Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, May 2nd. This is episode 140. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. Oh, we got stuff to talk about today. No, something happened. There's something happened in one of the hobbies. In both of the hobbies. Something happened in here. No, that's not how the song goes. It's amazing. How does that song go? We don't know. We don't know what song it was. Did you know over on the pinball show, I have a hard, fast rule that Zach's not allowed to sing? Yeah, how well does that work? It works fairly well because I gave him all these exceptions, but he can never meet them. So he does have a bad habit of trying to sneak in the first few notes of a song. and I might get to the point where I just hang up on him when he even does that because sometimes a lesson of firmness of the line has to be held. The rules, because I know you don't listen to the show, the rules are very simple. All he has to do is have any of the other podcasts on the Pinball Network mention a song on their show and then he may sing from one of those songs one time during the show. But most of the podcasts don't remember to reference songs because they don't run terrible podcasts. So, and the reason why that's an important distinction is he thought he was going to agree to anyone on the network and a bunch of the live streamers on Twitch will mention songs all the time, but I deliberately blocked that aspect of it. You're like, no. I'm like, read the fine print. I don't think so. He's like, can we take this before the TPN Senate? And I'm like, I am the Senate. Yeah. I had to work in my emperor impression. You just tell him you're just trying to save him. I'm not trying to save him. I'm just trying to save the show from itself. Holy cow. No one wants to live. If he was good at singing, it would be one thing. But no. And I don't blame him. I mean, I'm not good at singing either. It's just we have to have rules for ourselves or else there's chaos. Speaking of chaos or the soon end to it I did get a couple days ago My second dose of My COVID vaccine So we'll be able to record in person for the next show Yay Because you've been a long time Awesome I've been vaccinated since early February Yay Important Job You know what I'll miss the most I'll miss the beef tendons. Yeah. Nothing but beef tendon crunchies. So what's been going on? I have. I played some more Wastelands and that was like all I did last week. And then this week I haven't played anything. I've watched shows and binged a couple things. I binged Chernobyl and I started on Westworld. and finished watching some shows that were coming out, and I've been reading and just not played a whole lot, plus my normal critical role and stuff like that. Oh, yes. That's used a bunch of my time watching all that stuff every week because I can't stay up late enough to watch it when it comes out because that stuff starts at like 9 p.m. local time, and it's between three and six hours long. So I'm normally asleep before 9 p.m. Well, speaking of 9 p.m., I did appear on this last week for the Gaming on 10 video game podcast, and they start recording at 9. That's late. That's exactly what I thought. I was like, that's really late, especially since one of the hosts is over on the East Coast. So that would be 10. Wow, that's really late. Yeah. And I was told, well, he's fine. That's when they do it. So I think they were a little surprised. Now, people I work with know about this. One of them refers to it as four o'clock Dennis and the rule. It's not a hard and fast rule, but I tend to warn people, even those that I just work with tangentially, that if you want me to filter, it's important to get the meetings in before four. after four I kind of quit caring and I'll participate but like if you're overly concerned with me being polite to everyone on the call just be aware that I don't really filter at that stage and you've been warned so I might say something and I won't mean it to be offensive or anything but for example if something like a case in point was someone had this terrible logistics issue with shipping some stuff and I just couldn't stop laughing at them and and they felt really bad. And that made me feel bad, but it was still really funny. And so I had to mute. I had to turn off the camera because I just could not stop laughing about how horrific it was. And they were just like, we're having like truckloads of hand sanitizer. We're going to show up to these health departments. Like they had ordered like 1,800 bottles and they were going to get 180,000 bottles. It's funny. I mean, can you imagine what you would do with that much hand sanitizer? there i'm thinking like slipping slides down the halls this is all in my head but i can't explain that because they ordered 18 000 they got 180 that yeah they thankfully were able to get it canceled because the shipping company called them and said you guys are gonna have a forklift ready right because this stuff's coming on pallets yeah and they're like they're like but we only ordered like you know 10 boxes or whatever and like no no no no no no you're getting 200 boxes pallets we We had one of those issues kind of like that over the winter where we misunderstood something. We'd ordered winter gloves, and we wanted 12 packs, and each pack had four pairs of gloves in it. And somehow we ended up with 12 cases. Gloves for dicks. And each case had like eight or ten packs in it. So, we've got gloves for years. Thankfully, this one worked out. They were able to get the orders, not canceled, but restructured and reshipped to where they needed to go and all that. So, it worked out. But it was really funny. Anyway, so Gaming on 10, I think Don was a little surprised. I could tell at the start after I had mocked the current state of toppers in pinball. And he asked me, am I normally this direct when I do the other shows about this stuff? And I was like, I think so. But we also always record in the morning. So maybe not because I do filter a lot better in the morning. Same with the pinball show. We record at 8. Well, in theory at 8.30. In reality at 8.45. So the filters are up at that point. I put together a much better show recording early than I would ever late. But we play by the rules. Yeah. That way things are, you're not at the I don't care state. At the end, I just told Don, just cut out anything offensive. That's what I would do. So that's why that episode was 12 minutes long. Yeah. He's like, it's going to have a really abrupt end, Dennis. I'm like, okay, whatever works for you. But anyway, I have a link in the show notes. Well, maybe if you