Let's go ahead and cover... Real quick. Oh, sure. Yes. Yes. Interrupt, because my voice is getting too tired. I'm going to give you a second to get a drink and this and that. I'm helping you out. That's what I am. I'm here to help. Now, on the surface, none of these ideas sound like a terrible idea. I mean, the reliance on traditional features, because, hey, I like drop targets. Drop targets are fun. Spenders are fun. Stuff like that. and their aim, the stated aim to make something that is simpler to build, simpler to maintain. Everything about this sounds like a decent idea. So this isn't one of those things where it sounds like somebody just had some wacky idea and decided to try something and it failed. This sounds like an actual well-thought-out idea no matter how well it did or didn't work. Yes. While it did come out of a boardroom, essentially, this was not a pinball designer idea. This was a managerial idea. You see the concepts that they were going for and why they thought it would make sense. And the reason in part why I find this such an interesting thing, as we're about to dive into when we go, now that we're going to move past the issue of what the goals were, it's more complicated than the Internet makes it sound like it was. this actually, I mean, I'll go ahead and preview it by just saying that this was not the unmitigated disaster that a lot of people seem to think happened. It's not this. It failed, but it didn't fail as dramatically as I think people today seem to believe that it did. They see the unit counts on the designs. Then they look at what the other manufacturers were doing, and they know that Gottlieb failed, and they just jumped to that this was a major blow to the company that they never recovered from. That is not, from what I have seen, that is not what actually happened. But it didn't work, which is why they had to drop it. But they went on for years afterwards. So let's go ahead and talk briefly about the street-level games themselves. And I'm not going to go and explain all of the design features. Obviously, I've covered the basics, if that were true for any street-level game. But I'm not going to go into the gameplay mechanics for each particular one and the rules and all that. I have links to gameplay video on all six of them. So as I just said, there are six games. They were all made between 1990 and 1991. And they were done in this order. And here's just the basic stats on them. So there's Silver Slugger. That was a February 1990 game. It was designed by John Trudeau. And they made 2,100 units of it. That was followed by Vegas in July of 1990. It was designed by Jon Norris. They made 1,500 units of it. Then came Deadly Weapon in September of 1990. That was designed initially by John Trudeau, and then Jon Norris took it over. And I believe from an interview I heard with Trudeau, he indicated he didn't get past doing any drawings for it. So he was out before the Whitewood stage. So in Trudeau's mind, it's not as much his game as it is Norris' game. They made 803 units of Deadly Weapon. Then, Title Fight came out. That was an October of 1990 game. That was designed by Ray Tanzer, and they made 1,000 units of it. Then was Car Hop in January of 91. That was designed by Norris, and they made 1,061 units of it. And then the last street level game was Hoops, done in February of 1991. That was designed by Tanzer, and they made 879 units. What stands out to you, if anything, about what I have just described? Well, for one, whenever I hear talk about street level games, everybody talks about Hoops, but it's got so few units made compared to Silver Slugger or Vegas. It's kind of surprising to me. Yes, and that's the thing that stands out. Not specific, well, hoops obviously, because it was the smallest run of anything except Deadly Weapon. But that decline in units, you had over 2,000 units on Silver Slugger, followed by Vegas with 1,500 units. And then the numbers, they don't go down in sequence. Some people think that they just got smaller and smaller and smaller, and that's not true. Deadly Weapon was barely over 800. It's the worst unit count one. and then they got back to 1,000 and a little bit more even for Car Hop after Title Fight, and then Hoops fell way off. As an aside on Hoops, if you ever go and look at reviews of these games, Hoops is very polarizing. And Hoops was the other game I was watching for other than Silver Slugger because, like you, I had heard a lot of people talk Hoops up. Hoops, some people hate the layout. They think it's not fun to shoot. The tournament players, though, seem to love Hoops above any other street-level game. And I think the main reason for it is, as an interesting aside, Hoops didn't do the big mystery award thing that Gottlieb is known for that a lot of tournament players despise. Yeah, it's terrible. Oh, gosh, it's so horrible. It's weird. I mean, lots of games use mystery awards, but usually on tournament settings and stuff, they're not necessarily seen as overpowered or it's acceptable. Like, one of my gripes about Dr. Dude is I think its mystery awards are a little too imbalanced for me to want to play it competitively, even though I think it's a very fun game to play. Others have, I had a discussion on Pinside with someone on this who thought, in the tournament settings, enough of the most egregious ones are disabled. That's not a big deal. Your mileage may vary. But Gottlieb ones were known to have more dramatic mystery awards. As a counterpoint, Silver Slugger, the one I'm familiar with. I think the mystery holes give you all the modes. Which one you get, I think the scores are pretty balanced. But the bottom line is, in Silver Slugger, multiball only comes from mystery award. You can't lock balls by doing certain shots and saying, okay, that has turned on ball lock, and now I'm going to get a multiball. You cannot do that on Silver Slugger. It has to be gifted to you in a mystery award. So I think that game still is viable competitively because the mystery awards are all the mode activations. That's just one of the mode activations. So, I mean, there's no other way to primarily score mode points unless you do mystery holes anyway. But obviously something like hoops, which avoided all of that, comes across a lot better because you can target exactly what you want for whatever points you want. So that's a sort of mini aside about Hoops that makes it attractive. So let's go into about the street level games being a failure, because as I noted before, they have that reputation. And obviously the short answer to the question would be, yes, they are a failure because Gottlieb abandoned the concept in 91, early in 91, because Hoops came out in February and they went back to full featured games. So it didn't do what they wanted it to do. Now, let's do some numeric comparisons here. If you took all six of those street-level games and all those unit counts I gave you, the total production on street-level was 7,343 units from 1990 to 1991. Let me give you some counterexamples. The Simpsons, the icky one from Data East, that was the September 1990 game. 5,502 units. so that one game was less than 2,000 units away from all of the street level production let me give you another game Whirlwind which is in our finals for our System 11 tournament that was a January 1990 game by Williams 7,304 units less than 50 short of the entire street level run I think that definitely shows what you would consider a complete and utter failure. That was what I initially thought as well, because those are so dramatic. Now, in a way, it sort of does, because when Gottlieb went back to full-featured games, their production counts went back up. But obviously, the strongest street-level game, which was Silver Slugger at 2,100 units, wasn't remotely near what Data East and Williams were being able to put out in terms of production counts. But it's not necessarily that the games were bad or even badly received. So in an interview I heard with Trudeau, he recalled that when they released Silver Slugger, it was actually a well-received game. And 2,100 units was a good size by Gottlieb standards in the Premiere era. Because at this time, it's the company's Premiere. They're operating the Gottlieb brand. And there's a whole history about Gottlieb and its ownership that is interesting, but outside the scope of this piece. So versus what Gottlieb might have expected, Silver Slugger, at least, was a decent unit run. And according to Trudeau, the goal that Premier had, that Gottlieb had, was not to – they wanted to target a different market segment. the street level games weren't supposed to be going after the same market that Williams and Data East were going after. It wanted to go after a different market. I guess in a way maybe a new market. I'm not entirely clear. But a lot of that's sort of borne out by the marketing materials. Silver Slugger was the first game, as near as I can tell, that actually directly appealed to operators by saying that it would be offered at a lower price point than the past games being sold were. That buy Silver Slugger, it's cheaper. It will be cheaper for you to buy than the games you have been buying. So I've never seen another instance, actually, that a pinball company used a price cut in their marketing campaign. And that was one of the primary elements of the marketing campaign. So that's the idea. And we already talked about what Norris had indicated about how he thought that the games would appeal to those isolated locations and such. Norris, in an interview, he talked more about than Trudeau did about why it didn't work. And in Norris's view, and remember, he wasn't management. He was one of the pinball designers who did some of these games. And he did lights, camera, action. He did games after. He worked with Gottlieb until it closed. He blames both the distributors and Gottlieb for why the street-level games didn't work out. On the distributor side, he said the problem was Gottlieb had their MSRP value. That MSRP value was cheaper than the more full-featured games. And the way he described it, it's not like what I've heard. Some people seem to think that the problem was street-level games just weren't that much cheaper. That's not true, from what I can tell, from the MSRP perspective. Gottlieb did significantly get that price down. The problem is the contracts with the distributors did not mandate that they honor the MSRP. They were allowed to go over it. So, many of the, according to Norris, many of the street-level gains from the distributor network to the operators were priced at the same price as the full-featured gains on the market at the time, or they were only given very slight price reductions. So the operators would go, and they would see the gains they could get from the distributors, and then they were disappointed because they got next