Welcome to the Collective Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, February 19th. This is episode 187. I was not here for 186, but I, Tony. I, Dennis, am back also, but I was here for 188. In fact, I actually started to try and do my notes this morning. I made a 188, and then I realized you were already doing 187, and I didn't remember what number was the last number. So you're back. Oh, I thought you started the notes for 187. This might be 188. No, no, I rechecked it. Okay. I double-checked it. I published 186. Okay. So, no, no, it was fine. Because I thought, no, no, no, no, no. Because I still had a OneNote in for the episode I did. So it should have been like you shouldn't have been confused and you weren't. It's just I was confused and I didn't look initially at what you had started to put in. So I just immediately went in and just copied it before I read it and saw, oh, no, 187 is your copy from 187. All right, sausage making time, people. So what happens is we use a OneNote so we can both see the notes and work on them remotely and see each other's changes. And one of the things that ends up happening is we just copy the prior episode and then strip out all the content and then reuse because it's got our page structure for pinball and video games and everything. So doing that works very, very well for us. But sometimes we don't know who – different ones. It's not always Tony or me who makes the new one. It's whoever wants to start doing notes first. And honestly, it just depends on the episode who's faster. So this time Tony was faster. But yes, I have confirmed Big Bang Plunge was 186. Okay. And that was the one where you were not able to be there, but you are able to be here. I am able to be here now. Now, you had a big event yesterday. I did. So update us. Yesterday was the Polar Plunge that I've been talking about since early January. once again thank you to everybody who donated to Special Olympics we ended up earning $920 or I ended up everyone donating to me was ended up at $920 my team overall ended up just over $1,600 and I think Special Olympics for Kansas overall ended up in the $50,000 range I think they missed their goal but they were closer than it looked like they were going to be a few weeks ago. Yeah. When I last checked, they were up over 50,000. I believe their goal was 65. I think so, yeah. So, yes, thank you, everyone, who supported it. Because, yeah, obviously you were over half of your team, and your team wasn't like a team of two people. Right, right. No, and the vast majority of the donations came from the listeners, and we thank you for that. uh if you look on the facebook we have video and pictures and stuff from yesterday's event dennis was kind enough to record uh as did my wife you can definitely tell which one's which i haven't watched her video yet i put my i put the one i shot up early for the the patreon subscribers because many of them supported the the charity and uh so they were able to see that version. I was just like, I'm going to... I didn't put it in 4K, but I shot it in 60 FPS because I thought, well, maybe Tony wants to do a slow-mo shot. I might play around with something. It's a good way to get some video editor experience with. Now that I have Vegas from that Humble Bundle a little while ago, I need to play with it some. No, overall, it was a great event. I had a lot of fun. Was it fun? It was enjoyable. I think you were very proud of doing it. Yes. There was a period of time in there where I forgot how to breathe for like 10 seconds. Like if you watch on the video, they've got a whole bunch of firefighters out there in dry suits marking the goal place. And as I went past them giving them all high fives, pretty much during that entire line, I wasn't breathing because my body could not remember how to breathe until I got to the end of that line. Yeah, and I, as a spectator, I did not realize until it started that there were like rules. Like it wasn't just jump in the water and get wet. It was get in the water, into the lake, go out there. You are obligated to high-five all of them or else you have failed. Yes. And I guess you have to give all the money back. I don't know. Maybe not. But let's say yes. Let's keep those stakes high. Now, there was a little tent, and if you didn't high-five everybody, everyone who did, they just executed them in the tent. There was just a guy sitting there. It's good that they kept the flaps closed to us in the audience because I think it would have been traumatic to the children. Probably. Probably would have been. But, no, luckily, the air temperature was actually relatively warm by that point. It was in the mid-40s. The water was most definitely not in the mid-40s. They announced to us in the crowd the water was 31. Oh, see, there you go. I didn't hear it. Where I was standing, I couldn't hear anything they were saying. They said when they last checked it, it was 31 degrees. So I guess it was supposed to be ice, but with the power of salt, everything. Salt and silt, anything is possible. I think it's more the power of wave motion. Yes, and wave motion. And wave motion. So it was, as you thought it would be, it was actually extremely cold in terms of the water. Yeah, it was definitely cold. I definitely felt it. And when I came out of the water, I was thinking, well, I'll come out of the water and I'll look so Dennis and my wife could take a picture and stuff. No, when I got out of the water, I was like, I'm going straight to the tent. I got changed