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Episode 75 - Paper Like a Phone Book

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 56m·analyzed·Nov 19, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Pinball Company's $500k-$1M crowdfund for showroom expansion criticized as overvalued and strategically misguided.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss Eclectic Gamers' milestone progress toward episode 100, personal life updates, and a detailed critical analysis of The Pinball Company's WeFunder crowdfunding campaign for retail expansion. They raise serious concerns about the company's $8-10 million valuation relative to ~$500k annual profit, aggressive growth projections, lack of technician distribution planning, and whether the 1975-style showroom expansion model is viable in 2019.

Key Claims

  • The Pinball Company is seeking $500,000-$1,000,000 through WeFunder crowdfunding, with early investors valuing the company at $8 million and later at $10 million

    high confidence · Dennis reviewed Form C documents and WeFunder campaign details directly

  • The Pinball Company reported ~$500,000 in annual profit on their latest financial year

    high confidence · Dennis stated he reviewed Form C filed with WeFunder

  • Of the full $1 million target, $450,000 would service existing debt and loan payments

    high confidence · Dennis cited WeFunder campaign materials

  • The Pinball Company experienced ~50% year-on-year revenue growth

    high confidence · Dennis reviewed campaign documentation

  • When asked why they didn't pursue traditional bank loans, The Pinball Company responded that they wanted to 'share success with excited supporters' rather than admit banks declined additional lending

    medium confidence · Dennis interpreted Q&A response on WeFunder as coded language: 'the bank said no'

  • The Pinball Company did not proceed beyond the first production run of 100 units on the Jetsons game

    medium confidence · Dennis referenced 'reports I'm hearing' about Jetsons performance

  • The Pinball Company controls the Scooby-Doo license

    medium confidence · Dennis posed this as purported information from industry reports

  • Dennis is temporarily serving as interim executive director of his organization after his former executive director was placed on administrative leave and his contract not renewed

    high confidence · Dennis discussed this directly as personal work update

Notable Quotes

  • “The bank said no.”

    Dennis (interpretation of Pinball Company's crowdfunding rationale) @ ~54:00 — Core interpretation of why company turned to crowdfunding despite existing bank debt

  • “I think this valuation is too high. I would agree.”

    Dennis and Tony (on $8M-$10M Pinball Company valuation) @ ~38:00 — Unified skepticism from both hosts about core financial assumption

  • “It seems like 1975, 1980 type thinking for the modern age.”

    Tony (on showroom expansion strategy) @ ~48:00 — Characterizes business model as outdated retail approach incompatible with 21st century distribution

  • “Nothing about this makes me think I would get my money back.”

    Dennis (investment verdict on Pinball Company) @ ~60:00 — Final assessment: investment is not sound despite supporting crowdfunding model generally

  • “This has an odor to it.”

    Tony (on overall Pinball Company pitch) @ ~61:00 — Suggests fundamental credibility problem with entire business proposal

  • “How much of this debt on the books is because of JetSense? I would not be surprised.”

    Dennis and Tony (speculating on Jetsons failure impact) @ ~59:00 — Suggests failed licensing/manufacturing venture may have created financial distress requiring crowdfund

  • “I'm not a fan of this whole model, really.”

    Tony (on Pinball Company's retail expansion concept) @ ~45:00 — Rejects core business strategy independent of funding method

Entities

The Pinball CompanycompanyDennispersonTonypersonJake DanzigpersonWayne NyanspersonSpooky PinballcompanyWeFunderorganizationCrowdFunderorganizationJetsonsgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Pinball Company's retail showroom expansion model appears strategically misaligned with 21st century e-commerce distribution trends and local market penetration reality

    high · Tony characterized strategy as '1975, 1980 type thinking for the modern age'; both hosts questioned necessity of physical showrooms vs optimizing internet sales

  • ?

    business_signal: Pinball Company seeking crowdfunding after apparent bank loan denial despite existing debt suggests financial stress and lender skepticism about expansion viability

    high · Dennis interpreted evasive response about bank loans as 'the bank said no'; company has $450k in debt on books seeking $500k-$1M crowdfund

  • ?

    business_signal: Overvaluation of pinball retail business relative to profitability ($8M-$10M valuation on ~$500k annual profit = 16-20x earnings multiple) suggests unrealistic growth projections or desperate capital needs

    high · Dennis conducted detailed analysis showing valuation is 'ridiculous' relative to income; tech sector comparable would be 3x net income

  • $

    market_signal: Company projects aggressive 50% year-on-year revenue growth over 10-year horizon despite cyclical economic conditions and historical recession frequency

    high · Dennis noted 'There's no way we're going to last another 10 years before a recession...we're due' and questioned sustainability of 'gravy train' assumptions

  • $

    market_signal: Jetsons pinball manufacturing partnership resulted in limited first production run of 100 units, suggesting either IP licensing constraints, market demand failure, or manufacturing cost overruns

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.350

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, November 18th. This is Episode 75. I am Tony. And I am Dennis. And we don't have a tremendous amount of news, so we're going to have some nice discussion today, I think. We're going to go for fun instead of just raw news. That's right. This is not for work. This is for fun. And, you know, we're getting close now, relatively speaking. And you had mentioned this to me a while ago off air. But I guess we're going to hit episode 100 in 2019. Yep. I mean, we keep the same schedule. Right. It'll be sometime in the summer, late summer, I think. Okay. Well, you know what? I was starting to... We're going to have to talk about what we want to do for that. because it seems everyone does things for 100 episodes. Now, granted, nowadays with all these other podcasts, they're like getting that within like four weeks or whatever. Right, right. They're just putting out shows all the time. But for those of us that do the slow burn, it's actually kind of the big deal. But for the rest of you all, I know you're listening, nothing. Nothing. But anyway, I'm just kidding. We like them. We like all of our podcasting posts. So tell me, what's been going on since our last quasi-getting-recovered-from-illness episode? Well, I am mainly recovered I just have that, you know when you get sick, you got that little nagging cough Yeah, I still have that The dry one that just comes out every once in a while And you're like, I don't know why I'm so bad Yeah, exactly I've got that, I've got the black lung But on the whole health thing, on Tuesday this week my youngest daughter was on a field trip and my wife was chaperoning. Where was the field trip? They were at Science City up at Union Station. Okay, I've been there. So, and my wife was like, well, oh yeah, I'll carpool with one of the other chaperone ladies. That way we're not all driving our own personal vehicles. Because they don't let the chaperone parents ride on the buses anymore. They all have to drive themselves. Okay. Then I get this panicked phone call just after lunch.
2:24
Actually, I got a text message that said, call me. So it's like, okay. So I called. And I was like, well, what's going on? She's like, well, we're taking her to the ER. I'm like, whoa, what do you mean we're taking her to the ER? Well, she fell down and she cut her chin open and she's going to need a couple of stitches. And it's like, okay, well, let me know how that is. She goes, well, I rode with somebody else. So, once I get dropped off at the ER, I'm going to need a ride.
Scooby-Doo
game
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
Pinball Magazineproduct
KC GameConevent

medium · Dennis stated 'reports I'm hearing are that they didn't go past the first run of 100' and expressed unsurprise at performance

  • ?

    product_concern: Technician training and retention strategy for multi-location service network is undefined or absent from Pinball Company's expansion plan, creating operational risk

    high · Dennis noted 'training and distribution of their tech teams is not detailed in their plan' and questioned how company will attract/retain qualified technicians at new locations

