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Episode 194 - You're a Wizard, Gollum

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 31m·held·May 29, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Jersey Jack Harry Potter confirmed; speculation on design, pricing, timeline, and strategy.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss the leaked confirmation of Jersey Jack Pinball securing the Harry Potter license from Joe Kamikow. They speculate on game design, pricing ($12,000+), release timing (likely late 2024 or 2025), designer assignment (likely Eric Menier), art packages, and whether JJP will release a Standard edition. They debate the 'no-fail license' concept and whether inexperienced designer Mark Seiden should be trusted with such a high-profile title.

Key Claims

  • Jersey Jack Pinball has secured the Harry Potter license

    high confidence · Joe Kamikow posted about it; sources confirm valid and secured despite initial hacking speculation

  • Harry Potter pricing will likely be at least $1,000 more than current JJP LE pricing ($12,000+)

    medium confidence · Dennis speculates based on license magnitude and current pricing ($12k LE, $15k CE)

  • Harry Potter will likely release late 2024 or 2025, not in 2024

    medium confidence · Dennis doubts enough design work has been completed; Tony expects late in the year

  • Jersey Jack will not release a Standard edition for Harry Potter

    medium confidence · Dennis cites three reasons: complication of three SKUs, Standards were worst sellers, and JJP's premium positioning eliminates operator market

  • Eric Menier is the most likely designer for Harry Potter

    medium confidence · Dennis argues Menier (Godfather, Pirates, Guns N' Roses) is the obvious choice; Tony disagrees, suggesting Mark Seiden could handle it as a 'no-fail license'

  • Toy Story 4 was not originally planned; Disney dictated the movie version post-license acquisition

    high confidence · Dennis's sources indicate JJP was slow, had to re-up license, and Disney demanded Toy Story 4 as cross-promotion; JJP employees later contradicted Jack Winery's claim it was voluntary

  • JJP turned around Godfather quickly after Toy Story 4, less than one calendar year

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony cite this as evidence JJP has improved production speed

  • Joe Kamikow has worked on Harry Potter licensing deals (non-pinball) and Kapow collaborations with Stern

    high confidence · Dennis establishes Kamikow's credibility as a licensing expert

Notable Quotes

  • “This is Jersey Jack, so it's going to be Harry Potter 6. That's the one they'll release.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Humorous reference to JJP's historical delays and re-licensing issues with Toy Story

  • “It's Star Wars. I could sell a box of lights as long as it said Star Wars on it and make money.”

    Dennis (quoting Gary Stern) @ N/A — Illustrates the power of 'no-fail' licenses to drive sales regardless of gameplay quality

  • “I'm done buying new inbox pinballs, but for [license list], and maybe the laundry list is two games and maybe it's 12.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Demonstrates collector psychology around licensing-driven purchases despite claiming to be done collecting

  • “Start saving your money because I can't imagine you're going to find it under $12,000 new.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Pricing floor prediction for Harry Potter LE edition

  • “I don't think, no matter how much I like Steve Ritchie's games, I don't think Steve could do this game.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Argues against Steve Ritchie (recent JJP hire from Stern) as Harry Potter designer

  • “There's so many movies that I can see them breaking the art package up into just one overall art package and then like an art package that is just like the Hogwarts people and an art package that is just like the bad guys.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Speculates on potential art packages (likely 2-3 options within same tier rather than edition-specific)

  • “I think it could have done what Guns N' Roses did. I think it has nothing to do with the game. It was the theme that sunk that.”

    Tony @ N/A — Attributes Toy Story 4 underperformance to theme/licensing choice rather than game design

  • “If Jersey Jack was able to come in and say, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, JK, we don't even target operators. We don't have like a bar ready version... we start at $12,000. What bar buys this game?”

Entities

Jersey Jack PinballcompanyJoe KamikowpersonDennispersonTonypersonEric MenierpersonMark SeidenpersonSteve RitchiepersonJack WinerypersonGary Sternperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack production speed improving; Godfather released less than one calendar year after Toy Story 4, suggesting capacity recovery

    medium · Tony: 'there was a pretty quick turnaround from Toy Story 4... It was less than a year... that's the key thing is really counting from when the last game was dropped'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Debate within pinball community about whether experienced designer (Menier) or newer designer (Seiden) should handle Harry Potter; tension between proven track record and 'no-fail license' argument

    medium · Tony argues Seiden could work; Dennis and 'everyone else' argues for Menier: 'everyone's like, you've got to trust Eric. You've got to trust Eric'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: No-fail licenses (Star Wars, Harry Potter) enable sales regardless of gameplay quality; collector psychology drives purchases based on theme alone

    high · Dennis: 'Gary Stern... very openly said, it's Star Wars. I could sell a box of lights... It's the same thing with Harry Potter. There is not going to be any real standard'

  • ?

    leak_detection: Joe Kamikow leaked/announced Harry Potter at Jersey Jack via social media; initial speculation about being hacked, later confirmed as valid leak

    high · Dennis: 'Joe Kamikow has done a lot of the Kapow collaborations with Stern... And so he's worked on a number of licensing deals... he then posted later saying he wasn't granted. Maybe he was still hacked. But my sources... are this is valid. It is secured. It is in the hands of Jersey Jack Pinball.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: JK Rowling reportedly distrusts pinball and bar scene; Jersey Jack may have used premium-only positioning ($12k+) as pitch to overcome licensing hesitation

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.275

0:00
welcome to the eclectic gamers podcast today is sunday may 28th this is episode 194 i'm tony i'm dennis and oh we've got a lot of video games today we do have pinball there's some yeah we have a little bit uh no new patreon members as a reminder uh you can join us eclectic gamers patreon.com slash eclectic gamers podcast and it's as low as a dollar a month and i already have the baby's first for june ready to go yeah it's going to be about one of the new like major five releases that we've recently seen i probably will do those for i if i get motivate myself i still have some older babies first that i did back before we started everything yeah yeah i mean i've shared a few of them from time to time with folks so over the year i've been doing them for years but this motivates me to do new and they're fun to do but then i end up playing around in the photo editor forever yeah it's like i just wasted an hour uh giving a duck the best sunglasses i think he could wear sort of thing uh so anyway that so that's that uh for in terms of patreon plugs um what's been going on over the last couple weeks tony um not a whole lot uh it's that time of year where vacations are starting so there's lots of stuff going on uh getting ready for a couple big projects at work um i did record a video for the youtube yes you were telling me about this explain to the listeners because you've been of two minds about releasing i have and i haven't i still haven't decided so i recorded a video uh that was me starting a playthrough from the newest version of the rule the wave series rule the waves 3 which is the first one that's easily available it's available on steam previously all of the other versions of rule the waves were kind of like you know take your 30 bucks and hand it to jimmy and jimmy will take it and give it to a guy and then they'll get you they'll they'll email you the the download instructions to it type thing okay but uh so i started a playthrough and i recorded the whole thing and i and and and and talked about it and as i went through and edited and watched it i realized you know as much fun as this game is to play it's really boring to watch because it's basically spreadsheets it's like oh here's my fleet that because i started i started as the italians because i like to start as the italians and it's like okay here's here's my starting fleet okay all these ships are crap so first thing i'm going to do is design some new ships and start building them so i designed some new ships and i started building them and i started adjusting you know my budget and my research budget and playing all these games and starting some spying and doing this and that. The whole thing, it sounds really interesting when I say it that way. It does. This sounds like a game I would enjoy. And then when you actually play it, it's super interesting and fun. And then when you watch somebody else playing it, it's like sitting over somebody's shoulder and watching them play Excel.

Dennis @ N/A — Theorizes JJP's premium positioning helped overcome JK Rowling's reported distrust of pinball/bar scene

JK Rowlingperson
Harry Pottergame
Toy Story 4game
Guns N' Rosesgame
Pirates of the Caribbeangame
Godfathergame
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization

medium · Dennis theorizes: 'If Jersey Jack was able to come in and say... we don't even target operators... we start at $12,000. What bar buys this game? And then... she's like okay'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jersey Jack has three active designers: Steve Ritchie (from Stern), Eric Menier, and Mark Seiden (Metroid homebrew developer with no commercial release)

    high · Dennis: 'Jersey Jack has three designers on staff currently because Lawler is retired now. They have Steve Ritchie... Eric Menier... And then they have Mark Seiden'

  • $

    market_signal: Harry Potter expected to exceed current JJP pricing by at least $1,000; LE likely $13k+, CE likely $16k+; Standard edition not returning

    medium · Dennis: 'I think they'll probably go up at least a grand... I can't imagine you're going to find it under $12,000 new'

  • ?

    announcement: Jersey Jack Pinball officially/unofficially announced as securing Harry Potter license

    high · Joe Kamikow's social media post; Dennis confirms via industry sources that license is valid and secured

  • ?

