# Lost in the Woods with Arcooda Pinball Forest **Source:** BlahCade Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2021-07-05 **Duration:** 100m 46s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/blahcade-pinball-podcast/episodes/Lost-in-the-Woods-with-Arcooda-Pinball-Forest-e1bkfra --- ## Analysis Blockade Pinball hosts Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss Zen Studios' recent pinball show (featuring a quiz with minimal announcements), criticize quality control issues in Zen's Star Wars VR tables (Han Solo and Droids), explore Arcooda's lengthy development history attempting to create user-friendly virtual pinball cabinets, and preview the upcoming Rollers of the Realm Reunion indie game. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Zen Studios had their pinball show a week and a half ago with no game announcements — _Chris states 'Zen had their pinball show a week and a half ago, and nothing announced. Literally nothing.'_ - [HIGH] Han Solo had a skill shot bug that should have been caught in testing — _Jared: 'we saw it with Han Solo...how could that be missed? Like, there's no way that anyone adequately testing this game at the studio could miss that shot'_ - [HIGH] Droids VR table has broken part detection mechanics in the 3PO mode and kickback collision detection issues — _Jared describes 'when you spell 3PO all of a sudden you get 3PO parts scattered about the table...if those pinball parts are up on the wire forms ramps can't get them' and 'my right kickback never would activate'_ - [HIGH] Zen's quality control has declined compared to their previous reputation as rock-solid — _Jared: 'Zen...were rock solid and it was almost like...compared to FarSight...And then we see these two things release, and the quality is really, really down'_ - [HIGH] Arcooda has been developing virtual pinball cabinets since 2013 with persistent licensing and software integration challenges — _Arcooda tweets: 'Let's go back to 2013 where it all started on our video pinball journey...behind-the-scenes reasons why our products never reach the market'_ - [MEDIUM] Ten free VR tables have been given away by Zen, distributed via Star Wars Day promotion rather than as planned launch content — _Chris: 'they were giving away yet another free VR table...brings the total up to ten' and speculation about Star Wars Day (May 4th) timing_ - [HIGH] Blockade Pinball has been producing content for approximately 8 years since late 2012 — _Chris: 'we have been doing this now for 8 years haven't we since 2012 so almost 10 although it was the back half it was the very end of 2012'_ - [MEDIUM] Virtual switch/sensor detection in Zen's Unreal Engine implementation is the likely root cause of recent bugs — _Jared proposes: 'it seems to be the way unreal engine is sensing balls in play isn't quite right because that's the same problem with the ramps right...sensors it's all virtual sensors in these tables'_ ### Notable Quotes > "We finally have to talk about the pinball show. We have to address the elephant in the room that is the pinball show." > — **Chris Freebus**, ~5:30 > _Direct criticism of Zen's official show format and presentation quality despite production values_ > "It is very much like they're reading off teleprompters...without really feeling like they know the content." > — **Jared Morgan**, ~6:15 > _Critique of host authenticity and preparation on Zen's pinball show_ > "How could that be missed? Like, there's no way that anyone adequately testing this game at the studio could miss that shot unless they knew absolutely nothing about the table." > — **Jared Morgan**, ~25:00 > _Highlights severity of Han Solo skill shot bug and inadequate QA testing_ > "These aren't hidden features deep into gameplay. This is basic stuff. This is stuff you'll encounter. If you know how to play the game, you'll encounter it in five minutes." > — **Chris Freebus**, ~27:00 > _Emphasizes the obviousness of Droids bugs and testing failure_ > "I've got a feeling that the hiring that they projected hasn't actually happened yet. That's my gut feel." > — **Jared Morgan**, ~30:30 > _Speculates about Zen's reported hiring delays impacting QA capacity_ > "Star Wars VR is an experiment in the wild for them. They're cutting their teeth on developing with Unreal in the wild with a release schedule in play." > — **Jared Morgan**, ~32:00 > _Frames Star Wars as testing ground for Unreal Engine migration with live bug exposure_ > "We have our own standards, and over time, this has caused us issues...They want it so that your grandma could get software up and running on their machine." > — **Arcooda (Twitter thread)**, ~55:00 > _Arcooda's design philosophy for accessibility as core to their cabinet vision_ > "Behind-the-scenes reasons why our products never reach the market." > — **Arcooda (Twitter)**, ~50:00 > _Arcooda acknowledges chronic product delivery failures and promises to explain why_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Chris Freebus | person | Host of Blockade Pinball Podcast, also known as 'Shut Your Trap,' based in the United States | | Jared Morgan | person | Co-host of Blockade Pinball Podcast, based in Brisbane, Australia, experiencing video connectivity issues during this episode | | Zen Studios | company | Digital pinball developer producing Pinball FX and adapting classic Williams/Bally tables; hosts monthly pinball show with hosts reading from teleprompters | | Akosh | person | Zen Studios streamer and quiz host who ran the recent Zen pinball show quiz; noted for natural streaming ability | | Arcooda | company | Australian virtual pinball cabinet manufacturer attempting since 2013 to create user-friendly software-flexible cabinets; has faced persistent licensing and market integration challenges | | Star Wars: Droids (Zen VR) | game | Recently released Zen Studios VR pinball table with broken 3PO parts detection and kickback collision issues; part of ten free VR giveaway | | Star Wars: Han Solo (Zen VR) | game | Earlier Zen VR release with skill shot bug that allows plunger to not detect ball in shooter lane | | Rollers of the Realm: Reunion | game | Indie pinball-mechanics game releasing 2022 on Steam and Epic; sequel with improved vertical level design and character ability system | | Pinball FX | product | Zen Studios' upcoming pinball platform consolidating digital pinball titles; expected late 2021/early 2022 with 11 additional table releases by end of year | | Blockade Pinball Podcast | organization | Long-running pinball podcast (since late 2012) hosted by Chris and Jared covering pinball news, games, and industry discussion | | FarSight Studios | company | Predecessor digital pinball platform developer; Zen's quality being compared unfavorably to FarSight's historical rock-solid releases | | Mel | person | Zen Studios figure who announced 11 pinball-related items coming by end of year | | The Pinball Show | product | Zen Studios' official monthly broadcast show with format criticized for lack of chemistry, scripted/teleprompter-heavy delivery, and minimal announcement substance | | Unreal Engine | product | Engine used by Zen for Star Wars VR tables; virtual switch detection implementation suspected as root cause of recent bugs | ### Topics - **Primary:** Zen Studios show format and host chemistry, Quality control failures in Zen VR tables (Han Solo, Droids), Virtual sensor/switch detection bugs in Unreal Engine implementation, Arcooda's long-term cabinet development struggles and licensing challenges - **Secondary:** Rollers of the Realm Reunion indie game announcement, Zen hiring delays and QA staffing impacts - **Mentioned:** Virtual pinball gameplay mechanics and cabinet design philosophy, COVID-19 lockdowns in Australia and vaccination rollout ### Sentiment **Negative** (-0.72) — Hosts express frustration with Zen's quality control decline, lack of show chemistry, and obvious testing failures. Tone is critical but professional. Brief positive notes about Rollers of the Realm and Arcooda's engineering vision are overshadowed by pervasive disappointment with Zen's execution and industry messaging. Australia lockdown commentary is neutral/mixed. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Star Wars VR tables serving as live production testing ground for Unreal Engine migration with customer exposure to bugs rather than beta testing (confidence: high) — Jared: 'Star Wars VR is an experiment in the wild for them. They're cutting their teeth on developing with Unreal in the wild with a release schedule in play' - **[event_signal]** Blockade Pinball podcast reflecting on 8+ year history and evolution toward current high-chemistry format as counterpoint to Zen show's struggles (confidence: high) — Chris discusses initial rough episodes and learning curve: 'Those first 20 episodes of Black Cape were not good' but hosts found natural chemistry without scripts - **[market_signal]** Zen's distribution of ten free VR tables appears strategic reallocation from planned launch content rather than bonus giveaway (confidence: medium) — Chris speculates: 'Do you think they were like incorporated into the price and they're now just releasing them?' with timing tied to Star Wars Day promotion - **[personnel_signal]** Jared speculates that Zen's announced hiring expansion has not yet occurred, contributing to QA decline (confidence: medium) — Jared: 'I've got a feeling that the hiring that they projected hasn't actually happened yet. That's my gut feel.' - **[product_strategy]** Arcooda's virtual pinball cabinet products have repeatedly failed to reach market over 8-year development cycle (2013-2021) due to licensing and software integration barriers (confidence: high) — Arcooda Twitter thread: 'behind-the-scenes reasons why our products never reach the market' with explicit promise to explain delays - **[product_concern]** Multiple obvious bugs in recently released Zen VR tables (Han Solo skill shot, Droids 3PO parts detection, Droids kickback collision) suggest systemic QA failure (confidence: high) — Both hosts describe encountering game-breaking bugs within minutes of play; Jared explicitly states 'the quality is really, really down' compared to Zen's historical standard - **[sentiment_shift]** Community and podcast hosts expressing noticeable disillusionment with Zen Studios' execution quality and show format after period of goodwill benefit-of-doubt (confidence: high) — Chris: 'We really wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt...But I think our hosts, they need to get some chemistry, and they need to actually care about pinball' - **[technology_signal]** Virtual switch detection in Unreal Engine migration for Star Wars VR tables is structurally broken for common gameplay mechanics (confidence: medium) — Jared's detailed analysis linking Han Solo shooter lane switch, Droids 3PO detection, and Droids kickback issues to virtual sensor implementation failures in Unreal --- ## Transcript BlahCade Pinball Podcast this is the BlahCade Pinball Podcast i'm your host chris freemus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world it's jared morgan hello everyone Where are you going? We're going to have to apologize right now for Jared's video signal. Something is going on. We don't know what's going on. Yeah, something's going on with the program today. The interwebs don't want to play nice. And so Jared shall be being today portrayed by a pixely mess. I'd like to call it the soft filter of the Australian internet. That or Jared is just heavily aliased. I'm very heavily aliased today. Yes. So today Jared gets the effect. He gets the AKA moniker instead of me. Yeah. So, hey, everybody here in the States, it's the happy 4th of July Independence Day weekend fireworks. Boom, yay! For the rest of you guys in other countries, you're like, who cares? It's not. Yeah. It really isn't. It's like, what are you guys freaking out about? For us in Australia, most of Australia was in lockdown, like, you know, shelter in place, because we've had a Delta variant stream float around in the community. So we're sort of out of that now in Brisbane. But the last four days we've been in lockdown, but we can now go out with masks on and go and visit places to eat. And as long as we're sitting down, so you can't go to a pub and play pinball. So Netherworld is out until July 19, I think, which is ages away. yeah this is our basically first holiday where most of the restrictions have been lowered so right i bet you it's huge in that case well i mean i'm having family over and i'm seeing our neighbors unloading tables and stuff so there's gonna be a block party tomorrow it's gonna be Massive. That's awesome. And that is actually really good, isn't it? Because it's like life is kind of returning to the new normal that we now have to enjoy with COVID. Yes, exactly. I'm all vaccinated up to. I've finally got my two jabs. That's a very big bone of contention for Australians at the moment because our rollout is embarrassingly low, where 4% of the population is vaccinated. Only 4%? 