Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, January 21st. This is episode 211. I am Tony. I am Dennis. And we need to warn the listeners, our ever-faithful listeners, that we are recording remote again. So if we talk over each other more than usual, that is why. Yeah. And also, if I sound weird, it's because I'm on the back end of some really nasty sinus infection. That still has kind of beaten me up. Well, I hope you pull through. I do, too. The listeners need you. So what have you been up to, Dennis? Actually, surprisingly little. so in terms of fun stuff that we would talk about here so i had hoped to be done with the robocop rogue city game by now i tried to push through last weekend it's longer than i realized so every time i thought i was at the end there was another chapter and i've started losing to another boss and so i still thought i would have been done by now but because of agdq or awesome games done quick that's all i've been doing in the evenings is throwing that on i've not played any video games in the last week. I've been watching other people play video games, like a true nerd. So, long story short, I have, for one week, played Robocop, and then for another week, watched AGDQ, and that's really all I've done with my downtime. Other than that, I've shoveled a bit of snow, because, as you know, we've suffered with some very arctic temperatures, especially this last week. Yeah, it's been bad. I've not walked to work for two weeks, because the sidewalks haven't been clear, and it's been too cold. So, it's just been like, okay. Well, it is what it is. What about you? I've been doing much the same as you, very little, except for I had some sick mixed in there. And I've also not walked to work, but that's because it's, you know, How long would you think it would take you to, I was going to say, how long do you think it would take you to walk in? To walk in, I don't know. I did an estimate run looking at it. I think I can make the run on a bicycle in about an hour. Okay. Yeah, that's a pretty long period of time. Yeah. It takes me right at 20 minutes to drive. And all of the roads are 45 to 50 mile an hour the whole way. Yeah, I don't usually time it anymore. My walk-in, with all the crossings and everything, it's actually about, if I'm not really pushing, It's about 32 minutes, which would make sense because it's almost two miles, and I normally can kind of casually walk one mile in 15 minutes. But there's streets I have to cross and stuff, so I have delays with the traffic. And then my drive time is seven minutes usually, even if the school's in session. So it's very easy to just say, you know what? I'll just drive in. It's 10 till. Let me just get in the car. So according to Google Maps walking route, it should take me three and a half hours. Yes. See, you can't because you can't just walk up the interstate. You got to take a safe route along the highway. Well, it's safe route includes several miles, like five or six miles or four miles. It's four miles. of walking along a two-lane road with no shoulder and just deep, very sharp fall-off drainage on either side. So I'm sure that's going to be really safe. You might want some hiking boots for that route. Four in the morning. Yes. Actually, their route has me walking to a certain point, And then I get onto a path that goes through a park that is closed at that time. And it actually doesn't take me all the way to work. It ends. It says, oh, you're close enough. I'm on the opposite side of a creek, so I would have to still walk another mile, looks like, from what they've actually, were they showing the stop point at. Okay. Okay. Well, it might not be the most efficient way. Probably not. Okay. Well, in order to save your voice and the fact that we – honestly, at least I don't have a lot of content in the pinball section. This will probably be a shorter episode, but we're doing it because – The beginning of the year is always like that. That is true. That is true. So let's go ahead and hop right into pinball, and I've really only got four topics. One will be a little bit of a discussion one, but I don't think it will be particularly long because it's similar to one we've done before. But I'd like to go ahead and start with Stern Pinball's Jaws. Now, we already did our big discussion about the reveal on our last episode. I don't know if you've watched any of the gameplay that they've put out since then. I caught one little video. They did a little 16-minute video that was prerecorded as their first gameplay. I didn't watch the live gameplay, so I've talked about that on the pinball show. But I didn't know if you had seen anything that you wanted to talk about regarding the gameplay. No, I've not really watched very much on it. Okay. Well, and a lot of people will just be like, you know, go check out those streams if you really want to know more. There's no real – I don't think there's a good way to recap other than being completely almost reductive and being like, you know, let's just cliff notes what was already a pretty short video. He flipped the ball and it went to the – yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's got some of the baseline rules and stuff. If you don't have the game in front of you, I don't find that particularly helpful to dive into. All I can say is that it feels like there's a lot to do, which is very consistent with Elwynn and Nagel and how they've approached things like how Godzilla's got tank multiball, bridge multiball, kaiju battles, collecting your allies. This has a lot of those different things that you can go about and do in the game as well that are all kind of themed around the movies. So what I do want to go ahead and note, mostly so I can have a title of this episode that plays off of this, because there have been two other podcasts that have title episodes that play off of this, is the controversy of Jaws. No, no, no, no, no. The controversy is not Roy Scheider not having his face in the art. No, no, no, no, no. It's not that they have the rights to use elements of Jaws 3 and Jaws the Revenge, of which I know there are some shots of Jaws 3 in the video assets. I've seen them. No. It's why doesn't the shark eat the ball gate? Because that's a thing. Apparently, the community has decided, and I use that term very loosely, has decided that this game had to have a shark that eats the ball. And that there is not a shark that eats the ball means this game is a failure. How? because they decided that that was the most obvious toy, and the game don't have toys. Because if there's not a shark that eats a ball, the game doesn't have toys. And this is what's wrong with modern pinball is it's not 90s pinball. And in 90s pinball, shark would have eaten ball. Now, I've heard that on the Stern Insider Pinball Podcast that they have, I did not listen to this, but I was told this, that the design team was on that, as they often are when a new release happens, And they indicated that the very early design of the game, they made a mech of a shark eating a ball. And it wasn't fun. So they got rid of it because of all the logistics that go into what is essentially a glorified scoop. But I just I wanted to note it, one, because it's not a lot of content to talk about. And two, there are apparently a number of people that have basically thrown a fit about this. Now, I'm of two minds of that. One, you know what? At the price of these games, if that was a deal breaker for you or you want it to be a deal breaker, absolutely. Let it be a deal breaker. We're talking multi-thousand dollars. If you need a shark to eat a ball to spend $7,000 plus, by all means, don't buy the game if that's the make it