    product_strategy: Toy Story 4 licensing was not original plan; JJP delays forced re-licensing negotiation; Disney then demanded Toy Story 4 as cross-promotional tie-in

    high · Dennis: 'Jersey Jack took so long... once it rolled around, they need to basically re up the license. And at that time, Disney was like, yo, we want you to do it around Toy Story 4'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jersey Jack expected to offer 2-3 art packages for Harry Potter within same edition tier (LE/CE) rather than create edition-specific variants; potential Hogwarts vs. villains theming

    medium · Dennis: 'I could see them breaking the art package up into just one overall art package... and then like an art package that is just like the Hogwarts people and an art package that is just like the bad guys. But the same tier'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Steve Ritchie allegedly left Stern because he was promised Harry Potter at JJP; circulated with wizard robes Photoshop; Dennis dismisses as timeline-inconsistent

    low · Dennis: 'there was a rumor with a fun Photoshop thing that was claiming that Steve left Stern because he was promised Harry Potter at JJP... I don't buy it'

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack appears to be focusing on premium-only releases (LE/CE only) without Standard edition; suggests shift away from operator route market

    medium · Dennis: 'Standards were always the worst sellers... it was still really expensive compared to like a stern pro so the point was to get operators to embrace jersey jack games'

    • 3:09
    So I have not put it up yet. I think I probably will, but it is. We only have like 82 subscribers, so you can't really do that much damage to our YouTube channel.
    3:23
    I didn't do too much damage because at one point I was live streaming me playing Battletech of multi-hour sessions. I remember that. Many of which could also have been considered to be quite boring and then uploading it to the YouTube as well. But in the course of all of this, at work, we're having a contest kind of thing where they're having people. Work has like Workface is what I call it. It's like Facebook for work. Okay. But it's just within work, and it has no outside connections. But they're running a contest. It's like, oh, people, please tell us about, you know, you secretly run a podcast. I don't secretly run a podcast. Everybody knows I run a podcast. It's what everybody knows because I talk about it quite often. But or, you know, you were in a play or you used to be in a band or some stuff like that. So I was going to go through and I was like, well, I don't really have anything. But I remember we did those marathon commentary streams. From the Kansas City Pinball Championship. Yeah, the KCPC, the first two years we did that. And I was going to throw one of those up there. And I looked at it, and I pulled up the 2018 one, and I started watching it. And I'm like, well, first, holy crap, was I skinny in 2018.
    4:52
    That was your big weight loss year. I did. I lost like 100 pounds that year, and you can tell. And then second, I'm watching it, and I'm just like jumping to clips like, this is a 10-plus hour video. So, yes, it's like I'm not going to I'm not going to I'm not going to throw this up there. It's fine. I'm just not going to enter this contest. Yeah. But I jumped around. I watched some stuff. I thought about what you did. You had put together a little clip show of like funny bits. Yeah. That one was like under five minutes. That one. Yeah. All right. Under 10 minutes. It was under 10 minutes. But I thought about maybe just throwing that one up there. But half of the stuff in there, if you're not a pinball person. It was only funny to pinball people. It was only funny to pinball. So I'm like, ah. It's like, look at this joke about Tron. Oh, the people are going to love it. Like the only joke in there that made sense to people who didn't know anything about pinball was when somebody stole my chair so I was squatting down. I'm like, I'm so small. Yes.
    5:53
    You are very small. Other than that, I did start a new audio book. and I finished the first book in the series. It's like nine books long, and I debated if I was going to go any deeper into the series. It is very much a space opera, very – this is not foundation.
    6:21
    This is not – Double vision. This is not that. It wishes it was that. not good it's not terrible but it is definitely this is the the the space opera version of the uh uh what do they used to call them you the the men's adventure books oh that used to you'd used to find it uh in the bookstores there'd be because there'd be like here's the romance section and then there's the men's adventure section which is basically the male leaning version of the romance section but it's very much that type of book but i was listening to it as an audiobook the writing's okay it's very very battlestar galactica which is why i i decided to go ahead and go into book two because i'm i'm enjoying it but it's definitely it's pulling tons of battlestar galactica tropes into it uh and some serious mary sue characters in it none of whom are the main character they're all the i mean they literally have their version of starbuck who can do literally everything and she's the perfect cook and the perfect wife and the perfect spy you know this and the perfect that but the thing is is the narrator is like a 90s audiobook narrator very flat low inflection most of the characters sound identical so i was thinking about not continuing because of that i decided to continue and somebody must have gave him some feedback that he needs to make characters sound a little different maybe having the the the one of the most commonly voiced characters having just the slightly higher range octave slightly more feminine version of the main character's voice not such a great idea since they interact constantly gotta give her a little bit more soul deep bronx here i mean book one she sounded just like the main character book two she has like a deep like brooklyn or bronx accent apparently the only accents this guy can do is his kind of normal no real accent just kind of mushy thing new jersey brooklyn or bronx or like the north of england that's it and some of them make no sense because like it's just for the characters to have changed so massively to go from like oh i'm talking about a fusion drive and this and that and this like monotone no inflection, no soul voice, to having a very similar conversation, but it's the full-on, hey, I'm walking here type thing going on.
    9:14
    And I started the second book, and that conversation happened in, like, the first 15 minutes of the second book. And I just finished the first book, like, just immediately before and jumped to the next one. And it was just so jarring. I'm like, oh, man, whoa, that's rough. So It's interesting I don't know if I'm going to finish the whole series But I might switch to the books But it has definitely been The story's fun It's just The narration is rough And it is very Trope heavy You can tell It's very much a Self-publish Type thing Well, that did make me – you brought up something that raised a question in my mind, and we don't need to spend a lot of time on it because I don't think many of the listeners will necessarily care. But why do you think that there has been an acceptance, not universal, but I'll say more broadly, that Starbuck can do everything, but it's not cool that Michael Burnham can do everything? Like where do you think that line's drawn? Because I felt like Starbuck was celebrated. For those who haven't seen the reboot, Battlestar Galactica is the one I'm specifically talking about with Katie Sackhoff as Starbuck. And then Michael Burnham is the lead character by all structures because she's good at everything in Star Trek Discovery.
    10:45
    I was always bothered by Starbuck. I remember making jokes about, oh, great, she's their best sniper and she's their best pilot and she's their best drinker. and she's their best listener like she was good at everything and i i maybe it was always the same i don't really i mean because it's not like she had extra character or more character development she was always kind of a terrible person like throughout the entire series she was kind of a terrible person i think the issue is not the the ability scope being the problem i think the The problem with Star Trek Discovery is they have spent so much time on Michael Burnham at the expense of the entire rest of the bridge crew, and that was not the case with Battlestar Galactica. That's very true. Because while Starbuck could do everything, she was at no point would I have ever sat down and if somebody asked me, who is the number one main character in Battlestar Galactica, I would never have said Starbuck. Yeah, no. I don't think she had the most screen time. So that's probably it. I think that's probably the answer. well speaking of answers uh in terms of what's been going on with with me i've i've gotten through a few more chapters in chapter house dune but i'm not done yet and uh been playing a few video games so and i had someone ask me if i was why i needed to play i think it was more an edict that i needed to play more mainstream games not this weird stupid crap that i i've been playing in which i responded we'll just wait till this episode drops because i got more stupid stuff that's been going on it's more weird stuff we're playing through the games with gold backlog is what's been going on so i played and finished a game called bladed fury it's a metroidvania uh sort of set in the you know i'd say it's it's like china's favored historical period for martial arts things the warlord period right before like it's like the king dynasty or whatever yeah all that so it's sort of set in that era era but it's very demon fighting oriented and stuff pretty pretty short pretty straightforward not a whole ton of platforming elements but i still think metroidvania is probably the most accurate descriptor for it uh then i've played and finished bloodstained curse of the moon that is a straight up castlevania clone i mean we're talking like simon's quest castlevania 2 style graphics and stuff yeah it i guess it was released as uh alongside some more developed or more visual game or something i'm not sure but anyway i had it in my backlog so I went and I believe I won through the story of that yesterday so you were able to put it on three lives or casual which was you could keep having lives which yes that's what we did that's what I had to do I want to I just want to go through the story that's right it was still hard and I had a lot of deaths so it was good I did that swap it's like that time we played the aliens game at the Dave and Buster's where we just kept beating 20s in that game until we beat it except this was free so this this so this was free and i spread it over multiple days and then i unlocked nightmare mode and uninstalled it so i'm like no we're not working on this game anymore this game is done so that's finished and then i've also been playing a rhythm game called double kick heroes where you are in a metal band driving in a cadillac which you have modified so that, because it's the zombie apocalypse, and as it drives along the road, you're playing a rock song and you have to hit the beats because you've set up your double kick setup from your drum set to fire the guns.
    14:19