hadn't just started randomly dropping the F-bomb for the last 20 minutes of the episode. I was not that bad. I did not swear. but I probably did step on a few toes that were I could tell afterwards I was like, I would suggest maybe cutting this and this and this if you're worried about upsetting anyone. Because sometimes I think a discussion's just interesting and I don't think about how a person that's involved with it might respond. To me, it just doesn't cross my mind. It's merely a discussion of fact and then you end up finding out, oh wait, people get sensitive about some of that stuff. You never know. It depends on the person. Some people get real upset about stuff. Yeah. I'm sure you've run into people where it's like a total nothing thing, but they're like hypersensitive about it. So I've gotten better about just sort of predicting when that's going to happen, but I don't have a 100% success rate with it. So anyway, I'd like to get a show notes if anyone wants to hear that episode. So other than that, I think you sold that episode very well. Filterless Dennis is definitely high on the interest list. Yeah, I'm sure. it is. It's all up, containment was all upon Don and his ability to edit. It's all on him to save his show from spiraling into oblivion. And then I've, uh, I just started yesterday playing the season two of Telltale's Batman game. I'm Batman. Yeah, oh my, okay. I've said it only 50 times so far and I'm still in the first episode. Like, a cutscene's going away, it's like, that's right! Fade to black because I'm Batman! Where's my screen going? come back i've adopted the darkness you don't get to have it anyway i thought it was i just loaded it because i thought i just thought it was a redo like a graphical new engine version of season one i didn't realize i had season two so i was like oh i'm really excited i could continue this story i was gonna play gears 5 because we talked about that on gaming on 10 but when i started up it didn't seem to recognize or find my old saves which I thought were in the cloud. I mean, the prior time I had it was back with the Xbox that got burgled. But they never burgled the hard drive with all the stuff on it, nor did I have to change accounts. So I don't know. It had a whole bunch of update stuff applied to it. So I did the tutorial and then it would let me try and load my, or start a game and I just saw blanks. And I was like, um, hey, what's Batman? Yeah, Batman. I'm just going to play some Batman. Batman! So, anyway, that's been my time. So, as you mentioned, Tony, we have pinball. Stuff has happened in pinball. Stuff that gets to be talked about. And, nay, I say, not from the heart of Chicago, nay, I say, not even Wisconsin, and nay, not even even out of Texas. The Australians have saved us from ourselves and given us news. And that news is Haggis Pinball's announcement of Fathom Revisited. As the name would suggest, this is a remake of Fathom. There are two versions. There's the classic edition, which is essentially a true-to-form remake, modern components, but trying to be the old game. And then there is the mermaid edition, which is the LE, and that's a 250-unit limit. And that version has some modifications. I'm not going to go through all of them, but some of it is. They've got two LCD screens, 6.8-inch LCD screens in the apron area. It's got a special metallic reflective luminescent art on the cabinet. They call it ReflectoCab. Reflecto. Five-speaker sound system. It's got full RGB LEDs in the game. It's got full RGB, seven-segment score displays, and it comes with both the original rules and an enhanced 2.0 rule set, which is going to feature music and call-outs that were not in the original game. So Haggis' plan is to build 50 a month. I believe they're planning to start production in the summer. I want to think I heard around July. U.S. prices. Our classic edition is $7,360. $60, and the Mermaid Edition is $8,900. The last I have seen, per what thread I'm following on Pinsight about this, is they have not yet sold out of the Mermaid Edition, but I do believe that they are past the halfway point. But that's mostly people sort of throwing out order numbers and trying to guess. Yeah. So, discussion. Hey, we, alright. I'm going to start with a question for you to help steer this, and that is, what do you think about Haggis choosing the CGC method and doing a remake? I think that is a really good idea. I actually don't have a problem with putting out new build versions of classic old games. I like that. I don't like the price or the whole existence of the Mermaid Edition with different rules and call-outs and music. No. If I wanted the classic game, I want it to be the classic game. I can see some modifications. Like, I do like when CGC put out some of their remakes. They did, you know, the newer, nicer, bigger DMDs and the like. I like that. But I don't think it needs new rules necessarily or new music or all these other changes. And it sure as heck doesn't need to be $9,000. Hmm. What do you think about that the Mermaid lets you have both the original rules and the 2.0 rule set? Well, that, it wouldn't work any other way. I don't think anybody, I could be wrong. Actually, I won't even say I could be wrong. I am flat wrong. I'm 100% sure that I am wrong. There are people out there who would buy it even if it had just the new rules. but part of the whole thing is you like the classic game so you're buying it to get a new build version of a classic game that you like I still don't have a total sense in terms of I've played Fathom, we know someone who owns a Fathom I've played it quite a bit I'm not super familiar with what about the rules would I want to change I never thought that the game was particularly exploitable but I was found at a pretty hard game so that was part of the reason is the ball times just seemed really short but from the response online there do seem to be a lot of people that are really excited about having the 2.0 rule set and I'm basing that in part on the number of people who said they would have been in on the classic edition except they wanted the 2.0 rule set like they were willing to give up The full RGB, the RGB7 segment, the speakers, the ReflectoCab, the LCD screen. Well I mean I sure those are used by the rule set But basically it was like we wish that we could have had the 2 rule set included in the classic edition and then everything else be what distinguished the mermaid edition from the classic edition And some people said because of that differential, they weren't going to buy. Most of the sales are, as I would have thought, sounds like, are people ordering