or break it. I have probably vetoed the idea of buying a game for less. So I totally understand that. I also saw someone – I think this was in response to Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, which was the first one that kind of – that I heard that really dived into this topic. And someone I thought had a very – this was on Pinside in the Pinball Network thread, I believe. They had a very well-reasoned list of kind of what they mean when they say wanting to see the shark eat the ball. And a big discussion about toys and how toys did a lot more, especially in the 90s, you often would see a lot of toys with mechanical interaction on the play field. And now there's sort of this impression of – I can't remember if they used the phrase. I've heard it and seen it before where people are saying shots are the new toys now, and everyone's always talking about the geometry and not about the toys at this stage. So what I want to explore with you, Tony, is I think we already got your impression of does the game have to have a shark eating a ball? But also kind of what your thought is, though, on this notion of modern pinball isn't doing enough with toys, because I think that's a better complaint to me. I think I can see that complaint. I think the notion that it has to have the shark eat the ball is kind of crazy, especially if they tried it and they're like it doesn't work in a way that makes the game fun because then the complaint would be that oh it slows the game down or oh it breaks the flow or whatever other issue there is i don't know that are toys that important i mean some toys are there should be some i'm not saying go to the old days where there was no toys at all but I definitely think any toy that has zero function, zero addition, or actually slows down and breaks your play is a net negative. I mean, bash toys are fun, but they don't slow down and break play. How many times did we wait for the T-Rex to pick up the ball in the old Jurassic Park or stuff like that where it just completely breaks the game flow. That's a fun toy, yes, but at the same time, when you're having a good game, it really breaks it when you're sitting there for 30 seconds. I don't know. I think games don't necessarily need toys as long as they're fun to shoot and that they provide a good flow. Yeah, I think it's very interesting, And it's definitely a very, very personal decision for people. I tend to fall much more in the camp that you just expressed. And, well, first, again, I've already, I think, made it pretty clear, especially people have already heard me talk about it. But regarding this specifically and the shark eating the ball, to me, absolutely not. I get where if someone were to sit down, you've had a couple beers, you're with your buddies, and you were coming up with Jaws pinball, it's almost so on the nose to say shark eating the ball is a toy that in a way I'm glad they didn't do it because it's such a low-hanging fruit concept. Not that I really care if they go with a low-hanging fruit concept because it could make a lot of sense to say. I mean it's so obvious that it's like why didn't they do it? And it's also so obvious that do you guys really want the game to write itself that, I guess, that simplistically that we're going to do that one thing? I just think it's weird that maybe not too weird because I've seen it before where everyone's just sort of not everyone, but a lot of people are kind of rallying around that. Maybe because they want to hang their hat on. There's something about the game that they don't care for and they want to blame something. It might be a little bit of that. And some of it might just be they really want things to be that obvious. I haven't seen this much toy blowback on a Stern game since Mandalorian, where, remember, everyone just got really hung up that the baby Yoda figure didn't move. They were just really mad that it didn't move. So mad that someone made, like, a 20-plus page install guide on how to install a moving baby Yoda, which, honestly, I thought was the silliest thing. But I know people who bought that mod and put it in because they absolutely wanted that baby Yoda to move. on your comment about the toys that's where i think the you know i totally understand someone looks at it and they feel like it's too barren it's too barren they don't they want it to be full of toys and that's what they remember from the 90s that's where i think a lot of this comes from because obviously if you go back to the 80s there just weren't there were not a lot of toys especially uh if we're talking pre-late 80s there just weren't toys on the playfield but um yeah i agree like to me the the gameplay and flow is the more important thing because to me the main thing about the game is is the fun not the look so i don't really think shots are the new toys i don't like that expression because i think shots have always been really important we just saw a lot more experimentation earlier we go especially if you go back to the em era because quite bluntly a lot of em games are exceedingly unfun because they were just trying all sorts of stuff they But they were selling so many games. You knew you'd just move like, oh, that's a dud? We'll just move on. But that's why you have like Bagatelle and stuff. Some of that's just carryover from pre-Flipper that they were still – that's what they knew, and they were trying to work it in and all the rest of it. And I don't want to necessarily go down that rabbit hole. But you mentioned the Daddy East Jurassic Park toy. And the case in point I always like to point to is a game I know broadly is around a theme you really like, and that's Maverick with that steamboat ball. Oh, yeah, that ball lock. Yeah. It's another one that I don't really have hands-on experience with is the, what was it called, the grabber on Jurassic Park 2, the Sega one. That's supposed to be a really slow ball lock. But it's like, does the steamboat look cool? Oh, it looks cool. After the first time you've done it, though, are you really enjoying yourself sitting there watching? And here's where I think the difference is. and again, people, if that's what they care about more power to them, it's their money absolutely, say what you care about and push for what you want those toys were more important in the 90s because these were operated machines and the whole goal was to get people to look at that world under glass and drop coin in, it isn't about people going back for their 50th game there was that churn the churn of the people walking into the 7-11 the churn of the people walking into the arcade and they needed things to be eye catching and toys were eye catching because when the game's not playing what else could they do but have toys on the play field but in today's world these games need to stay entertaining that's also why where we have a lot of people who complain myself included i i try not to do it so much on podcasts but like privately i get deeply frustrated with just how much rules knowledge you need to be truly successful if you can make your shots on a lot of modern pinball games i prefer more simplistic rules there's a reason why i greatly enjoy having iron man over iron maiden but part of that issue is in a home environment how long does a shallow rule set last so i mean the pinball companies are responding to the fact that we have home collectors now by making games uh that prioritize being fun to shoot not prioritize being eye catching candy that people will drop quarters in and likewise why the rules are so complicated now because for the homeowner they're they don't they being stern don't want their homeowners to feel like after six months they