to no savings to buy a street-level game, and it was less full-featured, so it was less attractive for coin drop. It was put in a lineup against a bunch of System 11 games. And so Norris says that was one of the big problems that resulted in the failure on the street-level side, was that it was just the way Gottlieb had it set up with the distributors. They were allowed to go over MSRP, and they did. So you went to your distributor, and it didn't matter what Gottlieb recommended you sell it at. They just sold it at the same price you'd pay for a Whirlwind. Well, that right there seems to cancel out everything you wanted or hoped or needed from the design plan. I mean, the fact that it was... Yeah. I mean, originally when I was setting this up, I was going to try and see what the original pricing was running for operators to get these games. Because I heard there wasn't much of a savings. But after I heard the interview with Norris, I was like, well, I don't even need to know the numbers now because if that's the case, if the operator didn't save any money, it didn't matter that it was cheaper to the distributor. They just pocketed it as windfall profit. So, yeah, that totally would screw up the scheme. The whole strategy falls apart if the games aren't really any cheaper. I mean, they're only a couple hundred bucks cheaper. It's not enough. It needed to be significant. I had the impression going into this that they just barely shaved the price. They just couldn't shave enough features away to really control the money. But it sounds like they did. But Gottlieb didn't just blame the distributors. He also thought that it was because this was developed by the businessmen, the managers of the company, not the designers. He didn't think that the problem with street level was also they were too stripped down to be the only thing you were doing. So he considered them a novelty. So he thought Gottlieb's big mistake in this strategy was launching street level and then thinking, oh, well, we'll just do street level. They just did street level after street level after street level. And then when it started just before the end, they threw in a couple other full featured games. But the original plan was to keep doing street level games and only target that one grouping. so in Norris's opinion had Gottlieb scaled that strategy back and say only released a street level once per year instead of like for a year which is what they wanted to do then the strategy would have been more effective so if he had been if he had had influence in the meeting he would have said let's only do these single level games in the summer we'll do once one every summer because Gottlieb saw slower, I guess all the pinball industry saw slower sales operators in the summer months anyway. So that's when you do your niche game. Do your stripped down super cheap game and maybe that would be more effective than just saying, okay, we're the cheap game company now. We're just going to do cheap games. So he thought that had a role in it as well. I personally would think that the distributor markup would be the death blow. But anyway, so that was the stance. So that really, I think, assuming, of course, that Norris is correct, that would really explain a lot about why this strategy just had to be abandoned by Gottlieb because it didn't translate into what they thought it would. They're not any cheaper at the end product. There's no reason to. Why would you buy that when Whirlwind looks so much better than any street-level game? Yeah, that makes no sense to me. I mean, it does look so much better than any street level. And with the pricing set points and so trying to think of a good way to say this that doesn't come off sounding blamey. But it seems like for a system that's designed to be cheaper, easier, yeah, yeah, yeah, but obviously doesn't have the looks. and they obviously don't have the niche because it's, you know, Gottlieb. They have not been there since EMs went out of style. It seems like it was a setup that could have worked, and then just through a series of different events by multiple parties just never worked out. Is that what this is? It's not just one big lump failure, but there's lots of little things that caused it to happen that way? Yeah, I mean, I think it's clearly a mix of things. Gottlieb, at least per what Trudeau recalled, they weren't disappointed when Silver Slugger did the 2100 units and its reception. So initially, I think they believed it was working. But then as time went on and the pricing issue came up and everything, we'll hit on a few other things about how some of the games sort of performed. But yeah, I think it was a mix. Obviously, Norris has his opinions on the two main issues of failure, but it's just the way the market was able to acquire the product coupled with what the product looked like versus what the competition was doing. It just wasn't viable as a strategy that Gottlieb wanted to end up continuing to pursue. It was, they did better. I think they turned more profit when they made the full-featured games was the issue. See, and we'll get into why I qualified it like that, because while it didn't work in the way Gottlieb wanted, so the experiment was a failure. I think it's completely fair to say that. let's go ahead and hop over into how street level games impacted Gottlieb as a business because as I mentioned sometimes there's this narrative that goes on online that says that street level games were a contributing factor in the destruction of Gottlieb and I don't think that's accurate at least from everything I've been able to find out when actually hearing from those involved and reading up on summaries of what happened, that the company struggled. I mean, it did struggle compared to how Williams was doing, compared to how Data East was doing. It struggled, but it's not as critical of a struggle as you might have thought. So in Norris's opinion, he didn't think the street level was involved in the destruction of Gottlieb as a pinball manufacturer. He actually said that things were going just fine, even when they were in the street-level sales. If Gottlieb had continued to make street-level gains, and you see those really low ones that are just barely over 800 units, according to Norris, Gottlieb would have been able to survive at those sales counts. They were acceptable sales counts. They just weren't maximum sales counts. Why accept those sales counts when you can do better sort of thing? But that they were okay. They would have been able to be okay at those production levels. He said what actually happened, and we're going to diverge a little bit, but only because Gottlieb's destruction ties, at least in some people's narrative, to street level so much. But let's talk a little bit about why Gottlieb failed. And I had no other than, you know, pinball had a decline. You know, that's what I always just assumed. And that has a part of it. But Norris, who, again, because he was there through the destruction of the company, He said that Gottlieb's big mistake was actually after they were done with the Street Levels series. So now let's jump ahead a year from 91 to 92. Do you remember, Tony, what's special about the year 1992 in pinball? I was originally starting to say, wasn't 92, I'm going to sound like an idiot if I'm wrong, wasn't 92 when the big resurgence came with like Adam's family and all that? Yep. Yay! Yep. 92 is the year of pinball's resurgence. And yes, Addams Family is the game that gets the huge credit of being the kind of second round of savior. For those that don't know, in the modern era of pinball, they're seen as two major turning points where pinball got saved. One was when Space Shuttle came out for Williams, and that was sort of a period, I think that even got touched on in one of these interviews, where there was a little, a couple years ago, the video game crashed, the arcade games crashed as well. Not just like when the Atari crashed and all that, the big console crash of 83. But there was sort of an arcade crash, and pinball had a little, I'd say more of a mini-resurgence during the late 80s. Well, and then there's the big one, where it had the huge resurgence in 92, starting in 92, with the trailblazing sales of the Addams Family, which sold over 20,000 units, and it did great. But here's the thing. It wasn't just Williams and the Addams Family. All of pinball benefited from that 92 resurgence. And things were looking good for Gottlieb. Their numbers went up also. Yeah, they didn't have any 20,000-plus unit Addams Family to bank off of, but they were doing just fine for what their model was structured to be. So here's what happened, and this is going to sound really familiar to anyone who's familiar with Williams. Gottlieb decided to acquire a gaming company, and by gaming I mean gambling. And if I'm remembering correctly, they made lottery-style video game setups. So in the case of Gottlieb, the problem that resulted was their gaming company couldn't secure any licenses. They didn't have any licensed themes. So in that industry, if you don't have any licensed themes, it's really hard to sell games. And they didn't sell games. Now, Williams' gaming division started like that as well. I remember an interview. I don't remember who it was with. It was one of the pinball designers who worked for Williams who said that they had to carry the gaming division for years. The profits from pinball went into Williams' gaming division. And then eventually the gambling side of things got so good that, as we know, Pinball 2000, yada, yada, yada. They, even though Pinball was still making Williams money, I think even Star Wars Episode I made them money. They decided, we're going to get out of this. We're making more in gambling. So let's just do the gaming machines. Gottlieb was trying to do the same concept, except their gaming company never made money. Never made money. And so, again, Norris touched on this in one of his interviews. that he said their pinball division was making all the money for Gottlieb, continued to the end to make them money, and they had to pour all the profits into the gaming division. But since the gaming division never recovered, the debts that Gottlieb had to take on to pick that division up sunk the company. And that when pinball started to decline again during Gottlieb's final years, 1995-96, when the numbers were slimming up, So as Norris noted, and you can see these in the production counts if you want, those sales numbers were better than the worst of the street levels. They were producing more games. I think barbed wire was 1,000 units. That's more than a number of the street-level games. He said they could have easily survived. It would have required some downsizing if it was going to be a long-term period, which in hindsight it would have been, just like we saw with