mermaid editions to get the full. And I get that in the sense that setting aside how high the prices are. And I agree with you. When I look at these, I'm like, this is unlike what's... Well, we'll explore that. The prices are high, but it's only $1,600 more to go from the Classic to the Mermaid. And I think for most people, that $1,600 is probably going to be quote-unquote worth it for all the differences that you get. But is it worth it not as an upgrade, but just for fathom? What do you mean? Obviously, some people think so. But I'm just talking the price, period. I mean, the Classic Edition. The Classic Edition is more expensive than a brand-new Stern? Yeah. I mean, aren't we in premium range at that point? Yeah, $7,300. That's just nuts to me. I mean, I don't understand the, if you had the choice between getting, say, whatever, an Avengers or Deadpool or Turtles or any of those games or a Fathom, and those other games are more than $1,000 cheaper, isn't that a route you're going to go? I think for, yes, I think for most people. I think so. But what what Haggis is doing here, I think, is pretty clever. So as you noted, you like the idea of them doing remakes. I I think this is a play for growing the company. That's really, really smart. So that is. So I don't remember how many Kelts machines because that's their first game. And they just they shipped game number one just a week or two ago. I think they sold less than 30 Kelts. And that was a reasonably priced game. That was like around $5,200 or so. So it's just no one cares. No one cares about original theme kelts. This is not an original theme. This is taking nostalgia, repackaging it, and selling it to people. Now, where I, like you, had concerns on the pricing is it's so expensive compared to new games. It's so expensive compared to, like, classic edition Chicago Gaming Company 90s remakes. And the difference, which I think is interesting to explore, is, like, when Medieval Madness came out as a remake, even, like, I think the LE was cheaper than buying a used Medieval Madness. Used Medieval Madnesses were going over $10,000 at the time. It was ridiculous. Well, and what's the used price on a FABO? And it's all over the place. I looked at about a year's worth of listing. Now, these aren't confirmed sales. I'm not saying these are market trends. It seemed like most Fathoms, without me taking note of what their quality was, go for low fives to low sixes, with restored versions seeming to go all the way up to 10,000. Okay. So Fathom was going for more than I thought it was. Because I was never in the market for it. I mean, I wasn't either, and I've never looked at it, but I would have guessed a Fathom at, you know, well, half that. Yeah. Honestly. Well, and so Fathom was, of these games, it's not a bad pick. I don't think it's as good of a pick as, like, Medieval Madness would be, but that's already been done. So that pick's not on the table anymore. Right. So it's high. It's still higher to buy this than it would be, in my view, to find a used old fathom working in probably decent shape. But again, it's a question of how is it that much more? For $1,000 more with new components, would that satisfy you? A number of people that have said they are in on an order on Pennside have also admitted that they were in the process of restoring a fathom. And so to them, this was – they were only restoring it because they really wanted one. They don't want the project. To them, it was the only way to get a high-quality fathom. They'd much rather just spend the money and buy themselves into one. Right. But they didn't have any choice. It was like no one was selling their restored ones. So they were having to buy, you know, they had new playfields and some of them are like, we might be able to recoup some of our money selling for those that want to, you know, that want a true Bally one. Maybe we can sell our project off to them and we'll be able to reinvest some of that money against the cost of the Haggis version. And I don't have to spend months putting together a game. And oh, yeah. And on top of that, I get to have new rules. I'm going to have RGB displays. It's going to look a little cooler. Things like that. So, I mean, so that's the thing. But I think we do see how this price point on this, you know, we're talking a higher price than CGC for an older game. And there's a question of whether or not the 2.0 rule set is going to be worth, I mean, until people experience it, we don't know how worth it is going to be ultimately. Right. So, I think that's why you see that the Mermaid Edition isn't sold out yet. But on the pinball show with Zach, when we did last week's show and we found out that this was going to be announced on Monday, he thought this would sell out day one, and it didn't. In fact, we are now basically a week past sale start, and it's not sold out. I appreciate this from a market perspective as well, because I think we're starting to get a better sense of just what the upper end is willing to pay for 1981 games. Right, but yeah, I'm surprised he thought it would sell out that fast Because I didn't think that at all when I first heard about it Well, given the LE and given how popular Fathom And he was probably more familiar with what the Fathoms had been going for than I was I think he just thought, it's one of the best art packages ever done Almost universally agreed upon as being the best art package of 1981 and it's hard to get the game. It's got a lot of fans. But for him, mostly art, I think. He just thought that that alone would make people be like, oh, it's a no-brainer. It's like buying a topper. It's just going to go up in value. So let's buy. Well, clearly asking people to put almost $9,000 in on such an old game and you can get prints and stuff of the art. That's the thing. You can get the art. So yeah, ultimately, my overall thought is that yeah, I see where everyone's always wondering when things are limited in this hobby about whether they'll sell or not and we keep seeing different experiments. So like when there was that British group that was doing the Mafia pen and it was really limited but it didn't sell out. The price was just really high for what was essentially an EM game and then we see other limited edition games like the CGC remakes and they all sold out to my knowledge and most of the modern like sterns and j like the jjp gnr ce sold out in a day so this was it's like okay well it's cheaper than guns and roses ce it's cheaper than an le from stern but where does it i think it's cheaper than from an le from stern now so now i'm curious i'll double check that but anyway but