4%. If you have a look at the chart of nations that have been vaccinated, we are literally at the bottom of the chart. It is absolutely disgusting and disgraceful. Wow, that's incredible. It is just terrible. I know that we're well past 50% of adults in the States. I don't think we hit the 70% mark. or it's either that or we didn't hit the 70% mark for total population because they lowered the age down to 12 for those that can receive it. For vaccination. Kids aren't eligible for the vaccination here at all. You guys probably have a different vaccine, that's why. We're running Pfizer and AstraZeneca and I think we even have, there's three, we've got the Moderna as well. so we have access to all three oh but you know yeah it depends on how slow your rollout is too yeah so at the moment there's actually not enough Pfizer to go around so there's actually restricted there's a lot of AstraZeneca but the government over here has suggested that people below 50 shouldn't take AstraZeneca and they should have Pfizer instead but then the government just backflipped and said, oh, everyone can have Pfizer. Everyone can have AstraZeneca and then they backflipped again saying, oh, actually, maybe not. They literally don't know what they're doing. It's a waste of time. Somebody should make COVID pinball. You know, multiball could be all the different vaccines. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. And then you can have sick, you know, like drop targets or whatever of sick people and you're trying to bash them. I don't know. The ball is a vaccine. Yeah, exactly. You vaccinate them and drop them down. Hey, okay, let's dive right in. We've got a big chunk to talk about in the back half of our show, but let's start right off the front half. So we've said we were out of pace with Zen, and it turns out this time it didn't matter. It literally didn't matter at all, no. Yeah, so Zen had their pinball show a week and a half ago, and nothing announced. Literally nothing. Yeah, there wasn't anything about, you know, there wasn't the third original table announced. There wasn't anything related to pinball effects. There wasn't none of that. The only thing that they had going on was a quiz that Geno ran. Or, Geno. That's the other guy. Akosh. Akosh. Akosh. That he ran. And I do got to say, the quiz was fun. I enjoyed taking it and doing it. And Akosh is very natural. He is very natural. Yeah. He's just... I think he does a lot of streaming. So, you know, he was the person who did all the streamings for Zen before he changed positions. That's what he's doing now. So, yeah, he's very good at it. But it kind of got us thinking where we were like, you know what? Okay, fine. We finally have to. We finally have to talk about the pinball show. We have to address the elephant in the room that is the pinball show. We really wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. We wanted to let them warm up to the format of the show. And everything else like that. The quality of the production is fine. That hasn't wavered. It still looks good. But I think our hosts, they need to get some chemistry, and they need to actually care about pinball. Yeah. I have to agree with you. It is very much like they're reading off teleprompters. and it's reading off teleprompters without really feeling like they know the content. Well, it's reading words that you go I don't know what these words are, but I'm going to speak them. I'm pretty sure they know what the words are. They do. I'm sure that as far as production goes, they rehearse this. Because we've seen them do it. it's just it's sometimes really hard to watch and look you know it took us a long time to get the chemistry right for this show as well right like we have been doing this now for 8 years haven't we since 2012 so almost 10 although it was the back half it was the very end of 2012 so yeah and you know probably for the first two years we were finding our feet. Oh, absolutely. But I think, this is from the show format perspective, but I think from a host chemistry perspective, that didn't really take a lot to develop. No. And that was also dealing with six to eight people talking at the same time. When we pared down to three people, it got significantly easier to do. Yeah, that's right. That's definitely one of the lessons learned. Having too many people on the show is just not a good idea. You've got to have a refined group of people that can actually bounce off each other and get that chemistry right. Otherwise, the show really is slanted. Those first 20 episodes of Black Cape were not good. and strangely enough they've they're really hard to find now really hard yeah um no i just i it is though i you know we see the comments we read the comments after all the shows and more often than not we're kind of nodding our heads along too with what you guys are saying and uh i mean i don't agree with the comments of people who sit there like that there has to be massive information drops every single time and but then people are pissed off that they're just teasing things rather than giving an announcement it's like and then it becomes well maybe they shouldn't have them so often i i don't necessarily agree with that i think the monthly format is fine and and i don't believe that there needs to be a talking each time but there's things that they could do and unfortunately it seemed like again akosha is the one that would have the access to it because i was thinking couldn't we have a multi-part series of truly this is how zen puts together i mean from the point they get a the an idea to the ideas that you know to you know putting down on paper to starting to build them in the computer you know show us all that or how do you you know when you get the uh when you're doing a williams or a bally machine you know from the point you get that thing show us with the breakdown show us you know scanning everything in just walk us through make it a documentary almost you know for those for those shows that you don't have an announcement there's stuff that can be done yeah yeah oh look that would be miles better than what they do at the moment um on the show like it's just filler and it's it's not good filler at all well because right now it's having it's this it's thanks jared do you have something to add oh no thanks chris i think i've i think it's a a great thing that was just shown and it and i'm really looking forward to playing this great thing on my devices soon yeah it's just too stiff yeah it is it really is so anyway we just wanted to to mention that now i think it's because it's because they're going off script like the thing is we don't have a script and it's Because we don't have a script. Yeah, off the cuff. And it's way more natural. Maybe if they actually changed that for the show, made it less scripted, a little bit more improvved, that might... In other words, the teleprompter is just bullet points. Yeah, and they have to actually speak to those bullet points. Which are reminders, not read the bullet point, but it's just merely a reminder of what to talk about. Yeah, and actually let them give their own reactions, so it's genuine, not scripted reactions. like um because you know if they're on the show they kind of need to be passionate about pinball otherwise it's not going to work and we're still gonna we're gonna keep this this format going yeah like they've got to get into it they've got to start playing these games maybe they do i don't know but it doesn't feel like they do so get that feeling and you'll get a much more convincing show yeah um okay one thing that did get announced uh on that show was they were giving away yet another free VR table. This time it was droids. Star Wars droids. So that brings the total up to ten. We like free. We like free. Although it makes me wonder are they free? Or was it? Do you think they were like incorporated into the price and they're now just releasing them? Yes. I do. I believe that the intention was to release it as ten tables. They were just a little bit behind. And rather than delay because they wanted to get it out in time for Star Wars Day. May the 4th. Yeah, May the 4th. So put out what you have, and then it was, and we'll keep on working on these other ones, and then we'll drop them as free because 10 tables at that price, much more sense. That's a pack to me, and it's almost half of the entire collection. So that's my thought. My other thought is I don't think we're going to be seeing a VR drop again until after pinball effects. Probably. It seems, yeah, potentially, yes. Because where are we now? We're at nearly August. We're just in July now. It's just our July. Yeah. And then, you know, August, September, October, we might start seeing some pretty concrete stuff coming out October. Well, again, we've got to remember there's these, Mel said, 11 items, 11 pinball-related things, I guess. I don't know. Were they indeed tables? I assumed, but let's assume that. 11 tables by the end of the year. and he said that there was stuff going to be coming out prior to Pinball FX actually releasing. So if we go back a couple of shows, we had said sometime in July, I think you had pegged early July, I had pegged late July, for an announcement with release in August. So I think we're still maybe on track for that. We'll have to find out. We're going to have to wait and see. it'll be the I'm hoping it'll be the next the pinball show that we get more details about that but it feels based on Zen's previous rollout stuff it seems likely that August is a a time that we're going to get something larger announced I think but anyway back to droids droids which isn't it's a table I like I enjoy the layout and I enjoy shooting it it looks great in VR again, one of those tables that really improved with the VR treatment it looks so it's so much easier to follow in VR I think this is one of the ones that we said if there were tables to come to VR, droids would be one that we'd both be looking out for and we were right, definitely, it's suited for VR very nicely. That being said there were issues there was really obvious obvious issues that's just it it's not that these are hidden issues these are the obvious ones yeah first one being that when you spell 3PO all of a sudden you get 3PO parts scattered about the table that you have to shoot the pinball to roll over them and if those pinball parts are up on the wire forms ramps can't get them can't get them you know that but There's one where that spinning disc is. I couldn't get that one either. Yeah. Yeah, the part detection mechanic in that game, broken. And then also with the... That's the first mode. If you do them in order, it's like the first mode you see. It is the very first mode that you would see, yeah. That's bizarre. And then the other issue is the kickbacks. I didn't have a problem with my left kickback activating, but my right kickback never would activate. and I've seen other people say they had problems with both. So something's going on with the collision detection there also. Something. Now, this is interesting because we saw it with Han Solo. Yep. It had the skill shot bug. Yep. Like, how could that be missed? Like, there's no way that anyone adequately testing this game at the studio could miss that shot unless they knew absolutely nothing about the table so and then we see these bugs these obvious obvious bugs coming into the the second game release my question to you chris is what's happened to quality at zen because this never happened before every time they released a product they were rock solid and it