now. All right. Well, congratulations, then. Good job. Thank you, and thank you to all the listeners. Yes. Anything else been going on? Any games completed? No, I haven't completed any. I did complete my return journey to the Dark Tower. I finished the Dark Tower series reading it while I was at – in the lead-up. It would have been done before last episode, but obviously I wasn't here for last episode. So I've completed that. And then since then, I've just been still just working on random books that had built up, new books and series that had come out that I had built up and playing the same old games. Well, that's nice. Before I go into my very, very brief intro, I will say thank you. We do have another Patreon member has joined since the last episode. Basic support level. I believe I'll say it properly as Minneapolis. They tagged in as Minneapolis. I like it. I didn't actually put the revised total. I think we have 48 Patreon members. We're still quite away from your next 5K, which I did not realize there was a 5K associated with a polar plunge. You would have been a lot warmer. I have a New Year's resolution to not do a 5K this year. It's a very interesting resolution. I'm finding other ways to harm myself physically instead of doing a 5K. I am working on returning to the much healthier weight I was at in, like, 2018. And I feel like I would be much more apt to do a 5K at that point. So I am. I still need to drop the weight from the holiday. I keep thinking I'm going to make progress, and then I keep getting sent food and stuff. So I'm not getting any worse, but I'm like, yeah, I normally try to stay under 165. I'm at 170 right now. So I'm like, I thought all this running was supposed to drop that, but I think I'm just eating more to make up for it. So it's just like a balance thing. Well, some of it's also converting to muscle. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was about to enter in the Muscle Beach competitions, but they didn't have them at the Polar Plunge. Well, when I lost all my weight previously, that was where I plateaued, and it was because I started lifting weights and I was converting to muscle. That's a good point. Well, anyway, I have not run any 5Ks. I did finish a video game, Judgment, the kind of the Yakuza universe game I'd been playing. I did wrap that up a little bit after recording the last episode. so i do have a new game that i got for christmas from someone uh but i have not started it i've been playing a games with gold xbox uh a deal game that i had for free it's like a roguelike western i i can't remember it's like something canyon is the name of it i i don't care what the name of it is very very basic graphically it's just it's something i can kind of do without thinking too much on right i'm getting further along in it uh in terms of progress but you know you unlock new character types and I've been playing around with all of those and stuff. So that's related on the video game front. And then I have not played pinball in like three weeks. I just technically yesterday was the pinball tournament. And I was like, after, yeah, after, after the plunge, I was like, I think I said when, after you had jumped in and leaving, we're walking back up the hill. I was just like, cause I injured my leg again. I don't actually think I, I was trying to think, did I injure it jogging? Cause I have been, I have been consistently still doing three days a week, but I think I actually injured it at the Capitol, at the State House, because there are a lot of stairs there, and I had a number of hearings on the fifth floor, and I think I just pulled one of my quad muscles or something, and it's been getting better, but it's still sore, and we're going up this really steep hill after you've plunged, and I just said, I think there's pinball today, and I'm not going. I just don't feel like standing there in front of the machines that long. And I was walking there, and I was like, no i i think i've done my you've done your duty i've done my energy so and today my last actually it's i mean it's i've played within the last month because i did play pinball when we went to the pinball awards yes the flipping out theater so i did so i did play pinball there so it hasn't been all that long but i haven't played competitively in quite a while now part of that is also i have this concern it's just because of the nature of my work uh the The way the legislative committee process is, I don't get a do-over day. If I'm sick and there's a hearing, the hearing isn't rescheduled. I just don't get to say anything. So I have always this fear that I will be sick and unable to speak on a bill where I'm the only one who will speak on it, like I have coming up on Tuesday. I will be the only verbal testimony on a particular item because the item exists because I asked for it to be introduced. so I try and minimize my exposure during those portions of my work time because even a cold if I'm too sick I won't be able to get and I don't want to get anyone sick so anyway it's just as I sigh out because this is my least favorite time of year is this sort of work but I'm almost through the biggest burden of it I should be by the end of next week mostly calm and by the end of March like the week after TPF it should be fairly downhill at that point downhill in a positive way. Right. But anyway, so that's what I've been having going on. And we kind of talked about our limited enjoyment of pinball recently. So let's have some fun actually talking about it. Because