it did not immediately sell out so So clearly, while I think that the issue is both one price, but also it is an older game. New rules can only do so much for it. It was targeting an audience that I think Haggis knew existed, and that is people who really want Fathom. But the question is, how many people really want Fathom at that price? They knew there were some. It's super popular. but obviously you're really appealing to the niche of the hobby that knows the older games, not the new people. Well, just out of curiosity, I went and jumped on and was looking at some prices from all of those 81 Bally's, and Fathom is by far the most expensive of them, which would make sense if you're targeting something more expensive. The thing is, I think a lot of these other games are more fun than Fathom. I can understand. They could have a licensing problem trying to get something like Flash Gordon. That could be a licensing issue without maybe changing the art. But like 8-Ball is more fun. 8-Ball Deluxe. Yeah. And taking a quick look, it looks like when Avengers came out, the LE pricing was sort of in the $9,000 to $9,200. So this Mermaid Edition is a little bit cheaper, a couple hundred dollars cheaper than what a Stern LE goes for. Right. But it's more than a premium, which is more in that $7,500, $7,700 range currently, and way more, obviously, than a pro, which would be – so, yeah, premium is a little bit more than what the classic edition would cost, and Stern Pros currently run in like that. They're up now. It's like $5,800 around that price point. But at the same time, an Avengers LE, I think, would be a better option. But that's just me. And people feel differently. But that's one of those where, oh, what's an extra $200 or $400 for that level of difference? Well, I mean, a lot of that will come down to, in my view, what happens with the 2.0 rule set. But what I thought was interesting and where I do agree with you is I question the depth of the 2.0 rule set when you're only making it for maybe 250 people. Yeah. I mean, how much time, effort, and money are you going to put into it for such a small number of machines? Exactly. I think it would make more sense if it was part of the Classic Edition or if there was even an in-between edition. But I know there are not enough people interested in Fathom for there to be three editions, three versions of this game. And so, well, I mean, we'll ultimately see. And maybe they'll make some future decisions based off of, like, if the Mermaid Edition. they're only selling them for a set period and then they're going to close off and and that'll be that so they're not going to keep it open forever to get to the 250 maybe they hit the 250 i wouldn't be surprised if they do but clearly it wasn't a fast burn where there was a like people were in the process of joining the the clan haggis they had to do kind of like what spooky does with their their fang club and people who are members got to buy first i think everyone has learned from this is like you don't you don't need to worry like everyone had to be a member to get rick and morty because it sold out so fast you you did not need to be a member to get the fathom you wanted unless like you wanted to request a very specific number and you're obsessed about that there's no other reason you needed to but you mentioned like looking at some other games like eight ball deluxe and stuff and what they sell for price wise now part of the announcement that we learned about was haggis has a deal with planetary pinball which controls the bally and williams licenses for pinball machines and they have the right to do a total of five games this being the first and from additional discussion elements i have heard set like i i knew about that from the when we were recording the pinball show this is before all the news broke publicly But what I've heard since then is, well, what I knew at the time was they would all be of the same era. And what I'm assuming that means is, like, one of the features we mentioned is full RGB seven segment score displays on the Mermaid Edition. The Classic Edition, incidentally, has those. Also has the RGB lights in it. It's just they're only going to use the classic colors in the classic. And so to me, it's, oh, OK, this makes sense. Haggis is buying in bulk to save money. so everything's going to be seven segment score display that they're going to do is my theory they're not going to it's not going to go alphanumeric you know there's not going to be system 11 they're going to probably all stick in the early 80s and just use that same stuff so I mean I guess they could do like a six segment and just keep the sevens and just not use the last digit or something but anyway point being everyone has a good sense they're going to stick in that same era and also I have since heard that only Bally they aren't exploring Williams which of the era I'm not too surprised there's not as much good out of Williams in that era that wasn't produced in huge quantities the Steve Ritchie stuff so so the thoughts are well what other games do they do and well I can come up with things like Centaur I think is an obvious one it's like once we get past Fathom and I suppose Centaur the value falls way out like 8-Ball Deluxe sells for a lot for an early 80s game, but not nearly like Fathom does. No. So the ability to charge these prices is going to be more and more challenging for them to reach like 250 number unit sales on the other. Like after, other than this and Centaur, I really struggle with thinking that you're going to move a lot. Like I can tell you good rare games that people want like Frontier, but other than it being a competitive darling, I don't know 250 people that want Frontier. Does that make sense? Like, I know people around here in Kansas City who want Frontier. Some of them already own it, though. So it's like moving beyond that. I just don't think you can. I just don't think you can sell enough. Now, it may be enough for Haggis to build their company. I'm just saying, like, this was a brilliant one to start with, because if you're doing early era Bally, it's like it's Fathom and then Centaur and then it falls off a cliff on price. Yeah, because I'm looking at Bally's 78 to 83. That should be pretty much nothing but that general era type stuff. And then I think kind of like what you brought up with Flash Gordon, I think you need to rule out anything that has a secondary license. It's going to be too much work. Right. So like no Dolly Parton, no Kiss. No Dolly Parton, no Kiss, no Evil Knievel, no – what am I looking at here? There's Harlem Globetrotters on tour I mean