    • 2:52
    Okay. Where are you going? Oh, you're going to Children's Mercy Downtown. Okay. So, I left work, went up there, big cut. I mean, it was deep. It was real deep.
    3:05
    It wasn't super wide, but it was real deep. But between the fall, the cut, the stitches, all that, she was a trooper. The daughter was a trooper. She had no real issues. a little panic, but it settled down real quick. The worst part of the whole day, I mean, for all of that, the worst part, rush hour traffic. We got out of the ER just as rush hour was starting. It was trapped in rush hour traffic the whole way home. It took almost two hours to get home. Yeah, no. I would be afraid to work in downtown Kansas City living where I am because even though I have a 50-some mile commute, I go the opposite way most traffic flows. Yeah. It's like a 55-minute drive. whereas downtown Kansas City, you'd be 20 miles away, but if you have to go through rush hour, it's going to be at least an hour. Yeah, and that was the thing. That was the way it ran because I had Google Auto up or Android Auto up with me, and I was looking at the maps and this and that, and they gave me a route that involved going north out of the city and then across to 7 and then, yeah, across like K7, which is way outside of everything. Right, right. And then coming back down, and it would have been three minutes slower than going the most direct route. And the run time was still like an hour and a half. And I'm like, ouch. What in the world is this? Now, maybe because you brought up this injury. Now, I don't think the listeners know that this is the daughter that's, like, always injured.
    4:46
    Do we need to have the discussion about it? You and Children's Mercy are on a first-name basis is all I'm saying. With the youngest. With the youngest, yes. Now, she has no fear, and her self-preservation instincts might not be the most well-refined, But in this case, she literally tripped on her own feet and just landed. She was running on a, I mean, there was nothing there. It was a flat stage. And she just landed wrong. Okay. So it's not a case of science being dangerous. Right. But, yeah, we've been in with her several times. I went once, and there was a little thing with my niece, and there was like a, you know, showing how air can lift objects, like ping pong balls and stuff. And she wouldn't, you were supposed to be able to interact with it, and she wouldn't touch it, and she just started bawling, and she just said, science is dangerous.
    5:39
    And I was like, I'll have the pen for a moment. Who taught you that? Who did that? I can't, and I don't have the time to reprogram this stuff. Yeah. So I was just like, I guess we can leave Science City because she's afraid of it. Afraid of science. She loved Science City. She was having a ton of fun, and then she fell down.
    6:03
    Well, we all fall. But as Batman taught us, It's how we get ourselves back up with stitches. With stitches. That's right. She was cool with it. Otherwise, she got mad because we were always putting Neosporin on it and making her wear a bandage. And she's like, on Friday, she's like, I go back to school on Monday after I get my stitches out. Yes. My friends want to see my stitches. I can't wear a band-aid because my friends can't see my stitches. Yeah. She's trying to show off, and you're trying to sabotage her. I know. We're just trying to keep it clean and keep it from getting infected. No Lockjaw. That's right. But she doesn't understand. Lockjaw sounds fun. Sounds like a cool code name. I'm Lockjaw.
    6:51
    It's the new cool game, Lockjaw. Yeah. Lockjaw. We are your friends. Follow my hip sequel, Raybee. Yeah. Yay. Well, in some of our other kind of intro news, we hit our, a little bit after the last episode, actually, we hit our last requirements that we needed for our Twitch channel to move into affiliate status. So you got us all squared away with filling in the paperwork and getting those actual application things sorted out. Yep. We have that now. But I have more tax work to do. There's more tax work to do because all the green that's rolling in. But on the plus side We will have what I was hoping We would have in time for KC GameCon And that is a priority For transcoding So that hopefully if people want to watch The tournament They'll be able to live stream it On mobile devices and not have to be Stuck at the 720p output That I'm going to stream it in That's why I wish it was guaranteed But only Twitch partners get a guarantee And we could not be the Twitch partner requirement. In fact, even when you meet all those requirements, my understanding is that's like an application that needs to be subjected to an approval process. It's not just meet all these conditions in your apartment, which affiliate basically is. That's a meet all these things, put in an application, and we'll see if you're worth our time. I have noticed, because it also influences on the saved videos. Before we were an affiliate, I only ever saw one of our sessions that actually did have transcoding. Yeah. Regular folk are bottom of the barrel for us. But I have been seeing it more often now that we have the affiliate approval showing up. So that's nice. And in addition to that, I mean, I streamed some cold waters a couple of times last week. I'm hoping to stream it a couple more times this upcoming week. And you've been streaming the pinball. I've been trying to stream pinball twice a week. And so I did that, and I streamed a little bit of Zacharia virtual pinball. It's a pinball game. A couple days ago, yesterday, I tried out my NES Classic and streamed about 45 minutes or so of Super Mario. So just, yeah, just trying to use the channel a little bit more. It's sort of like a lot of times I'll sit and I'll think, well, if I'm going to play, I guess I could stream it. Yeah, no, I've been thinking the same thing. I mean, like I said, I streamed some cold waters. I'm waiting for the expansion of Battletech to come out. I'll probably start streaming a fresh playthrough of Battletech. Now, the thing is, and here's where I'm undecided. I'm tempted, extremely tempted. I have a brand new laptop on the way.
    9:37
    It's three or so weeks out, but its stats are so far beyond my desktop stats that I'm tempted I might hold off on Battletech until I get that and might stream off that. I'm not positive. I haven't decided for sure yet. You'll just have to see how your mood is. Or you can try BattleTech, see how it goes with the streaming and the resources demand, and if you feel like it's compromising how you're enjoying the game, then go ahead and say, no, no, no. So I'm hoping it won't be too much of a compromise being a turn-based game. But, we'll see. Yeah, it just depends. I mean, when I did Valkyria Pinball, because I don't run that through the capture card because I was playing it on my PC, that had someone come in and they said they thought that the physics looked kind of bad. And for whatever reason, this was the first table that I was playing. But yeah, there was like a lag or something going on. And I don't know. I didn't have dropped frames or anything. But the computer was trying to do an update or something. I don't know. I thought maybe part of it was I looked at the settings and my settings looked okay. And then I looked at other clips in the recording, and it looked fine later. And that person told me, oh, yeah, it looked fine later. So who knows what it was. Just something. Yeah. Or could it have been something in the game itself? Yeah. It's possible. Something when I switched between Windows. And, you know, who knows. There's a lot about how all that works and the uploads and the streams and all the settings that I don't understand. That's been part of the reason I've been trying so many different streams is I've been trying so many different settings. like what I can get away with when streaming pinball because I'm not, I am not moving around a lot. The score cam's not moving around a lot. Use those same settings and you stream Overwatch. It looks like garbage. Yeah. So it's just, yeah, it's just, it's interesting how. But you save resources because you're using less cameras on Overwatch. I do. When I went with Overwatch, like when I do Overwatch, I've only streamed Overwatch on the Xbox. I'm writing that through the laptop also. so I really don't burden the game down. Whereas if I were to stream it on my PC, while I could run it through the capture card, so far all my PC streams, I've just used the PC to capture everything. Right, which is how I've done it. Because it's convenient. So they're all set up in certain different ways. A couple other update items. Pinball Magazine number five, it arrived a couple days ago. I briefly thought maybe I could read it and kind of talk about it or review it or whatever on the episode. this episode? No. I'm not remotely far enough in it. I've completed one article. Pinball phone book number five. It's huge. Yeah. I'll let you read it up. We got a copy because I bought a little teeny ad. I think we're on like page 151. Check it out. It's a great ad.
    12:31
    So, this is the whole reason we get the magazine. This is the issue where the big cover story is it's the massive career retrospective on Wayne Nyans who was a Gottlieb designer who just turned 100 a couple months ago.
    12:45
    They put that out and he got a copy and anyway, I'm actually in the interview portion now. It started with a historian who wrote about Wayne's life and now I'm actually in the part where the magazine was doing the interview with Wayne and it's interesting. I find pinball history interesting.
    13:06
    Final thing is just in terms of my part and Tony got to hear the earful about this yesterday, but as I've hinted at for probably a number of episodes now, work's been very chaotic for me because my executive director was not going to have his contract renewed for 2019.
    13:31
    And he's known about it for months, and we've known about it for months. So the situation has been very, very awkward. They went on Friday, and they put him on administrative leave and they've put me in charge of the association for the time being on an interim basis until they can do a job search and decide who they really want to do things. So my pinball writing is probably not going to happen during the interim phase at all. I think I'm going to suspend working on any... I was actually in the process this last week of trying to resurrect an article I was working on. I just don't think I'm going to have time because there's a lot of stuff that's not going well and in my mind I have probably two months and I want to cram as much as I can accomplish in that two month window as possible so that on the assumption that I resume my old role overseeing finances that I'll still have gotten some of my changes it'll be too late to stop my changes they'll be in place you'll have made your mark already and my priorities right now are again because of what my role has been for years, there's certain financial changes that I want to institute, but also this whole process with my now former boss has been very draining on staff morale. And so there are a few measures I want to try and do to fix that because we're having a retention problem at this point.
    14:53
    And that's directly related to the morale. So we'll need to see if that's fixable or not. But it's not going to affect the podcast recording schedule.
    15:03
    We've already set this up so that it's not overwhelming. but some of my other pinball activities just ended up inevitably they have to scale back. I can't. Especially while you're wearing two hats and you're doing two jobs. Well, it's just a whole mix of things. I mean, he was working on some stuff so I'll have some things that we'll be able to pick up and continue but part of the issue that the board felt was that there were just too many pieces that he wasn't moving forward on because he knew he wouldn't be around. Right. I mean, that's what happens when you give them five months notice.
    15:34
    It's amazing. I mean, I'm not surprised. But it's a whole mess. Everyone is very angry. Everyone's lawyered up. It's glorious. But this is not the Lawyer Up podcast. Lawyer up. So let's move on up to pinball news. We're going to start with pinball, and we're going to start with news like we always do. There are only two news topics that I thought are worth talking about, and honestly, they're not much in the way. I was going to say. So we're not going to spend a lot of time on them. But this is what we do, Tony. This is what we do. So the first one, and I want to give a thanks to a friend of the show, Jake Danzig, because he's who first informed me of this, though it has since blown up on the pinball forums. And that is the pinball company, the St. Louis-based company that most listeners, if they know them, probably know them for being the entity that did that contract job with Spooky for the Jetsons. but their bread and butter is taking and restoring and selling older pinball machines like a retail outlet thing they have turned to crowdfunding for some expansion plans oh yeah so I have a link to the show to their WeFunder campaign which was the one that Jake told me about however they also have another link to a group called CrowdFunder that they've set up at as well. So quick summary is just the goal, according to the write-up on WeFunder, which was pretty detailed, included their Form C documents and everything, because I'm not familiar with WeFunder. I'm not familiar with either of these crowdfunding. Right. These seem to be more along the lines of actually doing that, what was sort of liberalized at the end of the Obama administration regarding letting nonprofessional investors.
    17:25
    You know, my whole gripe about Kickstarter. Right. If I'm giving you money, I should be getting equity. That's what I should be getting. I don't want swag. I want money. I want to make money. That's what investors get, so why don't I get it? Well, the law used to be very, very stringent about you had to have certain certifications and or certain amounts of money at your disposal. They wanted to protect people from being stupid and losing all of their money on startup ventures that they didn't know. But some of those things were liberalized through services of the amounts of money being spent were low enough and all that. So I'm guessing that's what these services revolve around, but I haven't looked into the services enough themselves to say that with any level of intelligence. But what is going on is that they, they being the pinball company, have conveyed that on their WeFunder campaign, this is what they're looking for. They want to do an expansion on locations. The idea would be dividend payments to the investors. I mean, so they're being treated as investors. That's the goal. and that there's a certain amount of funding that they're trying to raise and that they have a company valuation and all that. Their main goal seemed to be to try and raise a million dollars through the crowdfunding. Okay. But that's almost like the stretch goal thing, it seemed. The primary goal seemed to be half a million.