    It's so stupid. I actually, I've gotten to a zone I haven't been able to beat. I tried again today. I actually have reconfigured the buttons because I haven't been comfortable with the control scheme in the hopes, but now I still remember the old control scheme, so I was hitting all the wrong buttons, so I needed a break from it. But it has a story. It's hard to, it's cartoony. The text is not Comic Sans, but it's practically unreadable. Even with my glasses, I can barely read what they're writing because it's like this weird quasi-cursive print.
    14:52
    And the story, it did offer an arc. I mean, they know their story sucks because they offered an arcade mode where it's like, don't, you just want the action. Don't want to experience the story. I'm like, what story? The story is stupid. You have a Marilyn Manson clone that you've named Marlene Manson, and then you had a guy who's clearly Danny Trejo, and you call him Machine Ete. Oh, man. It's just, no. But I don't mind rhythm games normally, so I've still been kind of playing it, but obviously I've played some other stuff that I was able to finish to take breaks from it. So that's what I've been playing. So it's all trash. Man, we just play very niche games It's just the way it is right now Well, I play niche games and you play free stuff I mean, I gotta One might have argued I was killing time Till Golem came out But you know what? We're going to get into that later In the video game segment But let's go ahead and do something not niche In the pinball segment And that is Harry Potter So, you know what? What had to drop the day after we released our last episode? I know it. It always works that way. It's how it works. And for those that somehow only listen to this show for pinball news, I have no idea why you would do that. But if you do, surprise, Jersey Jack Pinball has been confirmed as having Harry Potter for pinball. This confirmation came from Joe Kamikow. Joe Kamikow has done a lot of the Kapow collaborations with Stern. And so he's worked on a number of licensing deals. And I believe he has worked on Harry Potter licensing, not for pinball, but has worked on Harry Potter licensing before.
    16:29
    I don't really want to go a whole lot into like the the logistics of the quote unquote leak or what we think of this. And some people are pushing back. Some people thought claimed he was hacked. He then posted later saying he wasn't granted. Maybe he was still hacked. But my sources, and you know my sources run rampant in this industry, are this is valid. It is secured. It is in the hands of Jersey Jack Pinball. So, saying aside the announcement itself, I thought we should probably have a little bit of a discussion about this. And I'd like to start with asking you, Tony, what do you think of the idea of Harry Potter as a license in pinball? Like, is this a good move?
    17:14
    I think it's an obvious move. Okay. Well, I felt stupid asking the question, but I kind of felt I had to start somewhere. No, it makes sense. It definitely feels like an obvious of modern titles. It feels like the obvious one to reach for. And maybe even more than some nostalgia titles like Back to the Future. I mean, everything seems to be a better reach for than Back to the Future to me. And I'm a fan of Back to the Future. You are. So I just think there's other things to go for. I think it's one of those games that It's going to sell a lot based on theme There's no way it's not going to I think the big question is going to be How they handle it We all know that This is Jersey Jack So it's going to be Harry Potter 6 That's the one they'll release But Or let's be I don't know if you've seen any of the memes Or the stuff on Instagram or YouTube or stuff But there's this whole new thing going around where people have taken ahead like AI art created of the characters from the Harry Potter movies. But they're all like ripped like gym bros, like hyper gym bros. You showed me a little something. Harry Squatter, the boy who lifted. Yeah, yeah. That's what I think would be the perfect machine would be that. Where they just take all the lines and change them so they're about going to the gym. You're a gym bro, Harry. Now I'll teach you how to brew roids.
    18:50
    Harry, make me drink all of the protein. Don't let me stop, Harry. Force me to finish the protein. Some say these number of reps are cold, almost cruel.
    19:06
    Okay. I don't think they do that. They're not going to do that. But I had to. I've seen so many of those lately. They just crack me up every time.
    19:16
    What do you think? Some people have brought up the idea of is this going to be Jersey Jack's going to do one Harry Potter pinball? Are they going to do like maybe split it over three machines or do a machine per book? I think there will be one game, maximum of three art packages.
    19:38
    Okay. Since you brought up the three art package, I do agree about the one game. I hadn't really thought much about the art. Do you think they bring back the standard edition for Harry Potter? I don't think so. I don't think they will. I just, I can see them.
    19:55
    There's so many movies that I can see them breaking the art package up into just one overall art package. It's everything. and then like an art package that is just like the Hogwarts people and an art package that is just like the bad guys. But the same tier of the game? But the same tier. Okay, I see. Okay. I haven't really thought that. I have thought I'm of two minds. One would be could they come out with like a super collector's edition? And I don't think they do that. I think they still do the LE and the CE only. What I do think possibly, it's been a while since they've done this. I think really since Jack hasn't really been in control of the company. But I think it's conceivable that they might do basically a ruby red edition after a year where they drop some new art packages and charge an extra $2,000 or whatever.
    20:51
    Pricing, do you think they adjust their pricing? Oh, they'll crank their pricing up. Do you have a guess in terms of how much? I mean, currently there are LEs, which are their baseline model, which is limited to 5,000 units. I believe 12,000. And then the collector's edition, which is usually closer to 1,000 units, I believe, is 15,000. Those are the current pricing. I mean, I think they'll probably go up at least a grand. Okay.
    21:18
    Do you have a sense? This is probably a sense. More of a guess. When do you think Harry Potter gets released? I think if they're really pushing it, if they really want it and they've got any work done, no. It'll be next year sometime at the earliest. Okay. I do think it does come out next year. I would expect late in the year. I do think – I just don't think they have any work done yet. I think this link dropped before they really had a chance to do anything. Do you think they had just secured it and that's when Kamikau announced it? It was basically once it was all locked in. I think so. any progress. I could be wrong. It could be early.
    21:58
    I don't think it's going to be this year is what I'm saying. See, I wonder. No, I don't think this year. This year, I do think they do get another game out this calendar year. I think they've finally turned that corner. I think they've shown it with how quickly Godfather came out after Toy Story 4, I think. Because we've often joked about how they've been talking up two to three games a year forever. But, I mean, there was a pretty quick turnaround from Toy. I mean, it was less than a year. It was less than a year. They were different calendar years, but it was less than a physical year. And that's the – I think that's the key thing is really counting from when the last game was dropped. I do think this calendar year they put out whatever Steve Ritchie has been working on, and I don't think it's – I don't think it would be Harry Potter. I think it's whatever was already being worked on. The other rumors have been Elton John. Yeah. I could see that especially if they put out something And if Harry Potter their next big thing I could see them dropping something that they expect to have a smaller run so that they can have it done and start clearing line for what they would sure hope would be their biggest seller ever Okay. Do you have a guess in terms of who would be the designer for the game? Do you think it's one of the existing? So Jersey Jack has three designers on staff currently because Lawler is retired now. They have Steve Ritchie that they got from Stern. They have Eric Menier who did Godfather, Pirates of the Caribbean, Guns and Roses. And then they have Mark Seiden who hasn't had a game come out yet. He is the person who developed the Metroid pinball homebrew and they had hired him about – I don't know when they hired him. I was going to say a year and a half ago, but I think that was when Ritchie was hired. I think they'd be insane to let anybody other than Menier touch a title this large. This title is too large to be given to a brand-new guy who hasn't had anything huge before. Who hasn't had anything commercially out yet. Nothing commercial. and I don't think, no matter how much I like Steve Ritchie's games, I don't think Steve could do this game. Okay. Well, there was a rumor with a fun Photoshop thing that was claiming that Steve left Stern because he was promised Harry Potter at JJP. Really? I don't buy it, but I've read it. I read the claim. And then they had a picture of Steve in wizard robes. I thought he was purportedly a huge Harry Potter fan. But given when he left and such, I'm not sure that really – It doesn't really align with the timelines.
    24:48
    Most of the people I've heard, most of the other pinball commentators have been saying what you've said, Eric Menier. I personally – in a way, that's the obvious move. I disagree though. I think because this is a no-fail license, there's no reason not to put Mark on it.
    25:06
    Interesting. I mean, here's the thing. Toy Story was a no-fail license, too. Had it actually been Toy Story, it would have been.
    25:16