Well the Harlem Globetrotters are a real group So there may be a license issue there too Yeah there'll be There's Nitro Groundshaker Yeah you can do that And I'm just looking at the Bally MPU that's the same as what was used In Fathom to keep me in the Same sort of area Do you think they do wide bodies or do you think That they want to keep all the cabinet sizes standardized I think they probably want to keep everything as standardized as possible. Okay, because there goes Paragon, which would have been obvious, and there goes Future Spa which was a less obvious but still probably a decent one Yeah I obviously as I noted Centaur would be a decent one 8-Ball Deluxe, I think you do. But I mean, there's a reason why the 8-Ball Deluxe isn't super high price. They've done three different variants of it. I mean, all being 8-Ball Deluxe, it's not counting Bad Girls and Sharky Suit Up. So, right. Medusa's come up a lot. I don't know if they want to deal with buying two-inch flippers and zipper flipper mechs and stuff that would be required for Medusa. But it would be a standard body, and they didn't make a ton of them. It's only like $3,200 or so. So that might be a good one to do. Can't do Star Trek. It's licensed. $6 million man's license. I did speculate on the pinball show. Maybe Viking. They only made 2,600 of them. A lot of people don't know Viking. Isn't Viking the one that was supposed to be Like something else No that's not Viking This is a different game Ignore me Then I shall The uh I mean Art wise you'd think Xenon And Xenon could use a 2.0 Ruleset if any game did need one But they made 11,000 Xenons Do you sell enough of them Yeah I mean I just Playboy's out it's licensed I don't know, Tony. I think this is hard. I think this is really – I think – I mean, I can give five. I mean, we can come up with five out of this, but it's like – I just – and it sounded like that they're still, like, looking for ideas. They haven't decided what the other four are. Yeah, it's – I mean, I guess you could do Fireball 2. I didn't know anyone cared about it, but – Yeah. Well, let's see. There's Skateball in 80. Skateball might be good. I've heard a few people suggest that one. So that one might be one of the five. Might be a good choice. I like Vector, but... I've wondered about Vector, too. I also like Embryon. Vector and Embryon both. Yeah, Embryon's wide, so... Right. That's why I... I mean, it would be a good pick if they're willing to do Widebody, but... It wouldn't be as good as Paragon, but it would maybe be the next one I would pick. Yeah, if they did do Widebody, I would say Paragon would be the obvious. Well, I would open a hot dog in as well. They only made about 2,000 of them. That's one of those 80 ballys that gets a little bit of attention. Yeah, I mean, normally it's like, oh, what would you do in this era? And I'd be like, well, I would do five class of 81s. My problem isn't giving you five class of 81s. It's giving you five class of 81s and you making money. Right. It's like, okay, so you have to throw out Flash Gordon, which they made a ton of, but you have to throw out Flash Gordon because of the licensor issue. Then we've got Embryon, Widebody, Electro, which wasn't, it's still not that expensive of a game to get. 8-Ball Deluxe is a decent pick, but it's just not the same market share as Fathom. Fathom and Centaur are the big dollar ones for hard. So you've got those. And it's, I just, I don't know. Because they're like, you know, if you do Fireball 2. Right. I think a lot of it just comes to how close are they wanting to stick to 81? How much are they willing to move around? Yeah, I mean, going with that battle, I mean, they're staying with the same sort of board set. I think they can go all the way into, like, 84 at least. So, I mean, there's a range. And they can go as far back as, what, 80? And again they don't have to stick with the board set Because obviously they're not using that board set Right I'm thinking display wise Era wise it's a decent demarcation point And there's some good stuff In that era It's just It's good stuff that you can ask for $7000 on I just don't know I don't think so I just don't think you can So anyway It's interesting I do think overall it's a smart move If they're not, other than I don't know exactly what the details are of the arrangement between them and Planetary, but if they're finding the demand has fallen off after the first couple, they can drop the idea, I'm sure, and then just move to doing something different or maybe discussing doing another remake with a later era, for example. I get the, like from Planetary's standpoint and Haggis' standpoint, probably, this was really smart in the sense that they've given themselves plenty of distance. There's like no way Chicago Gaming was going to go this far back in remakes. Right. We know Chicago Gaming's working on original new licensed stuff as well, not just sticking with remakes. And their remakes have been entirely in the D&D era. But if this is successful, I personally would much rather see Haggis than say, okay, go back to Planetary and say, you know, we've done two or three of these kind of early 80s valleys. Can we do System 11? Let's talk about that. Let's talk about doing alphanumeric, and I think you'll find more demand in that space, especially when you're moving into these higher price points. Whether or not they want to still do 2.0 rules, I can tell you from a competitive standpoint, most if not all of those System 11 games could use redesigns to deal with scoring imbalances and stuff for competitive. But that being said, Planetary already has an arrangement with a programmer to do code updates to those games that they're selling. and it doesn't cost you $9,000 to get those code updates. Right. So anyway, overall, pretty exciting. Good on Haggis for finding something that is definitely getting them a lot of attention. The buzz has been extremely positive overall. Even, obviously, there have been those objecting to various things, as you would expect, like what isn't in the Classic Edition or what the prices are and such, like you would expect. But people are like, okay, well, Haggis has shipped Celts. let's see them move forward they are asking for deposits which they say are kept in escrow until the game is being built and people are going to compare this to what's going on with Deep Root and as long as Haggis doesn't keep pushing back deadlines they can make themselves they can pull a spooky and make themselves as a respected boutique manufacturer that a lot of people will be willing to trust with their money I think it's definitely not a