    18:47
    So I think, I mean, I can't really, or I'm not going to really summarize it much more than that. So I thought, let's just talk about the idea of this. And this expansion is like retail location expansion. Broadly speaking, what they're saying they want to do is be within one day's delivery drive of 80% of their customer base. That's what they want. And I guess they do their customer base as Merca. So, I mean, let's talk about like opening up a showroom floor in Chicago and other locations. locations, but it's not just having the space to sell the games. It's also having the techs to go and do the repairs because that's part of the service. They warranty their games. So if they break, you're going to go and get them fixed. And that's sort of a, when you buy retail, that's generally how it's supposed to work on pinball machines. You're not just buying a, it's not like going on Craigslist. You're paying like $2,000 more, so they're supposed to provide service for you if it's It's not working. When you talk to that poor guy who went to a meanies gallery and bought a WWE for $3,000 over MSRP. Yeah, and that's sad because the MSRP on that game is zero. But, so, I thought, I'm going to open with some of my preliminary thoughts on this.
    20:08
    The first thing that I noticed when I looked this over is the pinball company already has debt on the books. so in fact they noted that if they raised the full one million they'd like to raise 45 so 450 000 of that is going to service debt and replay pay their loans so whereas if they raise only 500 000 all of the money is going towards their inventory stuff and oh and five percent i think for we funder fees but right but none of it for loan repayment excuse me loan payments. So that's one thing I noted. Second thing I noted, they're valuing their company at $10 million. However, for the purposes of the early investors, I think for that first $500,000, they're valuing the company at $8 million. Now, I am not an investor, Tony. However, I have seen an episode of Shark Tank. I think this valuation is too high. I would agree. In fact, I was so curious about this that I went and looked up, how do you do evaluation on a company? And I found out there are a lot of different models. But the ones that I would normally assume you would use, such as an examination of the assets that the company has, or a certain period of time on profitability, which I think an example valuation that one would use, I believe as an example is for tech sector companies, on the value based off of income, you would take the net income, multiply it by three, and use that as a valuation, for example. So the idea would be if a company is valued at a million dollars, it profits a million dollars in three years. That's the end. As an idea. Okay. But there are a whole bunch of other different ways where you factor in the debts or you factor in, like, if you were to sell everything off as like a liquidation.
    22:04
    There's not one right way to do it. There are just a lot of different ways that are seen as acceptable. But to me, this seems really, really high because they're claiming really aggressive year-on-year growth. They had about a 50% increase in their revenue, I believe, from the prior year. But they're projecting that out for 10 years. What? Also, all of their stuff seemed to be revolving around gross revenue, not net income. so I mean what about the expense side how much of the expense side I mean they did report their income in their form so people can go look at this a third thing in terms of my thoughts on this is the quality techs the quality repair people and they even note this as one of their concerns as well which is good because it's a fair one training and distribution of their tech teams is not detailed in their plan. Like, how are they going to do that? How are they going to get... They say they have experienced techs already. Well, that's great for St. Louis, but how are they going to get highly trained and retain highly trained techs to repair their games in Chicago? I mean, what's the plan for that? Right. I mean, we were talking yesterday with one of our area techs who operates his own games and that was one of his concerns. He's like, he doesn't work for anyone else because he goes and he does home calls. He has this reputation that he's built up, and it's enough that he doesn't actively seek more business because that's how it balances. But if you're a tech with a company, you're going to be making money by the hour. Well, how much are they going to pay you? How often are you working? Are they going to pay you enough? Are they going to pay you nothing? Because there's going to be enough call-outs to warrant anything like that? Yeah, I don't know. And I don't think they know either. And will you have techs who are actual the kind of people who can look at and diagnose something, or are you going to have parts hangers who just go out and go, oh, I think this board's bad. I'll give you a new board. Nope, that wasn't it. Well, maybe it's this board that's bad. We'll put a new board on there. But those, I guess, are my three main areas of concern. I didn't know, Tony, what are your thoughts on this and choosing the crowdfund to do it? I'm not a fan of choosing the crowdfund to do it. I'm not a fan of this whole model, really.
    24:36
    You mean the model of the funding? I mean the model of what the pinball company wants to do as a business. The model of what they want to do as a business. I don't, having, you know, a showroom here or there and having things set out so, well, if you order a game, we can have it to you tomorrow because we've got a warehouse sitting over here.
    24:55
    We've got a showroom there. It's just like, it doesn't seem like a, it seems like a very 1975 model of doing business for something like this. I mean, St. Louis, extremely centralized location, good highways, good quick runs to anywhere. I mean, yeah, but can they get games to somewhere in a day? No, but you can get a game to about anywhere in the U.S. in two days.
    25:25
    Right. I mean, it's, and really, how many people are ordering and asking for next day delivery of a pinball machine?
    25:35
    I don't know if they're asking, but they want to do it, or so they're claiming. Yeah, no, I'm just, the whole business model, the crowdfunding thing, I'm not going to say here good or bad. I don't know these crowdfunding, I haven't looked into these crowdfunding groups yet.
    26:00
    Crowdfunding that pays dividends and stuff, I'm all for that. I think that's a really good way to crowdfund things like this.
    26:11
    And businesses, like almost all of my crowdfunding, like on Kickstarter or stuff like that, has been specifically around, oh, my crowdfunding is basically a pre-order of this game. That's how I've treated it because I'm not doing the bigger thing. But I've got no problems that I would be more than willing to put in, especially when you see something like, you'll see like restaurants doing crowdfunding. Like somebody's like, well, I'm a good baker at home, but I want to start baking professionally, but I need to, because of the laws, I have to have a commercial kitchen space. So I'm trying to kickstart money to get a commercial kitchen space. And I can see doing that and being an investor with it. So that type of thing, I'm fine with it.
    27:01
    I just don't, I wouldn't do this one because the business model and what they're looking for does not seem like a very valid option to me. It seems a little pie-in-the-sky reachy that doesn't need to be done. It seems like all that money could be reinvested in ways that I would consider better. I mean, do you need a showroom somewhere where people can walk in and look at your pinball machines and do this and that? I mean, how often? I mean, here in Kansas City, we've got like three Armenian Gallerias, but how many people do you see even there ever?
    27:42
    I've never been to one. I've never seen more than, like, two cars parked in front of one. So, I mean, is it, unless you're doing, including, and I think they'd be better off working with a larger group that did, like, pool tables and all that home decor type stuff and putting machines in there as part of that type of thing than having their own separate special box. because, I don't know, it just seems like 1975, 1980 type thinking for the modern age. Okay. Yeah, I can see that. I don't differ all that much from your assessment. I don't have a problem with the idea of doing crowdfunding investment. So in terms of them turning to this approach, I think that makes a lot of sense. but I don't, in this case, I don't understand why they're, why they are turning to crowdfunding. That was asked on the, on the WeFunder. Someone had, there was like a Q&A thing and someone had sent in a question and said, why don't you just get another bank loan? Why are you turning to crowdfunding? Because it seems like they, you already had gone to the bank before and gotten loans. So why not just do more of that instead of giving up your equity? Why take on investors when you could keep 100% of the pinball company in your own hands. And the response was to me odd It was sort of a well we really there are a lot of people who are really excited about our success and we want to share that success with more people Let me translate. Okay. The translation is, the bank said no.
    29:27
    Yeah, and that's where, to me, that was, if anything, the biggest red flag. I should have pulled back up the Form C before talking today. I believe on their latest year, their reported income, the actual profit, was about $500,000.
    29:45
    So that's where my whole issue is. It's like $8 million, we'll do the lower value for the early investors, $8 million valuation. That, to me, is ridiculous at that low of an income level. Yeah. I mean, 16 years, you think that a business sells for a value that you'll make back in 16 years? Now, they'll argue that, well, no, we're projecting a certain amount of growth. That would be fine, except, I'm sorry, 50% year on year.
    30:13
    There's no way we're going to last another 10 years before a recession. Are you kidding me? No. It's been 10 since the last. We're due. I mean, these things are cyclic to a degree. They're not exactly measure by measure. But with everything going on, you can't think that the gravy train is going to keep running at this current speed for all of those years in a row. No. That's ridiculous. I agree with you about, I don't, the whole strategy doesn't make sense to me. I don't see why you want to have more showrooms. I don't see why you want to be a showroom, like a chain, like the Arby's of selling pinball machines that you rebuilt or whatnot. Plus, how much of this debt on the books is because of JetSense?
    31:05
    I mean... I bet I would not be surprised. The reports I'm hearing are that they didn't go past the first run of 100 on them. And after playing it, I'm not surprised. Not at all. I've also heard, purportedly, they controlled the Scooby-Doo license. So is that just like we're washing our hands of that and that's just a loss? Are they planning to do another build of games?
    31:28
    Bottom line for me, and it sounds like bottom line for you, I don't agree with the growth strategy. Even if I didn't have a problem with how much they value their company at and how much money they're seeking, and I don't have a problem with the choice to go crowdfunding, Nothing about this makes me think I would get my money back. Right. No, this has an odor to it. I think that this almost seems to me like sitting on the back porch, maybe had one too many whiskey sours, and you just thought, wow, we're the number one Google search when you search for pinball machines, and we've got all these followers on Facebook and all that, and this is all listed in there. And that's all true, but to think that you're going to just be Walmart for pinball machines, especially when you acknowledge that you have a big risk in the area of being able to maintain a network of technicians nationwide, like what you would need to do in order to maintain the same standard you can maintain out of St. Louis, it is not the way I would grow my company. No, it's not. I would be more looking at more 21st century concepts like, is there a way to perfect and push on Internet sales? Maybe we've been too shore room oriented. If you want to get nationwide, maybe do stuff like that. I almost think they just want to be a distributor in a way. You just want to, I mean, is that what you want? You want to be a distributor for old restored games? Well, I'm just wondering if maybe that would be a growth thing to be, well, we do the old restored games, but we're also a Stern dealer. Or we're also a JJP spook. I mean, they already have the relationship spook. I'd be more comfortable with that I'm not here to give them suggestions I don't care if they grow or go away they're not relevant to my existence because I don't buy from them and I never would just because that's not that's what Facebook's for I don't need them to be my tech but let's move to the next news topic then because we've talked the death out of that one and I'm wondering about books You know, Pinball Magazine number five, it's really more like a book than a magazine. Do you want to know what's more like a phone book than a book? What? The Pinball Adventures book that Todd Tuckey got to participate with. Have you kept up on that drama? Not at all. We have not talked about it, so you might not even know about it. I know nothing. I am a blank sheet. This will prepare to be written on really poorly. Pulpy paper style blank sheet. this is the best gift of drama for the end of 2018 pinball. I mean, for a year, as all pinball years are, full of drama, this one it's just one of those that just reminds you of the good old days of the ridiculous drama.
    34:21
    So, here's the thing. You're familiar with Todd Teche? Yes. TNT Amusement. He does a lot of YouTube videos. I've actually watched a lot of them. When I need to learn about a game, a lot of times he's filmed it. Because he is kind of like the pinball company. They take a lot of games. They clean them up. They do restorations, arcade and pinball. And then they sell them. And, you know, they sell them higher than you would sell privately. But he's been in the business for decades. So he's very popular. He's a very nice guy.
    34:50