Williams. But as a pinball manufacturer, if they didn't have the saddle of debt for picking up the gaming company that just couldn't make anything happen, they would have been okay. They could have kept making pinball machines. So I just thought it's really interesting because Williams and Gottlieb kind of did this. It was all sort of this idea of you want to diversify your income. And in both cases, it killed pinball for those companies, but for totally different reasons. One was too successful, and one was totally unsuccessful. So tying this back into street level, based off of that information, I don't think it's fair to say, well, street level was a failure as an experiment. That is not what Gottlieb's big failure was. Gottlieb went away as a pinball manufacturer not because pinball was unpopular or that they made really bad pinball machines or made bad decisions in the pinball sector, But their diversification efforts were such a disaster that there was no way that company could continue to pay off everything that they acquired. Gottlieb never declared bankruptcy. They shut down, they liquidated, and they were able to pay off all their creditors without bankruptcy. But that's why they went away. They didn't leave hanging. They cleaned everything up and just basically closed shop. So it was a clean break. It wasn't a, oh, creditors are still owed money, this and that type close down. They paid their debts. They, I guess if you want to put it in a broad concept, they shut down with honor. One of their machines that I think marks where all the posts and screws go in on the playfields, like a press, I believe, Stern still uses it. They bought it. When Gottlieb went down, they bought it, and they still use it because it's such an expensive piece of equipment to build. and golly, we've had it for decades. So yeah, it was sort of interesting. I thought while doing this, I did run into some other pieces of trivia that tied to street level that I thought I would note just because it's sort of fascinating, but not directly a part of the story in a broad sense. According to the Internet Pinball Database, Williams released a game in 91 called Harley Davidson. Not to be confused with the stern Sega Harley Davidson. This is a different one, Harley-Davidson. 1991 release. It was purportedly done to exploit the success of Silver Slugger. Williams saw how Silver Slugger was doing. Supposedly, again, according to the IPDB source, Silver Slugger, when it was on location, its coin drop earnings were rivaling Diner's. But Diner was a lot more expensive for Williams to build. So they decided they would try a low-cost alternative to a typical Williams game, kind of following the street level concept. I believe they only did Harley Davidson, but that was a response to the early effort of the street level where Williams thought, this is working and we need to respond to this. Another interesting piece of trivia, in one of the interviews with Jon Norris, he noted that there was the World Cup, and you might know that there's a World Cup pinball game that Williams did. and Gottlieb wanted to get the license for World Cup. And when they tried to secure it, they were told they couldn't have it and they realized that Williams had the license. And so Gottlieb decided they were in the process of working on Rescue 911. That was going to be their big game reveal, but it wasn't ready yet. And they needed, as Williams often did, they needed to keep their line moving, keep the production line busy, An idle line is devastating. So they needed something to build until Rescue 911 was ready. So they decided that they were going to steal some of Williams' thunder. And the way they were going to do that is they were going to beat them to market with a knockoff soccer game that wasn't actually World Cup licensed. And to see if they could get sales because there was all this sort of mania about the World Cup and all of that. Now, why am I bringing this up as trivia in the world of street level? the reason is Jon Norris was tapped to do that game and it's called World Challenge Soccer and what he did is he took he took his car hop design his street level car hop design he tacked on a ramp and a habit trail and that was it and they changed the art package so if you look at it on IPDB and look at a picture of the play field you will see it is the car hop layout except they got a couple little ramp things that they clearly just put on. I mean, none of the layout is different. They just accommodated those things. Here's the thing. World Challenge Soccer was a big success for Gottlieb. Now, you might not think so because you find out they only sold 1,470 units, which, okay, that's less than Silver Slugger. It's less easily than what Williams did with World Cup Soccer. So why is that good? But the reason was Gottlieb was only ever going to make 1,470 World Challenge Sockers. That was how many they needed to build to keep the line busy until Rescue 911 was ready. So they were going to make them. And they sold every single one of them, which they didn't expect to happen. They just, you know, you build them, you had to keep busy. And you'd build them, and if you had leftovers, I guess you would offer them at a discount or whatever. But nope, every single one was spoken for. The soccer hype was just so sweet. and I've never even seen this game before. No, no. Well, I mean, 1470 is not, you know, it's not a tremendous run. Most of the, you know, there weren't a tremendous lot of Gottlieb runs in general. Another interesting aside on that, though, is because it was essentially the car hop layout. Well, it is the car hop layout with a couple of ramps glued on. Norris did that. That game was from the meeting where they said they were going to make it to putting it on the production line. That was five weeks. it was the shortest development cycle Norris had on any game he ever did. Five weeks. And Gottlieb had short development cycles. They tended to average something on the order of three months normally. Which is why when you ask, why are their games generally so inferior to Williams' games, Williams usually gave their designers a year. But Gottlieb, he had three months. Wow. Anyway, five weeks. That was how much time he had to put that one together. It's the fastest he ever did a game. Obviously because he stole so much from his street-level game. and one other little piece of trivia that came up in one of the Norris there are two Norris interviews that are linked in one of them he noted that he thought he never worked for Williams he went and he worked for Stern Pinball for a short while after Gottlieb went away, Sega Stern but he thinks that Williams committed the same mistake on Pinball 2000 that Gottlieb did with the street level games in the sense that it should have been used sparingly. The concept, in his view, pinball manufacturers should focus on making traditional full-featured machines and spend only limited time doing novelty machines. And that Pinball 2000, with as expensive as it was, was going to have a drop-off in sales because people wouldn't, yeah, you could get a new playfield and not have to buy the whole new cabinet again, But it was sort of a reverse situation from what Gottlieb had with their super cheap street levels. Yeah, sometimes you might want something like that. But most of the time you want, if you're doing routing pinball, you want regular pinball. And Pinball 2000 was too irregular to just be only making games for Pinball 2000. But that's what Williams was planning to do, was just do Pinball 2000. And he thought, no, do one of those a year, but then do traditional games for the rest of the time. And, again, this is just a guess of his, but he thinks they would have had better sales had they spread it out and not just been like, okay, we're all in on this as an idea. I don't think he's wrong. I think that is, would have been a valid option instead of just trying to spam out everything all at once. So that is my conclusion of my street-level research story. And what I thought I would do just briefly is let's swing that around to today and our discussions about gains and development today. Tony, I'm curious, what do you think? Would a concept that's sort of like street level, I don't mean it needs to look the same. I don't even mean it needs to be single level or anything. But just the idea of if a pinball manufacturer, either a startup or more, you know, based off our past discussions, more realistically, an already existing one, were to come and say, let's have something that is visibly less money than what, but still designed for route, still designed, you know, not a home edition, but still designed to be a full-fledged machine that earns money. Would it work? Could it work? given what's been learned from the past? Are there things that are different now that would allow it to work, or would it still be a failure of an idea? Well, I think Stern's already doing it with their pro models. They models that are substantially cheaper They designed for route and they pull the job off well Because most people when they playing pinball machines they are playing a pro model stern somewhere When you go into bars, more likely than not, you're going to be seeing a brand new machine, and it's going to be a pro model stern. And I think they are pulling it off. Not necessarily going as far As they tried to go with the street level games But that said, even look at the one level For a one level game, look at Total Nuclear Annihilation That's a one level game and that was a ton of fun But at the same time, if somebody just kicked out Five of these in a row I don't know how good it would be Just like kicking out a whole bunch of these TNA is good because what it is and how it plays is fun. And it being single level is just something that it is. It's not like it was something that was aimed at special. So I think somebody could do it. I think it would be possible to use this idea of something designed for better maintenance, for better playability and a cheaper price, I think they would have some traction. But I don't think it would ever be huge. I think it would be, most like most of the other little boutique companies, it would be a boutique-like thing that if they could put out the right stuff and keep the games engaging and fun while keeping the price point down, it is something we would see. And Once again this also goes back to an idea That I've talked about in the past And that we see some In pinball And we hear the big Crashes against When the games come out Which is the reuse of Ideas And layouts and this and that I mean just like the big thing Like we were talking about earlier, Guardians of the Galaxy It's like oh is it Metallica Is it Kiss, is it this or that But I think a low-level boutique-type manufacturer who was designing specifically for an