terrible idea. I think Fathom was the no-brainiest of the no-brainers. Yes. Sticking in that era, the demand is going to drop off fast. I know I'm saying it ad nauseum, but it's like, honestly, if I were them and those were the conditions between me and Planetary and negotiations, I'd be like, I want Fathom and I want Centaur and I don't want any more. Or maybe you give me Barracora over on the Williams side because they make very many of those and everyone loves Roger Sharp. And beyond that, I want a different era. Yeah. That would kind of be my, that would be where I would go at it from. But anyway, we will just have to wait and see. Speaking of waiting and seeing, or in more accurate terms, hearing, let's go ahead and hear about video games. Oh, Tony, there has been a lot going on in video games. There has been a lot. of the Activision world has been shaken. It has. Activision Blizzard, so big a company, so much money, so many layoffs, announced that Bobby Kotick, their head, has accepted a 50% salary reduction and a 50% reduction in his target annual bonuses for his new contract that runs for two years. So that means his pay is going to be reduced to only $875,000. His maximum bonus is only going to be $1.75 million per year. Though that doesn't affect the $200 million bonus that he's supposed to be getting here in like June. Because that was off of his previous contract, obviously. So, I don't know. We might have to start a GoFundMe for Bobby. He's going to be in pretty rough shape. Um, I'm not sure the real question here is, is he going to, are they going to keep laying off entire divisions? I don't know. Here's the thing that really annoys me and almost outright angers me with the way they've done. This is this feels and the way they've, they've pumped this news out there makes it even worse is that this is directly an answer to all of the bad PR from them. making record profits and then laying off all those people followed by them making more record profits and hitting their targets so that Bobby gets his 200 million dollar bonus and they lay off their entire European division of the company to pay for his bonus I'm sure it's just one of those things that it feels like it's, hey, we took some real bad PR over this stuff, so let's do this, and that'll make everything better. Yeah, I've always had a, and this probably comes from the fact that I don't come from the corporate world, I've always failed to understand how the corporate pay system works, especially with the heads, and how that gets to be the way that it is, and why it sustains it the way it was. I always ask myself, rhetorically, of course, what would happen to Activision Blizzard if they had someone that only made $400,000 a year? Is that person crap and wouldn't be able to do the job, or what? Right. What do you get at that price? What do you get at $400,000 a year? I could run my entire association for over two years with that money. And here's a guy who pulls almost a million dollars a year in pay, And we all know that the raw pay isn't even where they make all their real money. They make it in the bonuses. Yeah, the bonuses. That's why whenever I hear about some company where, oh, the CEO is only making $1 a year, it's like, okay, I want to see what their bonus structure is. Yeah, I want to see what their stock options are. Yeah, because I guarantee you their stock options, it's either their stock options or their bonus structure is such that, of course, they only make $1 a year. They probably make $47 million off of the options or the bonuses. Short of – I mean, there are two different things. One would be the entire restructuring of corporate pay so that those at the top aren't making nearly as much over whatever their average employees make. And that requires an entire cultural shift. And I know the argument I've always heard when I've heard an argument is, oh, well, we have to pay this amount because our competitors are paying these levels. So it's been a race to the top. If you want the best person, then that's what you have to pay. But again, to me, it begs the question, what makes Bobby so good at this? What proved that he's actually a good CEO? That he made you enough that he hit this target? It sounds like getting a $200 million bonus was as simple as firing an entire continent worth of people. I could do that for you. I know how to fire people. I don't know the answer. In 100% honesty, I don't know the correct answer. And that's where the other side that I was going to bring up is. It falls on the boards, these governing boards for these organizations, to start writing in more provisions in the contract to prevent bonus targets being reached via certain behavior. And again, I don't know what the details are of his new contract. The new contract says you don't get to count savings on staff levels. So if you reduce staff quantities, those dollars saved don't get to count towards your target. But you have to write that in. You have to put in some sort of metric to measure it. And you have to have tried to come up with how you're going to make sure that that was adhered to. And it's a board, and they don't want to do that work. So, I mean, I know these boards are paid. They're not like volunteer boards, but they still don't want to do all that work. So they just do the same sort of contracts where it's like, oh, yeah, let's just give you – it's easy enough to say here we need a revenue target or a profit target. And then, of course, anyone worth their salt knows you can work both sides of the equation to get to that target. When I needed to stabilize my organization's financials, you know, I had to come in and, quote, unquote, save the organization. And almost everything I did was cuts. I mean, I should say the majority of what I did was cuts. I probably cut my way to 70 percent of the solution and gained income on the other 30 percent. so it's like i mean it was it was the best the best that i knew that i could do maybe if you found someone who made 875 000 a year they'd have had a better solution but sadly they were stuck with me oh or or if you pay me 875 000 i become magically smarter magical number right there is that the problem isn't that you didn't know what to do is you weren't paid enough to know what to If you'd been paid enough, yeah, yeah, it would just be an unlocking. It's like a leveling up. You'd get the level up music in the background. Yeah. Yeah. That's the secret is the experience tree isn't funded by actual experience. It's funded by cash. I just need more skill points. See, here's the problem, Tony. I put all of my points into cuts. All I know is how to