got to get rid of the game but that's what's going to happen with a pin bot or a taxi or possibly you know unless you truly love it for nostalgia reasons like touring the mansion and adam's family or getting to the end of cactus canyon they're not the hardest thing to do. Right. So that why I think it changed I don think it about cheaping out per se I just think it like gameplay and flow and fun and just the enjoyment of it This is the home market That's how they actually keep them. Having a really cool looking toy, maybe it pushes people over the edge to initially buy it. But if they start flooding the market secondhand, that undermines stern sales because they can't sell new ones because people are flipping the old ones. And that's where I think it comes from. Any final thoughts on that? No, I think that's been covered pretty well. Well, next couple topics we're going to probably fly through a lot faster. One is regarding Princess Bride pinball. We've touched a little bit on it. We remember hearing something about it a number of episodes back. We got an email after an episode where we – incidentally, I think coincidentally, talked about Princess Bride, and we just happened to get an email. I was listening to Slam Tilt Podcast, their most recent episode, but I heard it yesterday. And actually, what I heard there was that Princess Bride is happening for P3, but it's not a first-party multimorphic game. It's a third-party game. Interesting. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Because we've talked about it being a good theme. Yeah, it could definitely be a good theme. I'm interested to see how it works as a third-party theme because being third-party, I wouldn't think there would be much in the way of, like, a different insert module, a different module, and use one of the other modules. So I'm interested to see how that would be worked out. I'm also interested to see how a third-party managed to get the licensing rights for that. Yes. I mean, obviously, where there's a will, there's a way, I suppose. And maybe it's beyond an individual. Maybe it's a company. There was an image. I think it was sent to Don's Pinball Podcast that's been shared since. But it was like a close-up of a captive ball, which to me would suggest that this would be a third-party module, which has happened before. Nick Baldrige did that with Drained. True. So if someone's actually gone ahead and said, you know what, let's do a licensed third-party module, maybe it's Nick. I don't know. I don't know. Again, other than that first email just saying Princess Bride is happening, I have never received anything. We haven't at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com either. So that was our one email. But you and I – I think it would be a good theme. Yeah. Yes. And we've talked about that. And in fact, what is so interesting to me about that is I just read – it's very short. I don't have a link because it's basically like one paragraph. But I wanted to go ahead and note. I just read yesterday on NAP Arcade that there's purportedly from NAP a new pinball company that's coming out with Little Shop of Horrors. That's such a great movie. And so I wanted to go ahead and give you an opportunity to opine a little bit because you have mentioned to me before that you think Little Shop of Horrors would be a good pinball theme. I do think it would be a good pinball theme. It's one of those kind of quirky little niche things that's out there, but it's got a good music, enough comedy that you could do a lot of fun things with it when it comes to the rules and layout. It gives itself the obvious desire for a big bash toy, obviously of Audrey 2. and I just think it would be something that could play well in the kind of styles that we've been seeing in pinball lately. I'm not sure. I think the big question comes into, once again, licensing like always. Did they get the important songs? Did they get which songs do you consider important really in Little Shop and just how well it all pulls together. But I could see where it would be a lot of fun. I was trying to think when we last had a musical as a pinball machine. The only thing I could think of was Data East's Tommy is based on the musical. Right. I can't think of one. I think that's it. Write in to clickthegamerspodcast at gmail.com if you know another one. 1776. 76. Well, we all have our own preferences. Honestly, if there was going to be another musical pinball machine, I really would have thought it would have been Hamilton at the peak of the Hamilton craze. I could see that. I could definitely see Hamilton because that was a huge thing. The only other one that readily comes to mind would be, it would never have surprised me if Spooky had done Rocky Horror Picture Show. Oh, Rocky would definitely make sense as well. But I want to go ahead and use this to end our pinball segment with another sort of theme discussion. Yes, we've had these before. It's the most tired well to farm. But again, we're like 20 minutes in. We just don't have a lot today. So here's where I wanted to go with. Princess Bride is a movie from 1987. And most people who know Little Shop of Horrors probably have seen the movie version, which is 1986. 86 so we're in the 80s i'm not going to confine us to mid-80s but what are some other sort of 80s themes that you think might make for really good pinball machines and to add an extra challenge maybe try for us not to name ones that we haven't really talked about before so for example i would normally throw die hard out but i'm not going to today even though i just did but i'm not but anyway maybe like on i don't know if there were other uh you know we haven't necessarily talked a lot about TV shows and stuff, but I wanted to bring it up because we clearly, I think really right now, it feels very much to me like we have finally crossed that threshold where we're seeing more stuff from the 80s than the 70s as themes. And so, which is when you and I were little, like our pre-teen era is the 80s. And we'll try to keep it semi-realistic. No Lady Hawk. No. Oh, that could be So, you know, the Gottlieb prototype for Krull was such a – we need a real Krull. And I hear they might be remaking Krull, which is funny because Krull was a flop. But anyway, you know, like, for example, I thought about suggesting – here's one that – this is not much of a suggestion. So just as an example, there is a rumor there was – I haven't heard anything on it recently – that American Pinball had Masters of the Universe. It's like, why has not that been done? Because that was terrible. It was a terrible movie. But – No, I meant the cartoon. Oh, well, that would be better. Not the Dolph Lundgren. Not the Dolph Lundgren. Oh, my gosh. That was so bad. When Man-at-Arms uses the grappling hook to take a bucket of chicken. But thoughts on things that might make sense from the 80s. Short Circuit. Oh, number five is alive. I watched that a lot. I don't know about doing the second one, but the first one. But the first one would definitely be an interesting play. It's something that I feel it's one of those movies that I feel like was huge back then, and nowadays most people don't even know it existed. So it's one of those things. Maybe it was just huge because I had it on tape and I watched it a bunch. I mean, that could help. Again, I'm going to farm from someone else, but Mrs. Penn from Mrs. Penn's Pinball Podcast. She often pushed for Snorks. Oh, Snorks. Snorks, I think there's the nostalgia there, but honestly, I think Smurfs is a better pick. I think Fraggles would be better. Oh, Fraggle Rock. Down at Fraggle Rock. Yeah. Any other hints and stuff, like Dark Crystal or anything