operator, if they could get a handful of good setups that were interchangeable within the group so they weren't a series of identical playfields, but say you had like four or five sections to a playfield and you could swap them around to make slightly different machines, and if they could keep their prices low enough, I think they would be able to slide in as a low-end thing and probably have a not major but enough sales to maintain. I could be wrong, but I've always thought something like that because more the big pinball crowd, the collector crowd is going to dislike them, but I think there might be enough operators and people who will go, oh, I'm going to borrow, I'm going to play a pinball game. and have something that's easier and cheaper for the operator would survive, and they wouldn't be sitting there going, well, you know, this game's a lot like that game, because that's not how those people are. That's not how the majority of people who are just playing for fun, who are not part of the overall community, would notice. Yeah, I agree with a number of the points you made. In regards to the Stern Pros, for me, I do not view them in the same light as this concept of a sort of street level. And the reason I don't is the price to buy a Pro is essentially the price of a full-fledged machine from the past adjusted for inflation. So the Pro is the full-fledged machine in my view. These premiums, LEs, Jersey Jack pinballs, and everything else are full-fledged plus ones. they've gone even further to accommodate collectors than what you would have ever expected in the past. You would never have gotten, what you have in Jersey Jack's Pirates of the Caribbean is not what you would have gotten out of Medieval Madness. It is beyond that. And you pay for that. And a lot of that isn't the visual stuff on the field, it's the code and how deep the code is now. I don't know whether or not a company, especially based off of Norris's concerns, if he's accurate, A company that just were doing cheap ones, I don't know. I don't know if it would work or not. Under today's climate, I think it could, but I don't know. Once the next pinball decline happens, because I'm assuming at some point it's going to at least taper off. It will be like a wave. It will be cyclic, I'm sure, like anything else. But whether or not it would be worth it to Carl Weathers that versus another company that already exists deciding to do limited units. But the reason that I think that there's potential here is that most of this, all the boutique stuff, the deep code, you shed a lot of that deep code and go back to simpler modes where people aren't going to get all the way through usually on location anyway. You know, you can have savings there. I think your point about TNA is excellent because that shows that there is an audience that was willing and interested in a game that is fun to shoot. But as of the last update I saw, Total Nuclear Annihilation had only just passed 200 units. And again, look at that, take that, and look at the worst of the street-level games, which did over three times better than where Total Nuclear Annihilation has done. I will be amazed if Total Nuclear Annihilation hits halfway to the worst performing street level game. Oh, I would be too. It's a great game. Sure. Well, it's not cheap. No, no. The price is insane. I mean, it's $6,000 for a game that looks like a street level. Now, I understand why it's $6,000. Spooky has spoken about it. They weren't willing to sacrifice any of Scott Danesi, the designer's vision. And so you have things that could have been shed from a gameplay perspective, like having the four displays in addition to the LCD, and then you've got more displays in the play. I mean, there were things that if it was done with a BOM in mind, you could have sacrificed. Right. But they didn't want to. That wasn't the goal. Its goal isn't to be a street-level game, and that's fine. it's just but what I like about it besides that I think TNA is a very fun game is that it shows that at least on a limited basis on a novelty basis there would be interest in something that isn't full of ramps and bash toys but could be relatively easy TNA's code is very I don't want to say simplistic there's been effort put into it but the rules and everything it's all very traditional, very much in line with what you would see in the past. And if there's interest in that, I think there would be more sales interest if you could get the price point of a game that takes some of those ideas. Obviously, you sacrifice a lot of the flash and neat stuff in the case of TNA, but you get a finalized product that could do well. But I agree with you about you need concepts. It needs to be focused operator focus because a lot of collectors aren't going to want something that shallow to go and buy new in box. And I think the big thing, and again, we didn't really touch on it, but when street level was done, that was before Gottlieb really did a lot with licenses. And I think Norris was very open with a lot of his opinions. And I believe he noted it was Data East, which we did our thing about licenses a few episodes ago. And Norris basically confirmed what our takeaway was from looking at it. Data East was very license-driven, and they forced the other companies to move that way because it did make such a difference. And that's why you still see Stern so focused on licenses. You go with licenses to get the coin drop going. You get the game cheap enough. As an operator, let's say the collector market isn't as interested because they're just not as deep of games. Okay, well, maybe the resale value doesn't stay at 90% new in box on a game like this. Maybe it falls in half. but what does the operator care if the game paid for itself in 18 months? Because they don't need to factor in the sale of the game anymore. They're part of their profit-making model, which I think a lot of these operators, or at least the hobby operators, are doing, because they're never going to make enough out of the coin box to pay for the freaking premium collector edition Pirates game, except in the most high-traffic of areas. So, you know, I think things are different now. And the big thing that, based off of all of this, that I think crippled Gottlieb, the distributors charging what they charged, that wouldn't happen today. Separate from agreements that you might have with the distributors, nowadays, we, the buying public, knows the MSRP. We don't just go through our distributor and do whatever that relationship is. We know from the companies how much they think the sticker price is. And they'd never get away with going over it now. Yeah, no. I'm in shock that they could back then, but that was – I don't know what things were like business-wise back then. I was much, much younger back then, so maybe something like that was normal back then, and nowadays that seems like it's insane. I tried to do a little bit of research on that because I was surprised. it's, yeah, that mostly comes down to what relationships and contracts Gottlieb had with its distributor network. So, because you can make arrangements where you can say, you are not allowed to sell for over MSRP. That can be done. Apparently, they didn't do it. Yeah. Which was dumb. But, hey, they're out of business, so it is what it is. Alright, well, with pinball done, we'll go ahead and bounce over here to video games, and I'm going to open video games Talking about, as we spoke about last week Some loot boxes And I'm going to start with just going over the simple fact That loot boxes are a form of monetization And I want to get it out of the way right now That I have no problems with monetization I understand in this day and age To maintain servers And to put together expansions and stuff The companies need to make money somehow to maintain their programmers and still show a profit for there to be a reason for them to continue to support a game. So the problem with me isn't monetization. It is how monetization is implemented. The good old days of subscription service MMOs are pretty much gone. There are still a few subscription service MMOs out there I have played them in the past And I might play them again in the future We might actually talk about that here in a little bit But for the most part MMOs have shifted to a free-to-play system Where you just need to do subscriptions for bonuses Or they monetize through other ways And it has to happen It's something that people may or may not like And you always hear the complaints about Oh, I remember back in the day when I could get a $60 game And it was the entire game And I didn't have to pay extra And I didn't have to do this And I didn't have to do that But the truth of the matter is Is those games weren't getting, you know Two, three, four, five updates over the course of a year and they weren't maintaining servers that had thousands of players on them, so they had to maintain the servers and the bandwidth and this and that. Monetization is going to happen. The secret is to do monetization in a way that does not hurt your player base and turn them against you. And there are forms of monetization that do that. I am still a fan of subscription services Even though I am currently not involved in any of them DLC, paying for DLC I have no problems with paying for DLC If I want to continue that game If I want the extra stuff the DLC provides I will pay for it If I'm not interested in that specific one I won't But that becomes a problem when you're looking at like multiplayer games, because then you start breaking your player base up. I know a lot of games, Call of Duty, Halo, games like that have had issues with map packs in the past where they break their player base up because, oh, if you don't have map pack 13, you can't play these maps, you can't play this level. So their player base gets separated, and their servers start running to the smaller people and bigger issues finding games. So, DLC, while I enjoy it, is not the right answer for all games. So, the big popular thing, I'm going to go ahead and start with a quick definition of loot boxes, because loot boxes have become incredibly popular, and they've become very decisive this year. So, this definition is pulled from the greatest place to get all of your information. You should always live on it, which is Wikipedia. Urban Dictionary. Urban Dictionary would have been... Oh, I wonder what loot boxes in Urban Dictionary even says. Now I've got to go to Urban Dictionary. Thanks. In video games, a loot box is a consumable virtual item which can be redeemed to receive a randomized selection of further virtual items, ranging from simple customization options for a player's avatar or character to game-changing equipment such as weapons and armor. A loot box is typically a form of monetization with players either buying the boxes directly or