was almost like i remember when compared to farsight and And then FastUp was like the rock-solid, never-buggy, unreleased thing. And then we see these two things release, and the quality is really, really down. Like the actual QA for this product is low. So I'd love to know why that is. Like is it a really quick thing to pump out? Are they just shoving them out? I don't get it at all. I don't understand why these things haven't been issued to beta test. Yeah. I don't understand why something so obvious is getting out there. Again, these aren't hidden features deep into gameplay. This is basic stuff. This is stuff you'll encounter. If you know how to play the game, you'll encounter it in five minutes. I did. Yeah. And I'm assuming this has to do with Unreal, that they haven't quite figured out how for detection purposes. Yeah. I don't know if it's also because the Zen tables, the Zen originals, are obviously wholly digital. There is no mechanical issues, triggers. And I'd be curious to know with the Williams stuff, if just the sheer nature of having to model all of the switches and stuff like that, if that winds up being an issue also or not. because I don't know if it's opto-sensors or technically opto-sensors that Zen is using. It'll be very much regions. So you know when Farsight was doing up their tables and they had switches on the table, but really they were essentially hitboxes on the table itself. So you can probably carry that forward to Zen and that's how they're doing the same sort of thing. There's a region on the table that detects the balls over it and that's what gives you the score. as an aside, wouldn't it be nice for those older tables to have more switches visible on them, right? So they felt a little bit more interactive. Because the really nice thing about Xen is when you hit a target on Xen on some of the newer builds, the targets just have that little bit of movement to them. It's really nice. It gives you that really nice feeling. But I don't really feel that or see that on a lot of these Star Wars tables that are out there. They're very... Except for the new ones, of course, like Mando and stuff have a bit more of that. and the collectibles does. But the ones that they bring in, there's not that feeling that I get from them. So that will be good. But also, I forgot where I was going with this, but it was something to do with something, something. Something, something quality control. Yeah, I don't. Really, that's what it is. Yeah, I don't understand it. And, you know, considering the fact that we are told that they went and hired a whole bunch of people. I don't think that's happened yet. Maybe it's these newbies that aren't paying close attention. I don't get it. I really don't. I've got a feeling that the hiring that they projected hasn't actually happened yet. That's my gut feel. And I have a feeling that they are really having to divide their time at the moment between preparing Primble FX for release. Now, if this is what's happening, this is a telling point. If this is what's happening with all the tables, like when they do a table, they have to take it and rip out the PX engine, which is there originally, and then put in Unreal. Then that changes, that explains two things. The rollout time and the reason why we're seeing these problems coming in because they're essentially having to pull the guts out of the tables and then recode them, essentially. And we can definitely bet, I mean, we brought this up before, Chris, that Star Wars VR is an experiment in the wild for them. They're cutting their teeth on developing with Unreal in the wild with a release schedule in play. so we can expect to see um hopefully less of these issues coming into pinball effects when it goes goes live later in the year because they've experienced what that looks like and they can look for the things that fail all the time it seems that the virtual switches are the things that are causing the problems because that virtual skill shot switch um was a problem and when this is in uh solo and when you you bank the skill shot and you lock the ball the ball popping out into the out lane the funny thing is that when you look at that the the switch in the out lane generally speaking on pinballs the switch is the thing the ball sits on in the shooter lane um in the older games is to tell the machine that yes there's a ball in the shooter lane and it's waiting to be launched. But when the ball pops out of solo, it actually bypasses that switch altogether and settles into the lane. So that's, I think, potentially, one of the reasons why the skill shot wasn't working very well when solo was released because the game logic that they put into place probably wasn't relying on that switch to be locked on or activated for it to detect there was a ball in play. but that's certainly the effect that it was having like you couldn't launch the ball the plunger wasn't working because it didn't detect a ball in lane so it's weird stuff like that chris and i'm going yep it seems to be the way unreal engine is sensing balls in play isn't quite right because that's the same problem with the ramps right yeah like sensors it's all virtual sensors in these tables and that seems to be the root cause of the problem if i was offering a bug suggestion fix, and I was logging that in a bug, that's what I'd be suggesting in the bug report for this game. Or for this title, actually. Like I said, hopefully they get back to actually putting these in beta testers' hands, like Jared and myself, so that we can at least identify these things. We could have found those bugs in five minutes. And they would have been fixed the next day. Yeah, they would have, because that's the thing. The thing that Xen is still doing well is they're still pumping out fixes pretty fast after the tables are released to resolve those problems. So I haven't seen one yet for droids. I haven't seen one drop yet on droids. So that's taking longer than I would have thought. Maybe they've found some more stuff they're tweaking at the same time, which are welcome. May as well. all right let's uh step away from that talk and let's move into something that uh just popped up on my radar uh today and i thought hey what timing um some of you might remember there's a game called rollers of the realm and uh yeah yeah i love that game it's awesome it's a really really good game i've i have not actually played it myself but i obviously played the uh yoki's island express which different developer but same kind of feel where it's you know you're navigating to different zones and they have pinball elements on them well yeah uh there is going to be a new game called rollers of the realm reunion and it's going to be coming out in 2022 uh the links show link to steam and to epic so it looks like they'll be going to be putting it out on both platforms and i thought hey why don't we look at the trailer Yeah, this is news to me. I haven actually seen this So yeah I keen to actually see what it looks like All right so let me Because I really while you getting it up I really enjoyed Rolls of the Realm before It a really it a strangely good mechanic on the game Let's take a look at this. Here we go. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was a straight rat who'd lost her dog. Will you at least allow me to call you m'lady, m'lady? I am a keeper of charms. an ancient warning of what lies beyond we will live and wait until the realm needs us again a goblin a goblin in the city there you go love it now for now i i can't actually hear the audio from that here the I can definitely see the vision. Yeah. And I've got to say, it looks very true to the original. They've got a lot of the mechanics, the classic mechanics of that game look the same. They've got some better transitions to things like upper playfields, though, which seems to be a new mechanic in the game. The previous game was quite flat from memory, because it's been about a couple of years since I played it. but it felt quite flat and, like, sort of single level. So it's nice to see how they've incorporated some more height into the levels. That's really cool. The characters, when they were sort of rolling out all the characters in the game, it's like, ah, yes, I remember all those characters. And the thing is that each character has a different ability. So that's the thing. It's like an RPG in pinball, which is a game mechanic. So each of those characters will have a subtly different ability. like one of them might introduce an extra ball into play one of them might if you shoot a group of enemies it'll do like a like a cluster attack around them and sort of do a little bit of extra damage so depending you can choose your ball when you launch and essentially select who plays in the play field based based upon your roster of characters that haven't died so it's it's a really fun mechanic for the game and you do have to think about a bit of strategy when you're playing it and i do remember having a great time with it when i first when i first got it i like these kind of things just because when you're playing them you're not thinking about the physics because the physics are you're not they're they're not the important aspect it's can you aim and navigate the ball that yeah and the thing is with the original you really could like it was actually quite shootable as well as being um a decent people there were for a few oddities but the where you need to like shoot and aim but that was just the game mechanic and once you got used to that game mechanic because it's so separated from the world of actual sort of physical pinball um it's a pinball mechanic it's not a pinball game and that's a really important thing to remember here right with these sort of games a little bit like creature from the well as well which i downloaded ages ago from epic store when i had it for free and still haven't played it bad me you should probably do that because you know that and here's the reason why like i'm i'm a waiting for the the point where i move into my new place and i can set up my own wi-fi network it's it's a mesh network um which allows me to use my oculus wire free and i'll be able to connect my computer to my wireless network and play um all the pc games without a cord um reliably because you need a really good quality connection to do that um but also you know using like the air link and all the pc tech to to play these desktop games on a big floating massive screen is going to be the thing that i'm going to be transitioning to now for gameplay because i'm finding i'm not touching my pc at all for playing games i'm touching or only the the quest 2 now when i want to play games okay so i'm not playing any of the old fx3 titles on my computer i'm not doing anything like that on there now what i would like to try and i don't know if i can do this would be how could you make a virtual pinball machine using cabinet mode multi-screen in something like virtual desktop on VR, could you actually lay out a screen, tilt it, have a back-rollout screen like that up there and lay out your screen layout so it looks like you've got a virtual pinball machine? I would love to play around with that and see if I can get that working in a virtual environment. Because it's possible. All that the virtual desktop does, which is an app you can get on on oculus is it lets you lay out screens that are on your pc or views that are on your pc and display them in a virtual space so there would be nothing stopping you actually laying out a screen layout even with like a dmd here or something and then a screen vertically up and down so playing that on like a massive space with like a vr array like that would look really good. It's all about the speed, though, of your network. You've got to have a blazing fast Wi-Fi network and a very good quality one to be able to do that at any quality rate. So I don't have that at the moment, but when I do, boy, I'm going to be trying some things out. All right. Well, I still say you need to build yourself a Pinsim cap, but... I... yeah. I would... I mean, especially if you're really getting into you know only wanting to do it in vr um you're right i think it's uh it's time for me to um pester arcade one up and say all right when when are you guys going to do this um have you seen that they've got this new product out with it's a cabinet but it's got a projector in it this is arcade one up by the way yeah and it's got like a little it's got like a projector in it and it's got like it's essentially like a a gutted cabinet with a back cut out of it and a projector in it so you can project it up onto your screen. They're going for the party mode. It's the same, to me, it's the equivalent of the giant joystick thing. Yeah. It's meant for parties. It's not meant for serious gameplay, you know. Which is fine. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just, it's a thing. It's just another product. It's a thing. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, just take away the projector, give it some buttons on the side, an accelerometer, and Bob's uncle. There's your pins in. So we're going to, speaking of cabinets, okay, so speaking of cabinets and yet we're not really going to give new information, this is all old information, but we told you guys, follow the Arcuda Twitter feed because things are coming. Something's coming. And they vomited up a whole bunch of, tweets. So we're going to go through these because many of you probably haven't checked them out and figured, why not? Let's delve into this because there's some head-scratching moments, there's some interesting moments, there's some future announcement moments, so I say let's dive in, huh? Let's have a look at this. Let's have a look at this. So this all starts with, we love pinball. Let's go back to 2013 where it all started on our video pinball journey. We will share our discussions with the current pinball factories, our negotiations with software publishers, and behind-the-scenes reasons why our products never reach the market. That's our big bugaboo with them. We're going to go back in history first to explain where the projects have come from, and very soon we will launch a completely new way to pinball. We hope you can join us. All right. Here we go. Here we go. Let's see where this goes. We tried a variety of components, and the results were... Oh, excuse me. These threads are not the easiest to get going. No, they're not. Okay, so before we start, we want to mention that we do not want to offend anyone. I'll just spoil your alert. Bridges get burned. Yeah. We have our own standards, and over time, this has caused us issues. We're not saying off-the-shelf products are good or bad. They're all suitable for different applications. When we were looking at our Slingshot pinball, we wanted to create a product that offered the flexibility of console gaming with the ease of installing game software. on full dedicated machines. But it was not going to be as easy as we thought. And this is definitely something that all the communication that we've ever had with Arcuda, they've hit upon this, that they want it so that your grandma could get software up and running on their machine. They don't want it to be a complicated multi-step thing. They want it to be as easy as starting a movie. Exactly. We tried a variety of market components, and the results were not as we expected. Since 2013, the market has improved tremendously, but back when we first started, there were significant delays in gameplay, software issues, and game accuracy was missing. So obviously they're showing some of their wiring and things that they did. Early prototypes. Yeah. It's when we started to design and prototype IO boards and really started working seriously on the virtual pinball machines. So there's just your kind of start aspect of things. Um, continuing on here. We need video pinball game software and approach to Farsight Studios and Zen Studios for game licensing. Unlike homebrew software programs development, we want to create games and a platform where our grandparents could install and play the games. There you go. And there is a quote that looks very much like from digital pinball fans with names redacted. redacted that looks very much like a digital pinball fan screenshot like that like a digital pinball fan screenshot because for a while arcuda was on digital pinball fans uh yeah you know seeking information um let's let's see what do they say here uh sorry disagree visual pinball is hardly just a matter of installing and playing yeah because visual pinball is we've talked about it it's not it is not just a matter of installing and playing no at all um this is exactly the point of Arcuda Pinball, it really is just installing and playing. Pinball arcade software, as well as a number of other software games, is being rewritten for Arcuda, specifically designed for Arcuda Pinball, for owners just to install and play. This is completely opposite of what is in the marketplace right now. Our software is licensed, our hardware is designed from scratch, and our team working on the project around the world are pinball people with a wealth of experience in pinball. You do not need any computer experience, coding, hacking, hours on the Internet forums to work out how to get something to work. it's not a china cabinet with hacked software but a proper arcade product so even back then they were mentioning acknowledging the current state of affairs with the market which really was a bit wild west as far as playing pinball stuff went on a cabinet it wasn't easy um moving on here in their original state the licensed video pinball software in the market at that time was only suitable for basic full machine pinball play have you ever seen this table jared i don't know what I've never seen that table. I've never seen the table. There's a picture displayed off the screen of this Pirates pinball table with all these mobile playfields and stuff like that. And it's floating in the water, and I'm sitting there going... At first glance, I was like, hey, is that Pinball Wicked? And I took a closer look, and I was like, no, that's definitely not Pinball Wicked. No, it's not. Wow. I have no idea where that came from. It looks kind of cool, though. Yeah. For the next 18 months, we negotiated with both... Now, I hate that there's no what year this takes that they're talking about. I would love to know what this is. But anyway, for the next 18 months, we negotiated with both Farsight and Zen Studios. Actually, we negotiated with many software companies. We wanted to create software designed for physical machines and looked forward to working with all studios in creating advanced software. I'm curious their version of negotiating. Is it them trying to get them on the phone? Was it there lots of back and forth? Don't know. We had done our research, developed our range of products, and needed software. almost all companies ignored our requests, even when offering six figures up front licensing deals. This is where I'm going to start with this idea as we follow in. And that is, Arcuda comes off as the really wealthy kid that wants friends and thinks he can just buy them. And doesn't realize you have to have a personality to go along with it. And when we say personality, we mean demonstrated market value. Yeah. That well-recognized market value, which Hakuta doesn't really have and didn't have at the time that they would have been negotiating this either. They would have been largely an unknown name. Yeah. So it would have been splashing these six-figure figures around and these studios like Zen, like Farsight and others probably would be going, who are you? that's literally the reaction they started in 2013 trying to figure out visual you know doing video pinball cabinet and then they said they were negotiating for 18 months that's a year and a half so let's say if they started in 2013 let's say they didn't start doing any of the negotiating until 2014 so now we're uh you know middle of 2015 i think so from a ton of perspective You can only assume that's about it. Right. So think about 2015. Farsight is, what, maybe season four, season five of Pimple Arcade? Yeah, well in the thick of it. Yeah. Zen has Star Wars tables out and Marvel tables out, but we're still very much FX2. yeah that's right because FX3 didn't come out until 2017 so still FX2 generation and let's move into this little bit of fun history again remember Zen got approached by Scientific around 2016 to see if they'd be interested in the Williams Valley license zen in 20 again 2016 zen was in the middle of having walking dead and portal and i forget who else for licenses and they were like we've got to take care of these licenses we can't take on new and so just trying to put this in timeline perspective that you've got zen dealing with that thinking about the possibility of uh knowing that the possibility of williams and bally is out there Farsight is at least halfway through their entire collection that they wind up putting out, so call it 50 tables in. This is the marketplace that Arcuda is trying to launch into the middle of, tap into. It's a very diverse, very large digital pinball marketplace, so you can see why, to them, it would have been pretty attractive. Yeah. yeah they're trying to get in there okay so continuing on we wanted to create we've done our research developed a range of products and needed oh yeah there's the six figures that's right we did the six figure number but again it's like you're coming in and just who are you yeah you know so yeah there we go let's see in May 2015 hey look I think we approached Zen Studios for licensing of their PC and Android software for physical cabinets. Again, I bring up this. They were in negotiation for 18 months. Was it a negotiation or was it just trying to get a response back? It's unclear. We were the first company to discuss Android licensing with Zen, who asked us for all of our business strategy and sales vision. I think that's just obvious for any company. that comes knocking on your door. Well, hey, put together a package. Tell us what you're wanting to do. That's right. Later, Zen asked for our hardware specifications for both our PC and Android systems, which we shared. Again, seems standard to me. In May 2015, Arcuda approached Zen Studios for licensing their PC and Android software for physical cabinets. And there's their physical cabinet. So that is, they're saying 2015. I'm trying to think about, I was looking back, Jared, at our podcast. I found a podcast that was talking about our CUDA in early 2017. I know that wasn't the first time we'd ever talked about them. So I know that we were talking about them as of 2016. And that was with them talking about their actual physical machine, the Ultra. Yeah, the Ultra machine. Yeah, the Ultra. That's right. So, and I tried looking up this. I'm like, is there anybody else that's ever talked about our CUDA than us? did a Google search. Everything is Arcuda-related with some announcement stuff from, I don't know, various rando publications. None of our podcasts popped up related to it. So we're not in their search engine. But clearly, I'm just going to say, we're like the only people that have been tooting this horn at all. Yeah, yeah. All right. We were the first company to discuss licensing with Zen who asked us for a full business strategy and sales vision. Again, of course Zen's going to ask for that. Later, Zen asked for hardware specifications for both our PC and Android systems, which we shared. Here we go. After sharing our sales vision, which included selling Android machines to the market at $600 to $700, with smaller quantity game titles, Zen rejected licensing Android software to Arcuda. during this time we had already created a range of small entry-level machines but need licensing before they could be released to the market right so i do think that again just because you're throwing money or trying to throw money at a company um that company has licensing agreements and their licensors may not be cool with it. We know this for a fact, right? At that point, there was probably not even a notion of Arcade 1-Up coming to the mix. And Zen was probably going, seems interesting, but we have no idea whether our licensors would have any appetite for this at the moment. Right. Well, and you look at what their mock-up is, and it's all Avengers. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I mean, hey, let's just jump in on there, right? Well, you've got to get Disney's approval. Just like that. It's like, ooh, they'll be going, ooh. I also think, I'm sorry, you wanted $600 to $700 for that? Yeah, no. like that's a tabletop i mean sure that's concept art that's very you can see it's all like but that's android six to seven hundred dollars no just no no all right so here we go more um we're trying to create an all-in-one style full-sized pinball machine which would support off-the-shelf pc games homebrew and our cuda version software keep that in mind our cuda version software. The idea shared with Zen was that the customer could purchase their games from Steam and play normally on our cabinet, or with their cooperation Arcuda would work with them to develop an advanced cabinet mode version, different to what they currently had available. Arcuda had already designed a range of cabinets, and the owner could install whatever software they wanted. Zen rejected this and wanted to license only Zen Studios themed video pinball machines, which they would earn a cabinet royalty fee. I think part of the rejection here is Zen didn't want to turn over their software, basically, for Arcuda to then manipulate, which is exactly what Arcuda wound up doing with Pinball Arcade. That's right, they did. So, again, I'm reading these tweets, I'm getting this rejected, you know, you asked the girl out and the girl said no feeling, but it's also kind of like, yeah, but you were putting a ton of stipulations that she was probably like, no, I'm not cool with any of this stuff. You're skeeving me out. You know, and so Zen has done all this hard work making software, and you're coming in saying, oh, well, we want the software, and we're going to then manipulate it and do our own thing to it too. Hmm. We're going to essentially fork your software, make an Akuta Zen FX2. Yes. Yeah. Which I'll have more to comment on when we get to the Farsight angle of this stuff. And why I so might have been smart about this. Let's see. During 2016, Arcuda was heavily advertising new release cabinets and ideas. So, again, this is, I think, when Arcuda had contacted us. Our international launch was to occur at the IAAPA Florida Amusement Trade Event, the biggest arcade event in the world. We informed Zen Studios in May that we'll be attending this event. So I love that. We're going to be there. Visit us. Yep. Before this, however, we showed our pinball machines at PinFest Australia, where we showed over eight different company games found on Steam, Android, on our cabinets. With thanks to the PinFest team and visitors, we can have a good market research and discuss with players a variety of topics that included software and hardware design, market acceptance, and more. Zen Studios wrote to us and said they were not happy for us to display their game in our cabinets unless we paid their cabinet licensing fee and asked us to remove all videos information showing their games on any of our machines. Well, yeah. Mm-hmm. Well, yeah. You're selling your machine using another company's software. Without their permission. Yeah. Explicit permission. Exactly. Yeah. So there's two. Zen offered, and we'll probably cover this later on in the thread, I think about licensing, how they actually license their product commercially. I don't know if it's actually covered in this thread. I think it's a bit light touch. But Zen had a commercial product offering and it was on commercial machines and you pay a licensing fee and they have the right to use it. It's really simple. You enter into contact with Zen and they give you the authority to use. But I bought it on Steam. I should be able to display it. No, because you're selling a product. You're using that. Like your product is dependent on this software to work. So that's different than just buying it on Steam and then using it because if they were buying a shell, like a digital pinball shell saying, hey, this is compatible with Steam and all these other platforms, it's up to you to find that software and configure it. That's a different matter because that's a consumer product then. But when you bake it into the product and make it a selling feature, that's a commercial interest. And that's a different license. Moving on here. Let's get back to the main thread here. In October. Can I say at this point, Chris, I really wish this was a blog post. I really wish that they just made this a blog post and linked to it at certain points. Like putting a little teaser and then putting a link to that point in the blog post so people could follow along. That's how I would have done it. Using Tweet as a blogging platform is not a good decision But at least they doing better this time around than the first time around where it was like nothing was threaded Everything was just one of three, but sometimes they get mixed. It was confusing as hell then. I can follow a thing. In October, we agreed to pay Zem's cabinet fee and to make a dedicated cabinet to show Pinball FX software shortly after we found out that our... So I love this. They're implying that it was, okay, fine, we'll pay, here's the money. But I think it was one of those things where Zen earlier had said, this is what it would cost if we agree to terms. Not when you bring the money, you've automatically agreed to the terms. It's still a two-way street, and I don't think they quite got that. So shortly after we found out that our long-term timber factory partner in China was shipping our same pinball machine to USA for the IAAPA show. IAAPA, that's how they say it. At the time, we believe that they were using a copy of Zen Studio software, rebadging our machine, and selling the product into the USA. This is where there seems to be a little accusation going on. It seems, yeah. It seems, I don't know who they're accusing. Are they accusing whoever made it? The cabinet manufacturer? Or are they accusing Zen? I don't know. Read on. Popcorn is ready, folks. Just before the IAAPA show, Zen Studios informed us that they will not sign the contract for the PC version cabinet contract with Arcuda. at the IAAPA show, we realized that Zen Studio had licensed their non-exclusive software to our competitor who had partnered, so when they say non-exclusive software again, they're just talking about the Steam version of the software it's not or are they saying their non-exclusive commercial version, because I'm pretty sure anyone can go, hey Zen, we'd like to engage you in a corporate agreement with your software and Xen will go, sure, we've got five different manufacturers running this software at the moment on their builds. Are you happy with that? And if they go, yeah, that's fine by us, they'll enter into contract terms and you can get their non-exclusive software to run on their machines. Right. That's what I'm reading into that. Okay. Anonymous with software to our competitor who had partnered with our cabinet factory, both the China Cabinet Factory and Xen Studios were both at IAPA to support this competitor. And here they have... That's the sentence. That last sentence. Yeah. Both the China Cabinet Factory and Zen Studios were both at the IAPUSH to support this competitor. Caution. That's all I can say. The picture that they're showing here is here is the Arcuda cabinets. And, hey, look, there's that fishing game that they said got. That fishing game. And there's also a Game Wizard there as well. So there's those. And then here is that Pinball Effects Champion Edition pinball cabinet that's commercial. It has a coin slot that Zen was having. I don't know for sure. Was this cabinet ever available to the general public, or was it only available for commercial sales? I don't know. And I'll say this, too. I went to find this. It ain't for sale. all the websites related to it are gone um so i don't know what happened with this cabinet me neither but it's certainly it it wasn't something you could just go to a website and say hey i'd love one of those can i have one well i mean they advertised it their facebook page is still up um but none of the links work but they were selling it for eight grand on facebook eight grand is way too much for a pinball machine like that way too much right um later on no wonder they weren't selling it put it that way well i mean vp cabs is also about that much for their full-size cab um which also runs zen software they paid the licensing fee they did yeah you know Because that was the VP cabs went on Shark Tank, got a great deal, licensed in, and they started producing legit cabinets. You know, you could buy them. To this day, you can't buy them anymore. Well, I take that back. You can't buy them right now because of the lumber shortage, but you technically can still buy them because they were like, if you really want one, contact us. Yeah. We'll put you on a waiting list. We'll put you on a waiting list. Literally until we get the wood. Back to the show. During the IAPA show and months afterward, Zen Studios had further discussions about licensing their game to Arcuda for a coin-op market. This included Arcuda funding the coin-op work as a partner. We never heard back from Zen, who proceeded with their own coin-op machines. So this is where it gets confusing. So they're saying that for months there was licensing talk, but then they never heard back from Zen. Either. So I'm confused. yeah there's it's hard to deduce what's going on from this from what's being said by Akuta here there's too many gaps in what they're telling us to be able to put 2 and 2 together here right we can only take what they're saying on face value because that's literally it's not 2 plus 2 they're actually trying to do some algebra but they're not giving us the full equation yeah that's right Zen Studio Games Pinball FX 2 Pinball FX 2 VR, Pinball FX 3, and all Android games work perfectly on all Arcuda cabinet. Purchase the software on Steam, Oculus, Android, etc. and play on Arcuda machines with touch controller and physical pinball controls support. Well, yeah, we would hope that. Basically, you can say that, you just can't advertise that. That's right. You can tell people that it works, you just can't advertise it as a feature. That's right. And I would expect nothing less. I mean, especially now with ad games, if people can make the ad games machine run this stuff, I would hope that you could on a full-size cab. But anyway. Wait, where did this thread go? Oh, I think you might need to scroll up a bit higher. It doesn't seem... No, down. Oh, this is the thing I hate about this. All right, well, I'm just doing it in order. It says, as soon as we announced the Williams Valley titles on our platform, we immediately started receiving inquiries about the Stern tables that Farsight Studios was digitally creating for them. The Stern Pinball Arcade software was still being created, but we voiced our interest and was hoping to include these titles on our machines. Fast forward to early 2018, Farsight Studios writes to us saying, Stern Pinball are open to the idea of licensing their video tables on our machine and would like to buy an Arcuda pinball cabinet before giving their approval. We met Gary Stern at the Asia Amusement Expo in China the following month, where Gary tells us he has no interest in cooperation. This is where I think Farsight is playing shenanigans with Arcuda. Yeah, for sure. Because Farsight is basically looking at, oh, you want to contract us out to make a game. Hey, we have this license. Let's see if we can, you know, and it's almost like... Shop it. I think it's the, instead of asking, we're going to ask for forgiveness, not permission. Oh, very much. And it didn't work. No. This is because Gary was probably like, what the hell? I never again heard that. The Fireside Studios and Stern Pinball released their VR version of Stern Pinball Arcade later in the year. It's again a great opportunity as our machines already support VR as standard. This was great timing as we were just about to show our Ultra at Pinfest Australia, a show that both Gary Stern and our CEO were attending and guest speakers. We reached out to Stern Pinball and asked whether there was any possibility to show the Stern VR software at the event. Even if he was not interested to license the tables to us, we wanted to promote the new VR software at the Pinball event and explain that customers would buy the software from Oculus, etc. Stern wrote to us and asked us not