    You take this exact same game we got, but themed around Slinky and Mr. Potato Head and not Forky or Sporky or whatever his name was, or Spoonie. What was his name? I'm Trash. That's his name, is Trash. He's Trash. I didn't watch it. It would have. I think it could have done what Guns N' Roses did. I think it has nothing to do with the game. It was the theme that sunk that. And yes, the high pricing for not a lot on top of the play field didn't help. But I think there were people ready to look past that had it been all the movies or Toy Story 1. Which would have been the obvious move. In a way, to be blunt, I'm probably wrong about Mark. Because for all the reasons you and everyone else have named, everyone's like, you've got to trust Eric. You've got to trust Eric. But I still remember the time when Gary Stern – I don't remember if he had been drinking or not when he said this, but I guess it doesn't really matter – when Star Wars was coming out and someone at a show or something asked him a question, and he very openly said, it's Star Wars. I could sell a box of lights as long as it said Star Wars on it and make money. And it's the same thing with Harry Potter. There is not going to be any real standard here, like as in the buyers are going to be so frenzied that they're going to eat it up no matter what. Because – and I always think I'm being silly with that, and then I see it time and again. It seems like there's always – I guess this is why we do licenses or why they do licenses, right? is every time something comes along, there's always someone who's like, well, I'm done buying new inbox pinballs, but for, and then they have this laundry list of, and maybe the laundry list is two games and maybe it's 12 of all these licenses where it's like, I'm done buying new inbox pinball, except if Venom comes out. I'm like, oh, okay. So you're not done is what you're really saying. Is you mentally are in a place where you can't say no just based off of the theme. Right. And I don't understand it, but I understand it exists, so we have to acknowledge it. That is a very true fact, and that is a very valid argument because it could be – I mean, I can't think of the last time that we had a license. No, I can. Toy Story was the last time I think we had a license that I could have driven the kind of hype that this is. and it drove a lot of hype early on and then it broke because of everything we've talked about the past about it right and the the issue being and again that one's extra interesting this isn't a side for for listeners who may not be familiar so toy story was a leaked uh title a license known license before toy story 4 was even out right and as the story goes again with my super uh secret sources that I have throughout the industry was that it just Jersey Jack took so long because they were very slow at making games and going on to new titles that once it rolled around, they need to basically re up the license. And at that time, Disney was like, yo, we want you to do it around Toy Story 4. And had they been faster, had the design gone faster, they would have been able to do the first one or do the trilogy or whatever the plan was that would have been far better now what complicated things was uh jack winery uh jersey jack who founded jersey jack pinball went on a podcast i think it was a podcast and had claimed like they voluntarily like he he phrased it he didn't say this succinctly but basically it was oh no toy story 4 was our choice and then there was a live stream later with other jersey jack employees who worked on the game who were like uh again phrased politely but uh no that's not true we were we could have possibly argued it but disney was like we want you to do toy story 4 and we were like um let's agree let's agree because we still think that it's worth doing um so no that i i got the impression that they didn't really fight over disney on the decision but it was not originally supposed to be toy story definitely wasn't supposed to be toy story 4 originally and then they got themselves in a situation where that movie was coming out and Disney was like, oh, this would be a great cross-promotional thing. And then the game came out over a year after that anyway, so whatever.
    29:45
    Anyway, I didn't really have anything else on Toy Story to talk about right now. I think we'll... Harry Potter.
    29:54
    Correct. But I'm also done with Toy Story, for that matter. I'm done talking about Jersey Jack, unless you had anything you wanted to add. No, I think with what the information we have, I mean, that's all we can really do is speculation. If you're a Harry Potter fan and you're one of those people I described where, like, gameplay and stuff don't mean anything to you and you just buy things off theme and this is a theme you need, start saving your money because I can't imagine you're going to find it under $12,000 new because that's the current low price. Yeah. And I don't think they're bringing back the standards. I'm just saying, you know, start getting your financial ducks in a row so that you – So you don't think they're bringing back the standard either? No, no. I have a couple of theories for that. I have three. I have three reasons. One, I think they probably feel that it there's no like it adds complication of three different skews. And the standard always had a significantly different bill of materials ever since. Well, ever since Guns N' Roses, at least. And so because maybe it was Wonka. But regardless, like it's just I just don't think they want to manage it. So that's that's point one to the standards were always the worst sellers. so again why would you like financially never really made sense it was still really expensive compared to like a stern pro so the point of the standard in theory was to get operators to embrace jersey jack games and put them on route but it was a very different experience like we played the guns and roses standard we had that on location at 403 and i i mean i was gonna say it was fine i bet i didn't like the game right i'm just but it was very different than the one with that was more of the stage show field because this was missing a huge chunks of the play field were totally different um and then the the third reason is i've wondered in the case of harry potter if these stories were true and jk rowling's arguments about you know not trusting pinball and all that was about the whole bar scene i wondered if regardless of the the rumor about you know how or that Stern didn't get this license if Kamikawa was working on it and all of that stuff. Saying all that aside, if Jersey Jack was able to come in and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, JK, we don't even target operators. We don't have like a bar ready version. We don't have a standard that's like, look at our pricing. We start at $12,000. What bar buys this game? And then we ask for what? $5 coin drop? I mean, come on. trust us we're Jersey Jack and then she's like okay so that's the third reason okay I implore you to reconsider okay cock pow enter the fist watch it when will we get that game Jersey Jack it would sell terribly that would be a dream team it would sell terribly but we put put in the pile of other stuff that's weird that people hope for like um like uh escape from new york and big trouble in little china and uh uh what's the stupid one that i hate the across the eighth dimension one buckaroo bonsai yes i hate that movie why do you hate buckaroo it's just good it just sucks on all levels it's not big bootay big bootay okay well moving on uh we have a discussion topic that was requested by blueberry johnson mr blueberry wrote into us uh based off of our last episode's coverage where we talked about whirlwind 2.0 and he wrote and he said agree that the whirlwind 2.0 creative looks like an absolute hodgepodge mess but what would be a better 2.0 execution that is working with the unmodified playfield if i recall correctly they're only doing content changes for the display and translate what would options for less stupid re-themes look like in terms of execution this could be in two respects one audio visual ways to re-theme the game that are different but not ridiculous in terms of story visuals modes etc and two rules ideas for rules changes that leverage the existing layout and mechs to make for a more code depth than the original so basically he wanted us to like fix 2.0 not just say this sucks so well thank you for writing in we need to do more than just point to the doll and say we're 2.0 touched us well he would like us to do more than just point yeah that's that no it's a valid criticism is it yeah probably because i stuck it in the notes but okay uh fix it tony how solve it we can't change the layout i agree that's fine i i wouldn't want to change the layout you can have a you can have a lcd display you know you can keep the scare bros i would keep i would not keep that uh i i'd keep the display and everything i would it doesn't have to have a story it's not necessary i think upgrading uh with simple changes add some modes add some uh uh various other tweaks things that people are more familiar with, things that become more common. You can add that, but you don't have to build a story where farmer whatever is chasing the evil tornado and you don't need any of that. Not everything has to be some epic like journey. This isn't Journey to the West, the pinball machine. We can just have a game that has fun things to shoot without trying to tell a story and especially not a stupid story.
    36:01
    Keep the grandmas. No, don't keep the grandmas. Oh, my gosh. That was so bad. But that's the type of thing I think. Like the changes that were made.
    36:19
    It's on the tip of my tongue. For Beatles, the changes they made to. Sea Witch. thank you uh uh minor nothing i mean they added a lot of nice stuff but it didn't turn into anything crazy in my opinion yeah but i mean that did have a different layout i mean they tweaked they were able to tweak the layout they were able to tweak the layout but i mean stuff like that just adds some things to it just targets and modes and stuff without having to have the whole story and the whole explaining why you're doing anything, why aren't you just doing it?
    37:00
    But that's what I would do, and that's probably why I'm not a designer. Well, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I'd rather just say it sucks and move on.
    37:14
    Well, because I'm not a designer either. Okay, I guess in the case of Whirlwind specifically, um i'm good with the i'm okay with the idea of going ahead and putting the lcd screen in uh but like watching the gameplay uh footage that came out i mean these were super simple animations i don't even know necessarily that i like the decision to put in that display i get that you need to do a board set upgrade in order to have more audio more content uh so So that's what I would do. I would have kept the alphanumeric displays. I would have gone with just changing a board out for more audio content. And I'm of two minds with this. I like your point, Tony, about there doesn't need to be a story. This doesn't have to be a mode. It doesn't even have to be a mode-driven game. But I do think that doing modes, at least, is a reasonable way to approach things. And you want to loosely tie it together with a story, you can, but this whole storyboarding with adding zombies and grandmas and a poop monster, I just don't – there's just no value in it. And it makes something which was about a storm and turning it into something totally different, and that's where I think the first mistake was. So if I was doing Whirlwind 2.0, it would have been – I would have kept it storm-centric, and I see one of two ways. We either keep the tornado theme or you could restructure it as like a hurricane because you're still kind of dealing with a similar cyclic wind element thing. But I would probably just keep it with the tornadoes. I would be looking at – because you have a new board set, and I don't know how everything was wired originally, so apologies. But what in terms of we could use on the layout that could be different? So you remember one of the key things about Whirlwind are those annoying three spinning disks. Well, can those be individually controlled? What if you had a mode where the goal was to make certain shots and you're activating all three of those spinning disks and the mode isn't over until you've activated all three and then you hit your completion shot, which could be like the seller. That could be something where that's basically getting you to the stage EF5 tornado. and as you go along.
    39:34