    So, anyway, he announced months and months and months ago that he was a part of a 10-book deal to talk about his adventures and experiences in the hobby of pinball specifically, just the customers and all the games, and that basically was going to be kind of like some of my pinball compendiums I have down in my living room where there'd be a lot of photos and he'd talk about the games and things like that, and it'd just kind of be him, I guess, like his YouTube videos, but in print, was kind of what my impression was. What is up with this old school stuff? Yeah, I don't know. In my mind, when the announcement happened, I thought two things. One, Todd's storytelling in a book could be really, really good. But two, isn't there a cash grab from, why the 10 books? 10 is a lot.
    35:48
    You do not need 10 books to cover the history of modern pinball. I mean, most, I have, the old compendium ones are very in-depth on games, and as in-depth as we really know on a lot of them, and there are only three. Yeah. So, I wasn't sure, like, are these going to be really, really small books, or were they going to, I just, again, I didn't know what the plan was. I just thought, ten books is a lot to ask one guy to write. So, I wonder if the publisher just had this, like, did they hobbit this thing, hobbit the movie, not hobbit the pinball, where it's just like, this should be one movie, but now it's three. Yeah. because Lord of the Rings was three, and it was just a big mistake, and they should never have done it. So, anyway, fast forward. The book has come out. I remember one of our former guest hosts and friend of the show, Jason Knapp, he got the book because he told me about it because I said I wasn't sure if I was going to get it or not, and I asked him what it was like, and he said, But the stuff, it wasn't just, sorry, threw my pen. It wasn't just stuff that Todd wrote. It was, there were other, it sounded like there were other contributors that there were, there were some issues with the editing and stuff, but the stories and stuff were interesting. Okay. So I was like, okay, thanks, Jason, that's interesting. And then I just kind of forgot about me thinking about getting the book or not. I just was sort of like, I'll wait a little while longer. Maybe see when book two comes out or whatnot. I went and read up a little bit on the thread, and then there were a lot of people who were like, the content overall is pretty good. The paper was terrible.
    37:26
    The most common analogy I heard was it was like the paper that was used in the old Yellow Pages. That's the papers. Oh. Papers of quality. Another issue were there were numerous editorial issues, like grammar and spelling errors. It was rampant. There was a whole thing involving the Dr. Dude section.
    37:47
    And I may have messed this up, so I apologize if I'm incorrect. But the Dr. Dude had the wrong game listed under Dr. Dude, or the Dr. Dude section was in twice. Some game was in there twice. I guess the wrong game got put in twice instead of what was already inserted in. But broadly speaking, people seemed relatively positive to the content and character of the book, if not the quality of it. A few weeks ago, Todd Tuckey came onto Pinside and said that he was only working on the first book. He wasn't going to be participating on the next nine. That his role was in the first book. And people were like, okay, that's not what you said originally, but maybe he didn't like it or he didn't. There was a misunderstanding. There wasn't a whole lot of discussion on it other than, oh, well, that's too bad. We really like you, Todd.
    38:45
    The editor, I don't remember his name. He would go into Pinsight and create an account. He would go in and he would sign his post as editor. came in and threw Todd under the bus and then rolled over him back and forth and back and forth. It was, Todd was supposed to do 10 books. Todd broke contract, so he's no longer going to be participating in the project.
    39:15
    That's what that guy said. And then he just tore into how he flew Todd and Todd's daughter out to Vegas on his own expense. And there were some photos out of that. I remember posing with, like, the banners for the book or whatever were going on. And that Todd, he had expected Todd to help sell books. But based off of Todd's YouTube subscribers, they only sold to, like, one-half of 1% of the follower total. So clearly Todd's fans weren't buying the book. And that Todd was supposed to proof and grammatically do all of his edits. He was supposed to have a print-ready, he was a freelance writer, and he was supposed to have print-ready content to go. And all those mistakes that were in there were because Todd did not appropriately edit his material that he submitted in. And that Todd was about to go bankrupt, and so this guy, out of pity, bought a game from Todd, and that it was in terrible condition and not as advertised. and that the paper quality of the book is industry standard. So that's not a legitimate complaint. It's just standard paper quality that's used for paperbacks or whatever. So now things get interesting in this thread. It's not interesting already? No. Now it is. Because the Todd Brigade comes out and they're like, we really like Todd. You little nooblet can't just come in here and attack Todd. That's completely inappropriate. Why are you blaming him for everything? Why are you saying that it's his fault? You signed your post as editor, and you're saying it's his fault that the editing sucks? What is that about anyway? Eventually, Todd comes back in and says, look, guys, I'm consulting with my lawyer. I'm not going to go and get into this whole mess here. I just want to say that if anyone's ever watched my videos, you guys know that I'm joking all the time that we're bankrupt. That we're about to go bankrupt. Everyone needs to buy everything because we're going bankrupt. We're as fine as we always were. We're not any more bankrupt than we have always been. So that's what that is. And I wrote my stuff and I turned it in and I promoted the book on the show. And that's what I did. And it just didn't work out. And so I'm moving on. And the editor guy comes back in and he's like, well, the terms of contract, the breaking of the contract, what appears that was is he felt Todd disparaged the book. Because in one of the videos, one of his employees used it as a leg leveler on a pinball machine. And that was disrespectful to the book. And he was supposed to promote the book, not disparage it. And one of his other employees in another video called the book Toilet Paper.
    42:10
    So, again, Todd's like, well, but that's how we all, I mean, we always joke around. That's how our videos are. But this guy was very upset that it didn't help promote the product.
    42:23
    And so then people started researching the editor, and they're like, oh, look, he's the guy who's invented, like, one of these gutter rake things. Oh, look, here's a spot on Amazon where he reviewed his own product and gave it five stars and listed it as under another name, but he used that name elsewhere, so they were able to figure out that it was him. So, all this stuff. Meanwhile, now the editor is getting downvoted into oblivion on Pennside. I know, I'm telling this way out, but it's so dramatic and juicy. And he's just like, look, guys, I've got kids. I'm going to go spend time with my family. I'm not posting this thread anymore. And then he comes back, and then he says he's done with the thread. And then he comes back again. The last thing is, he just goes, well, it's time for me to go. Oh, and he talks about how big his house is and everything. Oh, he's one of those. And then it's like, well, I'm done with this thread. Me and the family are going on a cruise, so we're going to be gone. And he deactivated his Pennside account. So, anyway. I'm not sure if there will be a book number two. I mean, I know Todd's not doing it. I'm just telling you, Tony, that out of the ten book series, because he kept insisting that there would still be ten books put out.
    43:33
    I don't think there will be a number two. I'm skeptical. Don't you understand who I am? Don't you know how powerful... Look how rich I am. I've got a big house and a pretty wife and beautiful kids and we're going on a cruise. Why won't you love me? Why doesn't anybody ever love me? Well, and some of the... And again, it's a... There's always an irony to it because of the pinball collector side of the hobby, which is disproportionately, I feel, representative on Pennside. Pennside isn't the sort of place, I think, where you go and you start trying to open up pocketbooks to say whose ding-dong is bigger. I don't think Pennside is the kind of place you go, period. Maybe. But, I mean, when you start getting into a wallet measuring contest on Pennside, people will be like, I've seen others like this on Pennside. And someone, of course, posted this, as I often have in any of these threads, and it's when you start saying like that, when you start talking that way, you come across as a person who doesn't really have any money and you're relying and you feel the need to promote what you have to try and make it seem like you're a big shot sort of thing. Right. And that, to a lot of people, that's like, I guess, the rich Nueva Reach people might do that, that old money is always like, you don't talk about money. So, I don't know. Again, it's just, the guy just got so defensive. And again, it's Pennside. he went and he took a person in the hobby and he criticized them it would have been hard enough to do if he was right but as time kept going on it seemed like everything he was critiquing Todd for I mean, just me on the outside, I don't know Todd and I don't know the editor but going through all of this, I'm looking at all this and I'm like, man I don't think you did this right I mean, alright, you know and I'd wait and I'd probably have to scale back for a while at the top of the show, but I've written pinball articles for Pinball News and This Week in Pinball. I am not expected to have ready to run quality editing. Oh no, no, no. That is very much a self-published thing. Yes. That's very much the type of thing where you're like, I wrote this book and none of the book companies want it. And this one guy's like, well, yeah. We'll print it for you. We'll get it sent out there. We'll get it on Amazon. We'll get it sent out. we'll get into a couple bookstores here and there and this and that. Yeah, you're a published author now. You're a big boy. Good for you. That's the type of thing, and that's how places like that expect. They're basically just a printer. Well, and he apparently turned to some self-publishing house to do the print on the books. But this guy was putting together the books, so he's the editor. so when I write something about Atari and I give it to Martin Ayoub at Pinball News I expect him to edit it I always say I've proofed it but it needs to be read again same with Jeff at This Week in Pinball I give him a guide on designers I say I always remind him make sure to like I need to you know they're editors they should know you guys need to edit it understand I've proofed it I usually proof it at least three times I'm going to miss stuff, especially if I'm on a tight deadline and I'm trying to get it to you as soon as I finish because it all just starts to run together in your head. And that really comes clear when you start having things like chapters reprinted in your book that your editor didn't do its job.
    47:00
    I'm sorry. And all the spelling errors. You know, Word has a spell check. I mean, you might use the wrong version of there, but at least it'll be one of the three properly spelled. That's all I'm saying. Yeah. No, that's definitely a very kind of shady type outfit. Kind of thing you see. Anyway, it's all there on Pinside. There's a good, there's a whole pod technique, but I'm not linking it because I've summarized it so well you don't need to read it. But anyway, it's just been fascinating.
    47:32
    Yeah, that sounds insane. It's pinball. So, speaking of pinball, we're now done with the quote unquote news. Sorry, that's the best I could do. for this two-week period.
    47:45
    It is what it is. At the end of the year, it's post-Expo. There's just, don't hold your breath. There's nothing coming. I thought, especially after seeing our pinball magazine ad again about stressing how we do research-driven topics and deep dives, let's have a dive topic. Let's talk about single-level pinball. And I thought, this is timely because Beatles is being built at this point. It's a revised Sea Witch layout, which is a single-level game. and we've talked extensively about one of your favorite games that came out last year, Total Nuclear Annihilation, which is a single-level game. People seem to be having a good time with that game. We'll see if they have a good time with Beatles. But let me ask you, Tony, single-level now. And for those that don't know, what we mean when we say single-level is simply these are games that don't have upper playfields, lower playfields. There's only one playfield and no ramps. So a relatively flat game. Are they back, Tony? Are they like the Ghostbusters? We're back. Ghostbusters, where you at? Where you at? I think that there is definitely space for a limited number of well-designed and well-built games. How much space? I do not think we will be seeing a huge resurgence. We're not going to see primarily a majority of games go to a single level. It's not going to happen that way. Okay. I agree with you, but that's super straight. So let me, let me, let me, let me, I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you out. All right. Stern. Here we go. Boutique, Kapow title coming out. Beatles. Single level. Are we going to see one pin a year, be it a Cornerstone or Kapow or a custom job like Primus or whatever, single level from Stern every year? Are we going to see a single level a year from Stern? No. Okay. No. I think we might see one every couple years. If they sell really well and if everything keeps up, we might see more. But I don't think TNA is its own very special thing.
    49:55