to show their new VR software release on our machine. So exactly what... That's a recurring theme, right? Yes, exactly what Zen had done with you guys, because it's the same thing. Yep, that's right. Don't show our stuff in our cabinets. Yeah, you're using it to advertise your cabinet. Look at that cabinet there, Chris, before you scroll up. The one with the lady playing the VR. That's a Masters of Time. It is a Masters of Time. Doctor Who cabinet theme. Well, if you look at this picture right here. No, hold on. Look at this picture here. You can see the folks. So there's Doctor Who, Rescue 911, Haunted House. Boy, it looks a lot like the ugly of the AtGames. I was going to say, you can see where AtGames got their design. design chops from. Uh-huh. Oh, God. Which makes me also wonder how much of this is Farsight. Yeah. Just saying. Stern Pimble Arcade Games, Steam, Oculus, and all Android games, work perfectly on all our Cuda cabinet. Purchase the software on Steam, Oculus, Android, etc. These are little sales, for the record, these are little sales pitches they interjecting into this tweet tornado. It's not even a tweet stream. Okay. Time Shock is an... This is another ad. Time Shock is an advanced video pinball table with a rich history. Working with Barnstorm, we will make further advancements which include both home model and coin-op models. Time Shock Arcade Edition works perfectly on all Arcuda pinballs and will be included for free for pre-orders. Here's my question. why are they essentially showing a VP Cab's Vertigo machine that is what it is isn't it no this is this is Arcuda's machine yeah this is their that's the one they're going to be that's when they announced like a while back well this is an earlier version of it I just find it interesting that obviously they've never bothered to throw VP Cab's under the bus yeah they've only ever bothered to throw their China manufacturers yes I wonder what VP Kazevs has to say about any of this anyway yeah and working with Barnstorm does Barnstorm even exist? I don't think so and also just word to the wise Time Shock is no longer really an advanced pinball table anymore it's a bit dead so I wouldn't really be touting this is revolutionary because it's actually not anymore in the marketplace Arcuda Pinball is a huge project for Highway Group. It is bigger than we have announced previously, and we will explain why setbacks have made us more determined to release the full potential of Arcuda Pinball machines, hardware, and software. It all started at the IAPA in 2016, where they're saying they had 2,217 full-size Arcuda Pinball machines pre-ordered in five months. That's nice. That's nice. This is the one that I'm kind of like, what? During our negotiations with software companies in 2015, See, they do this flashback thing. It's like, get your timelines correct, please. Oh, yeah, timelines. We had forecast that our pinball sales would be approximately $25 million in the first year of release. $25 million? Yes. Okay. At launch during IAPA 2016, we were well underway to achieve these sales. Well, remember, you're essentially charging $10,000 per table eventually because they were going to do $9,000. 2,000. So 9,000 times 22,000 equals 19,953. So that's where they're getting their projected figure from. I have no idea why they're... Oh, because they were featured on an article. A TV show, yeah. So we're going to skip that. Here we go. Yeah, skip. Okay, as we finish our road trip and move to our new developments, we will share our old work with Farsight Studios. Here comes the bus. It's about to back over you. Oh, yeah, big time. Arcuda paid Farsight Studios to modify and develop custom software for Arcuda, which would allow their mobile and PC games to work on physical arcade and pinball machines. This project is called Arcuda Pinball Arcade. The first phase was to make the software work on our cabinets. This included support three monitors for PC, support two monitors for Android pinball model, support touchscreen. Arcuda's big on the touchscreen, by the way. new key mapping for PC and Android pinball play field ball macaques to be fluent with no missing frames, gameplay lag or play errors there's your issue right there because it's Farsight that lost points Farsight agreed to all except for two monitors support on Android as they suggested they could finish the above development work within four weeks four weeks So here's some behind-the-scenes stuff that's not going to be popping up on this. Let's just say that Farsight way overpromised and instead decided to use Arcuda's dime to pay for their R&D to make this project happen. So it's the old adage of if somebody says, if you're an actor, and they go, well, this job requires you to know how to ride a horse. Do you know how to ride a horse? you go yeah sure and then the very next day you go take horse riding lessons um yeah exactly um but at iapa the software was not running smoothly and we only showed limited functionality if you visit our booth we are really sorry you could not display the cabinets games to their full potential however your excitement and vision in the project enable us to collect thousands of cabinet orders and plan for the next phase of our product release so yeah arcuda's banking on the software working to sell their cabinet, Farsight is banking on Rakuta, bankrolling them to pay for the R&D. Over the next period, we found that the software needed significant time and investment. Whilst we had sent Farsight, remember, Farsight had no cabinet mode. None. None. No. It had been hacked, and somebody had made a mod, but Farsight itself did not have cabinet mode available. and if i when i visited their studio and i saw behind the scenes of how their tables basically they would take a photo of a playfield and then overlay graphics on top of that playfield but it wasn't always one-to-one and so sometimes like screw posts would be well off of where the image screw post was. Oh, yeah. I remember seeing screw... Because they had to make geometry work. But what I'm saying is they made it visually work for looking in landscape. At a certain angle. Yeah. But as soon as you go direct overhead, those things are going to become painfully obvious. Things start to break. Yeah. It was very much perspective-driven design, the way they laid out their tables, for sure. Yeah. So, over the next period, we found the software Farsighted suggested they could not finish the phase one work without a physical cabinet. After the problems with our first timber factory, we had negotiated with American Pinball to handle the mass production of cabinets, and our prototype cabinet was sent to American Pinball immediately after IAPA show. This cabinet was later shipped to Farsight Studios. I played on that exact cabinet. It was a freaking beast. It was made out of steel, the entire thing. It was juggernaut, right? It wasn't wood cabinet. it was metal. Like you get with a traditional pinball machine. It was metal. This thing, you could drop off the top of a roof and it would survive the fall. It made godly solid-state machines look like flimsy pieces of balsa wood. And we know what tanks those things are. I remember you describing it to me. Yeah. They are tanks. They're heavy as hell. Yeah. I know. I've been dragging one around. There were significant delays in the Arcuda Pinball Arcade software and during the second quarter of 2017 we decided to stop accepting orders. we needed to concentrate on having the software finished, which would also include our Phase 2 work. Which included? Event triggers, functioning mapping, lighting circuits, head tracking, Kinect support, variable nudge, plunger tuning, Arcuda I.O. boards, but we needed to get the first phase solved. Yeah, we just need to get the thing actually working. So not only were they waiting for Firesight to just get the cabinet mode working, they were also trying to add in this Kinect support head tracking, which, I gotta say, was pretty damn cool. It was awesome. I saw a video of it, and I'm sure the video did not even show how awesome it was in real life. Until I played VR, this was mind-blowing on certain tables. It made certain tables just, like, I keep on bringing up Black Hole with a huge improvement with this head tracking going on. Yeah. 380 plus hours were billed by Farsight Studios on Black Hole. that's a lot of hours, on backglass DMD work. This included finding and creating better artwork, enabling DMD and backglass to function, and introducing animated backglasses. Again, Farsight had never bothered with the backglass. No, they were literally static pictures, some of which included keys in the images, backbox keys in the images. Dangling there. Yes, just look up Skirt Stiff, folks. You'll see the keys dangling. Examples of animated backglasses found in Arcuda Pinball Arcade It includes Cyclone, Doctor Who, Lights, Camera, Action, and Scared Stiff. So obviously they went from this, where there's the speaker grill and whatever, and the DMD being small, to full back glass with larger display. Presented in the DMD region. I'm going to just point out this stuff is, I believe, oh well, we wouldn't have seen this, but what they did for Gottlieb, because these also include Gottlieb tables, is, I believe, what you're seeing in the AtGames collection. Yes, that's right. Because as far as Farsight's concerned, yeah, we made these. Regardless of if we made it on Arcuta's dime, we made them. New and modified camera angles were needed for gameplay on real machines. These adjustments were made on both the Android and PC versions of Arcuta Pinball. So these are just images. Screenshots showing you the different perspectives. Yeah. Connect head tracking software was developed, and over time, software errors solved. Plug and play. This software edition was released for free to all Arcuda Pinball Arcade customers. Which, again, they don't have any machines out there, so I don't know how that worked. Arcuda signed a multi-year exclusive contract with Farsight Studios, including game licenses. The time was to be used to develop the most advanced hardware software possible, as well as develop new markets around the world. And here's your 76 titles that we're going to be including. It's basically everything except for the Stern titles. So again, Stern very much was like, no, we are not part of this, despite anything Farsight might have been saying. Yes. um we made the decision to continue funding the project so that we could launch our cuda oh here's where we're again all out of things okay after the loss of licensing farsight studio suggested that we have new ip together with the possibility of stern pinball releasing licensing to our cuda for the new focus in coin operated products i swear it's lucy holding the football and charlie brown trying to kick it um yeah we put a strong focus on promoting this information to our corporate partners and worked hard to finish various IP ready for the coin operated marketplace. This included a new range of cabinets and software. More about this soon. We concentrated our development on Doctor Who Masters of Time, which we showcased during the Australasian gaming show in 2018 at Darling Harbor, Sydney. Unfortunately, the software was not stable. Ultimately, we did not sign a new kind of contract with Farsight Studios. We made the decision to continue funding the project so that we could launch our Cuda Pinball Arcade. And even after the product was launched, we continued to pay Farsight Studios to repair errors so that we had the most stable product possible. Arcuda released this... Again, I feel bad for Arcuda because I feel like Farsight was just taking them for a ride. They totally were. Farsight promised... Again, remember, Farsight promised working software four weeks. We're now a year and change into the venture and Arcuda is still having to pay... to... Like, it's not warranty work that they're getting here from Farsight. No. This is cash money that they're having to throw Farsight's way to fix the crappy product. Arcuda released the PC Steam version as well as the standalone PC version that can be used on any video PC pinball. The Arcuda version was never released to the public and only will ship with dedicated cabinets. Yeah. Well, yeah, it was never released to the public because