    Or you know what? As a other concept kind of in the non-story vein that you had brought up, instead of making that a mode, making that like a bonus multiplier. You activate each spinning disc. If you get one going, it's 2X, 3X, then 4X. And then you're scoring. Because those things cause so much chaos that people don't want the discs to spin. So they need to have a reason for them to spin. That should be a reason. Another thing that could be done is they have the one ball lock off on the left, but you could change things for maybe like a two ball, a quick ball, multi ball where you lock a ball in the cellar. And then once you plunge another ball in, it fires out and you've got a two ball going on. There could be a condition that could do that. Right. So I'm thinking things like that where you're just basically trying to work around in the tornado and you add some things based off of what features are on the play field where you might be able to stage balls a little bit because they already have a locking position or they already have a mechanism whereby they can – they go in and can be kicked out. And the cellar is a prime spot to take advantage of and not just be a place to maybe start stuff. but yeah i mean with uh you can do something a few things i suppose with a physical ball lock if you wanted to make more than just you know the goal of it was always in my mind trying to get towards that one multi-ball i so you could repurpose it and and do some other things where you're locking over there for certain modes like again if you want to do things really mode based what i'd probably do is maybe kind of hoopsify it a little bit uh try and install a bunch of hurry ups and do that like hoops is a game where there are no modes there's a multi-ball i mean modes isn't traditional like story modes so hoops has got multi-balls but everything else is all about hurry ups like the extra balls are hurry ups the specials are hurry ups um the the um whatever the modes are where you you know rip the spinner or go into the pops and build your bonus those are hurry ups uh so whirlwind has a layout where i think because there's not a lot of there's not a lot of places to stage like i had my idea with the seller but that's really it in the ball lock area that's like it everything else is just targets and stuff so hurry ups might be a good way to kind of you know use that layout and and get a little bit more out of it but i wouldn't dramatically rework whirlwind is kind of where yeah i does whirlwind need a reworking is the big question so so if you're going to go in and and say oh i wanted to use this layout and make a whole new game i not i'm not really cool with that idea i i just don't i think balancing whirlwind makes a lot of sense but that's a that's a pretty straightforward thing but yeah in terms of some enhancements i would say yeah maybe uh change it up where there are a few more hurry ups i i really am keen on my idea with the spinning discs and activating those to apply like a playfield multiplier i think that would be a really fun thing and if you're absolutely you know insistent on maybe stripping out the main multiball and using that ball lock area to activate some, well, essentially multiballs, but are themed around something that have different goals with what to do with the balls. Yeah, that's fine if that's what you want. But that's about it. I wouldn't go all out and do animations. I'd have kept it alpha. I'd have kept it alphanumeric. I don't. You know, it kind of gets back to what we've talked about with a lot of the P3 games. And one of the things we really liked about Scott Denise's game was how he just kept that big screen, and he kept it looking like a standard play field for the most part. And the problem is when you have that big area and it's a screen, people feel obligated to fill it with animation. But this is pinball, and these aren't AAA studios, so they fill it with cell phone game style animation. And it's huge and in your face, and you see its inferiority. and it's like why would i not just enjoy some art i have the same mind with this with whirlwind in the kit why would you take this for granted it's not nearly as big of a deal because it's in the back in the area but it's like why do we need to occasionally see some scarecrows dancing disco like with a two-frame difference of just the arms moving um versus keeping it alphanumeric and not having to worry about dedicating resources to that you could still do all your new call outs and all that cool stuff audio is easy visual is where i think people they like they just assume like you just have to do it right and then you end up with some pretty i mean it's not fair that we compare this stuff to like triple a games like golem but we do and if your pinball machine looks worse than Gollum, maybe you shouldn't have been animating it. But we'll get to that in a little bit, won't we, Tony? Yeah, we'll have a little discussion. Alright, last thing for the pinball segment is Rumor Corner.
    44:43
    Rumor Corner Dennis Creasel's got the news before Napa Cade Is that right, Tony? Yeah.
    45:01
    Okay, so on this rumor corner, Tony, I've got an interesting one. Godzilla. I think a lot of people may know this. You probably don't know this because I only found out about this recently. But I don't stay in touch in the topper world all that closely. But here's the thing. Godzilla's pinball topper is coming out this week. In fact, it may be within a couple of days, like 48 hours of this episode. Has anybody seen it yet?
    45:25
    I don't know anyone who's seen it yet. or if I do, they haven't told me they've seen it. But this is what... Your topper guy has failed you. My topper sources are not going... I normally don't care all that much about toppers. But this is Rumor Corner. So here's the thing. My understanding is this news is already out there. Also my understanding is that the news that this is going to be a topper is already out there Here the thing for the Rumor Corner that might be of interest to listeners What I am hearing though is that while this is not going to be as dynamic as the toppers that Stern has been doing like Mandalorian for example I have heard that this is supposedly and I not seen images but supposedly this is more than just the flat plastic approach that we saw with Avengers or Jurassic Park So it's something in between just flat plastics and hologram dynamicism.
    46:22
    That's the rumor. Interesting. I would like it to be more than just flat plastics, but at the same time, it's stern. And for $1,000, it might be like flat plastics except for like a Godzilla head sticking out of the flat plastic. Yeah, I'm leaning towards – I'm of two minds. One mind is, yeah, there'll be some sculpt or sculpts in addition to flat plastics. Or the other thing is maybe in the old days where, like, I remember the Deadpool topper where it was flat plastics but it had a spinning thumb. Right. Maybe flat plastics, Godzilla head, but the head moves. Maybe something motorized. Yeah. But for $1,000 with what they charge for toppers nowadays, I'm not expecting a whole lot because toppers.
    47:16
    That's how it is. But anyway, were you rumor-tained? Anything to do with Godzilla rumor-tains me. Okay. Well, we've got video games now, and we don't have anything about Godzilla, I think, in the entire list. We don't. We did receive another game review. I still have a few codes available that were turned into us that we don't know what the games are. So if people want to do reviews, email us at collectedgamerspodcast.gmail.com. We'll send you a Steam code. You download it, play it, and then you can send us a write-up, and we'll read it on air about your review of the game. It doesn't have to be very long. Or if you want, you can send an audio file, and we would be willing to also just drop that in. But I don't want to make people feel like they need to get a microphone and do all that. We haven't had anyone do that yet, but one of our potential reviewers has said that that's their plan.
    48:08
    They just don't want to hear our velvet tones. So do you want to read Thomas M's review of The Holder, Tony, and do you want to do it in your Bronx accent? Oh, no, definitely not in that accent. You already did. Forget about it. That's literally about all I can do, and it's terrible already. I am not an accent guy.
    48:30
    Not very good. I can do very poor Scottish or very poor German that sounds like Scottish. That sounds like very poor Scottish.
    48:42
    So I will just do it in a normal-ish voice while I try and get the range right for my glasses so that I can actually read it. There we go.
    48:57
    The game I received was Beholder. The entire game takes place on one screen. The mechanics are solely point and click with the mouse. The characters are black silhouettes with some details in white, like eyes or a tie they may be wearing. The setting is an apartment building in 2D from the side view. Cut out so that you can see the apartments. There is a bus stop at the curb that has an arrival departure every 30 seconds or so. At the start of the game, you are moving into the complex as the apartment manager. It is noted that the government is placing you in this role. Upon your move in, it is not so subtly hinted that the previous manager is being arrested and forced out by this same government. You are given instructions on how to make reports on the tenants, and you are warned that any mistakes on reports you make will result in fines and punishment. You are then given keys to all of the apartments and a sum of money, and your family moves in.
    50:01
    As an aside, wow, that's a really creepy premise. Your first task is to buy a set of cameras from The Store, which is just a sliding menu you click on. Then you sneak into the apartment of the tenant that you want to spy on and install the cameras in his smoke detectors when he's not home. Once you see him making drugs, you click to capture it. Because he will. They will, for sure. Everything you've got to do. No one can help you with drugs. You click to capture it and then go to your office and make a report to the authorities. Later, the police come in and beat him up and arrest him.
    50:39
    This gives you more funds in which you use to renovate his space and get a new tenant in. All during the game, you continuously get reports from the government alerting you to items being banned. This could be things like books by a certain author, manufactured drugs or something like something simple like payers you can also get solicitations from shady characters selling you banned items that you can sell later for a nice markup that is about as far into the game that i have made it so far as for recommending this game it would be a stretch to think it would be a hit with most people my 15 year old thought it was funny though i see steam codes available for a dollar 50 and i don't think i would buy it myself for that price but it was worth a laugh or two.
    51:23
    Well, thank you, Thomas, for writing. That's kind of a creepy game. The way it was described reminded me of, and I don't know if you ever played it, it was a game called Papers, Please? Yes, I've played Papers, Please. That's what this reminded me of. It does kind of sound like that. Papers, Please was a fun game. I didn't get very far. Yeah, you could lose an entire day pouring over someone's passport, and then you get in trouble for not going fast enough. Right. But what if they're a spy? Well, before we settle into the big, my wife and daughter have been playing through this new game, talking about niche games.
    52:07
    Unpacking. Okay. In this game, you play a character moving into a living area, an apartment, a house.
    52:20
    Maybe you're by yourself. Maybe you're sharing it with people. Whatever. The entire point of this game is you move in and you've got piles of boxes. And you pull all the stuff out of the boxes and then you find the homes for all of the stuff inside the place that you are moving into. Some of which already has stuff from other people who live there. So it's like a puzzle game that involves you unpacking boxes and putting clutter away. That sounds absolutely horrible because of the whole time. If I were to play it, I would think, why am I not just doing this in real life and accomplishing something? That is my thought. Okay. But they both played it. My daughter has beaten it. My wife's probably beaten it by now because she was like on the final level. But it's like, wow.
