All right, Joe Katz is live in the house here at the Jersey Jack Pinball Podcast. Joe, I don't know, pretty exciting news this week for those especially that are into Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was a game that you had poured everything into at that point. And when did Willy Wonka come out originally? What year was that? That was out in, I believe that came out in 2019. Yeah. And the code had gone through several iterations. In fact, it went up to version 1.38. Yeah, the last version was 1.38. Right. And recently you released to the world version 2.0. Yes, that is correct. I did release 2.0. Let me ask you this. Before we get into the specifics, because I think this is fascinating. It's a fun game. A lot of people claim it to be their favorite game, and the code is fun. What brings a game from a micro-increment, say from a .37, .38, to a full 2.0 type of a situation? Yeah, that's a good question. I think part of it was, you know, when I finally got my own game and I started playing my own game at home and I started to play with people who maybe aren't so much pinball people like my brother, I sort of started to get a better understanding of where the roadblocks were for people. I think when you are talking about minor increments like 1.38 or 1.34 to 1.38, it's typically bug fix here, bug fix there, a small tweak here. And from 1.38 to 2, I touched just about every module in the game. And I just thought – I thought I could go to 1.50, but I thought if I did 2.0, it would sort of give people the idea that, hey, this is fresh. This is no longer based off of the 1.0 numbers. Now we've sort of gone to the 2.0 number. So I try to look at it as like, okay, instead of it being a one number, now it's a two number. People should just automatically think, oh, I should try that. You know, if I went from 138 to 1.5, I think people would have sort of thought it wasn't as big of a deal as maybe it seems. It makes complete sense. You know? I think there's a lot of weight that goes into people trying to figure out what these code numbers mean. And to your point, it does make sense because it is a different playing experience. I know that from having been given the opportunity to play the game with a new code prior to the release. Now, you did something a little bit different recently because we opened up beta testing for code, and this 2.0 version had gone to the beta testers first. What was the initial feedback that you received? Actually, initially, I gave it to a private beta originally. I had a couple guys that I trust that I talk to a lot. They play the game a lot. They know the game really well. They vary in skill level. Some of them are better than others. I sort of created a small little private group just to kick it off, just to get feedback from people I trust and that I know know the game before I sort of let it go to the open beta where then it's sort of free for all at that point. Right. Sure. So I gave it to a couple of people and I was sort of thinking, OK, if they come back to me and are like, oh, you ruined the game, then I probably would have just scrapped the whole idea. Right. I didn't want to get caught giving it to an entire open beta without just a little bit of reinforcement that what I did was down the right path. So I opened up the small beta. We played it for a while. Then I gave it to the open beta, and the feedback was generally very, very positive. there were a couple things that once i gave it to the open beta i had played it enough to know that there was one or two things i still wanted to tweak and basically once i gave it to the open beta it just confirmed my suspicions that there were a few things i needed to tweak tweaked them up played a little bit made a couple different versions for the beta guys and then just was like let's roll with this i think it's time for the world to see it you know and not have to deal with open beta and all that just download it off our website uh now when you talk about the website recently on social media when the game was released you had a quote and it said and this is your quote my main objective with 2.0 was to offer a fresh playing experience while keeping the spirit of the original rule set intact i decreased the overall game difficulty and added a few surprises along the way so are there going to be people that are going to be upset that the game's not as hard i mean what made you really kind of go back and revisit this to allow somebody to maybe explore further within the game yeah that's a great question I do think there will be people out there who thinks it is now too easy and they're going to get to pure imagination pretty quickly. But I think now instead of the long game on the game being getting to pure imagination, it should be what it always should have been, which is executing the stacking and the correct this, this, and this to maximize these points. and you know yeah people are going to get to the end but the the fun part about that is i'm guessing prior to this update there's maybe five people in the world that ever got to the end wow interesting and that's an issue yeah and that's an issue i realized pretty quickly when i was playing it with my brother when i grab a couple stat dumps from a group of different skilled players and saw what they were and weren't doing. And I feel like there's so much in that game that people need to see. There's just a lot in that game that people were missing out on. Well, I would imagine that that's something that's perplexing for somebody that's programming a game because ultimately as a player, if you're not scoring driven, and even if you are, you want to get to that wizard mode, that grand wizard mode. And depending on the complexity or the difficulty of the game, majority of the people are never going to see that and all that hard work which is the big payoff for the player may not really ever really be experienced by those that enjoy the game so this kind of gives you know opens the door lends itself well for people to progress through the game it's not going to be something where you're going to be you know going to pure imagination and and crushing the game every single time but there are increased amount of opportunity or odds for you to get there yeah and then there's also like for the the lesser player who probably still may never make it to pure imagination they now can see stuff like dots dots dots and wonka bar craze and maybe getting to wonka vader a little bit more than they used to maybe getting three golden tickets or maybe getting a third golden ticket or maybe even seeing office for the first time sure and i feel like office and most secret machines especially are too they're unique i don't want to say they're uh never been done before in pinball but i think they're unique enough where i want people to play those modes i want people to see those modes and there's so much gain there like that even if