receiving the boxes during play and later buying keys with which to redeem them. So that's the basic definition of a loot box. I have played games that utilize all of these systems I used to play quite a lot of Star Trek Online. I should probably log into that game and see what it's changed, because it's been about three years since I got in to play that game. But they use the unlock system where you receive boxes during play, and you purchase keys to unlock the boxes. Or you can purchase boxes and keys separately as well. And then our favorite game, Overwatch, who I also believe is one of the best utilizations of a loot box system, where you earn loot boxes through gameplay, and they don't need to be unlocked. You can just open them, or you can purchase them if you want more. But I believe the most important part and what makes it solid is the fact that there is nothing game-changing in it. It is all make-or-make-or-dress-up clothing stuff. And for that reason, I like it because all monetization, whether it's a loot box or any other form, has the issue when it starts putting in gameplay issues, when it starts giving you as a player, because you were willing to go and spend $100 on your fancy glowing shield of reflect everything, I can't be touched, I'm a pretty, pretty princess, makes it so other players are weakened and beneath you is a problem. Because when you're playing a multiplayer game online, their only difference between players should be skill levels and not who has the fatter bank account, in my personal opinion. So with the systems and how all this monetization is seen overall, all, we have seen games go from, oh, you can buy super weapons, you can buy better armor, or games like Overwatch that just go, well, you can make yourself pretty. I started playing World of Tanks many years ago. I can't even tell you how many years ago. I started playing rolled a tank shortly after it originally released. And when they first put their monetization online, it had a severe pay-to-win issue because there were things like ammunition and bonuses for putting out fires, repairing damages on your tank, and this and that that were only available for real money that were much, much better than anything you could get in-game. Over the years, they have taken that and they have shifted it down so you can purchase any of those things from in-game currency. They're just more expensive. So they've turned it into a grind. But you don't have to be completely locked into a well, I didn't spend this money so I can't have this. It just becomes grindy. Is it a perfect answer? No, it's not a perfect answer, but it is a more fair answer than having something that is 100% pay to win. But the nice thing about that system and systems like that is you can sit down and go, I want ammunition, so I buy ammunition. I want this piece of armor, and I buy this piece of armor. And that's where loot boxes come in to being even worse is because you don't know what you're getting in a loot box. It is a randomized box of stuff. It could be you could get five things in that box that you already have. You could get five brand new things that aren't worth anything, that aren't worth the money you spent on it. you could get stuff that is simply not what you were looking for. And I have a problem with that. That is my primary problem with loot boxes, is the simple fact that it could be anything. You don't know what it is. You don't know if it's what you want. You're paying money for it in the hopes of getting something. A lot of countries, particularly in Asia, have clarified and now consider loot boxes gambling because of that. I know that same issues have not been handled as much in the West. They are specifically in like the United States They have been called that it's not gambling Because they consider it just the same as a booster pack for a card game Like Match the Gathering or Pokemon or any of the others And anybody who's played those games know that you don't know what you're getting in a card pack It could be anything I mean, it's the same as if you're going out and buying baseball cards. You don't know what baseball card you're going to get. It's a pack of baseball cards. But those concerns, when you're combining the randomness, which means people are dumping more and more money trying to get what they want, with the fact that in systems where you can get a decisive advantage by spending actual money, is where the big problems with loot boxes are appearing now in late 2017, where it's become such a big thing. I know there was a lot of backlash during the Battlefront 2 beta when it became apparent that there were a lot of very good things that could only be gotten because they used their star cards, that's what they call them. I've not really played any games that use this whole card format for a first-person shooter where you adjust your loadouts based upon cards and this and that. Halo 5 does a little bit of it. Does it? Yeah, I haven't played it. Yeah, I don't know. You get so many cards every time you play a match, though, that it's, I mean, I don't know how monetized it, I have no idea how much money they make off of it. But, yeah, I mean, it's been where you get these cards and you can use them to get a better vehicle for that match until it's destroyed, things like that. So, I mean, the cards are significant in that game at least. Yeah, but the fact that you can buy those cards, which means the fact that I have the ability to, say, I have the ability to just walk out and toss 10 grand at something. and that's just whatever. It doesn't affect me. It's like, oh, okay, here's $10,000 for whatever it is. I mean, I can go buy a $10,000 TV, or I can do this and that, and I choose to throw it at a video game. The fact that that could let me get items that nobody else can get unless they're also throwing large amounts of money at the game, and especially when you're looking at items that are so OP that anyone who does not have said item has no chance against you. It just does not, it breaks the game. It breaks the fun of the game and it breaks the flow of the game and that's the type of thing that has become more common and you're starting to see and that's what the backlash with EA was with Battlefront 2, the backlash was bad enough that EA has actually announced changes to their loot box system, and they are removing some of those higher tier star cards from being anything you could get in the boxes. The epic high level ones are going to be removed. They're changing it so you can't just have never played the game and drop a ton of money in the game and buy yourself and grind everything up to make super powerful cards. They're requiring you to actually play and make milestones before you can unlock things. So you actually cannot just buy yourself to a high-level character. And I think those changes are good. I think they're valid. We will see if it actually fixes the problem or if they're just going to put their monetization in in a different way. I know some games, like the before-mentioned World of Tanks and all of Wargaming Sisters, World of Warplanes, World of Warships, all of those games, they have the ability, you can buy what they call premium time, which is kind of like a subscription. type setup where while you're in premium time, you earn more experience, you earn more credits, this and that. So the time you play is more effective, so it just cuts down on the grind. Now that's the question I have for you, Dennis, and for our listeners, is when it comes to monetization in all forms and loot boxes in particular, do you think it's okay to be able to buy your way to a higher level play without having to actually play to buy equipment that makes it, that gives you a decided advantage over people who haven't spent the money? And do you think it's okay to get bonuses when you spend money for things like progression for more experience so you progress faster? Or do you think this is one of those things that should only be for non-game affecting cosmetic type things? And how do you feel on the randomness that is a loot box? Well, for me, it really depends on a lot of different variables involving the game. So much like how you noted in the case of Overwatch, which is the one we're both most familiar with, if it's something cosmetic, I don't care. I don't care about the randomness. I don't care about the percentage of the drops. I don't care about the dollar amount being involved because there's no gameplay aspect that is relevant. So in regards to any crates that work off of what we'll just call cosmetic items, I'm okay with whatever they want to do. So let them, you know, only available for purchase via crate, not allowed to earn them in game at all. I don't care. On cosmetic, I don't care. So saying that one aside, when it comes to progression enhancements, I'm okay with it, but I'm not a fan if they're – I'm not a fan of it. if they're only available via purchase, I definitely disagree with them being available via purchase on randomized crate. If you want to buy an XP boost and they don't regularly drop, so for example, Halo 5, every time you play an online game, a multiplayer game, you get crates. You get crates to get you stuff. Every level you get crates to get you something, and they include anything that you would have bought. that's to me it's okay because you have that grind option if you're going to say well they're not going to drop you have to they're just available for purchase I think they need to be available for purchase direct like I want to buy an XP boost not I want to buy a chance to get the XP boost that I want I have a problem with that I I get why in the U.S. that they're not calling that gambling, nonetheless, they're exploiting that gambling aspect to try and drive you to continue to. And I see why, because they're going to sell more, because they know you're not going to get what you want most of the time. So you're going to keep paying until you get the item you want or the progression enhancement you need. Now, do I care if that is there at all in a single player game? No. Except for, and this is what sort of came up with Shadow of War, is the grind so extensive that you wouldn't be able to actually finish the story without doing the purchases? And I don't think that happened in the case of Shadow of War, but that is a concern. Do you end up breaking balance because the progression is just such an obstacle, that it's such a hill to climb, that you have to resort to doing that. It's pay to win on a single player. So some people just don't think you should have progression enhancements on single player, period. I don't really care, by and large. It depends how, what the progression gets you. Like, a game I play all the time, Gyms to War, where you can buy crates and all that. And you progress, you get levels, and I can't