cut stuff. I put all my points into cuts. But you give me more. I'd max that tree out, though. You give me enough XP, I'm going to put it into income generation. I could be OP. If you're a whale, you can make me an OP. You could make me OP. That's all it takes is enough money. Yeah. I'd like to see if that's how it actually works, if somebody's willing to throw enough money around. Also coming out of the Activision Blizzard world, Jeff Kaplan. Papa Jeff. Papa Jeff. Jeff from the Overwatch team Everybody's favorite Programmer designer guy Has left Blizzard After 19 years Overwatch is dead to me now No Honestly We had multiple listeners write in with this one It's a huge deal because Jeff was Not only the face of Overwatch for all intents and purposes. He was like the best positive PR thing that Blizzard or Activision has had going for them in quite a while. His interaction with the player base and with the fans and the way he came in and handled issues and dealt with it was the bright spot on Activision Blizzard actual PR stuff because they real bad at it Yeah and of course the rumors are flying about the departure Is this a sign that Overwatch 2 has been delayed too much? Is this a sign that Overwatch 2 is going in a direction that Jeff doesn't like and Jeff was leaving? Does Jeff have a problem with Bobby and Jeff's leaving because of what Bobby did to Europe? I've heard every theory you could think of involved, and I've seen more than one person also say, you know, Jeff was there 19 years. He may have just been ready for a change, and there was never going to be a good time he could leave. Right. If he waited until Overwatch 2 came out, people would say he's leaving because it's a disappointment. Right. If he leaves before it came out like he did, then there's a problem with its development. And if he leaves at the store when he's starting whatever his next project would be. I mean, he has done so much stuff for Blizzard over the years. I mean, he worked on Warcraft, World of Warcraft. He worked on Titan, which never launched but formed the core of what became Overwatch. I mean, he's done so much. And let's face it, it could simply be that maybe he needs a break. I mean, I've never stayed anywhere for 19 years. I didn't hit 19 years, no. I got close Before I left I got to about 16 and a half I was at Oh 16 I was at 16 I could have hit 19 If I had gotten that 875,000 a year Yeah I mean Well heck if I had gotten 875,000 a year I'd still be there But But It didn't happen No that's just how Things go so I don't know I'm not I'm not taking this as A terrible bad sign Like some people have But it is A Disappointment Just as a fan I don't hold it against them I don't Have any problems with it it's just it'll be Sad not to hear Not to watch a video about an update and hear Hey this is Jeff from the Overwatch team Yeah the The public face of Overwatch being Jeff is the big issue that they'll probably struggle a bit. I mean, finding someone to do it, no big deal. But people for a long time are going to just compare it to Jeff. And that's unfortunate because Jeff was so iconic. It's not really possible for people to live up to what he did. No, it's not. And it'll be rough. I know Aaron Keller is taking his place. He was on one of the founding members of the Overwatch team. so it's not like they brought in some outsider to take over the slot. It's just so hard to follow up. This would be like going to an open mic night and then finding out that some massively well-known comic was doing a little background testing new stuff, and you had to follow them up. Yeah, it's like if Michael Winslow was the opening act for me. Right, exactly. It's just going to be... Instead of how we normally do it. Exactly. I miss going to comedy shows. Yeah, that was a good one, too. That was. I really enjoyed that one. Going on, we will leave Activision Blizzard, and we will now go to a much smaller, less important company, Microsoft. Who'd they buy today? They didn't buy anybody But They've made changes That specifically Are good For people who aren't Microsoft I bet you people Who don't like Microsoft are going to make bad excuses I'm sure they will The first thing Is they have Followed through on an announcement They had made back in like January They have now dropped their requirement to have an active Xbox Live Gold account to play free-to-play games. Oh, okay. Yep. That's right. They did say it'd take a few months to get that rolled out. And it's rolled out now, so I think that's a good thing because I always thought it was done. Oh, yeah, these are all free-to-play games. No. You have to have an Xbox Live account. Not really. Fool you! I mean, if you've got a PlayStation, it's free-to-play. If you've got a computer, it's free-to-play. If you've got... If you've got a Switch, you probably won't be able to figure out how to play online. But if you do, maybe it's free. Right. But not for us. You still have to give Microsoft their cut. Mm-hmm. So that's good. I like that. The other thing is they also announced that as of August 1st, they're going to reduce their cut on PC game sales from 30% to 12%, matching the Epic Game Store's cut and giving so that much more money is going to the game developers. Oh. That's big because Steam is still at 30%. Steam refuses to budge. They're the giant. And they are, obviously. I mean, I don't actually like the Epic Game Store, so I've got it and I've used it for some things, but I prefer Steam overall. But they have definitely made some changes. Like I know Steam is tiered based upon if your game, the more popular your game gets, the lower percentage they take, but still they don't go any lower than 20. And that requires your game to be like huge. So one of the things that it will be interesting to see is how much of an effect this has on sales through their PC gaming sales if they pick up a bunch. Just because they're a better platform than Epic. And how many people would prefer them to the Epic platform who are deeply concerned about this type of issue. That would be interesting to see. You know what they're not changing, though? They're not changing their cut on console games because everybody's console games are on console games. The take is always the same across all the platforms. Oh, okay. And with so much of the hardware being basically subsidized by the takeoff of the software sales, that's why the hardware is as cheap as it is, it makes sense to me that they're not going to cut that down to match. because I'm pretty sure that they're still doing the, the, the hardware is might at most be a breakeven thing, uh, for their actual sales going