it was made for their cabinets. That's right. There we go. Over 1,400 hours of development time was paid for our IP work. Nearly two years later, we released stable software, by which time new companies had entered the market. We are concerned that our IP is now being used on competitor products. What do you think that means? At games. What? Yes. On competitor products. Because again, all of that work that Farsight had never put, it's it's our cuda was paying for it and yeah it was their contract they are the ones that and then there's another ad skip past that okay skipping past that um okay here we go we're almost at the end folks uh why share all of our problems if we have been following our history roadmap and wondering why we displayed a warts and all approach over these last currently weeks it's because we wanted to share with you what has shaped the current marketplace we have shared a lot of our development work behind the scenes and had bad results pinball is not easy many people work on an exclusive basis we want to change this and have a truly inclusive community from problems come solutions it's time for a new way to look at pinball which is oh here's their just pinballs in our blood we've been there for a while is what they're saying and here it is our cue to pinball is more than video pinball machines. It is an inclusive system where we invite all to join us, whether you're a designer, manufacturer, distributor, or just pinballer. We are looking to create an open community where people can get their pinball ideas to market. And look at this branching tree that they've got. Look at all these opportunities for people to... It looks like a factor diagram. It looks like a fidget spinner to me. It does a fidget, yeah. But it's obviously saying, Hey, come to us. We'll be your hub. We'll be your thing. We've got so many things that they're not even defined yet. Yeah. But come along anyhow. So here we have coin-operated. We have pinball machines. We have Pinball Maker. Interesting. Pinball Apps. So I'm going to say Pinball Apps, I'm assuming, is Android-based. Pinball Maker, I believe, is think of it as Visual Pinball 10 or future pinball, but using Arcuda software. And then there's Pinball Forest. pinball forest software they have the Arcuda pinball arcade and they have time shock that's it for their software that is the software and I hate to say it but software is what is going to move your product yep and those two products are not compelling enough to move right Arcuda pinball's new suite of modules allows you to design create and sell your digital pinball tables and mechanical pinball machines to the world marketplace pinball manufacturing is not easy we are looking to change this So it almost seems like they're trying to do, hey, do you want to actually build a pinball machine? Come to us. Yeah, you're a homebrew dude. We've got an ecosystem for you. Use our pinball apps product with Pinball Forest and our Pinball Maker thing So Pinball Maker to me sounds like that the service that will build your machine you know what i think you right yeah that build the physical machine pinball forest is probably the design development design your pinball you know yeah all uh vpx um and pinball apps distribution distribution yeah yeah that's what it seems like Yeah. Yep. Make your own video pinball tables using Pinball Forest. Yeah, there we go. Our new creation software. This software is currently in development and will be offered free to the community. Pinball Forest, you're the designer. Make your dreams a reality. So, yeah, it's free to the community with the caveat of whatever you create can be used license-free on our cabinet, I'm sure. Probably. Nothing is free, folks. If the product is free, you are the product. Yes. That is the rule. And there you go. That is the stream. That is the stream. Quite the, I don't know. I'm having a hard time knowing what to make of this because I get what they're trying to do, which is they're trying to say, hey, we've been around a while. We've just had some bad luck. We have a pedigree. We've got a pedigree that you're just not aware of. So let us tell you our pedigree, and now with that pedigree in your minds, let's now tell you about this new announcement that we've got and why you should care about it, basically. If you're wondering how they're still able to sell Arkuda Pinball Arcade, they purchased... They bought a boatload of them. They already bought them, and now they'll distribute them until they're gone. So, yeah, they bought the content off the shelf. They still have the things from that, so they can still legally sell it. um yep because it is a box product essentially yes like you saw it in the thing it's like a usb stick and another interface device it's like it's a hardware-based product it's a dongle basically yeah um but it's not like zen's going to go but not after that they're not going to get zen's product but there's no way that but they are still saying obviously look you can still play zen's product on here it's just not going to be using any of the arkuda software um i almost think of this as probably they're making a front end you know for for yeah for bring all your pinball games here here's our front end uh whether zen is going to be happy about that or not is a whole nother story so it might be one of those things where, well, we can't import Zen into the front end, but you can still load up Zen on our machine. You know? Very much like AtGames. Yeah. Like, you know, you can do that on AtGames as well. The idea of the Kinect head tracking software, well, that's long gone and dead because the Kinect cameras are impossible. You can't buy them anymore. You can't find them. They're not in retail stores. You have to buy them secondhand. And, like, basing a business model around that a product that's not available anymore is not really something you can do. And it was a whole software thing. It was. It's only compatible with the Farsight Cut of their Pimble Arcade cabinet mode software that they got. So not really a thing. And I'll say this. If you bought the Ultra Cab, Arcuda doesn't come with the Kinect camera. You've got to go and buy one. You've still got to find it yourself. Yeah, go have a look on eBay and Craigslist because, yeah, good luck trying to find one. Because the thing is that those cameras are used for more than just Xbox. There's like an open network available with them, which is how Arcuda were able to tap into it. It's got an API and a software developer kit. So there's plenty of people using that software and that hardware for other applications. So they're not easy to get a hold of. You know what my opinion is about this whole thing? Like the Pinball Forest, the Pinball apps, the pinball maker this is arcuda learning from hard lessons they're going okay we can't rely on any third-party manufacturer of pinball software to actually not screw us over allegedly um so what we're going to do is we're just going to make our own software on our own products and platforms based on people from the community making these titles and that's going to be the software for our machines so that seems to be the value proposition yeah now if i i've had a little bit of experience with product management i'm not seeing a very strong value proposition for a Why would I care about essentially some developer, a pinball table developer, and let's assume for a moment that somehow they're going to be able to recruit really good pinball designers from VPX in to use this software to start building a table catalog for them, right? Because that's really the only way that this is going to succeed if this is what's feeding their cabinet, right? They've got to have a line of really good developers that know how to work around virtual pinball to create some really good titles, similar to what Magic Pixel are doing with Taito, right? Yeah. Someone of that pedigree to actually make tables that people actually want to play. But you've got to also remember, AtGames already has said, hey, guys, create your own tables, submit it to us, we'll cut you in on the profits of people that buy the thing. So now you're competing with that. They're literally doing the same thing. They've already tapped into the VPX market at games. They're already one step ahead here by what it looks like. Yeah, because those people already know how to operate the program. You're coming in saying, hey, use our program. It's brand new software. Yeah. Brand new software that you now have to learn to be able to contribute to our ecosystem. Which maybe is easy software. I mean, that would be wonderful if it is. who knows what the physics on it are like um who knows what the you know choices of you know customization are um because if you're going for that easy to use model then that means you're going to severely limit the options because you want to make it fun look at mario maker they purposely make it easy to build the levels and then slowly they add in more complicated things and then the community figured out ways of tweaking things to make it do things that it wasn't initially necessarily designed for you know and whatever but it it's it's ramping up the learn but you gotta start off easy and yeah uh you know hey if they've got a killer app i know people have been asking for build your own pinball software for ages because yes vpx is it ain't easy you got a script yeah you gotta know how to script you know that thing It's a visual basic still, isn't it? Yeah. I think. Yeah. And you've got to do it on Windows. There's no choice. You have to do it on Windows. So very much vendor locked as far as the operating system is concerned. Whereas you look at other ones, like if you're looking for a similar product that's kind of already out there and established, what about P3? Yeah, multi-morphics. The multimorphic platform allows you to do exactly what Arcuda is proposing here already. There's, you know, like, for example, Nicholas Baldridge from the Bingo Pinball podcast. He's made up his own P3 multimorphic game, designed himself. It's now available as a module for P3. You buy the pinball machine, you buy the module, you're playing it. It is quite literally plug and play. so they're kind of already doing what i do is kind of doing here i do think they're onto something with the idea of um going from designing it digitally to then saying you know what i want this as a real machine and yeah them having that wing available to them that yes we can manufacture Again, Arcuda is sister companies with Highway Pinball. Highway Pinball obviously did the Thunderbirds machine. Yeah. So they can actually build a physical machine. That's not an issue. They have that availability. So you trying to build your own physical machine would be a nightmare. Actually, I'll need to correct you there. highway amusements is not affiliated with highway pinball as in um andrew highway or whatever his name is right they're two separate it's spelt differently it's it's they're two companies they were distributors for thunderbird in australia so they did distribute the pinball here but they weren't they're not an affiliated company oh okay yep okay but i mean i just know that they have they do have the ability to manufacture machines and units um so since they already have and parts so since they already have that ability it would save you the the hassle of machining and coming up that's the hardest part but you know it's one thing to say yes we'll build your pinball machine but do you like do you know what goes into doing that there's wiring diagrams there's looms there's like the reason why you produce a pinball machine is you're going to produce 200 or 2000 of them because you have to make all the essentially the engineering equipment for it like wiring looms and and loom charts and all this stuff that's not really designed for single use no no no i don't i don't think that this is meant for somebody just going well i want to build my one machine no i don't think that's what it is at all i think it's somebody that says, hey, I want to produce this and I want to sell it 100, 200 units. I want to be a boutique pinball manufacturer, but I don't want to go ahead of a factory. Well, if that's the argument, then that's different. So people could actually use this as a