you think? I think Dark Crystal would definitely have its place. I bet there are a lot of people who wished it had been Dark Crystal instead of Labyrinth from Beryl. I'm sure there are several. And the thing is, there is a new Dark Crystal show that just came out like last year. And I think they're making another one. They're doing some more Dark Crystal stuff. So it's actually timely. Let's see. What other? I mean, we're thinking movies, which is kind of where you were farming a little bit more. E.T. was probably one of the biggest 80s movies that could do an interesting world under glass sort of approach that a lot of people have nostalgia for, though the licensing is probably a nightmare on that. Flight of the Navigator. Oh, yeah, that was early 80s. Because it's supposed to start in 1978 or so. Right, right. But the movie actually came out in, like, 86, I think is when it came out. Hey, you know what? If you're tired of waiting for Steve Ritchie's F-14 Cat, why not Iron Eagle? That would be good. The first one. Yes, the first one. Everyone's thinking Top Gun, of course, but there's already the rumor that J.J. Pease either got Top Gun or Maverick. So let's talk Iron Eagle instead. Right. Iron Eagle was a good movie. I really enjoyed the first one. I know there's like 37 of them now because they just kept going back to that well somehow Lou Gossett Jr. that's who I was thinking of yes yes he was teaching the kid to rescue his dad right because that's how it works because then they did like Iron Eagle 2 through like 7 I think I only saw the first two Navy Seals oh you know that's a guilty pleasure of mine I know it is. God here. God here. God help me. Your God can't help you now. Last Starfighter? Oh, Last Starfighter would be excellent. Oh, I just wanted, but that's where, you know how people were, we were poking at, does the shark really have to eat the ball? In Last Starfighter, you have to have Death Blossom. Right. So now you're talking like an Apollo 13-esque massive salvo of balls. You don't have to do it. If it doesn't work as a toy, though it should, I want that thing spinning around firing balls 360 degrees. I want them to hit the glass. I want it to be awful. But just do it on the screen otherwise and get around it if you can't. If you can't. Oh, man. We're trapped in the gravity of the moon. What do we do? We die. I don't think you can finish it. Thank you. We die. My favorite part. My hand was physically doing the glass. It doesn't work when we're in an audio format. Yeah, you actually hear it in the audio. Yeah. For those, most people won't know this because I never released it. But I actually, when Star Wars, the home edition, the pin came out. I think you know this because I sent you a link. I actually took their trailer and redid it with my own sound effects from Star Wars stuff and added in. The background music, though, is last Starfighter music. And I throw in that line about we die at the end of the clip. I never released it because I showed it to someone else. And they said, you know, Stern might not like that. And I was like, I don't want to take the chance. I don't want to hear anything. It was one of those times where I was like, I don't want to hear any guff. So I kept it private. But it exists. I still have it out there. I should probably have it on YouTube just as an unlisted video. Completely out there, but it just popped up because I had IMDB up because I was looking up the last Starfighter, the date for the last Starfighter. And it included more like this, included Inner Space. Oh, Inner Space. That could be a really – like if you were willing to go in with like custom plastic ramp and colors and stuff, I think you could have a lot of fun with Inner Space. Right. That's one of those movies that you – I mean because that was Dennis Quaid and Martin Short. I thought it worked really well. So – but yeah. Yeah. No, definitely one of those that – I don't know how you would make it work. It's just one of those movies that just – I mean, Goonies is like a – I think someone's doing a homebrew of Goonies, and there's always talk about that. Big Trouble in China has often had a lot of love. We know there's a homebrew, or at least I know someone was working on one for Spaceballs, which, again, that's one where I would have thought a company would have picked that one. I would have thought. Maybe it's too hard to license. Rambo is another one. And, you know, First Blood Part II, especially if you wanted to go just sort of the action-y violence. But, you know, if you just want to farm action, 80s nostalgia, there's so much. I mean, there's stuff like that, which was, you know, exceedingly popular. Full Metal Jacket would kind of be in that boat, too. The Untouchables is a personal favorite of mine. The Untouchables is great. Hey, I mean, that was a movie that Sean Connery won his Academy Award on. Or you could go really corny like Tango and Cash and Red Heat. Did you see Red Heat where Schwarzenegger plays a Russian police officer with James Belushi? That's a weird one. Blade Runner, another obvious one that probably deserves it. I could definitely see it. And it would have been a good time to hit with the new Blade Runner that came out a few years ago. it would have been timely. Yes. I think you don't often see like a straight up comedy stuff done. Like Deadpool's pretty funny as a, as a pin, but like as a straight up comedy thing, though, I honestly don't know. There's a homebrew airplane. So obvious. And just as long as you could have the clips for the audio, as long as you get the audio, I think a lot of people would just enjoy it. You could have it. You can actually have a fairly simple looking game with that. because, I mean, there are different approaches you could take. Right. I think a lot of people might have enough nostalgia for that alone. It's maybe not the – I wouldn't say it's an A-list pick, but I do think it's probably a strong contender. Trying to think. 80s, 80s, 80s. I mean, there's a lot of famous dramas. I don't usually lean towards – like, you know, Enemy Mine, for example, I think might be too dramatic. I would be way too dramatic. I mean, I don't know how you would make that work in a pen because I don't know how to make a lot of this stuff work in a pen. Yeah, well, that's not our job. We're just picking good themes. That's picking good themes. It completely blows away this whole mid-'80s thing, but it's now stuck in my head since we started talking about it. Broken Arrow. Oh, gosh, Broken Arrow. It was such a terrible – But that's going to lead us down the Travolta-verse, where then it's like, well, if we're doing that, we've got to do face-off, right? We've got to. Travolta just did this string of really nonsensical movies that made no sense at all. He just, it was like, I don't remember. It was just like, he kind of fell into the action thing for a while. I can't remember when Pulp Fiction was versus all the rest of it. But he just started doing a lot of action movies. It was just what happened. Kind of like Nicolas Cage had that happen. And, you know, he did this whole, yeah, I mean, Con Air and The Rock and all the rest of it. But you're right. We're getting outside of the 80s. So I think that'll probably be it for the pinball section. Thank you for playing along with me, Tony. Let's jump into video games. All right. Video games. It's the beginning of a new year in video games. And you know what that means? Layoffs. Oh, that's true. That's very true. It's so true. And the layoff count is high already this year. There were a bunch of layoffs going in before Christmas. So far, let's see, Twitch has laid off 500. The CEO of Twitch, Dan