    And the Beatles thing has nothing to do with the game. It's all about the theme. And those two machines are outliers. I think most people at the end of the day would not want to have a whole bunch of single levels every single year. If this was back in the pinball heyday where each company was putting out a dozen titles a year, if there was a new title coming every single month from like four different companies, then maybe, yeah, you'd see four or five of them a year total from the industry as a whole. But it's not. I think we've got TNA. I think we've got Beatles coming out. And I don't think we'll see another one for a while. Mafia? That's valid. I hadn't thought about that. But I'm going to go with that is not. I'm still going to classify Mafia and any games that come out there. To me, that's going to be locked in with all the other maybe boutiques. The try-hards. The people who are trying to put something out. if I'm talking about the industry as a whole the main as solid as the pinball industry is because if I'm going to be 100% truthful if I'm going to sit down and say who are the big main players in pinball who are the people you know you're going to turn around and you're going to get games from next year it's Stern that's it but from the big players that I'm confident we're going to get games from in the next couple of years that are still going to be batting around. We're still going to get some games from, I think we might see one more single-level game, maybe out of that entire group. But I don't think until we get good feel for how popular these games are and how they sell and how they do and how people react to them, that we're going to see another one, unless it's a remake of an older game. Okay. I'm going to hedge my bet there. I'll be safe there. No, that's fine. That's fine. Safety first, after all. Yes.
    52:06
    So, Scott Denisey, we know he's working on another game for Spooky. Do you think his second game will be single level? I don't think so. I agree with you. I was just kind of curious because he's sort of currently, he has a one game rep and his rep is single level master. Right, but I don't know that you can get one game. No, it wouldn't be fair. Yeah, that's not fair at all. You know what? Life's not fair. So we're working with life. It's just like, you're the biggest Scott Lee collector in pinball. Scott Denny's only builds single-level games.
    52:42
    So all the EM collectors out. You know what? We're not. This is how these rumors that I'm constantly squatting down. Pinball will eat you alive. You start stuff like that, and you'll get devoured.
    52:58
    People sending me bumper stickers saying Premiere and stuff. It's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. So you heard it here first. Dennis needs bumper stickers to put on his car. Yep. He wants to get the little gulpy fish that says Gottlieb on it. Oh, my gosh. The gulpy fish. Oh, my gosh. You feel like it's the mid-90s again.
    53:25
    Well, all right. So, I guess to just start in this segment on what do you think of single-level games? I enjoy single-level games. What is it about them that you like? I like that, in my mind, for a single-level game to really work, it has to have a nice combination of minimalist goals. and it's a more, I consider it a more minimalist style layout. It is something that is much more, and I don't mean that like, oh, there's like one pop bumper and there's one sling. And I mean, no, I just mean it's, they don't have, it's not as busy. It's all very, very compact and very well targeted and laid out for a specific goal. and I think when it's done well, it makes for a game that can be a lot of fun to shoot. Now, a lot of modern pinball doesn't really like it, isn't going to like it so much because a lot of times it will have the kind of depth and rules that you see from, you know, like The Hobbit and games like that where you have a phone book that tells you how to get to all the modes and the incredible depth. But at the same time, it gives you a huge amount of quick play and replayability if it's laid out and plays fun.
    54:55
    And they can still be challenging. TNA can still be a challenging game. But at the same time, it's got a stark simplicity to it that I enjoy. Case in point, you're Silver Slugger. Silver Slugger is not a deep game. I think it's my favorite game out of your lineup. I will play Silver Slugger I do play Silver Slugger Every time I play one of your games I also play Star Trek Because I love Star Trek And I play all of them But Silver Slugger just is very Enjoyable to me For I think the simplicity And how it feels And how it plays And I think games that can capture that kind of feeling And be single level Will have a place in pinball I just don't think there's a place for a lot of them because they're not going to capture the interest of everybody. For somebody like me, I like them. There's a lot of other people like, oh, it was fun, but I wish I had more to do and I wish I had a ramp and I could use an upper play field and a lower play field and a sub-basement lower play field. I want a play field that when you're playing, it pops out of the coin door so I have to look straight down to see where to see it and then before it goes back type craziness. But I think there is a place for them I think we might see one more In the next several years And That's probably Going to be it for the next If we saw more than one more in the next two or three years I'd be Surprised Probably happily surprised But surprised Okay My big hedge there is We still have no clue what Deep Boots is Yeah, and that's, I guess, my hang-up as well. Right. Because given the volume of just different games they're saying they're going to do, I've wondered, and the pricing, that they've indicated some desire to go beneath Stern Pro. That's not to say you couldn't do a traditional layout, non-single-level layout. I mean, look at Thunderbirds. It is priced below a Pro, and it has a ramp. But, again, look at Thunderbird. Yeah, I'm just saying that there are ways to do it cheap. Maybe then it feels cheap. It just depends.
    57:18
    Because, aside from that, I agree. I think we may see, I wouldn't be surprised if we see a single level a year, but I think most of them will be reskins. That would be a good deal. Like the past or something, where you just reskin for a boutique job thing. So not even as big of a run as Beatles, but just like, I mean, the rumor, I made the joke of it, or used it as an example earlier, but the rumor mill says that Stern's release of a Primus band theme pinball machine is imminent. And the assumption on my part is I wouldn't be surprised if it's a reskin of Supreme. Probably. So, because it would probably be a highly limited run. Yeah. So, my thoughts on single level, I think it's pretty obvious that I enjoy them. Most of my lineup is single level. In fact, of the seven games, I own four of them meet the definition of a single level game.
    58:11
    But my... I mean, it's a mix. For me the thing I like about single level is I believe that you have more potential to have a creative layout with a single game than you do with a game with ramps in particular Now does a single game have more of the same or less shots than a non-single-level game? I think that answer very much just depends. Games with upper and or lower play fields because of how they're effectively using 3D space can get more shots in than a single level game will have. Games that are basically just a single play field but with ramps I think usually have the same number of shots. Because the issue becomes unless you do certain things like Bicycle Girl Ramp for example on the premium and LE versions of Walking Dead which can lift and then creates another shot or fall down and then you have the ramp shot. Other than that those ramps are taking up space that something else could be happening. Right. So, and the problem, and I think it's a problem for a lot of players, is if you get too crazy and creative with placing the ramps and trying to work in other shots, and you can't see those other shots, it bothers me. I mean, that's one of my complaints about a game like Creature from Black Lagoon, is I have trouble seeing some of the ball exits and stuff, because it's just a little too cluttered with how creative Trudeau got with the ramp layouts, but when you look at, and again, you go to non-bumper sticker street levels, like look at Tidal Fight, pretty unique layout. Look at even a game like Vegas, which may not be a great player, but there's some really unique hoops. I'm not saying they all work, but at least the layouts are interesting in a way where if you're trying to accommodate ramps because of that ball velocity and how the ramps have to angle and the entrances to the ramps, there are only so many places you can, I mean, they're going to take a certain amount of width, and because you have to accommodate the ramp going up and being around and coming down somewhere, that takes options off of the play field that in a single level you could do other creative things with the space because you've got all that room to work with. broadly speaking, I think most single-level games do probably end up with fewer shots than non-single-level games, because I think people have figured out at this point how to effectively use the 3D space relatively well, and do things like diverters and lifts and all that. So, I see where that might not appeal to some people, but brutality is possible on any layout. And you know there's just TNA as a good case in point. That is a deeply brutal game. And that's because there are shots that are, like, where the ball lock is. It's just so close to the flippers. You can do that with a single level, and you can do that with a non-single level. It's up to you if you want to make your game brutal or not. But that, if people understand, I think you've got a lot of different types of people who buy pinball machines or play pinball machines. But I'm going to do two categories. you've got that well under the glass group that they're all about bling. They're not players. They never will be. They're too much about wanting to see a toy. They're too much. They remember their inner toddler and they just want to watch that ball loop around and do stuff. They don't want to do any work. They just want to watch it do the work for them. And that's fine. People can go into pinball for whatever reason they want. But if you're going to appreciate the creativity that you can do on the flat surface, that might appeal to more people that are more interested into how different shots feel different. Weird things to try and do. You know, things to hit. Like with hoops, the tip-in shot. What an interesting, simple idea with a couple of stand-ups. There's a kick-out hole, and there's not like a direct shot onto it. You have to do some nudging to try and get stuff to go in there and how it interacts. It's different. And that's some of the stuff I appreciated on Mafia. There's not a lot going on with Mafia. But in today's era, putting a spinner in the middle of the playfield, that's not something most people are comfortable doing. Everyone's just like, we've got to have spinners on the orbits. Spinners on the orbits. They feel so good. I agree they feel so good. They also feel pretty unoriginal. So can you make a spinner work somewhere else? Sure. Zachariah did it for years. but none of y'all know it because you don't play anything but your 90s Williams games so yeah I think that I think single level games can be great but being single level doesn't automatically make you better that's the other thing you can't just think oh I'll be single level and I'll look I mean Total Nuclear Annihilation was lightning in a bottle for a few reasons part of it was we'd gone so long without a single level that it felt kind of fresh retrofresh. Right. But also that game is predominantly carried on its brutality of play from a player perspective, the simplicity of rules for those that feel overwhelmed by modern games, and the sound and light show for those. So a lot of people, I mean, you watch that straight down the middle YouTube pinball show, they rated Total Nuclear Annihilation very highly and I was quite shocked because I thought, yeah, well you guys are going to give it an F on toys. So you're going to pull its rating down to a B- or whatever by default because of your grading system. But they didn't. They actually rated the toys fairly highly because they treated the Denise Lock as a toy. But everything else I figured would do very well because the color-changing GI. Oh, yeah. I didn't disagree with the review. But I was surprised because I thought, this is too much of a throwback. You guys don't like throwback stuff. You want mechanisms. It becomes how many gizmos can you cram under the glass? not about play. Right. And see, and that was the thing, that was why I fell in love with that game in the first place, was because we played the original, we played the Whitewood. It was a Whitewood, and it was one of the most fun games I'd played that I could remember at the time. And I still enjoy that game. Every time I get a chance to play it, I enjoy that game. But the thing I have to bear in mind, which I think plays very well into all of your very safe choices you were trying to say at the start of the segment is people are talking about how this is this being TNA is this runaway success. Spooky hasn't still sold out 500 and they're ending the run at 550.
    64:57
    It's much better than they assumed. It's better than I assumed. But it's still not even the worst of the street level by hundreds of units worth selling at the street levels, worth produced at the street levels, hundreds away. And we don't know the production runs on things like sterns and stuff, but when you think about that, it's still not to the level of the Jersey Jack games, as far as we know, the stern games, that have ramps and such. So, even though there's a faction of people that seem to really appreciate single levels, I agree with you that I just don't think they're going to become super common, because I think it's a vocal minority. I think there are a lot of people that they just, they need to see shaking palm trees, they need to see plastic or habit trails all over the place. And I don't know if it's gameplay, and I don't know if it's even really world under glass. It might just be it's the only way you feel like you didn't get ripped off paying $7,000. Right. And it could, and I think it is very similar to like what we saw with Jersey Jack and Dialed In, where everybody was like, you don't have to have a theme. It doesn't have to be. Just make it a good game by a good designer. It's a lot of fun. Easy money. Dialed in. Jersey Jacks best game by leaps and bounds.
    66:19
    100% the best game Jersey Jacks put out. You haven't played the new Pirates. You take that back. You have not played Eric Meunier's new Pirates. 100% the best game Jersey Jacks put out. Burn. I'm going to get hate mail on that one. And,
    66:34
    it's their worst selling game. From what I've heard. Pirates has failed less. You keep forgetting Pirates.
    66:43
    Is it officially out? Yeah. Everybody who, somebody has it who wanted it. Uh-huh. Sorry, Zach. Okay. If you want to be that way. All right. But I think. Production hasn't been out a year, so we can set it aside, and all the others have been at least produced a year, so it's a little more apple to apple. Right. I think, because I think after a year, there will be more Pirate Soul than Dialed In. Oh, really? I think so. Okay. I don't agree that it's right. Well, because I've only played the prototype, I can't say.