say that they're necessarily items that I'm aware of that enhance your progression. But if they did, all the progression really does, by and large, is give you more slots to build teams. And so it just makes life a little easier. It's not game-breaking or, you know, it's not going to give you a major enhancement in PvP from a character leveling perspective. Their model is very much driven on letting you upgrade your cards. And the upgrades are significant. But there is always, I've never spent a dime on that game. but I definitely have to grind far more than if I were willing to buy the stuff. And they work a lot of them on randomized crates. Not all. Some of them are crates that here is exactly what you'll get, but most of them are randomized. So when it comes to multiplayer on progression stuff, that structure is very critical. So like Battlefield games where they will give you, and I believe you have the option to buy things like XP boosts. In the older Battlefield games, all that really did was give you an ability to unlock more features on weapons faster. But it wasn't weapon damage or anything. It's like, oh, now you can equip the flashlight. So it affected gameplay. They walked the line close enough that I wasn't annoyed, but there were reasons you might want the XP. But I didn't think they were enough that they would be compelling in the degree of, I can't win without it, sort of things. So, my too-long-didn't-read version of it all is, on most of the progression stuff, I don't think it should be in crates. If you want to sell it, your reasoning that you explained at the beginning of your segment about this is how games are to support what they are at the stage, as expensive as games are to make, I totally get it. I don't think they need to be in crates. I think these, if you want XP boost, you know, you want this particular character, you should be able to just buy the character outright. I get that they make more off the crates, though, because it's the gamble. The gamble that you won't get what you need and you'll drop another $5 on it. But that's my overall stance on that. I wanted to, even though obviously our main focus here is on the loot box idea. what I was curious is one we had a listener Gavin write in and ask about the thoughts on streamer loot so I'd like to know what your thoughts on streamer loot are and back on the DLC thing I kind of wondered what your I'm fine with DLC being solved I should go ahead and get my opinion in there but I did definitely start to greatly dislike it when games were shipping with DLC on disc and then you had to pay to unlock content that was already developed what are your thoughts on DLC being pre-made, and then they just sell it to you later. Because to me, that's very much saying that this is really an $80 game, but we just, for whatever reason, feel we can't tell you the game's $80, so we're hiding it, and I don't like that. Yeah, I don't like that either. I think that is an issue. It comes up with the same thing in fighting games, where it's like, well, you bought the fighting game, and we'll give you six to eight characters, and we've already developed 17 characters, but to get the other ones, you have to purchase each of them for $5 a piece. Isn't Dragon Ball FighterZ getting a lot of backlash because the pricing on the characters that's been announced is very high? Yes, it has been getting a fair amount. I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head because I didn't write them down, but yeah, the pricing on the characters is very high for what you would think it should be. What about the streamer loot thing, which apparently is the idea that Twitch streamers are getting items just because they're streamers? It's not something I've run into very much. I actually hadn't even heard of it before we got that message, and I started looking into it, and it seems to be a big G thing. I think there's a few others out there, But pretty much everything I've found talking about it is on PUBG. And it's weird to me that I understand because streamers bring attention to games and people watch the games that they want to do something for those streamers because it helps them overall. and it seems weird to me though to target specific streamers with stuff I said I just do not have enough experience with this yeah I mean I guess my if it's cosmetic I don't care if it's sort of like a pre-order bonus I don't care I don't care too much as long as they don't have a distinct advantage in a PVP sense I don't care Right, and I mean, that's my answer on everything. I don't care about it if it's cosmetic. I like cosmetic stuff. I'm fine with that. I have spent money on crates on Overwatch looking for a specific cosmetic because I wanted the Junkrat Junkenstein skin and I got it last year before they let us just buy them with a points in game which I prefer Uh but no it's just one of those things. It is kind of silly that in my mind, it's silly that doing a stream of a game, even if you're bringing more people to it, wouldn't that use special things that's not available otherwise? Because then people who are going to come into the game are going to see something. If there was something there specific that they liked, it's not going to be available to them unless they are a large-name streamer. I don't know. It's weird to me. I have a hard time understanding some of it. Not from understanding why they do it, but understanding why it is something that people are willing to accept. That makes play more unbalanced is a bad thing. And I don't think you should get a special thing because you are a player or because you are a streamer or because you are, oh, well, we're going to do something very special for this guy. He won a tournament, so he gets a very special thing now that he can do that's only available for him as a possession. It's like, yeah, we defeated a raid, and we got all of our stuff, and we successfully looted, and we passed the loot out to the people, and they got it because they beat the raid. Because anybody can go play that raid and beat that raid. I mean you have to build things up right to do it But it is possible And now I'm going to cough And make a weird sound So It is just one of those things And what's really weird about this whole Loot box thing Is While it's hit big in video games This has not been just a video game thing My wife and kids are all about these collectible toys that is a box that you don't know what's in it until you open it up. And I don't understand it. Just like the loot boxes. Like you were saying, if I could just pick what I wanted and pay for it, if I could just go, oh, I want Junkenstein. Here, oh, Junkenstein skin is $3. Well, you know what? Here's $3 because I want the Junkenstein skin. I would be much happier about a system like that. than a system where I have to buy a loot box and hope I got it, then another loot box and hope I got it, another loot box and hope I got it. But it's that running cycle that builds up money for them and builds up into even moving into the whole sunk cost range where somebody starts thinking, well, I've spent this much money so far, what's another $5? What's this? Well, I can't stop playing this game now Look how much money I've paid for now I mean, I ran into this issue When I quit playing EVE And when I quit playing World of Warcraft And stuff, it was like, well, I've paid so much money And it's kind of sad To drop it and not play this game anymore It's the same thing Except for now Instead of being a subscription It's literally, well, I dropped $100 to get this special gold weapon that has a 100-round magazine, and it automatically headshots every fifth round. So, I'm not a happy man when it comes to the way monetization, and especially the randomness of loot boxes, has been doing to the industry as of late. I don't like it. I don't like the feel it gets because you don't know when you get outplayed in a game that allows you to get bonuses. It's like, did I get outplayed because that guy was better than me? Which in my case, the answer is yes, 99.95% of the time. But now it's like, did I get outplayed or did that guy have a bonus that I don't have and I can't get without dumping the money? Does that guy have something like that? I mean, it seems like a lot of these loot box available things that twist and bend the game are winked upon legal allowed hacking. It's just like hacking from a gameplay standpoint because one person has an advantage that nobody else has. But the game companies are like, yeah, no, that's cool. We're cool with this one because you paid for it. I don't know. Yeah, sort of regulation changes like some other countries do. I don't see it going back in the sense that it seems like the loot box is the replacement for DLC, which while controversial when it first came out, you at least still got to pick exactly what you wanted. And this is that move away from that because people feel compelled to drop more money and try and win what they need. But, you know, it's not going to be classed as gambling. then I don't know. I don't know what you do about it. Obviously there is backlash from gamers, but as we've seen lately with all this discussion, Battlefront 2, Shadow War, Forza 7 was one. I know that's had a lot of controversy on how things are unlocked now. But still, if it doesn't, I don't know. It depends on people to stop buying the games. Obviously EA got scared enough on Battlefront 2 that they did respond to the backlash. So there are some responses, but it's a mountain that short of making it difficult for them to sell games in certain countries, for example, because it's seen as a gambling product, I don't know how it ends otherwise. Yeah, and I don't think it's going to end. I mean, while a lot of those companies or countries have set it up as they see it as a gambling or social gambling type thing the fact that I do not see it changing in the United States we have too many things that are the exact same as this with the difference that they are a physical item instead of a virtual item and I don't see any reason why it would change other than the fact that players just said no and it wasn't working as a monetization And that's not going to happen. As I said, I've bought loot boxes. I don't know if you've ever bought a loot box, but I've bought loot boxes. I've bought keys to unlock loot boxes that I received. I mean, I've been part of the problem in the past. I'll probably be part of the problem in the future. I don't know. But it is, well, I do know. I won't be part of the problem when it comes to something that is game-breaking. because if you are required to play, if you have to spend extra money to get a bonus to make the game playable, I don't have any interest in that. And that's one of the reasons I haven't gotten War Door yet is because of the initial backlash from