you're never getting to most secret machine at least now maybe you're able to stack a couple factory modes at the same time and feel what that feels like to have you know fizzy lifting drink going and having super spinner going and having a super x going and feeling what that can feel like to just quote-unquote blow up the game you know and i i just want people to experience that no matter what their level was and i think there was a little bit of a barrier oh i want there was a barrier of entry for that to happen fair enough you know and i think i threw everything at the kitchen sink at this game yeah and i love the way the rules worked out and i would have been satisfied leaving it the way it was but i really once i started to do a little bit investigation into what people were seeing and what they weren't seeing, I just felt like this was the best option. And yes, there are going to be people who are like, oh, now I beat it in one day and I've had it for six months and now I've already gotten to the end. Well, that's great. But now go explore the rest of the game and see where you can do X, Y, Z and maximize A, B, C. And just keep... There's so much in the game to play. It's so many modes, so many different things you can do. And they were locked behind skill that was too much, basically, is how it played out. Like, I loved playing it. I loved the challenge. But I play pinball differently than probably 95% of the people who buy pinball machines. That's a great point. And I appreciate the fact that, you know, you kind of looked at the numbers and you took the feedback into consideration and you listened. And that's not something that is an easy thing. This isn't where you put an extra couple hours to, you know, to polish some code. It had somewhat of a mini overhaul, so to speak. And I would imagine a lot of that was on your own personal time, right? It was. And, you know, obviously, you know, we're a business. We're, you know, we need to get the next game done. That's what this business is about. Right. But it's a labor of love for me. I love Willy Wonka I love what it represents I love that it gave me the chance to kind of go a little crazy with it and just make modes coming out of every shot That's so cool. You know, and like, but you're right. I mean, we had a cool conversation, too. We passed each other in the hallway a few hours ago, and you had said something that I thought was very interesting, and that was we were talking about the difficulty being adjusted on the 2.0 code. and we were talking about how it might present itself to the skilled player maybe a little bit too, I don't want to say easy, but maybe not as challenging, so to speak. I don't know that that's the same thing. And the point that you had brought up was that, do you want to discuss that point? Sure, yeah. And I thought this was interesting because it led into some conversation, and I said, hey, let's stop that now and maybe we'll continue this on the podcast just because I think it's interesting to cover. Yeah, this is an interesting subject because when the game was the way it was prior to 2.0, basically what that's doing is saying, okay, if you want the challenge, here you go. Here's the challenge. But if you don't want the challenge, then you need to be savvy enough to be able to go into the settings and change things to make it easier for yourself. The problem with that is that the people who are unable to get far in the game, chances are they're probably afraid to go into the settings and make adjustments. Without a doubt. Right. I am guilty of that myself. A lot of people are. Yeah. People think there's a common thread that gets pulled about, oh, if I don't play it the default way that the programmers intended, then I'm quote-unquote cheating in some way. All your scores are nullified because there's not a baseline in which they can be compared. Right. But here's the problem with that. Okay. Because you're talking me off the ledge here. Yeah, yeah. This is why I don't touch settings. Here's the problem with that. All right. Pinball, when you're playing pinball, it's about having fun. Sure. Right? Usually. It can vary. Trust me, I know. It's about fun. It's not about, oh, I'm going to compare myself to Ken because Ken played it on the default settings and I play on the default settings. So we are 100% apples to apples and we can compare our scores and we know that it's legit. Right. But most people just want to have fun. and the intention here was instead of putting the onus on people who are casual or just straight up afraid to even open the coin door they don't have to worry about it anymore interesting because the game is set up the way it's set up to allow them to have fun with it being quote-unquote easier yeah and now you've established a new baseline right exactly and now if there's uh joe bob out there who's been in pinball for 20 years and he's super comfortable going into settings and reading what they mean and reading what they are well good guess what good go in there and make the game harder for you right because you are comfortable you are a player you are a pinball person i'd much rather put that on the pinball people than on just some person who bought the game because they liked willie wonka and they liked the idea of having pinball in their house right it's like you're impacting less of the demographic by asking the skilled player to increase the difficulty versus asking the lesser skilled person to go in and make a game easier. And it's interesting because you normally do not hear of changing settings that make something more difficult. It's usually the reverse. And with Willy Wonka had been out there for a couple years and now having this new rule set, again, I think it's cool that you do have that new baseline set and you can revisit the game. And it's not just difficulty. I mean, you've got a few, quote unquote, a few surprises along the way. There's some new content in there, some new ways to experience the game, which I think is fun. Yeah, it's – I just – I'm – I would love to break this idea going around in the pinball world that if I touch my settings, I'm no longer as cool as ABC. Because that's not what this is about. Like, if you want to compare yourself to other players and you want to kind of walk around and be like, yeah, I got $15 million on this game, just go be a tournament player. Because then you're playing on an even playing field with a bunch of other people who want to be competitive. With increased difficulty. Without a doubt. Right. And it's like playing casually at home, just play what makes it fun for you. Yeah. Don't worry about, oh, my friend, he's got it, but he doesn't touch the settings and he gets a pure imagination and I can't do it. But I just want to suffer because for some reason I want to be compared to my friend. Like that's not what this is about. Right, right. Like you bought this thing to put it in your house.