    67:19
    Well, the reason I say that isn't about this or that. It's just I think it's a terrible theme. Yeah, but some people at least know that theme. Dialed in doesn't mean anything to anyone. No, it's just a pure fun game. Yeah, I agree. And I think that's how we're going to be seeing these single-level games, is it's going to be the same way. It's like, oh, that game was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed that game, and they're still not going to sell as much as something with the toys and the bling and the fancy. Yeah, I agree. So. Well, okay. That was a deep dive on single level. Yep. I'll enjoy them while I have them. Well, okay. The nice thing is there are hundreds of them, because up until the 80s, that's pretty much all you had. Pretty much. I'm sorry. They did actually, people may not know, they did experiment with ramps in the Eon era. There are a few games of them. There are some amazing games out there that I really enjoy. Amazing.
    68:16
    Speaking of amazing skill, it's time for our last pinball segment, 20 questions. 20 whole questions. That's right. For those that don't know, but surely you do, but those that have just recently tuned in just to hear us talk about single-level games, 20 questions is a game whereby I will, in this case, have Tony be asking me a series of yes or no questions. It will be about a pinball machine. The pinball machine will have flippers, and it will be a pinball machine that he has played before. I will answer yes or no to those questions. It is a closed-book process for the first 15 questions. With questions 16 through 20, Tony is allowed to use online resources to help him research the answer. Are you ready to begin? I am ready to be embarrassed, yes. All right. I am ready to hear your queries. Is it an EO? No. Is it a DMD? I probably should have read up on the game more.
    69:16
    So obviously it's not a game that we play all the time. Yes. Is it from the 90s? No. Is it from 2000 to 2010? No. Nearer than 2010? Is that a question? Yes. Is it newer than 2010? Yes. That is question five. Is it a Stern? No. Is it a Jersey Jack? No. Is it a Spooky? Yes. Is it America's Most Haunted? No. Is it Rob Zombie? Yes. I thought that one first, but then I was like, no. My hesitation is I'm not, and actually, technologically, I can't tell. It's not in the write-up whether or not they used a color DMD or they used an LCD, but it looks like a DMD. It's dot art, so that's why I said yes to that. I felt that as being fair. But I had to go and look at a photo of it because I just, all I remember is that the display looked. Yeah, it never worked where we were at. We did actually play a number of times.
    70:24
    So, oh, gosh. I think this, I think you had a question 11 last time, so this is now a new record for you. Yeah. That's a good question.
    70:32
    That's really good. I'm pretty happy with that. Yeah. Let's see. We've got enough time. I've got a list. You have a list. I've got a list. I've been doing worse and worse while you're doing better and better. Maybe I need to quit picking these modern games. No, those are good. This was right. I just thought, we'll do some variety. Yes, the game. Okay. Is it electromechanical? No. Is it a DMD? No. Is it from 1980 to 1992? It is. That should be official. Yes. Is it from 1980 to 1985?
    71:10
    Yes. Is it a Bally? Yes. Is it from 1981? No. Is it from 1980? Yes. Is it Frontier? Yes. I think that was question eight. It was. Yeah.
    71:24
    I think you see... Crickets! As we've been talking about that game a lot lately. Yeah, listeners may not know, but Frontier is going to be one of the tournament games at KC Game Con on December 1st. Yes, it is. Well, I mean, it'll be available for play November 30th through December 2nd, but the tournament is on December 1st. Right. And so one of our area players and collectors has a Frontier, and he agreed to allow it to be one of the four solid state, you might think of it, early solid state era games to participate. Yeah. There's a good lineup. I'm pretty interested. Yeah. Fun, different. Yeah, I should have written it down. All the games have been determined now except for the fourth D&D game. Let me see. I've got it. I actually just had it called up. I was looking at it this morning. Oh. Now, there are a few tickets left, so if people want to go, you can still pre-purchase tickets if you want to be sure you have a spot in the tournament. I know a lot of you won't be in the area, but it's going to basically be all day on Saturday, December 1st, U.S. Central Time. So starting, I think, around 11-ish or so and ending a little bit before 8 p.m. You can watch, because Tony and I are going to be providing commentary during the event, at twitch.tv slash eclectic underscore gamers. Yes, we are. The tournament list is High Hand, Sky Jump, Grand Prix. I like Grand Prix. That's the only Williams you've named so far. Jumping Jack. That's another Gottlieb. Future Spa. That's a Bally. Alien Star. That is a Milstar Gottlieb.
    73:06
    Some Gottlieb lovers bringing their hoops. There are no Gottlieb lovers, but hoops is a very popular premier Gottlieb. Frontier. Bally, as we noted. The joy and harshness that is Iron Man. One of my favorite Sterns. I love Iron Man, yeah. Tron. Another very popular Stern, and another Borg design as well. And Mustang Premium.
    73:33
    I actually kind of enjoy it. Mustang almost plays too fast for me. I really would like to have, I mean, I would not mind owning one to spend time with it and try to master it better. Okay. And the last one we don't know yet. I've heard it's mostly down, it's chiefly between two games and they're both 90s Williams DMDs. We'll see which one it is. It'll be a good time. So go ahead and tune into Twitch.
    74:02
    We have our Twitch set up so we'll be able to throw it to YouTube when we're done anyway, but if you watch it live, we're probably going to be I won't say snarky, but let's just say we're not going to be as dry as some of the others have been, I don't feel. Yeah. It's just too long. We'll be talking way too long. Oh, yeah. It'll be... Our prep is pretty much done. I apologize in advance for my terrible jokes. Yeah. Yes. Everything else. That's good that you have apologized. We'll just link to this timestamp as people need it done. Tony's apology. Yes. So, let's go ahead and move on to video games.
    74:39
    So, the first thing I want to go ahead and start us off with is that Microsoft Studios, or Microsoft as a corporation, I should say, has acquired two more studios. There is a link in the show notes to the news announcement. They had a fan event. I think their XO18 event or whatever it was called. It's designed for fans, not for media. Right. It was whatever stupid name that some person says. Yeah, like Sony has their PlayStation experience that they do sometimes and all that. Well, so Microsoft did one of these as a fan event. so it wasn't really targeted to media but the media I'm sure is glad they covered it because there was a fairly big announcement. Now the first part of the announcement was in no way surprising. We'd already talked in the past that all the reports were coming in that Microsoft's acquisition of Obsidian Entertainment was imminent. That has now happened and for those that don't know Obsidian is known for Fallout New Vegas which is probably their biggest game in recent years but they also did South Park's Stick of Truth and Pillars of Eternity. They're big-time RPG people. Yes. And then Microsoft also said, oh, yeah, by the way, we've also acquired InXile Entertainment, who is known for, in fact, they and Obsidian were very closely related if you go way back in their history, because InXile did Wasteland, or Wasteland 2. They're working right now on Wasteland 3. Barb's Tale 4, Torment, The Tides of Numera. So, they are known on the PC side as well for RPG games. In fact, I think at least a couple of these were successful Kickstarters. Yes, Wasteland 2 was. And I think Barb's Tale as well. Yeah. So, this is definitely showing, and I think RPGs is a spot that Microsoft has had a lack of high-level content compared to PlayStation. They, They have. Part of that, it's been a blend of reasons, too. I think part of it is there has, and this was very much true, maybe more so true in the last generation, but some technically third-party developers based in Japan often would only develop for the PlayStation because that was what was predominant even last gen in Japan. They never had high Xbox sales. and then the other thing is Microsoft, yeah really their only RPG exclusivity that they had of note was the Fable series and with the closure of Lionsgate a lot of people have been like well Microsoft still owns Fable but who in the world is doing it our assumption is no one the real assumption is that Playground known for the Forza Horizon games they have a second team the rumor is they're doing fable, but that's not known. It's not known for sure.
    77:33
    What I thought was interesting, I was listening to another podcast, IGN's Xbox podcast called Podcasts Unlocked, and they did it because I don't really keep count, but they did a count. I mean, with these two acquisitions, Microsoft now has one more first party studio than Sony does. So they have now passed them. I thought they were still short. That is not true, though. They now have a studio advantage in the first party lineup. So, we'll have to see with the next coming generation. I think it's much like, sure, what we discussed in the episode where we talked about Obsidian, but everything that is going on just looks to me like they don't plan to lose next gen. They're going to fight it. And the course of action has been the hand of Phil Spencer the checkbook and say, start buying some stuff. Because this is, you have to figure anything that they're going to do is two years out minimum. Every single one of these acquisitions, I don't expect anything exclusive until the next gen. Yeah, there's no way. But I also expect all of these things will be available for Windows PC players as well, because that's also part of their strategy. And they're trying to implement a lot more cross-play and stuff. It was announced that the feature to plug in mouse and keyboard is now functional on Xbox,
    79:02
    the game makers will get to decide whether or not it's allowable, if they have concerns about cross-play unfairness and stuff. Because as I have started to do Overwatch on the computer, and I was all of a sudden like, holy crap, easy mode aiming, I forgot just how easy it was with a mouse. The biggest thing for me is remembering how to walk with a keyboard.
    79:21
    But with the aiming, it's like, whoa, I can nano who I want now. Lucio, no! Why was you always jumping from the... Lucio, no! Lucio! And then he did nothing. Anyway, so that's the only notable news I felt out of that fan event. However, those journalists, when talking, had pointed out that all of them, the four that were on that Xbox podcast, expect at or before E3 2019, Microsoft will announce another studio as well. Really? They're not done yet. This is just a projection. Now, I know Microsoft has said in the past that they're not thinking in generations anymore, like the standard console generations. They're thinking of just advancing hardware, which is a line of PR crap as far as I'm concerned. Yeah. No. So it's, I mean, here's where I think there's a truth to it that I agree with you. That the whole, no, you have not. All right. Well, because you're going to have to, the consoles are still going to have to be on generation cycles. Because at some point, you're just going to have to say that this new stuff can't be expected to still work on the old stuff. It's just, you've got to draw a line in the sand there. Now, the evolutionary nature on PC, obviously, that's always been the case with PC. See, that wouldn't be atypical. What I do think they intend to do, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Sony at least also start doing this at this point, especially because the consoles are now really just regular computers. Right. Is that backwards compatibility will just be a thing going forward. I hope so. And that when Scarlett, which is Xbox's codename for their new thing, comes out, I fully expect to be able to pop Xbox One discs in there and install games and play them. Yeah. or, if that doesn't work, do what they started to do with the 360, pop the disc in, it lets it see it, and then it downloads the version, and it runs it through an emulator. Then I'm not even sure they're going to need the emulation anymore. That's what I think by that standard, that they're no longer, it's not going to be like, oh, no, I feel bad that I was working on this Xbox game, Xbox One game for five years, and now everyone's, you know, we took too long, it fell into development hell, and it's fine. No, you can still put it out, and it would work on the new thing, and no one has to worry about it and you don't have to feel... That could be good for developers. Yeah. No longer feel like, again, much like on PC, it's not like, well, everyone traded in their Xbox 360s. No one has that anymore. It's not like... It won't have to be like that. It could be a brave new world. I think that's supposed to be a bold new world. I think so. I can't really say until... We'll move on. Yeah. No, it's not. We'll just pretend that didn't happen. Yeah, I'll edit it out. You don't have to do that. I know. No, no, everybody needs to know the truth You sing worse than I do Okay, that's a lie No, actually, that's probably true But, so You know, what we should do We should duel about it I wonder what other things have duels We really need to sit down and work on segues at some point No, we, no That's more work The listeners don't care Yeah, but there, yeah We're, every year, because we're at the end of the year And what do we always get at the end of the year? We always get The video, or the game awards From Jeff Kaley No, no, yeah, the video game awards Yeah, the video game awards They've been out for, you know, several years now They tend to be fairly popular-ish They do, I've been watching The last two or three years My personal opinion Of the show is very mixed Right I and I think a lot of people are probably Mostly just watching because there are a lot of trailers So it's just kind of like This real sizzle reel Of all these upcoming games you want to play And then having When it comes to hearing people talk about the actual games of the year The this and the that I tend to turn to like giant moms Like week long Multi hour There's a way too ridiculously long But I enjoy it so much It's targeted to a certain type of person I watched part of one once, but the debate, seeing through the debate process is both cool, but also, in a way, witnessing how they negotiate it is almost... Makes you sad. Yeah. It's not something. And I just think it's just... I'm not faulting it. I'm just saying, you could never package that and get most people to want it, because it's just way too long. No, no, you couldn't. You couldn't. But... But it is thorough. It is very thorough. But now There's a new person coming to the thing CBS Because they have I don't know Are there shows on CBS anymore? I don't remember CBS is putting out A video game award show Oh They're airing it The day after the video game awards Well then it's not exactly a duel That would have been Here we're going to put it up against the video game awards That would have been interesting That would have been a duel This is a big enough duel Because you're looking at something that The video game awards at this point Are just streamed online Because I know they used to be on Spike I don't know If a cable show still carries I've always watched it streamed Yeah I think they're just online now And they have been for several years Well I mean I think they just let a few too many people drink at it, and you get these really, I mean, there's always someone who crashes and burns on the stage. Right. It just, it's semi-professional. That's maybe the way I describe it. I think it's a good description for it. But with CBS's new one coming out, it is, besides following the day after, it's being put on by the same company, the same group that does the Teen Choice Awards. And it's the Gamer's Choice Awards. You can go online and vote for what games you think need to win everything. But we already know how this is going to be. It's going to be Fortnite wins, everything Fortnite's put up for, and maybe Red Dead 2 gets something.