way. They could hire their own designers, basically, use the software, and basically treat the pinball forest product as their go-to-market strategy. And you could do it like what people have said that what they'd hoped Stern would do when they were with Pinball Arcade, which is, hey, put out a digital version, let a massive amount of people play test it, do your code updates on that, and then go to physical machine. And then, yeah, cut it. Because, you know, the way that pinball design used to work is you make a whitewood and then you literally make 20 different iterations of that whitewood to get the shot layouts right. Yeah. Now you can do that basically and get it 90% of the way there in things like VPX and then cut a whitewood and then do some one or two iterations on a whitewood to get it shooting right. Yeah. So that cost to market is now dramatically reduced for pinball manufacturers who need to go down that path. But here's where Arcuda really needs to work on the messaging because I don't know who they're talking to. Yeah. We're guessing. No. We're guessing at who they're talking to. but I don't know who they're talking to. Are they talking to the basic consumer? Are they talking to the budding pinball hobbyist? Are they talking to people that just like creating tables? Or are they talking about, like you said, the boutique pinball manufacturer? Who are you talking to with this? Because if you can't get that messaging out, all this is for naught. So hopefully we'll hear more about that from them. This might come across a little bit bitchy, but based on the interaction in their tweets, it's nobody at the moment. Yeah. Nobody except us. Yeah, there literally has not been any comments on any of these tweets. No comments, not even likes on these things. Like, you look at each of the things, and there's so few likes or any interaction on these things. I don't know if anyone even cares. So to make them care, Arcuda market the shit out of this because at the moment it's not even a thing that people care about a harsh reality it really is I'm not holding punches here no one cares at the moment so you're going to have to do a lot of work to make them care a lot of work at the moment maybe this will help again it's been COVID and everything but showing up at a show and having it up on a pedestal, kind of like Arcade 1-Up did, boy, that generated a lot of excitement, didn't it? That got them sales. Even though it was totally hacked together, box with a PC inside it, and you couldn't play it because it was so fragile, nothing would work. It was rolling demo only. But that's how you release a product. You iterate in the wild, in the public with it, and you get the thing out there. like you know for launch this is what i would expect from this pinball forest thing i would expect a game built atop the platform to be available to play on an arcuda cabinet from the outset yeah if you don't have that don't launch until you do like because this this will demonstrate the technology you need to have a case study about how long it took to build that table you need to tell people how many people are involved and the basic layout of your business to actually be able to do that like what do you need to actually interact with our system do you need a designer do you need a rules designer like what do you need to actually play in our forest but right now they're kind of taking the we built it will you come approach yeah and no one's coming because there's no I'm sure that there will be more information released about this Yes. Like, there's not really a website at the moment I can see about this. So this is a teaser, but it better be a pretty solid delivery when the time comes, because unless it is, no one's buying it. And on that teaser front, again, we have been talking about our CUDA since at least 2016. And where are the cabinets? We've yet to see a product. There are none. Except for the ones that were shopped around, the prototypes at Pinfest. Yeah. That was the only opportunity that I would have had to see one. The only time I have played Arcuda product was when I went up to Farsight Studios, played on that pinball cabinet that was shipped to Farsight, using that software that they were currently working on, which was the Arcuda Pinball Arcade. It still had some issues, but they were very close. that's the only touch I've had so you are probably among one of two or three hundred people in the world who have ever touched this thing and actually interacted with it I'm also including the people I'm also including the people down at Pinfest who got their hands on it and probably the people at IAPA as well who got their hands maybe IAPA is a little bit more but we're talking sub even if we're being generous, sub 1,000. Well, and I'm talking about using the Kinect head tracking software version too. Oh, that one, yeah. That's probably even less. So, from a market exposure perspective, not even a blip. That's what I'm saying. So if we've been talking about them for five years, what's around? um so on if we're going to apply a positive thing about this it seems that they've learned their lesson they know that they can't rely on third-party software vendors to be reliable enough to actually do what they want yeah so if this solves that problem and they're going into more of a hey code it test it build it using pinball forest and our ecosystem of products with our 20-25 years plus experience in building arcade machines, which that is a known fact. They actually do, like their other department, they're well-respected in the industry. So that aspect is true. And they've got the clout to be able to manufacture machines. But this other side of it, like the ecosystem side, that's the bit that's a little bit dubious and doesn't have a lot of market credibility at the moment. So they can build that up and get it to the point where people are taking notice. And they're competing against P3. This is the thing. Like, P3 already has this market. You can go and do this. So that's a big established company at this stage. So from a market perspective, I don't know. So they need to get a designer that's interested in working with them to learn the program. that designer then needs to come on shows like ours and talk about the ease of use and what can be made with it. That designer's table needs to be then manufactured as a real pinball machine so we can see what the turnaround on that is and what a finished machine looks like. And that really is your call to market right there. That is, if you're going to take this seriously, that's what you are going to need to do to make people go, wow, this ecosystem is actually a thing. Let's go and try this out and get more people building pinball machines. I mean, that's where I'd almost say, you know, go to Jack Danger, who built his own machine. He did a whole series, you know, a video about that building. Yeah, get him to produce it through the system. Go to him and say, here, you've done already a real machine, how that went. Now try building the exact same thing using our software and let us do the finished product. And in the end, you can even compare. And stream it. He would be the obvious partner to choose. Very obvious. He, very, very obvious partner. Pretty much a match made in heaven, really. So, Akuta, there you go. There's a bit of free advice for you. go and have a talk to him about his product because his pinball machine that he made himself looks interesting um the thing is though it may not be a real reflection of the platform because he's already designed it and prototyped it and got to whitewood phase so he already knows but i'm talking iterations but it would show how quickly you could design it in the software and then not having to source your own parts. And obviously he had Stern guys helping him source parts. So not having to source your own parts and seeing what transpires when you let somebody else manufacture your machine. Yeah. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see who they're going to partner with for the pinball maker element of it. I mean, it makes sense for them to actually partner with HomePin here, which is the company you're probably thinking of. That is, yeah, that's what I was thinking of. I mean, HomePin are essentially set up for exactly this sort of work. They have a factory. They control their parts inventory down to the manufacturing of those parts, so they're not beholden to Stern or any of those manufacturers for parts, which a lot of people do get problems with when they're trying to start their own business. So, you know, HomePin would be a good physical manufacturing partner to partner with here. So, I mean, that side of things, before it's even announced, I think that's probably where they're going with for their manufacturing partner. So that sounds like it's all sewed up. It's just those first two phases, designing in Pinball Forest, putting it up as a downloadable product because Pinball Apps sounds like it's a, it's for the digital side of things so you basically develop it in pinball forest you test it as a pinball app on an akuta pinball machine and then if you want to take it that one step further and do a short production run of these machines for people's homes you then go and take it into um pinball builder and there's your physical pinball machine that seems to be the workflow based on what i see here well we'll stay tuned folks we'll we'll see what we can discover um we do yeah we'll see if we can we have our contacts in arkuta we'll um you know reach out to them reach out and see what they have to say uh see if we can find any more information about what direction they're heading towards um i mean obviously in the past they've been cagey because they've been for obvious reasons they didn't want that information out but now it seems like they're letting their own information out so maybe they'll be willing to share a little bit more further details um and where we can go with that but that uh wow that was a big show that was a little meatier than uh i think we expected we we we our eyes were bigger than our stomachs but uh as is often the case when we do one of these sort of shows yes um so anyway uh hopefully you guys found this interesting. I know this is completely different than what we're usually talking about, but it's all digital pinball and this is kind of new territory to try and cover. Again, we'll keep you up to date as we have all these years about Arcuda, whenever there's anything going on. It would just be nice to actually have something for us to get our hands on to comment about. Something that you can get your hands on too. Well, yeah, given they're in Australia. I've got more chance of getting an Hakuta product shipped to me than anything from Arcade 1. Because I mean, software-wise again, it's like it was just Pinball Arcade souped up a little bit. So it's not like... That's not that exciting, really. No. But this new venture could be interesting. It really could be, if they do it right. They've got to do it right, though. boy. So if you're, if there you go, if you are, uh, somebody who really wants to make your own pinball game, you might just have the opportunity to do it. Yeah. Exactly. That's pretty cool. That is. All right, folks. Well, that's going to, uh, wrap it up for us. And, uh, we'll just have to see what unfolds. We'll see what, uh, pops up in pinball news. Obviously, um, we're gonna have to a little wait a little while. to see what Zen has cooking. And hopefully they'll solve the droids, bugs that exist. But I do got to say, though, the VR experience is still, again, it's pretty damn cool if you're on the fan. It's very good. I don't want to play pinball in any other way, unfortunately. It's VR or nothing for me at the moment. Jared has drunk the Kool-Aid completely. I'm well and truly into it. Even with its inherent problems that it's got at the moment, like you know clarity and stuff I haven't started FX3 for months I really haven't sounds like a ringing endorsement to me alright well until then and until next time when we go and talk about Jared's favorite items du jour the stuff and things we'll just have to see you next time bye bye yeah bye bye _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: b70a1eee-9f80-45f0-98c8-1a54f81384b9*