Clancy, did a full-up Q&A following the announcement of the layoffs. And in that Q&A, he said, we've implied this before where we say we need to run it sustainably, but I'll be blunt. We aren't profitable at this point. Yeah it I deeply concerned I don want to I not a panic person so I not going to ask anyone to panic I mean for those of you who are listening who are streamers namely in pinball because I know a number of you are I would really start thinking about having an exit strategy if Twitch fails in terms of, like, where you're going to go. I'm not saying move from it. I'm just saying have something in place in your mind with what you want to do. So if you're thinking like going to YouTube or something, maybe look into what it would take. There are rules before you're allowed to live stream on YouTube. It's not just like already have a channel and you can instantly live stream. There are certain requirements you have to meet. So I would just suggest like start thinking about an alternative place to go because I am deeply concerned that Twitch is going to be able to stay afloat. And one can argue, well, it's got Amazon money behind it. Sure, but Amazon can pull the plug. They've pulled the plug on things before. They may not have Google's reputation for that, but they do pull the plug on things. They do, and that's one thing that in his Q&A he said. He said, we work with Amazon, but the goal is to be sustainable and profitable. If we're not sustainable and profitable, we have to have a plan going forward. so they they are very much i mean to just bluntly say we are not profitable is kind of a huge thing and they are definitely the biggest of the streaming groups which means also that their costs are higher because they are doing so much more streaming but it will be interesting to see how things go. Yes, because, I mean, you're right. They do face a lot of costs. I remember when Mixer was a thing that Microsoft was doing, and there was a lot, I mean, there were a lot of kind of pro-Twitch people who were, I think, fairly complaining, well, you know, Mixer has a lot, like, they don't need as much infrastructure. They don't have to live stream as much stuff at the same time, so they've got a lot lower costs. But, as you've noted, Twitch is the biggest, and that works both ways. They also have this huge audience and huge number of streamers and it's borderline, to me, borderline shocking that as long as it's operated, they can't figure out how to make that work when they are the industry leader on it. Right. I mean, no one is surprised if you hear that back on pinball, if HomePin doesn't make a profit, but if Stern were to say, you know, we're not profitable, and it's like, but you guys make and sell the most machines, it would be concerning, even though I'm sure they have easily the highest labor costs, because they have more employees than anyone else right and that's i mean with them having started opening up to all to allow their people to co-stream on other sites where they used to be a hard ban against co-streaming uh with them starting to make some of the other changes they've made recently it's all painting a picture of concern and especially since they're doing so many things to try and increase the amount of money streamers get without actually making any from other sources, without doing anything on their side, without increasing the payouts. Because since they're not profitable, they obviously can't increase the payouts because they don't have the money for it. Because they're not even bringing in enough to make a profit. They're probably maybe breaking even. Yikes. Discord laid off 170. That's what we're using to talk to each other today. We are. And it's been working very well. I mean, Discord's pretty good size. It's pretty ubiquitous at this point. Lots and lots of people use it. I know I follow several different channels besides just our own. But I know, like, my daughter has her friend group has a Discord that is just like all of the friends put together in their own Discord. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Discord. It's easy to set up. And, of course, when you've got lots of people using it, then you just use one app and you're able to bounce between all those servers. But they've had to downsize. They've had to downsize. They're laying off to sharpen their focus and bring more agility to the organization. I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means either. My guess is that it means that they overstaffed while looking to expand on a project or something that probably failed in the background. So they're cutting the group. That's my guess, but I don't know for sure. Now, Unity. Unity's the big one. Now, that's not surprising, though. No. No. Unity laid off 1,800. That's a quarter of their total staff. Blame their new CEO. Right. Because they had a real bad – it's almost to the point where I'm wondering if the – and we've talked about this in the past – if that whole rollout, that failed rollout thing back in August for their changes wasn't kind of like the whole new Coke thing. where it wasn't a... It was so ham-fisted. Right. Where it wasn't, we're going to play this real bad thing and then we're going to settle back into something that's not as bad, but that'll make people happy and it's still not working very well. Yes. So they've laid off a quarter of their total staff. That's in addition to the staff they laid off last year. So they're probably pushing up a much larger percentage layoffs, 40 plus percent. lost boys interactive has laid off a sizable amount of their staff there's no exact numbers it's a company owned by gearbox what do they do i don't recognize the name uh they've been doing little side projects and assist work with gearbox for gearbox stuff okay but they've got a staff of 400 and oh so that's that's a pretty big studio then right And there's no firm numbers on how much other than sizable, a good section, which is no real surprise considering Gearbox has been looking at being spun off to become its own thing again because it is with, oh, the company just left my mind, the ones that have had all the trouble since June of last year. Embracer? Embracer, yeah. Yeah, because Embracer has been talking about basically releasing Gearbox to be on its own again as part of their tightening up of things. I don't know what Embracer is doing. You'd think Gearbox would be one of the most potentially profitable things they got. That would be my thought. I mean, Gearbox is a solid company, which is why they would just shut it down. Just turn out some more Borderlands and be done with it. Behavior Interactive, they're the developers of Dead by Daylight. They laid off 45 employees. And CI Games, developer of Lords of the Fallen, laid off 10% of its staff in the last couple weeks. So it's definitely been an interesting start to the year. No major surprises there, though. We knew layoffs would happen. They always do. And we'll see how it continues into the year because last year was really bad for layoffs all year long. Right. I know a lot of it was companies that had upsized during the pandemic with the giant upswing and everybody being trapped at home. And they're now reducing their staff to be able to match what their actual sales are. I don't know if that's just an excuse, but that's the thing I've seen a lot of places commenting on. We'll see what happens going forward. Last time we talked about Square Enix Leaning into AI art They've announced that they did their first Experiments with AI art in the upcoming Foam Stars game which is their Take on the The Squid game from Nintendo Splatoon Their take on that type Of gameplay apparently