    85:55
    Okay. Like best cowboy hat. Yeah. Maybe. I don't know. Is there a cowboy hat skin in Fortnite? That might be Red Dead even. Okay. But what's interesting to me is the fact that they're running it literally the day after.
    86:12
    It's been such a primetime type thing. And at least one of the hosts is a very prominent Twitch member.
    86:25
    And by Twitch member, I mean like one of Twitch's big directors. It's DJ Wheat is one of the hosts of the CBS Gamers Choice Awards. So they're seeming to take it serious. Right. So they seem to be going pretty serious. Now the question is, does it just become which companies buy the most ad time to get the most coverage and who gets the most this and that? And, I mean, if it's related to the Team Choice Awards, do we get best kiss? Surely. Fortnite. It's always Fortnite But no that's We've got some links out there From Places where we read Where we were reading up about it And I know They've still been making changes so we don't have Like a full list like up to Yesterday they were still making changes to some Of the categories and adding stuff in so we'll have To see what comes out Of that also just While we're talking about those the golden joysticks were held a couple days ago Pretty good set day for God of War Not surprising I heard Extremely positive Things from my Sony brethren Who have been playing that game Or did play the game It did come out quite a while ago this year Right and they also had It was a good day for Fortnite Which again shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody Well given it's penetration It's just because it's free to play The Battle Royale Right. And, in fact, that was the ultimate game of the year was Fortnite Battle Royale, not Fortnite Vanilla. Right, right. No, the Fortnite Battle Royale is what's been doing everything.
    88:11
    There was nothing. God of War and Fortnite pretty much owned almost everything except for, like, the very console-specific titles. And some of the, like, PC game of the year was Subnautica, which I've talked about. Yeah, you have. It's an enjoyable little survival game.
    88:33
    Well, here, I'll just run through the list real quick because it won't take very long. Best Storytelling, God of War. Best Competitive Game, Fortnite Battle Royale. Best Cooperative Game, Monster Hunter World. Best Visual, God of War. Best Indie Game, Dead Cells. I've heard a lot of stuff. I've heard about it, but I don't know. I really don't know anything on it.
    88:53
    Best Audio, God of War. Still Playing Award, World of Tanks. We just talked about that yesterday at our pinball tournament. We did. We went to a pinball tournament yesterday. We were there really, really long and talked to a lot of people that I don't think either of us did. No, we both went like to an end. I mean, I made fights a bit, but yeah, that was terrible. I didn't. Every game I played was terrible. But I can understand still playing World of Tanks. World of Tanks is awesome.
    89:20
    E-sports game of the year, Overwatch. I don't think that's a surprise since they just broke out the scene. Yeah, it was so built up and this and that. Best VR game was Skyrim. Okay, Skyrim. Sure. Best refrigerator game as well. Yeah, and best, you know, yeah. Best pen and paper choose-your-own-adventure game. Yeah, everything.
    89:44
    Studio of the year was SIE's Santa Monica studio. Mobile game of the year, there we go. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Mobile. It actually won something over Fortnite. Yeah, well, this is probably the last time you're going to see PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in any list. Yep, that's for sure.
    90:04
    PlayStation's Game of the Year, God of War. No surprise. Xbox Game of the Year, Forza Horizon 4. Not a surprise.
    90:13
    Nintendo's Game of the Year, Octopath Traveler. That kind of surprises me. Not really. Was it really the only notable game this year? I think it was the most notable game this year. most of the ones I am thinking of were from last year. Right. And I think that's kind of... Switch is actually... They've managed to break Nintendo's cycle of having lots of amazing... or having really amazing first-person... first-party games and, like, no third-party. They've got lots of third-party games now. They've got lots of indie games. They've got a lot of games that are actually coming out on the Switch, but they still haven't gone really huge. their first party games the ones that have come out have all been amazing but there haven't been the numbers that I kind of expected this year but most wanted game it's Cyberpunk 2077 there's no shock there CD Projekt Red is all the rock star at this point they could be doing a Hello Kitty fashion dress-up game, and it would have been the most anticipated game of the year. Just because of what they bought from the Witcher games.
    91:35
    So, I mean, that's what it is. Critics' Choice Award was Red Dead 2. Yeah, all the reviews are great. Yeah. Lifetime Achievement Award was Hidetaki Miyazaki from software. From software. Yeah, from software. Dark Souls. Yep. Which is obvious. Terrible game, by the way.
    91:59
    But the ultimate game of the year, Fortnite, as you said earlier. Yep. So, no real surprises. And here's the thing, I think the other two award shows are going to look almost identical to this. I think you're probably right. I don't know. I mean, it is possible that maybe a lot of people will say, it depends where they do their cut-offs. I mean, here, clearly there was the Still Critics' Choice Award. The others are still in their evaluation process. I wouldn't be surprised if Red Dead poaches these God of War slots, but that's about the only movement I imagine. Right. Just because Red Dead's got a broader audience base because God of War was a PlayStation exclusive, and Red Dead is on other... I mean, it's on two consoles, but you lose the PC market. But God of War didn't have the PC markets. Right. It's just... It's Rockstar. I mean, God of War will demand that you stand and support it. Rockstar only requires that you kneel.
    92:58
    That's my logic on it. So, anyway, our last video game topic is actually about Sony. It is. We talked about Microsoft. We're a book at the start. We're going to bookend it here with Sony. And, Tony, you informed me of this news about E3 and Sony reevaluating what they want to do. Significantly reevaluating. By a significant reevaluation, it is, they're not going to E3 next year. They canceled their PlayStation experience this year. They didn't have it.
    93:29
    They had a, I mean, they're showing that E3 this year was the same standard Sony showing that they've always had. I think it reviewed really well overall. Yeah. They always do. But they're not going to be there at all.
    93:45
    I'm going to read a couple quotes. that Sony has given to Game Informer when it comes to, when they were talking about this decision. As the industry evolves, Sony Interactive Entertainment continues to look for inventive opportunities to engage the community. The company told Game Informer in a statement, PlayStation fans mean the world to us and we always want to innovate and think differently and experiment with new ways to delight gamers. As a result, we have decided not to participate in E3 in 2019. We are exploring new and familiar ways to engage our community in 2019 and can't wait to share our plans with you. And they were specifically flat out asked if they were going to push an event off-site. Like Nintendo. Yeah, like Nintendo and EA have. And their answer was, we will not activate or hold a press conference around E3. So they're just not doing E3 at all. So, first stage first, Microsoft wins E3 2019.
    94:43
    Like, guess they're the only ones there. They're the only majors there. Them, Ubisoft, Bethesda. Hey, I enjoy Bethesda's as much as the next one. Their last one was awful. It was like the worst. It was. It was pretty rough. So, yeah. Rough is a good word for it. Yeah, I mean, obviously, the first thing is this is just yet another, like, is E3 going to reform itself? Are they going to reform itself? because I'm like, my first understanding was that the big complaint was E3 had just gotten way too expensive for the entities to participate in versus what they were getting out of it. Right. Is this more of that? Or is this really just internal to Sony that they've just decided for whatever reason that they don't either need E3 or that they don't think that it would go well for them? I can't tell. I have... As I've been going back and forth over this story, I keep coming to two conclusions. And I cannot decide for me which one is more likely. Conclusion one is that they've seen the sheer amount of success Nintendo has had with the Nintendo Direct.
    95:57
    And how well that has worked for Nintendo. And they could very well be going to their own thing like that. And at the same time, PSX is already their version of BlizzCon, which has always been large and successful for Blizzard, even with the problems they had this year due to the whole fact that they had nothing huge to announce on anything and how the Diablo Infinity thing blew up in their face. But it was still, overall, a very, very successful thing for them. my other thought is that it could be they're they don't have any major first party non multi system stuff coming out next year they don't have anything special because all of their big crews all of their major first party people are working on playstation 5 material and the most we're going to get will be sometime next year maybe an announcement of a PlayStation 5 release in 20. Okay. Because I think 19 is too early for the next year. I agree, and I could see that. But I think with the kind of build times games take anymore, when you're looking at two to three years lead time on a game release, I just don't think they have enough to make it worth their while for that kind of energy and money dump for what will obviously be a much lower level event than what they normally turn out because they won't have much. Okay. I mean, your reasoning makes sense to me, so I could see that. I guess my issues to poke holes I can try and poke is I get the idea of doing their own Nintendo Direct via the PSX, but they did cancel the PSX this year. So I don't know if that's really the plan, so they haven't why they're not already trying to transition into doing that regularly, if that's the goal. Also, even though Nintendo loves Nintendo Directs, they are always running something while E3 is around. They do their treehouse or whatever. And so, even they don't step fully away from E3 because there's so much game journalism going on at the event. There's so much media that, and that's what E3 was founded on being, that you're giving up the news cycle to everyone who's willing to show stuff. The third thing is Sony never shows, well, never is a strong word, but Sony never shows upcoming, recent upcoming stuff at E3. They're always like three-year-out crap. I mean, look at this last one. They showed that cool thing with the Samurais, the Japanese setting, and all that. And everyone looked at that, and at least I looked at it, and I go, that's next-gen. There's no way that's this-gen. And so why not still tell about that? So, to me, I don't see why, even if they don't have a strong year of first-party stuff coming out, that didn't stop them from any of the other E3s where they didn't have a strong year. Second year of the PS4 console was a weak year for them, but it didn't stop them. They still talked about what was going to come out in three years instead. It's always three years instead for them. So I don't...
    99:25
    All the things you say make sense to me. I don't know if that's the right mix of it or they just think that it's just not worth... I guess I would be right. Maybe it's just not worth it to them. Maybe it's just not worth that they can get the PR in the other way like you proposed with the PSX or just doing every other month announced? I don't know. Yeah. And I don't think we're going to know for sure until they actually say so. I'll go ahead and I'll do a blend on things. I'll say I think you're right that most of the first-party crews are probably working on games to launch with the next gen or just after. 2020 is realistic. I'd say I expect new consoles from Sony and Microsoft in 2020 or 2021. I definitely expect we'll hear announcements by 2020.
    100:21