    53:10
    Okay. I thought I played niche games. Yes. Okay. Wow. Yeah, that's a pretty special game. It's available on Switch and Steam. You know what? It's probably one of our random codes. I'm starting to find that our random codes don't seem to be very good. I'm sorry. I've gotten to the point where I basically apologize to people when I send them the code. I apologize in advance. We haven't had one positive review yet. Now, granted, we've got more codes out than we have had reviews come in so far. So I've not given up hope. It's just it's a faint glimmer at this stage. Yes. We can hope. But you know what isn't a faint glimmer? All the important video game news that is. All of the huge news. There's been a lot of stuff. Actually, a lot of this is negative, too. But interesting and not niche. Some of this stuff's pretty big. Yes, it is. The first thing, which dropped not that long after our last episode came out,
    54:05
    Overwatch 2 scrapped their PvE mode. The mode that is the whole thing they talked about from day one. The whole reason why we had to get Overwatch 2, purportedly at the time. Or so a lot of us felt. Right. Because that's all they talked about was the PVE hero mode and the talents and how you could spec your heroes into different things to do the big PVE co-op stuff.
    54:30
    That mode's gone completely. They have reported that they are still going to put out some PVE and co-op stuff. But that main mode that was what their original target was is gone. Yeah. Yeah, and I assume this PvE content stuff is probably going to feel like Junkenstein's Revenge and those sort of little of it, which I've enjoyed. I've enjoyed, but it wasn't. So for those that don't follow Overwatch, and again, you had to really follow it at the time. So when Overwatch 2 was announced, this was like 2018-ish, 19-ish? Something like that. Yeah, years ago. 19. It was 19. So at the time, the argument was, all right overwatch 2 is going to come out it's going to be a retail purchase game which is what overwatch 1 was but um all of the so to not split the player base the pvp was not going to cost anything so anyone who was still playing overwatch 1 was going to still have the same pvp experience with the overwatch 2 players basically overwatch 2 would be auto downloaded because all overwatch 1 is is pvp right but you're going to buy overwatch 2 so you get these stories there There were going to be these talent trees, as Tony noted, so you'd be able to spec out this. I mean, there was a cinematic announcing Overwatch 2 where there's a cool scene where Reinhardt, one of the main tanks in the game, and Brigitte, one of the main supports in the game, merge their shields together. That's not a capability that exists in the PvP, but the idea was you'd be able to spec and do that for the PvE experience. And for those that don't know, PvE is player versus enemy, and PvP is player versus player. So PvE often means single player or co-op play, and PvP is fighting other humans.
    56:17
    And so then what made it so interesting and why I think a lot of people are downright pissed about this is when that announcement happened, support for Overwatch 1 basically evaporated. They kept the game running. What I mean is there was no new content, and this was very much a game and service approach. So, like, we didn't get any new characters after Echo came out. There weren't any new maps. There weren't any new modes. They kept recycling the same PvE experiences. Like, it was the same Junkenstein's Revenge every single year for Halloween and all of that. And then finally, in October of last year, Overwatch 2 comes out. And they were telling us, okay, well, the PvE isn't ready yet. So we're going to drop Overwatch 2. It's going to be an automatic free upgrade for everyone. Everyone's going to get Overwatch 2 and it's basically just going to be Overwatch with better graphics. Okay. And that's what we've been doing since then. Now, as of Overwatch 2's release, we're getting support on the PvP again. They're doing seasons. Right. And there's usually a new character every other season and there's new maps on the opposite, whatever. They are doling out content like they used to.
    57:25
    But when they made the change, they shifted their funding model because now they weren't selling retail games. So with Overwatch 1, there was a loot crate system, highly controversial gambling loot crate system. But with Overwatch 1, not the biggest controversy because it was all just for cosmetic skills. That's all the loot crates were for. They've dropped having that option now. So most of the things that you want cosmetic-wise, you have to buy with real money. And the only way to earn real money in the game is by completing weekly challenges. and as i mentioned to tony uh last week we had just i had read online cross the threshold where if you had done there are three tiers of weeklies if you had done all three tiers since launch you finally had enough to buy one legendary skin which is like 20 bucks one 20 bucks yes and so the loot crate systems had frustrations because of the gambling nature and people not getting what they wanted but you could earn a lot of in-game currencies and buy a lot of the older skins by quote-unquote for basically free anyone who played a lot could get all the skins they wanted essentially that's not true anymore you can't grind more coins in overwatch 2 once the weeklies are done that's it there's no other way to get more coins and doing all three tiers doing all three tiers is really really challenging um uh mike who's been on our uh show before with our e3 episodes in the past he and i play overwatch together and we do we work on the weeklies we usually stop at tier two unless unless the week's gone great and we think we can get tier three done because you get less coins every tier and tier three is it's a lot of work like it's just a lot of play you do more work and you get less for it yes which i don't blame them for that because they wanted to discourage feeling like you get 30 coins for tier 1 20 for 2 and 10 for 3 and that way you kind of i think psychologically it helps discourage i mean that's my boat is like do i really want to invest another 10 hours in play to get to the third tier when it only took a total of 10 hours of play to get the first two right it's kind of like that so it's like oh i'm not sinking i play it less i feel than i did overwatch one for those uh sets of challenges it's just they're more they're not it's not as bad as it was but so a lot of people at this point though long story short are like well we were we were totally going to get this pve experience and now what's happened is we've been moved to this new ecosystem. Overwatch 1, when it came out, they promised there wouldn't be sales stuff like this. But now we're not in that anymore. So those promises don't hold. So I think that's where a lot of the pushback comes from. There are a lot of people that were really looking forward to a more single-player experience.
    60:08
    And I was too, but we were never billed for it either. We were supposed to have to buy the PvE. And since that didn't happen, I'm not personally as upset. But it's sort of been a – I mean, the way they sold it when they did this announcement, they were like, well, now we just realized – I mean, they made it sound like it was all of a sudden. But there's a lot of suspicion that they knew the PvE wasn't going to happen when they launched Overwatch 2 back in October. I don't know if that's true or not. But the question is, what have you been doing for the last X number of years, just sitting there and failing? because yeah it's really odd for them to just come out after such a long time and be like well no this isn't good this isn't working out so we're just dropping it i mean i get it in a way that the idea of the talent tree system with this many characters i i can't think of any game that has that if they were worried about balance especially that could definitely be that would be the biggest issue right like trying to but if the balance or if if it's only if the talent tree only affects the pve then it's not as big of a deal i agree though um they may have been some sensitivities to the idea of people playing through all the modes and stuff with the same four characters or whatever you because you're playing with your friend oh no i get to have ryan hart because ryan hart's broken because he's got talents that are better than everyone else's and stuff. I don't know. Yeah, I said no one ever.
    61:37
    So anyway, there have been a lot of memes. I've read a lot of fun memes about people. The one thing is in the world of Reddit, according to Reddit, everyone's now quit playing Overwatch, which is not true. In fact, the Overwatch League viewer numbers I tuned in yesterday to earn my Overwatch League tokens, which are their own currency for stuff, just to put it on in the background on one of my computers. It had 45,000 viewers, so There are still people clicking and winning those tokens. Yeah, it's not dead. It's just people are always like, it's just more the blindsidedness of it. Like, holy crap. You've been working on this for like four years since announcement. And purportedly, they'd started planning on Overwatch 2 two years before the reveal, which would fit. But it's like, no. It feels like they're saying, well, we've spent seven years on PvE and we've given up. And these assurances of like some of these elements are going to show up as events and stuff. It's not the salve that people were hoping it would be.
    62:43
    You all have phones, don't you? Yes. Speaking of you all have phones, don't you? BlizzCon will be returning in person for the first time since 2019 when they were like, hey, y'all got phones, don't you? I don't know why they continue this event. I don't know. There will be more information coming soon in the next month. I wrote down in the notes next week, but I'm pretty sure they said in June. Okay. So there will be more information coming out about it soon because so far the only information they've dropped is that it is returning in November as an in-person event. Because as you recall, they did the online event in 20 and 21, and then in 22 they just canceled it all. Right. Correct. So we'll see what happens. The last several BlizzCons leading up through 2019 hadn't been great. That's why I don't understand why. I mean, I guess I kind of get it because the Diablo and – But the thing is Diablo drops in June. Right. I don't know unless they want to talk about like DLC or something. Like what's there to – Maybe they're planning on it taking until November to get the bugs worked out. that popular anymore to have their own con. That's my stance. And I think you're right. I don't think it's going to be. Maybe they think that they'll be under Microsoft by then and then people might actually be excited. But I just don't think there's going to be enough news in that case. I don't think there will be either. I figured it was gone was dead. Yeah. So and I mean, it wouldn't be the first time something that somebody had said it was going on and then it canceled. They canceled E3. Yeah. Got canceled only a few months out. So also in discussions, it's come out Final Fantasy 16 in a very big difference than most of the recent Final Fantasy games. They have no planned DLC. So they're not going to do like 13, which had like three, which turned into a trilogy because of how they ended up doing it. Or 15 that had a ton of DLC so that the game actually had a story that completed. or the MMO versions that obviously have tons of DLC because that's how a live MMO works. They say they've not planned any DLC, but I mean, this is the same company that found out that so many people liked Final Fantasy X that they decided to make the make-who-make-who dress-up version of it with X-2 where everybody changed clothes all the time. Yes, lots of outfits. All of the outfits But they don't have to worry about that In Saudi Arabia There was a PlayStation showcase this week Dumped a lot of information on PlayStation I've only got a couple things in here about it Because they dumped so much information I found it interesting that Square announced Foam Stars It's a 4v4 party shooter with foam That sounds a little It sounds a little inky It is slutty Splatoon it's literally all of the characters are like cartoony rave looking characters with guns that shoot foam and like champagne bottles and stuff so i it's like it's literally my very first thought when i watched the trailer was slutty splatoon so okay yeah well sure why not uh splatoon is a hugely popular game. I understand why they would want to copy it. Yeah, it's just... We'll see. They released a new trailer for the first-person magic shooter Immortals of Veyhem. I know we talked about this last summer. It's a very magic-based first-person shooter.