there's A lot of in game Like album art and all that album art was created by AI. So it's a very small percentage of the art of the game, less than 1% of the art of the game, but it is their first experimentation with doing AI art. So we'll see how that goes. Also, Ubisoft has updated their subscription model and created a new tier because they are saying that consumers need to get the mindsets They need to have their mindsets changed And be comfortable with not owning their games anymore And the subscription is the way of the future So they've created a plus premium subscription At $18 a month That includes all new releases and some early access And their classic subscription at $8 a month That is a curated selection of popular back catalog and live games And the big thing is They're the ones who have the streaming rights to Activision Blizzard games Due to Microsoft cutting that deal to get the UK to sign on board for the buyout or the merger. So we'll see where that ends up leading. I don't know. I can understand people not being comfortable with not owning their games, but at the same time, we've seen this happen in the music and the DVDs and movie industry where less and less people are buying CDs and they're buying everything digitally. And we're having the conversations like we had with PlayStation last year where people who had purchased games were about to lose access, or purchased movies, I'm sorry, were about to lose access to those movies due to their licensing deal ending. that the PlayStation had to fight to get another licensing deal signed up with for a couple of years. But, I mean, that's an ongoing struggle and change that I think we're going to be seeing as more and more things are digital only. Yep. It's been a fear for a long time of what happens if X and Y end up happening. And we're starting to see those X and Ys happen. And then people are like, I don't own the thing I thought I owned. And they're like, well, you didn't really own it. And it's like, well, then why is this digital future good for me? Yeah, and I think that's a problem we're going to be seeing across the board. It's the same thing as just I know has talked about in the past with what happens if you have a large digital library and you pass away. That digital library just goes away with all of your access and all of your stuff. So nobody, where if you actually physically own it, it can go down to your descendants. I'm hopeful that the Star Citizen, they find a way to pass that on to descendants so my great-grands can actually play it when that game releases. I'm sure, yes, descendants are longing for my copy of Golem. Yeah. Have you started it yet? No, because you still find RoboCop. No, because I need to finish RoboCop. You've got to finish RoboCop first. I don't like to play lots of games at once. It's too confusing for me. I understand that. Bad enough I've paused Starfield. I'm going to forget how to fast travel, which is the only way to travel in that game. Games. Fun. Xbox had a developer direct and threw out a couple interesting titles, all that are slighted to come out this year. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. They're once again trying to put out an Indiana Jones game that will hopefully be good. I think the only one that's ever been good has been the Lego one. The buzz on this one has been very positive. It has. It's a first-person game slated to release sometime this year. The videos I've seen of it look interesting, but we'll see how well it actually pulls off. Avowed is slated for release in the fall. That's the next Obsidian game that they've been talking about for a year or two now. Hellblade 2 is slated to release in May I remember the original Hellblade was one of those sleeper games That kind of took off huge when it came out But nobody expected much of it It became a huge thing Yeah Visions of Mana is coming this summer And Oxide Games is putting out It's called Aura History Untold It's a grand strategy game And Oxide Games was founded by former Firaxis team members Oh, Firaxis. I haven't thought about them in a long time. Right. So that's interesting because Firaxis drove a lot of the later Civilization games, the XCOM game. So it'll be interesting to see another grand strategy game that, from the looks and descriptions, feels very Civilization. Okay. I might have to keep my eye on that one then because I haven't played a grand strategy game in quite a long time at this point. Yeah, everything about it feels very Civilization, and Civilization was always a great series. Couple things, last things. Nintendo, their shares have hit a record high. As expectations of the Switch 2 announcement and speculation that Saudi Arabia is going to be investing more, like they've been doing pretty heavily in the Japanese video game market lately, with their fund that has been dumping so much money in. We've talked about it a couple times over the course of the last year. And so their Nintendo shares have shot up. We've seen reports at this point from lots of developers that they're doing work for Nintendo on all new hardware. But Nintendo has made no official announcement. And then to finish it up, I thought we'd talk about Awesome Games Done Quick, which just finished last night. I actually fell asleep before the final finale of it last night, getting over this sinus thing. I've been sleeping a whole bunch lately. But I feel like overall this might have been one of the best GDQs. Yes, at least in terms of structure, functionality, flow, I'd say this has been a major improvement. Now, as you know, but the listeners might not, that AGGQ, like so many other events, this has always really been a big live event. And so the pandemic caused a lot of disruption in terms of they didn't know how to do a week-long, a true 24-7 live stream. And there were a lot of struggles with that. And then in the wake of being able to start doing them back in person, there were just other issues. I mean, they ended up being virtual far longer because they made certain decisions to quit holding the event in Florida. And so they had to pivot. it and then i remember last year agdq kind of happened at the regular time but sgdq was way early they did it like memorial day right like memorial day kicked it off instead of the fourth of july which is normally when people what so that was weird normally agdqs and sgdqs are kind of looked at separately and normally agdqs perform better because there are more people who it's you're inside it's winter people aren't on vacation when they do it so anyway uh yeah i I agree with you, Tony. I thought that overall, when I'd come home from work, again, as I noted in the intro, I would usually just throw this on and listen or watch whatever was happening. I did not stay up all the way to the end. I never do. However, I saw them hit their monetary $2.5 million earned, and they didn't get much past it. So honestly, I probably cut all but like the last 10 minutes. Probably. Because they were near the end of the run. It was just it was already almost midnight. And I was just like, I think I'm going to stop. But so, you know, they raised what? $2,516,507. I seen some other things that put it within of that So something in that neighborhood I will note now this is per comment that I saw on Reddit so I not going to say for sure but I going to because their numbers didn agree with what I've seen in some articles, but it is very close. This is the worst earning AGDQ financially, since I don't, I won't say ever, their numbers only went back to 2020, but it's the worst from 2020 through 2024. It's about 100,000, more like maybe 130,000 less than last year. Right. Which, with the