    So I think that makes a lot of sense. Sony could be going, well, we're working full bore on that. We've already won this generation. So let's, and Sony financially, my understanding is correct, is not doing well as a company. So they may be like, let's just scale back. we don't need to try and sell more consoles. We've saturated the market with PS4s. So there's not... We don't need to do anything. I mean, on the whole, we're recording, obviously, before Black Friday, and I've already seen there are a whole bunch of sales that involve PS4s for $199 with a game. Yeah. So I think it could be a blend of all that. What I think is more interesting, in fact, is if E3 now finally will take some sort of corrective steps to solve... They have a problem. They have a major problem, and I think they have to make some sense. And I think we will see them do something. I don't know if E3 can save itself. I don't know if things have changed so much that they can't be viable anymore. It still is for so many gamers, myself included. E3 is still, to me, the event. I expect a lot of news to come out between all of the leaks that happen online, just the breadth of gaming journalism now, which is constantly digging and much more professional than it was 10 years ago, coupled with that so many other players have decided to try and give themselves more oxygen by not being at a combined event.
    102:05
    I just, I don't know if a combined event's viable anymore. It very well might not be. And I think that no matter how it goes, E3 2019 is going to be a very different animal because Sony has been one of the two tentpoles that have held E3 up as all of the other smaller things have fallen away. Microsoft and Sony have always maintained E3.
    102:33
    And with Sony now gone, it might as well be a Microsoft show. Because the reality is nothing else there matters. Well, on the hardware side at least, I'm going to assume for the time being that some of the major third-party developers like Ubisoft will still be present.
    102:51
    I don't know. Maybe E3 will make some reforms and reach out to some. I'm assuming Sony's lost for this go as they've made their announcement. But maybe E3 can approach some of the former entities, maybe approach Nintendo and say, we want you to tentpole and offer them a discount or something. I don't know if it's the money or what, but I've often heard that that's a big complaint. and I've also maybe the decision by the E3 community to allow the public to attend E3, perhaps that did not go over as well with those who are doing presentations as what E3 hoped, which my take was always E3 did it as a money grab to try and take even more money by just upping the attendee count, because everyone, people like me are like E3 is the event, wouldn't be great if I could go to E3 and buy these expensive tickets and all that, well Now you're like, well, do I want to buy the expensive tickets to go to the Microsoft experience? Because that's what it's looking like. Okay, well, I'm an Xbox player, so yay. But no, I wouldn't do it for one company. I don't think I'd go to E3 now. I would have gone to E3 in 18. I don't think I'd go to E3 in 18. I don't know. And I don't own either console. Yeah, but I always watch Sony's presentation. It's interesting. I mean, I don't, though, I mean, I don't, it feels too redundant for me to get another console that plays most of the same games I could play on anything. That said, I'm always interested to see what are coming out on any system just because I like games. Right. So I'd like to at least learn about them. Anyway, we'll have to see, but I think it's bad news for E3. That brings up the next question, which is a much more almost administrative question that I wonder is, how far out in advance has E3 booked spacing and how far out in advance has E3 preserved their locations? Because the loss of Sony means whatever location space they have now is way bigger than they need. Yeah, I don't, I mean. and that's going to hurt their bottom line it depends on if they have provisions in their contract that allow them to break if certain conditions don't happen and whether there are penalties for those breaks or not there will probably be a way for them to reduce space with a penalty at the very least, that's pretty typical our organization has a very by our standards, very large annual conference every year, we normally book out about five years. That's our typical approach. Fairly significant period because that's about the only way you can get the locations and dates you want. You have to go far enough out to beat anyone else who's going to compete with you for the space.
    105:42
    But on the flip side, there are often we have provisos in place to make certain changes or if certain things aren't achieved we don't have to do. There might not be a penalty or if we obtain certain things, other things might be waived off. Like Reynolds face fees might go away if we generate the venue enough income through another mechanism. So it just depends on what the whole contract arrangement is and how they've got it set up. But I would guess they've probably gone out at least three years. That would be my guess. I mean, the closest we've ever cut it was one year, and that was a disaster. We had no choices on anything.
    106:23
    And there were a lot of internal reasons why we stalled it that long. But from a strategic standpoint, it put us in a terrible position. We had no negotiating power whatsoever. That's why we go out multiple years, is not only to pick our dates, but it also gives us flexibility because the venues like it because it gives them security. They know that you're bound by contract that you're going to be there. And in our instances, if we were to break, there are always significant penalties. It's cheaper than doing the event and having no one there. So E3 might just have to bite the bullet and say, we've got to shed the amphitheater or some portion of the space out and pay them some probably five-figure value and just say, we're breaking that part of the contract out. Let's follow the break provisions and pay you your penalty and it'll be less of a loss than renting or maybe they just keep the space and don't use it. Or hope to find, entice, like you said earlier, entice someone else or try and arrange something like, I don't know, take that space that was going to be used and try and have it as like a free play area or a bigger area for demo space and don't charge your vendor booths more money for taking advantage of it and just, like, using it. I mean, there are things they can try and do. It's bad news. It's really bad news. There's no way this is good for E3, so I don't... It also brings up, then, the next question is, does Microsoft stay in and own the space and own it as basically what would be, basically, a cut rate deal for them for an excellent spot at that point, because it's a giant thing where they're going to be the only major player there. or do they do like they've done with some other things in the past and go, well, if Sony's doing it, we're doing it, at which point E3 would die. Yeah, I mean, it's too soon to say because I don't know if Microsoft's already basically signed a contract with E3 to do it. My personal guess would be Microsoft will do it. But there's not, if anything, there being less people is probably advantageous to Microsoft. And given the, not stigma, but just association with E3 being the big gaming news conference, having a free win doesn't hurt. No. Especially when you're stuck so far in second place this gen, and you're taking all this action to try and, I mean, Sony's been shooting themselves in the foot in a few, I'm not saying this is a bad move on their part. Oh, yeah. But with the whole thing about their walled garden and the Fortnite stuff and how cumbersomely slow they were, their ability to lock everyone out. It's kind of like how Microsoft got that rep in the 90s. They were the company that was crushing all of the people wanting open source and not wanting to play fair with people. And now they're making changes to their store, so it's less of a, okay, we didn't beat Steam. They're making changes to their infrastructure, all this focus on backwards compatibility, all this cross-play, including cross-play with Nintendo whenever the developers want to. Yeah, they may be doing all of that because they have to, because they have to have things that will attract people to them because they don't have the games to do it. But that thread, it's seen as, regardless of the motivation, it's gamer-friendly. and Microsoft at this stage has to be just saying, we have to repair all the damage that happened with how we launched this console. This console's dead. I mean, we're going to support it, but this console's dead. We're not winning this gen. And they did struggle hard out the gate. And we want to win the next gen and they still go into it at a disadvantage because the disadvantage is most people, if they look under their TV right now, have a Sony. And so when it comes time to think about PS5. They're going to be like, well, I have the PS4. Shouldn't I get the PS5? Microsoft has to try and overcome all of that. I think they're making all the right steps to do it. I think Sony, to protect its position, is not really doing anything. And that may be enough. Honestly, they may not need to do anything. 360 versus PS3 was a very, very close thing, but Sony easily won several international marketplaces. They did. Just by being Sony. So, they've got certain advantages no matter what. But Sony's not a well-run company, and I just don't know if they know what they're doing in a lot of ways. Their gaming division, broadly speaking, has been very good for a really long time. That's part of why I think they were sort of caught unawares on the Fortnite thing. Right. Because they're like, but we're Sony. Don't you all own us anyway? And then when everyone's just like... Don't you own the phone? But then when people are like, I can't use all the stuff I bought in Fortnite and transfer it over even. I'm locked. I'm locked in. I can't move it to switch. You know, I wanted to play on the go. And Sony's like, why would you want to play on the go? You have a PlayStation. That's kind of the thing. And so, yeah, they've been... It is what it is, but yeah. This is going to be really interesting. If anything, we might actually have a shorter... I think our E3 episode has gotten longer every year. This one might get smaller. Maybe. We can only hope.
    111:32
    We'll just bring in three more guests. That's true. This is roundtable. This is going to just be like 20 microphones. I was choking by USB cable. Can't breathe.
    111:44
    Speaking of USB cables, we're at the end of the show, so let's go ahead and talk about what we're going to do for the last episode of the year, because you had some thoughts. And I looked ahead at the calendar. If we record on the Sunday, that's going to be the 30th of December. So it will be before New Year's Eve.
    112:03
    That would be our, if we follow our typical official, you know, as long-time listeners know, we come out every two weeks. We do do some deviations, usually to accommodate guests. So it's usually a Saturday or a Sunday, but we've ranged as far as four days from that, or three days from the Sunday, either prior or after. But, Tony, you want to say what the intent is? Because Tony had an idea for what we're going to do. As usual, the final episode of the year is going to be a year-end review in terms of content. Right. I always do it like that. It just seems to make a lot of sense. There's usually no news. So that will still happen, but we're looking at, since we have all this equipment now for streaming, and we have the cameras and everything, doing a live stream, we'll record the podcast, and we'll edit the podcast, and the podcast will go out like normal, But while we are actually recording it live We will be streaming on Twitch With a camera for each of us This and that So you can get to see all of our little things that get edited out The coughs, the laughs, the crass jokes, the bad language But at the same time we're wanting to be able to take and answer live questions from people in the audience while we are doing the podcast, or at least in a segment of the podcast and help throw in audience support with as we do it. It's going to be a big trial thing. It's going to be a big test thing that we think could just be a lot of fun for our listeners and our Streamwatcher friends and everything else at the end of the year.
    113:56
    We're going to do it. We don't know how good it'll go, but we're sure we can make it work. We don't have the exact date. It's just going to be the end. It'll be the last show of the year, so probably on or around the 30th. That's the current schedule. We'll stream it on Twitch, so people will be able to do that and participate just in Twitch chat.
    114:15
    Then, obviously, we'll be recording. You don't have to go on to Twitch to do it. That episode will be turned into a properly processed, balanced, cleaned up episode and released as normal on our SoundCloud and through our RSS feed. No obligation to watch it through the stream. It's just, Tony thought it would be a nice year-end thing to do and I think that makes sense, so we're going to give it a go. You see if it's a massive headache? Yeah. Terrible? Maybe a minor headache, but on the plus side, it won't really be any more editing. Right, because that's just going to be live and that's just going to be a... And Tony will have his laptop by then, so we'll be able to probably make this less, like it won't be super system intensive or anything. Right. I'm not overly worried about getting the equipment to work. Yeah, no. Just doing the setup, getting everything arranged. Two cameras, two mics. We know we can run a whole lot more than that already. Yeah. Anyway, so that's the plan. But before that, we'll have another regular episode in two weeks. And another one two weeks after that. Well, actually, I do have to note, so people aren't surprised, I don't know exactly when the next episode will be done. Because we've got KC Game Con tournament is the Saturday before we normally record. That Sunday, I'm volunteering and I'm at the show. I need to check and see when the show ends because I'll obviously have to be back home at some point because they're going to deliver my hoops back to me.
    115:53
    So I'm assuming we'll probably be able to record on Sunday because I don't think it's running. But it might be late. Well, later. Well, yeah. Because I don't think they're running all day Sunday. I think maybe it stops in the afternoon. Kind of like how Texas stops in the afternoon. Which makes sense. We'll just get packed up and get home. I'm currently thinking we will record on Sunday and I'll probably get the episode out on Sunday. It might be Monday. We might have to kick the can down the road a little bit because I may be too tired to at least do the editing. We'll have to see.
    116:22
    Anyway, until then, you can always reach out to us, eclecticgamerspodcasts at gmail.com or on various social media platforms, namely facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcasts. We're on Twitter and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers as we are also on Twitch. Yep. So until approximately two weeks I'm Dennis I'm Tony Bye