    66:39
    I have to say the trailer didn't really impress me that much because it's basically first-person Mega Man. That's what it amounts to. You have all sorts of spells, but you've got like a thing on your arm, and you just kind of hold your arm out and you move your fingers and stuff happens in Magic. Yeah, that's how Magic works. It's a first-person shooter using Magic instead of guns, basically.
    67:05
    Hell Divers 2 was announced with a very Starship Troopers trailer that I would just – I never really played the original Helldivers. I've watched some people play the original Helldiver.
    67:20
    It's fine. It's a third-person shooter, but the trailer is just, it's a little crazy. But we'll see how that goes. I seems to have got a very positive rep. We'll see what happens. Metal Gear Solid 3 remake was announced. so it's they're calling it metal gear solid delta snake eater so uh about the most interesting thing to me alan wake 2 alan wake is a really good game if people haven't played it uh i would recommend it it's a it's a fun story the mechanic with the flashlight actually works really well yep i was i was really surprised i that was a game that was kind of up my alley and it was a bit of a gamble though because i thought the flashlight mechanic was going to get really annoying uh but no that game was really good and i was very surprised honestly initially i was surprised that there wasn't a sequel and then i at this point i'm surprised they were able to make it happen right because it's been so long and and originally i i've played alan wake as well and i agree with you it's an amazing game that i i played it because you said it was really good so i played it and it was really good it is it's very good so if you haven't played it i highly recommend it. But yeah, no, there's a sequel coming and they had some gameplay in it So it be out this October supposedly until it gets delayed like everything else yeah um there another assassin creed yeah everybody knows that it expected another one that was surprising to me street fighter 6 they're finally moving on from street fighter 5 yeah there were some uh i i'd heard about this one coming so this this didn't surprise me i don't i don't know if uh evo this year's gonna have six or not i don't think it i mean i don't think it'll be out fully out yeah i think it'll be a big deal when it finally comes out right this one is actually back on xbox as well five was not five was just on the playstation yes it was one of those uh forever exclusives that they somehow are allowed to arrange legally. But you can't buy a company.
    69:33
    Well, that's how it is. That's how it is. Spider-Man 2, obviously. The first Spider-Man was amazing. That's going to be a huge hit. That was very popular. I don't know. I don't know that they could... If they took the engine from the first Spider-Man and just made a new story using the same engine and no changes to it, it would be a huge hit. As long as they don't massively jack it up like get all emo hair that breaks the game type stuff going on it should be fine right it's going to be a massive hit and then sony revealed project wii u i mean project q a dual sense controller with a screen powered by the cloud because apparently they just need to do Or what Nintendo did. Now, I had heard that the way it streams is only off of your console.
    70:31
    Like the games need to be installed on the – or as the games are. I don't know. I didn't look into it. I didn't look too deeply into it. I mean, that's kind of how the Wii U was, is that you had to have the games on the console on it.
    70:47
    Sent stuff. And then there was stuff you could do separately. It's not a Switch. Right, right. And I guess it's probably good then. The controller looks enormous, though.
    70:57
    I don't understand. I just figure it's for people that want to play in bed or on the couch or not at their TV. Maybe. Even though the PS5s are usually hooked up to, like most people have TVs in their bedroom or at their couch or whatever. But, hey. Don't you have a TV? Yeah, don't you all have TVs? But they're not competing with Switch with this. No. Which is, I think, smart. I think their Vita days are behind them. Leaving the PlayStation discussions and like I said there was a lot of games I didn't talk about I heard there was some criticism actually about the showcase and not the least of which apparently like Microsoft was live tweeting during it basically saying all the like some of their they were making the same announcement saying all this stuff's on Xbox too so a little I think maybe they've gotten a little trolly in their monopolistic rage Homeworld 3 has been delayed It was supposed to be out first half of this year Now they're saying 2024 That's quite a delay And then as Dennis has hinted at My PSS We swears it We swears it's good Play Golem It's okay It's fine No it Golem Murderer It's been so bad I actually had someone tell me I should get it because I was laughing so much at all this stuff. And I'm like, because I like Lord of the Rings a lot, Tony. I know. But $60. And I've wondered, is it going to be like a so bad it's good experience? Because that's not what I'm reading. That's not how it sounds. I want it to be because I want to place it. I saw a video comparing post and pre-patch one little section of the game where pre-patch they were getting four FPS.
    72:52
    Post-patch to fix everything, it was 28. So much better. The human eye can't see for a second. It's just there was like game-breaking bugs that you could fix by like turning off the hair physics. Yeah.
    73:17
    So, yeah, it's been, I mean, a lot of review sites, you know, normally you're used to seeing like review grade inflation, but this game scores are really bad.
    73:32
    IGN rated it like a 60%. That's high. Off of their early release copy. And has said in talking about the issues with it that maybe they rated it high. Like what you run it on some sort of cray system. And that's what it seems like. It's like basically this game runs great if you have the perfect exact right build for it. Which does not include any of the consoles that it's playable on. Right. You have to have like this exact perfect PC to run it. It is very issuey. And if you've not seen Gollum with his emo clove cigarette smoking hair, you are missing out on something very special. He's so adorable.
    74:26
    He's like Misa sad. Misa listened to Muse. The very first thing I saw when I saw the pictures, the very first thing I thought. I don't know why I started doing the Jar Jar Binks there with the Mises. Because it's more appropriate. I forgot who I was voicing. It's more appropriate, in all honesty. You should say, people are going to laugh. No, Annie, no.
    74:51
    Annie, no. Dennis chokes to death. Continue, please. But the very first thing that popped in my head was the South Park Goths. Oh, okay. When I saw them with the hair. Yeah, no, I get it.
    75:20
    Oh, it's so terrible. I mean, we've talked about this game a bunch in the last year as it's been coming up because we're trying to figure out, really, how do you make a game off this premise in the first place? I still don't actually understand what type of game it is. It's a stealthy action game. I mean, it's too unplayable to be anything. And it seems like there's a lot of, like, decision tree stuff that pops up, because a lot of the memes I'm seeing are things like Golem encounters an orc and then gets a choice like kill him or run away, and people add new options for golf, some of which are too inappropriate for this podcast. Yes. And so I was just like, it's super weird. Now, I've heard something in my research of this that I thought was very interesting. So the company that's produced this, was it Daedalic? Daedalic is the publisher. supposedly they actually have the rights to do another lord of the rings game and so that's come up for for two reasons one is people asking questions about like how much work are they going to put into trying to fix golem if they're they want to move on to this other game and the other is playing guess the next game based off of what this you know this this stealth golem game with emo hair it's a tom bombadil rhythm game i did see someone uh think about a game that was tom bombadil the name is a rhythm they thought it would be something else i don't remember what it was there was a uh count uh farmer maggots crop like math game was an idea there was the bilbo baggins walking simulator where he just walks around middle earth and you just click on stuff um and then there was the one where everyone is hopeful for even though it would probably be messed up would be the concerns based off of golem and that would be uh a shire farming sim but they want to like have like a managed hobbiton and be able to grow crops and and stuff and it's started pipe weed stardew shire yes yes yes there were some comparisons to that i want Don't Stardew Valley, but in Tolkien's world. Make it happen. No, what they need is they need a Shire-based dating simulator. I didn't see that one. I did see someone suggest Mary and Pippin, and they're going around trying to get second breakfast. It's that. It's a Mary Pippin simulator where they just are trying to get as much food into them as they can.
    78:08
    I don't know. But I have not been able to bring myself to buy this. Not at $60. I did check to see if it was a games with gold. Not yet.
    78:19
    Not yet. Is it available on Game Pass? I don't know because I don't have Game Pass. Maybe it's the thing that finally gets you to buy into Game Pass. I don't know. Then you'd be able to play newer games. I could. And you could argue that they were free. I could.
    78:33