that. And it doesn't sound like it's as bad as I feared it was going to be from the initial layout. But I just haven't had a chance to pick it up and play it since then because of it And we will see We'll see what happens to it But it's not going to change It's just like everybody has been saying for years now Don't pre-order, don't pre-order, don't pre-order, don't ever pre-order People pre-order Everybody pre-orders And it doesn't matter how good or bad a game is People are pre-ordering, and they're not going to stop pre-ordering. So it's a system that's just going to be in play until something else changes or there becomes a better way to monetize the system. Yep, I agree. I agree. Okay. We've gone from Gottlieb's debacle and self-destruction, maybe, maybe not, depending upon who you talk to, to loot boxes and how badly they've caused horror and the big issues that have been popping up with them, especially in the last few months. So we're going to go on to something a little happier to finish today up. And we are hitting BlizzCon's announcements, or at least the most important of them, from our point of view. Yep, all our South Korean listeners will be excited. So, let's go ahead and jump into the deep end of our love. Let's jump into Overwatch. Now, would you rather hit the hero, the map, or the new short first? I'd probably start with the hero because I think it's the biggest announcement. Overwatch has a new hero. Woo, thank you. Good night, New York. All right. It wasn't who I thought it'd be. No, it's not. And I was surprised. For those who haven't seen or heard The new hero is Moira I'm assuming I'm pronouncing that correctly It looks like Moira She is a geneticist working for Talon And is a support healer So once again we have a new support Which brings the total new support count up to Two? I think, yeah Anna was the first add-on in there Anna was the first. She was a support. And Moira now. Arisa was a tank. And Sombra and Doomfist both count as attackers? Yeah. Was one of them a defense? No, I think they're both offense, though. Sombra probably should be classed as support. But anyway. But Moira, and I've got a nice little run of the stack list, Or of her stat block That was nicely put on Somebody put out on Reddit And we will include a link To that stat block in our links Section for those who want to look at it But the important Things about it are She has No armor, she has no shields And she has 200 hit points She has Her biotic Grasp which is used for healing and damage creation. She heals with one hand, damages with the other. Her healing heals 75 to 80 hit points per second. This is all PTR information, so this is all going to change at one point or another. But it's also, in addition to healing at that, it has a residual overheal, so if you get somebody with it, they will continue to heal as you move away, which lets you give just a little bit of time. It does burn your resources to heal, and the heal is a kind of May Freezy Gun style AOE heal beam thing that passes through targets. So you can be near and wave it at your front line to charge them. Spray it, spray it, don't say it. Exactly Her damage is a target lock on But it's not like Symmetra's beam It requires you to maintain the hitbox in the center of your reticle A lot more than Symmetra ever does So you still have to aim and track targets It's DPS is terrible It is sub-Winston DPS The current PTR DPS is between 30 and 50 DPS So you are sub-Winston damage It's supposed to have a fairly long range It can be blocked by shields But it cannot be blocked by D.Va's defense matrix The important thing about that Is when you're doing the damage Is it rebuilds the resources that you use When you're healing So you can You do some healing You do a little damage to rebuild your resources So you can heal some more The healing resources recharge slowly But the beam boosts it up quickly And both healing and damaging Charge the ult And also currently Damaging targets heals Moira So when you're doing damage You are healing yourself Which gives the lower DPS a bit less of a concern with you. It gives you a bit better chance to survive getting in a one-on-one fight with somebody. We're just going to have to see how that shakes out. Her other moves are she's got a biotic orb, which is an orb that she can throw, and just like her other abilities, you can throw either a healing orb or a damaging orb. The orbs last 10 seconds. The cooldown lasts 10 seconds. So you can only have one orb out at a time. The orbs do 200 damage or 300 healing before they disappear. They travel about the same speed as Symmetra's orb. They slow down when it actively locks onto somebody because the orbs throw out beams that heal or hurt people, and they bounce off of walls and stuff. So instead of hitting and disappearing, it'll bounce around in a room. So if you launch it in a tiny room, it will slow down when the beams hit targets. It will slowly track through the room and bounce off the walls instead of disappearing while dealing out its 200 damage or 300 healing. It will pass through shields, which means you can lob it and send it past Rhine or Orisa's shield Which is going to be unhappy for those guys It is Deflectable by Genji It is absorbable by D.Va It doesn't use resources We'll see how This works out In the PTR and what the changes are She also has An escape It is fade, it is not A teleport It has a 6 second cool down It makes you faster than normal It makes you invisible And it makes you invulnerable And it lasts for less than a second I don't know that sounds like it could be really useful And at the same time I don't know if a second Unless it makes you a lot faster Is a second long enough to get you away from Whoever is chasing you down I guess we're just going to have to see it But I think it's good to have a support healer Who has an escape to get away when they start getting primaried. Yeah, yeah. Outside of Mercy's slingshot, none of the others really do. Yeah, yeah. That's why, I mean, because I know when I play Ana, I spend a lot of time, a lot of times I don't necessarily use my grenade when I should because I'm starting to take enough damage that I feel like I have to keep it to maintain life. And her ultimate, all the initial stuff on her ultimate is that it's really powerful. We'll see how long that lasts on the PTR It is hit scan It is long ranged And it is a wide beam It lasts 5 seconds It does damage to enemy units And heals friendly units that are in the beam It ignores shields It ignores defense matrix You move faster while using it And while you're causing damage to opponents with it You are healing So this is a usable weapon to counter all sorts of things. I mean, if somebody's throwing out attacks, you can use it to wipe out the opposing team while holding your team together. You can hit people caught in a grav and heal through the grav while causing damage. You can line it up right to the people attacking the people trapped in the grav. It sounds like an incredibly powerful ultimate. Yeah, it's interesting. But But support ults are generally the most powerful ults in the game. At least that's the general interpretation at high level play. So I would say overall that's fitting. I wouldn't be surprised if the ult doesn't change a lot on the PTR. But we'll see. It comes down to whether or not her ult makes her meta to the extent that none of the other supports are. That seems to be always the case and why Mercy, incidentally, is being reworked yet again for yet another nerf. so it's the fact that she's just too powerful with her ult. Yeah, they built her up and now it's time to drop her again because the new ult is too strong. Yeah, it's just she's always, she's being, I mean, Lucios aren't picked now. Everyone has a Mercy or you lose. So it's just, and some of that has to do with just how they changed her res and such but because she gets another res when the ult is active is the primary issue and she's almost impossible to target and kill while she's a Valkyrie. But that's different from, you know, that's an aside. That's not BlizzCon stuff. But it's the struggle that Blizzard is always doing with this game and trying to balance it so that all the supports, particularly the healing supports, are viable. And every time they fix one, it seems like another falls to the wayside. And I, like I said, will have the link to the actual thing on the Reddit page talk about this stat block and talk about her that was put up so you can go and read all the comments yourself because there's tons and tons of them and some of them are really good. And now let's move on to the next bit of wonderfulness to come out of BlizzCon. A map. Yay, it's a map. I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map. The map for the coming out is Blizzard World. It's a hybrid map, so you get to, well, you know what a hybrid map is. It's a crossover It's not pure defense It's not defend a point It's not purely defend a point It's not purely escort a payload It's hybrid Hybrid maps are single point captures That then give you a payload to escort Yeah And I like hybrid maps They're quite a lot actually This one's interesting Because Blizzard decided to I don't know Would you call this breaking the fourth wall? I mean I guess if the company of Blizzard exists within Overwatch, just without their having created the Overwatch stuff, I guess it wouldn't be. It'd be kind of meta. But the new map is Blizzard World. It is a Disney-esque theme park in-game made up of Blizzard stuff. There is an animated video out for it that is kind of cool and short. Once again, the link's going to be in the show notes. You don't really see enough of the map. You don't see any of the map, really. No, it's just an announcement. It's just an announcement thing. I think the idea is kind of interesting to see because, I mean, you hear, you know, characters from Diablo talking and from StarCraft and World of Warcraft and this and that. It's just an interesting little idea that I actually kind of like, and we'll see how well it's implemented and how good of a map it is. And then after that, they finally put out another animated short for Overwatch, Honor and Glory. It's the one we've all been waiting for. it is Dixie Reinhardt specific and I have to tell you this might be my new favorite Overwatch animated short the only other one that I think is at this level is the Hanzo Genji one or maybe the Bastion one but I think this is my favorite of them so far it's very well done I didn't realize Dixie Reinhardt was such an unlikable character but you gotta have backstory well yeah it seems to be he was unlikable and then he became who he is because of being unlikable and learning. So, yeah, backstory, we'll learn. And I like to believe that we got to see an early example of one of our new characters that we'll see eventually