from then we're going to go on to Valorant. Uh, we've not talked about Valorant in a while. Um, the riot made an announcement that I thought we'd talk about a little bit because it's kind of, eh, they've decided that they are going to record all Valorant voice chat, 100% of it, all of it, as a combat for toxic behaviors. So if you're recorded cussing somebody out, being evil and sexist and racist and all that stuff, and somebody reports you for having a voice chat badness, they will have the recorded voice chat so that they can actually listen to it and make a decision. They claim they are not going to actively listen to players. They will only review voice logs when something is reported. They plan to only keep the logs For as long as necessary Whatever that means That's pretty vague And that they will protect it As if it were their own Whatever that means They say that they own it They did say that if you don't want Your voice chat to be recorded Turn off voice chat Well I guess that's a step above saying If you don't want your voice recorded You can always not play So, I mean, they already record your chat, your in-game chat and stuff. Yeah, I guess this is, I mean. I think it's the obvious step. Yeah. Now that, I mean, this is something that wouldn't have been a problem, you know, seven or eight years ago when the only way to get voice chat in-game was to do it over a third-party program. Yeah. yeah i mean given that it's through the game i overall yeah i'm i'm okay with the concept mostly because i'm not sure what they would be able to use the voice stuff for any like if it leaked out or whatever i don't know what people would be able to use it you know for for nefarious purposes but right well they might find out that little Timmy spent the night with Bobby's mother. Voice chat's so trash. I have honestly turned voice chat off almost every time I've played a game. Maybe they should just disable voice chat. Just because it's like... Or it'll be one of those... I've had multiple games, like in Overwatch, where I will start... I'll be playing matches. And over the course of a match, I will be muting people on my own team because I just don't want to listen to them. You get the guy who feels like everybody wants to listen to their music. Yep. So they... Or the one that's swallowing the mic. Right. Or the guy who's got the super loud clicking mechanical keyboard and has his mic set to always on and you occasionally hear him yell at his cat. Or the one that's supposed to be doing his laundry and he has to keep yelling at his mom that he'll do it in a minute. Yeah. And then he doesn't because it's been a minute later because he's still playing the game. And you're just like, wash your clothes. It's like, go do some laundry. It's not a big deal. I mean, it takes a couple minutes. You can wait between matches. Heck, you're playing DPS. You should have plenty of time to do it. Yeah. Waiting for your match to be decided. Wash your clothes. Like how your play is. Washed. Dumpster loser Yeah I don't know How am I supposed to tell people to get good now Get good noob Freaking noobs I don't honestly see Where much anger should be coming out of this Like I said With everything else is already recorded And considering how many people are streaming On Twitch to their Three bot fans Or nobody in their room while they stream and play. You know, like when I play a game in stream, there's nobody there. Everybody comes in thinking it's Dennis and they're like, oh, we're not playing pinball? Bye. And yeah. We'll see. We'll see if this actually does anything good. If it actually helps. I don't think it'll help. I think everything's still going to be terrible. But we'll end with some words from one of the big OG game people, Konami they have a whole code named after them they've made so many great games I mean not in like 15 years but they announced that they're not going to be at E3 this year and then I remembered oh wait they are trying to have an E3 this year it's going to be like all online or something like that I don't remember because E3 is dead now. But they did announce that they have several projects deep in development. No idea what any of them are because I think they've only got like one or two announced projects in the last couple of years. Konami is kind of, while it's been huge in the past, disappeared from the actual video game realm. Lately. Poor Konami I know, it's so sad Well, I guess we'll find out when they finally are willing to tell us About these deeply developed projects Yeah, I'll let you know a hint Being Konami, I doubt the development's that deep They'll probably have some issues So I am kind of interested to see how E3's going to turn out this year Being it's fully online no in-person nothing stuff at all, I think it's going to go terribly for them because so many companies have already said they're not coming that it's going to be rough. And we've been talking for the last, as long as we've done a podcast, how bad E3 is getting. So let's see. E3 2021, partnering exhibitors slash sponsors. Hey, look, Konami's still in their list, even though Konami's not going to be there. Maybe they're sponsoring it. Yeah, they could be sponsoring it. Nintendo, Xbox, Ubisoft, Take-Two. I'm assuming T2's Take-Two. Probably. Warner Brothers Games, Capcom, Konami, and Coke Media. Media partners, IGN, Polygon, PC Gamer, GamesRadar, IGN China. Game Bonfire. and some company who's got a weird symbol that I have no idea what it means. I kind of miss our big E3 episodes, too. Those were always fun. Well, we just have to adapt just like the gaming industry has to adapt. Yeah. We have no choice. We will watch the co-streams of it and see how it... Decide if it's worth talking about. Yeah. It's entirely possible it won't be. Could be. Well, we'll find out at that point But until then, if you'd like to speculate On how you think E3 will go You can always email us at EclecticGamersPodcast at gmail.com Or via facebook.com slash EclecticGamersPodcast We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram As Eclectic underscore Gamers And we'll be back in a couple weeks I don't know if there's going to be new pinball news or not Everyone thinks that Stern's next announcement Is imminent, but I wasn't hearing Positive spy reports For this coming week So maybe the next week just before our episode? Let's be realistic. It will come. We'll record on Sunday and the announcement will be made Monday morning. Yeah, it's always possible. Because that's what normally happens. Wait and see. Until then, I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. Bye, everyone. See ya.