    Maybe someday. But I'm still working on Double Kicker or whatever the name of that game was. I already forgot the name of. now dadelic has apologized for the poor state of the release well that's kind of them but i'm glad their apologies are so wonderful didn't stop them from releasing it you would have thought that they were like man this is real rough we should probably hold but you know the problem is that they've delayed it twice already significantly yeah but i don't know do we honestly think they're going to no man's sky or cyberpunk this and fix it no i don't think they will not at all but we could be wrong i've been wrong before yeah i don't know they just they just tweeted thoughts and prayers yes yes that's a good point uh nintendo has issued a dmca takedown notice to valve because apparently on Steam they had what was called the Dolphin Emulator. It's a straight-up Wii and GameCube emulator. So instead of the back alley downloading an emulator from some random guy somewhere to run your hacked ROMs of Nintendo games, you could just straight-up buy it on Steam.
    79:57
    Nintendo was a little unhappy about that. Yes. Now, I've not looked much into this one. However, I did read some claims that emulators, true emulators, are legal. They are. And some had claimed Nintendo, under Japanese copyright law, has to do these lawsuits just to preserve the copyright that they don't actually expect to win. Right. because I've heard that this lawsuit is because these games are new enough that there is coding in the games that is encrypted, which means the encryption had to be broken, which is a violation. Interesting. Okay. To make it work. That's the claim. All right. The company that made, or the developers that made the emulator, only found out about the takedown notice when Steam told them about it. Nintendo never talked to them at all. They went straight to Valve. So we'll see how that goes and if they can make changes to keep it. So now for the big one, the one everybody's been waiting for.
    81:07
    Like we said last week, the EU approved the merger of Microsoft, Activision, Blizzard, King. They did secure concessions about cloud gaming. Those concessions that they secured basically requires that European gamers can stream any Activision Blizzard game they own via any cloud gaming service. Basically, they have to license all of those games to all cloud services so that you can get it on whichever one you prefer. and that's for like 10 years I think is what it was that's the concession they got and that's something that Microsoft had already been doing that's why they've been making all these 10 year deals with everybody the UK as we talked about before had denied the merger and they responded the UK CMA had responded saying that they stand by their decision to block it while the EU was saying, well, we don't think it's fair to block it.
    82:21
    But the CMA's decision has had some bounce back within the UK. The CMA bosses were called before the Business and Trade Committee to answer MP's questions about why they reached a different decision than the EU. and they were questioned about if they had considered the effects of blocking the deal would have on the UK's reputation and such.
    82:52
    It's one of those things that they were questioned pretty hard by MPs in Parliament. This is not the first time that the CMA has blocked something that has been controversial. they recently blocked a merger between like two grocery stores chains because it would make them too big uh even though a lot much like this it's still it would have made them the number one because it was a bit like the number two and the number three grocery store chains in the country merging and they were like no you can't do that um but uh the uk chancellor jeremy hunt uh called on the regulator to understand that they have a wider responsibility to promote economic growth within the UK. And that is something they need to consider because the CMA is not a direct governmental organ. It is a separate thing. So the government has like some oversight, but not direct control of. And now there's starting to be some unconfirmed reports coming out. But one thing is confirmed for sure. One of the senior directors of the CMA, Colin Rafferty, did previously work for the law firm that represented Sony through the entire thing. The unconfirmed part of it is that there's reports coming from inside the CMA that he was the driving force behind blocking the merger, and he was the one who forced it through. which brings in concerns, obviously, of should he have recused himself from even being involved because of his ties to one side's legal team.
    84:36
    Yeah, that one's tough. I did read a little bit about that one as well, and I heard some reports that that law firm is very large.
    84:44
    And so there were some questions that were, well, when he was there, did he ever work on Sony's accounts? Are we saying that if you work for any mega law, because some of these law firms have all the big clients. So it's like, would he have to like sit out of like anything that involved a Fortune 500 company because they all use them? Right. So I don't know yet whether there's really anything there or not. And yeah, because that was the question I heard. I read that and that it has been a while since he worked for that law firm. Yeah. So it's not like he left that law firm and went straight to CMA. He left that law firm and went to another law firm before going on, so there's been some time. But I would be more interested in knowing whether or not maybe he had any personal relationships with the lawyers who advocated for Sony because he used to work with them professionally. Correct. I think it's fair to ask some questions here. I'm not convinced yet that that's why he was the person trying to get the merger blocked. He might just have that ideology in general. But it's interesting. But yeah, no. And that and that could be it's just another one of those things. I don't think this is the route that there that that that's the route Microsoft Activation Bulletin King is going to go to try and break it. They've got plenty of other stuff to talk about. I think I think it's just coming up because a lot of people are kind of like, why are all these other countries approving this and asking for concessions? And the UK's body CMA is like, we don't think you can achieve any particular concessions. we're not really negotiating it we're just going to say you can't do it right and even in their thing where they said you can't merge because this could be a problem in their document they even said well cloud gaming is not really a thing right now right and so it's that's the part that stuck out to me when I read the summary of their reasons for rejection and I was like okay because I sympathize with the concerns and Microsoft does have the infrastructure in a far superior state than many others for cloud gaming but cloud gaming is just not really done right right so why are you blocking things on on these like woulda coulda shouldas like i thought we were about trying to stop yeah like having a monopoly form and you're like trying to forecast how cloud gaming is going to incubate if it ever even becomes a thing right i mean we think it will because we think clouds are fun and clouds happened in applications and stuff but i you You know, there's a whole lot of what ifs with like bandwidth and Internet and download speeds and throttling and all these things that have are huge. There are barriers to cloud gaming beyond just the companies being able to host it. Right. That anyway, I don't know. I just thought it seemed so speculative was the part that was surprising. I mean, again, the EU was speculative to a degree, but there's also this notion of at some point, do the competitors have like zero obligation or do they have to like we give them a 10 year window? and they choose to take advantage of this to catch up, and then Microsoft can start limiting once more. And that's pretty common to do, an arrangement where – not to bring up wristwatches too much again, but, for example, Swatch Group owns a movement manufacturer called ETA. They acquired that as part of the moves to – long story short, to save watches when courts got invented. Mechanical watches were in big trouble, and the Swiss organized a lot of stuff under Swatch Group and ETA was one of those things that made movements for a lot of different watches. Swatch Group wanted to stop selling those movements to competitors because Swatch Group makes a lot of watches. They own Omega, they own Flick Flack, they own Breguet. And so when they went to do that, the Swiss government came in and said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. This was an arrangement to save the industry. if you want to stop selling your movements elsewhere, we have to have a multi-year window where people can develop their own infrastructure to make their own movements. So you have to keep doing it for a few years, but not forever, not forever. And we've passed that point. So if swatch doesn't want to sell at a movements to anyone else, they don't have to. And that's why you saw the surgeon in house movements for other manufacturers is because they were told the supply may go away. Right. Because this company is asking for the right to move away from, but because everyone had agreed and consolidated under that, there needed to be a ramp off. So that's where I see the value in the 10-year ramp off for Microsoft to, you know, all right, you've got to put everything out on every single cloud for a while but not forever because at some point people have an obligation. Your competitors have an obligation to figure it out if they care about it. Right. And a decade is a long time. But the U.K. stance was kind of like you seem to be number one right now, so no. what about if we do no what if we do a hundred no a thousand no you will die he knows the future he knows what is coming they will prevent you from being the evil did I ever tell you the story of Darth Sony the wise they'd say they say with simple former lawyers they could take the life force right out of you I don't think it would be a question and put it into their own walled garden each of the lawyers will do it sorry anyway I don't know what's going on it's weird and the only major player left is the US and if the US comes back and approves it then because the latest things I've seen out of the CMA is them basically saying the US hasn't approved it yet so we could be right we could be siding with the US which is that's true USA we'll see so but that's all I have for video games this week okay well we're done this was a meaty episode full of steak maybe some potatoes if you want to reach out to us about any of these meaty elements you can email us eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com you can also reach us at facebook.com eclecticgamerspodcast or support us on patreon at patreon.com eclecticgamerspodcast we're available on twitch twitter and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers we also have a discord that we haven't really talked about in a while. It's too hard. The links are weird. The links are so weird. We can't say the links. It's in the show notes. It's in the show notes, and it is a good place to talk to us. We have a fair number of conversations going on. It's actually reasonably. It's not one of those really busy discords, so don't feel like you're going to get flooded with notifications, but it's not unusual for us to see a few posts a week. Yeah, and just have some interesting conversation, and every once in a while, I'll dump my meme folder into the memes. Yes, I saw that you had done that. So. All right. Well, until a couple weeks from now, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See you.