economy, is no overall surprise. Right. People just have less money sitting around to give out. And I heard that, again, someone on Reddit replying to that did note that they quit adding bits and sub money to the total amount this year. So maybe it's closer if that's included. I don't know if those are still going to that. I assume it is. I didn't do bits and sub. I just do a regular donation. Yeah, I just do a regular donation as well. But anyway, I mean, they had in 2022 had – and that was obviously – that was one of the virtual years. But because of their – I think that one still ended up being virtual because of their whole movement thing. But anyway, they broke $3.4 million that year. So we've seen – I mean, I don't want to downplay it overly harsh because, I mean, $2.5 million is a ton of money for – this is for the Prevent Cancer Foundation, by the way, for those that are – that's what – AGQ serves that charity. And then the summer one they do is for Doctors Without Borders. So what were your thoughts on, like, highlights or lowlights of the stuff you saw? I will say in near the end, there was an interview where they talked about how the changes they'd done this year. And they had two stages. So they could be prepping a stage for a run while a run was happening on another stage. And that's why they did not end up, you know, five and ten hours behind like they normally do. And I think that's a big part of the reason it ran so much smoother this year. And I thought that was a really great just highlight. just how well everything kept together. For my personal highlights of stuff, there's a few that, because of how they fell in time, I didn't get to watch them because I was either at work, that I need to go back and watch the YouTubes of, and I haven't done it yet. But of the ones I did see I really liked On Saturday The final The final day They had a lot of really good runs I liked the Mario Kart 64 All cups utilizing skips run Beating all cups In Mario 64 in 27 minutes And change There were some really cool skips in there That I had never seen before I know they really talked up the dog playing gyromite and it was not great in my opinion it was kind of what I expected but it was not as much fun to watch as I think would be thought of the other one the one that caught me out really interestingly was the Octopath Traveler 2 run that happened back on Tuesday I was watching that in preparation for the Hades run and I'll admit I ended up falling asleep before the Hades run which I have to go back and re-watch the Hades run because I was really hopeful to see how that went and I think those are the ones that really jump out at me okay yeah i uh i did go back because they i think very wisely did not give the dog a prime time slot in the united states correct i watched 45 seconds of it it was awful um it was he was not a good boy i um he is basically i just i i knew it's a dog it can't do a lot but given it's a dog obeying commands i felt i have seen like clips from tiktok of dogs that have exhibited more control i mean i i had someone else tell me that there was a part where the dog basically killed the guy wouldn't uh wasn't here's how i knew i knew it was going to be bad up front i'm going to tell you how i knew they had an interview with him and the with the owner and well peanut butter was there too peanut rose the dog and he's the owner was trying to get the dog to basically to speak and the dog didn't obey and i thought this dog is not ready for prime time this is not a good boy so but what a good marketing idea for donations yeah so brilliant definitely i even with me with what little i saw thinking this is stupid and boring uh from a charity perspective brilliant move. They should maybe see about having a goldfish play next time, and maybe they can morph off of that. So that was not a highlight for me. I'll actually also note that people were super supportive in the Twitch chat. I didn't get all the way through the final game, which was Final Fantasy 5, which is a game I have played. There was a part where the runner messed up something. He didn't have his character properly leveled, basically. It's a little more nuanced than that. And just had to keep trying to get past this one fight in a way, I think, to try and get him. I don't know. It was, let's just say, I quit counting after the A3 set of the system. And part of me is sitting there. They're not at the 2.5 million. And I'm like, is this scripted? Last year's Summer Games Done Quick, there was a lot of criticism because they weren't hitting their financial goals. and they had a game they wanted to have run, but they needed to reach a certain threshold. And they ended up having the chat team, the couch or whatever, vamp for 40 minutes as donations trickled in. Because it's one of those things where it's like, we can do this bonus game if we hit this incentive. And the nod, nod, wink, wink is they always hit the incentive. Well, it's gotten harder now that they're not reaching the amounts that they used to reach. And they've built their estimates based off of prior year performance. in fact i'll go ahead and spoil he was supposed to go and fight omega weapon and the plan was clearly he was going to do it on the route of the speed run and they didn't have the total yet so i think he went back and did it because i know they hit the total they i turned it off when they hit the total but he had already gone past that point and he had made a save so i was like oh that's how we're that's how we're playing it we're being a little dishonest but anyway uh it was uh i kind of like it when i see streamers mess up on stream but this guy was so hard stuck for i mean it was over 10 minutes i was editing a video at the time and i'm just like oh this is this is really like this sucks this is not this is not fun to watch he has been stuck here for too long even i can't get like schoeden fraud of joy out of it right so i've seen it ended up being unfortunate yeah i've seen some similar in the past where it's gotten to the point where they've had to load like safety saves because they're just like, well, it's like there's this thing that it's it's we have a 90 percent chance to get it right. And there's only a 10 percent chance for it to go wrong. But if it does go wrong, it's literally a game ender and it's three quarters of the way through the game. And then you get it. It's like, OK, well, we can either end now with an hour of dead air to go or I can load a safety save. So it's always disappointing. I do not watch this stuff for people to be setting world records. It's a marathon. I think having your safety strats so that people can see what, in theory, how things are supposed to be is totally fine. And part of it was he struggled throughout the run, I felt, with his notes. I mean, he had a tablet up with notes. He was clearly constantly losing place. At one point, it lost connection to the Wi-Fi, and I guess he was streaming the notes instead of just having them loaded up in a notepad. Oh, wow. But it just was not – for the ending stream, it looked a little sloppy. And again, these things happen. So those are my two lowlights. So let me end you with some positive vibes. Okay. I did watch the Hades race. It's a race. The Hades race. That's why I wanted to watch it. All I'll say is it's super close. Nice. Super close. And it was a lot of fun. I thought it's just really – but again, that's again – game I've played so much. I have every achievement in that game from the Xbox version. The only thing I kind of wish, again, people race, what makes the most sense for them is the weapon build-outs are very similar. They use the same weapons in the same