here, because I'm pretty certain that is one of Jorgen's kids talking to Dixie Reinhardt in it, and why not? Let's bring the whole family into the game. Yeah, sure. They still need to do an explanation on Torbjorn. He's one of the characters I know the least about. Yeah, really, I mean, you don't know a lot about him. There hasn't been a short. There's been some comics. He has got like 147 kids based upon the one comic. Okay, that's a little exaggeration. He's got a ton of kids based upon the Christmas comic from last year. I didn't read that. Oh, yeah, no, no, he's got, because there was, in the comic, it was primarily centered around Tracer, but there was a scene, there was several panels with Dixie Reinhardt, and Jorbiorn's family was there. I'll never pronounce his name right. I can't do it. I'm apparently just unable to do that J thing. His family was there, and there was literally, like, I don't know, ten kids. It was pretty funny. And they were all hanging all over Dixie Reinhardt. Okay, well, that ties in with this well, then. Yeah. Yeah, no, it tied in really well together. I don't know. Have you read any of the comics, or have you been just not really paying attention? The comics are actually pretty good. They're all pretty short. They're all available online. I demand cinematic experiences for everything. Well, yeah, I know. I wish I could. Man, I would like a full cinematic insanity. like a full up Overwatch movie. Animated. I don't want Dixie Reinhardt to be some freaking actor. Well, there was more than just Overwatch news. There's stuff we used to play. Yes. Yes, Warcraft. Warcraft is getting a new expansion. It is Battle for Azeroth. They've finally decided that they're tired of having Horde and Alliance working together, so they get to go fight each other again. Hanzo's cousin fights Mercy's dad. That's the summary of the cinematic. That is a really good... That's actually perfect. I like that. The cinematic's good. I mean, let's just... Blizzard does good cinematics. I have not played World of Warcraft since 2008. July of 2008, I looked it up to be sure. That was when my subscription expired was July of 2008. So I have no idea what the changes are, what's different, how things are playing. I've actually considered at times going back just to see how things have changed, but it's never happened. I don't know. Maybe someday. It's just like my return to Eve that will happen someday. except for going back to that would be easier because I can't bring myself to go back to EVE without reactivating all of my tunes which would require me to get like four subscriptions running concurrently because I was running three to four tunes at a time where with World of Warcraft I could go back with just one subscription. I might be able to type myself into that one a little bit easier. So there was that. There was the... I didn't even know this was a thing but apparently people wanted the classic pre-all expansions World of Warcraft, so they announced that. Yeah, I think it'll be out next year sometime. They've got a bunch of work to do in the background because from the initial reports I've seen, it's a lot of the original stuff, the original back end and all that is gone. There's like no saves of it, so they're having to rebuild the back end. A lot of that original data isn't available, as you would think. All of the current illegal classic Vanilla servers that have been running here and there on the Internet that you can find have been using just client-side data and then guesses to build custom backends to make them work. So we will see What goes with that I am Part of me is like well I'm really interested In classic Warcraft Because that's what I played at first I stayed in through a bunch of them But classic Warcraft was where I started But at the same time I remember There were things about Vanilla That I did not like And I don't If they're going to go straight Vanilla without fixing some of those things, I don't know how interesting it would be to play. I mean, I played a Shaman and a Hunter primarily, and Shaman in Vanilla is healer only. Most of the classes have only one route that is viable for play in Vanilla, and I don't know how that's going to hold up with all the changes that have happened in that game. because I know there's been so many changes since I left, and how big of the changes between Vanilla and when I left in 2008 were, we'll have to see. I don't know. Yeah, I'm not at all interested in this, but the crowd was. Yeah, the crowd's really looking forward to it. There are a lot of Vanilla servers online, and there are a lot of people playing them. There are a lot of people who like them. I mean, the old 40-man raids, yada, yada, yada. I don't know. We'll see. Honestly, I could see myself coming back and trying WoW out for a while. Modern WoW. I don't know if I'd ever go back to this WoW classic. I don't know if. I spent so many hours there to go back to it being exactly like it was before. I don't see. because I thought Burning Crusade was a major upgrade. I very much liked the Burning Crusade expansion, and I liked the changes it made to the playability of the game and how much more the other trees, besides every class having one tree that was what you could play, basically the others existed, but there was no real viable way to play them. I liked the viability they added to all the classes that way. Yeah, I did too. I thought maybe with Wrath of the Lich King you could argue the game was getting too casual friendly, but I wouldn't go vanilla. But hey, that's what people want. Yep. Well, that's what people say they want. They're trying it out. We'll see if they actually make anything or if it turns into a big old boondoggle. Let's see. There was a StarCraft II announcement. a game I've never played. Well, now you can play it because it's going free-to-play. StarCraft II is a lot of fun. I actually purchased StarCraft II a long time ago, and I still play it on occasion. It is an enjoyable game. I like the first StarCraft a lot. StarCraft II is a lot of fun as well. But as of November 14th, StarCraft II Wings of Liberty will be free-to-play. Those who already own Wings of Liberty, so me, will get Heart of the Swarm expansion for no additional cost. ranked multiplayer will also be given for free to players, but they'll have to unlock it after achieving 10 first wins of the day. So basically you can get ranked multiplayer, but you have to play for a while. You have to play and get at least 10 wins before it'll go active. So it's kind of like your stuff not really counting, your whopper points not really counting until you've been in so many tournament-type things. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, it makes perfect sense to me I don't see any issues with it Starcraft is still A very popular tournament play game Maybe this will see more people playing it Because it's been a while since it came out I still play it on occasion Should probably play more of it But yeah, we'll see what happens I'm not upset by this at all So Maybe now that you can play They've got a bunch of co-op stuff Specially designed they've got co-op campaigns on StarCraft. Maybe we could see about now that you've got a computer putting together and doing some of the co-op campaigns. Well, let's see. Last major announcement that I see you noted was Heroes of the Storm, which I also have never played. I've not played it either. It's a MOBA. It's, from what I've read, it's fun, but it's not League of Legends or Dota. It is more, it's supposed to be more casual than those two. But it's literally Blizzard going, hey, let's make a MOBA that uses all of our in-house characters. And they are adding Hanzo and Alexstrasza from World of Warcraft in this expansion. I mean, they've already got Genji and Junkrat and Zarya and Tracer from Overwatch and characters from all the other games they've ever done. So, cool for them. And there's also going to be A Should be no surprise for anybody There is going to be an expansion For Hearthstone Which they seem to put out A couple of those a year I haven't played Hearthstone in about a year I used to play it real a lot But I just drifted away from it I haven't tried it It's Pretty solid as a Collectible card game It's not terrible It's like magic type play. The play's a little different. It goes a lot more for the randomized stuff because you can do that because it's got so many senses. You can pull a random card. It won't just pull a random card out of your deck. You can pull a card that says random character, and it will literally pull a card of any card that exists in the game. And that can be interesting, and that can also make for some really, really cheap stuff. I mean, you could drop a card that costs two, and it'll randomly pull you out a ten-cost card and drop it. It's fun. It's got a free-to-play aspect as well. You don't have to purchase anything to play it. But to get expansion cards and stuff, if you want to play it anything even vaguely competitively, Competitively, you've got to spend money on it. I think that has us. Okay, wow. We had a lot. It was a really busy, I think, between everything and dropping two big things on one episode, kind of made for a longer than normal episode. Yeah. Well, good. They can just, you know, it'll fill out the commutes. We're going to see for the next episode might, if everything pans out, It might be a few days early because we might be able to do our electromechanical episode. But if we record it, it'll probably be during a weekday. And I won't hold it up for release. I'll release it when I can get it edited. So, well, not totally locked in yet, but it's looking like it's going to happen. Early or it might be a day late? Oh, I didn't. You know what? I should have probably looked at my calendar to see when we were planning. no it would probably be early because I think we're talking about the nope oh I see oh god I forgot oh because we're originally I originally was talking about a week before when we're currently planning to so no what we'll probably do in that case is I think we'll probably plan on our two week episode like usual and then we might just have an early another episode we don't do a special special episode I hate all that special edition, it'll be given a normal number. It'll be given a normal number, because it's not going to be an interview. It's not going to be tonight on a super special episode of the Eclectic Gaming Podcast. We might call it a super special episode, but it will still have a number. It'll have a number, like a real non- puppet, Pinocchio, going on here. It'll have a real number. I'm not going to plug anything this time, so I'm just going to say I should see everyone around two weeks. Until then, I'm Dennis. And I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 8dcb48af-2abf-4658-a4d2-165e6a22c43e*