order, except they take two different versions of the final weapon. But anyway, it was still watching people just destroy a game. I was like, they beat it three times in what would probably take me one time. Sort of how it went. So that was super cool. The last night, the Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom run. Oh, that was so good. Very good. The key thing on these things, I think, is having really good commentary. And there was very good commentary during that run. And that's what makes it so awesome. Another one I need to call out that I think has really good commentary and thus makes it interesting is the Mario Maker 2 glitch run. it's a glitch exhibition normally they do like a relay race which is usually a lot of fun when i heard it was glitches i was really disappointed but it was so well done it actually was very entertaining probably the best stream i saw was mario maker 2 glitch exhibition really yes uh a couple other i did watch the octopath uh oh the the which that one was all right uh balder skate 3 i haven't played that game uh they do they do avoid uh spoilers major spoilers uh and that one actually uh was pretty interesting to watch just because of the tech and stuff so right that one isn't the strongest on commentary but it's decent and it was a good ending game because a lot of people uh love that game and it was a good stream so i thought that one was really good not legends of zelda good but it was very good um i didn't really click with the uh mario 64 drum any any like drum percent or something but a lot of people really loved it so i'd say if you are into seeing games played differently there is a guy who plays mario 64 with a drum set and he was actually good at it yeah i just i it's too gimmicky to really click with me but uh but the crowd loved it so uh and it and it paces really well like you can see the struggles with how the drum works but he didn't like he knew how to do it too so it wasn't horribly it wasn't horribly broken or anything like that so i think those are probably the the main things that really clicked with me that i watched but um i thought it was yeah the dual stage thing i did not know they were doing the dual stage thing until the interview at the end on the last day but i was like that was so smart yeah because this is the first one that it actually ended on saturday normally it ends in like the middle of the night, like 5 or 6 in the morning, Sunday morning. And I guess one of the nice side effects of it was they ended up being able to throw in a lot of bonus games. They'd throw in a bonus objective for a whole bonus game because one day I got home and I turned it on and Death Smiles was playing, and Death Smiles wasn't in the schedule. That's a shoot-em-up. Apparently, they were freeing up enough time that they were able to stick in all these other games where a lot of people who are there to showcase one game, but they actually know another game, and sometimes if it's a less popular game or whatever, they'll do it as a bonus. And they were just able to get a lot of bonuses in that weren't in the main schedule. Yeah, I thought it worked out really well for them. I know in the interview when they were talking about it, they were talking about how it used to be you'd lose two to five minutes minimum per game, which doesn't sound like a whole lot until you realize you're talking about over a week's worth of time. And then this new system seemed a lot better. And they seemed, the host and everybody involved seemed to be more conscious because it wasn't 6 a.m. on Sunday morning when everything was supposed to have ended eight hours earlier. Yeah. Yeah. There was a time in these GDQs where you knew the last day was going to be listed as it was going to be into Sunday. And they would just end with like a six-hour RPG and just let everyone go to bed. Yeah. Except those runners, and no one would be in the room. Basically, it's just like, yeah, anyone who wants to watch, it's like, we're speedrunning Final Fantasy II. What's the speedrun strat for Final Fantasy II? Oh, yeah, you just play through it. Oh, okay. Cool. That's one of my – I've never been a huge fan of the super long game being in these things. I personally – and it felt like this year. Maybe they do some in the late night hours. I know that's a popular late night AR thing for the new games. Yeah, there was a lot of stuff that I watched that was under two hours, which, I mean, basically, if you're going past an hour, you now have a long speed run. So, I mean, in theory, that Final Fantasy V was supposed to be two hours and 50 minutes was the estimate. Oh, by the way, let me go back and whine a little bit. They modified that. Before I turned it off, I saw someone went in and changed the estimate to three hours because the guy got hard stuck on the antlion for 10 plus minutes. And I'm like, that's a bunch of crap. His estimate doesn't get to change just because he sucks. we all like the but then you get the boulder ski the eight minute boulder ski three run yes yes it was so so interesting also i uh yeah once they i'll probably eventually get that for my console and i'm like you know what i might one of my favorite things about watching these these games uh seeing stuff like that is to take some of the the basic things and applying it to my own gameplay, so I think I'm going to use Bear Tech. That was hilarious. I'm going to use some Bear Tech in mine, kind of like I used the Doom 2016 speedrunner, had some techniques for the final boss, and I was like, I used those. I was like, it works! And it made the game so much easier to play. I love it. Anyway, overall, yeah, I thought it was very, very good. It was. I quite enjoyed it. I always do. Do you have anything else for us, Tony? That's what I've got. My voice has definitely been taking a turn down here towards the end, I've noticed. Yeah, I tried to fill in with my criticisms of Final Fantasy runs and Antlions and everything else. I fell asleep. The Final Fantasy, I fell asleep probably a half hour into it after it started. And honestly, the runner himself, he was good. I get it. It's an almost three-hour game, and if you miss one thing up, all of a sudden things are really complicated. it was just like I'm also like you guys I'm looking at the math and I'm like they're not going to reach 2.5 million they're not going to reach 2.5 million well I guess if he stalls out 15 minutes on a thing that's not even a boss maybe then that's a bunch of crap it's not fair at all I will say I don't think either of us mentioned it I did enjoy the Lost Judgment run the Kaito Files Lost Judgment Like a Dragon Yakuza run thing. Oh, I missed most of that one. It was pretty good. It was mainly driven less by the game and the speed run through the game itself, though that was good, so much as by the runner and the commentary team was very, very funny, and I quite enjoyed that. I mean, because otherwise it's just a Yakuza game. So you beat people up. You do. You do. But you can do it fast. which is not what I did, but it's the best way to play it, I'm sure. But those of us who want to tell us what they thought was fun or funny about the stream can write into us, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. You can also reach out to us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. You can support the channel through Patreon, patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. We're on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks. Will there be more news? who knows it's early in the year so probably not a lot but we'll cover what we've got but until next time my name is dennis i'm tony goodbye everybody see ya