you know what? If you can't play it, we can at least pretend like we're experts on it. And that is what doing a podcast is all about. Yay. Yay. That's my pinball party impression. Multimorphic. Let's start with them. They issued a video teaser for a new P3 module. It's called Project Carbon. The video is a little over a minute long. It's essentially just a trailer. It's a very alphanumeric-looking screen that just shows who's the designer, who's the rules person, all of that sort of stuff, while playing some funky vibe-style 80s music. I'm probably naming all the genres wrong. So the game is original. I do have a link in the show notes to the video on Facebook so people can go and watch it. this is the game that was recently discussed that uh scott denisi is creative director on so scott is and for those i don't remember scott's who did tna for spooky uh or who spooky built for him uh so he's the creative director he also unsurprisingly is doing sound uh sound design and the music for project carbon and then i think the other notable item i'm not going to go through the entire design team is the rules so bow and karen's who is a very high level player and also used to do some rule design for spooky he did alice cooper's nightmare castle we interviewed him years ago on this or we had him as a guest host on this podcast many years ago uh the uh he's doing rules for this so i think both of those names are are good draws oh it's exciting yeah i mean i uh generally speaking i have liked a lot of what what scott has done in pinball uh game design wise tna remains my favorite of the things like like i like it more than now that i finally got a chance to play rick and morty right do you think the layout on tna is superior but i can see the draw with the license and the humor integration on all of that in terms of why people really gravitate towards rick and morty uh he's done some other sound stuff uh depending on the style you know i like some of it more than others but i do like electronica music in general and that's his kind of wheelhouse so so that that jives with me really well uh and of course uh my my take is as an original theme not and this is our you know a general thing that would be true for any pinball company in my opinion but i don't see it moving p3 platform units i think we've talked about that before but i could definitely see a lot of people who have already invested in a P3 wanting to buy the module, perhaps just because his name is attached to it. And attaching Bowen as well is just added incentive. Yeah, I think that's a good solid double attachment. That will be a good draw for the people who already have machines. We know they got a large number of orders due to Weird Al that they're still fulfilling. So there was a large addition to the owner's club for the system. And I think this is just a smart move. I mean, those are two exciting names to be attached to a project. Yes, indeed. So good news out of them. No word on whether this game would actually be ready in time for TPF, but it has been confirmed. I don't think this is a shock to anyone. Multimorphic has, as far as I have ever recalled on, and I've been to a lot of TPFs at this point, they've always had a very major presence there, and they're going to be a vendor again. I don't think we've missed a TPF since 2016, except for obviously the cancel. Which don't count as misses because they didn't happen. Yeah. No, we've done it a long time. And I actually always, if you are curious about the P3 and you're struggling to find a place to play it, because they're not on a lot of locations. Right. If you can make TPF, it's a good opportunity. Jerry usually has, at least for the first party stuff, a very impressive lineup. He often has multiple modules installed, and it's usually not a lot of lines because he brings a number of units. So, I mean, even last year, they had two Weird Al's, and that was the biggest line I ever saw for P3. And it still wasn't a terrible line. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't like how when we see the line for Big Lebowski, we're like, nope, it's just going to break before we get to it anyway. Which is what has always happened. Yep. Poor Lebowski. I still have never played it. Maybe someday. Maybe. Maybe someday. Maybe. Maybe I'll get to play it before they finish the build. I don't know. So let's move to Spooky Pinball. Okay. Former manufacturer associated with Scott Denisey and Bowen Kerins. And, you know, been in a bit of a – what's the baseball term and football term? A rebuilding year? Okay, I can see that. I was going to say slump, but – Well, I don't know. There's a lot of excitement about the Scooby-Doo. I talked a little bit on the episode you were not available for about the gameplay video that came out. It seems like a long player but not the stop of Halloween and Ultraman which I think will resonate a lot better as Scooby than that game did Anyway they shipping now Scoobies are shipping And also, if you want to get hands-on time to play the game and you're looking at the show circuit, apparently the first show it will be at is going to be the Louisville. I probably mispronounced that. What are the locals called? Louisville? Louisville. Louisville Arcade Expo. Tony doesn't seem to think I've got it at all. I don't know. Louisville. So how we in Kansas would say it, the Louisville. The Louisville Arcade Expo is going to happen. Louisville. They're at Louisville. I'm pretty sure that's not right. I'm pretty sure that's not correct. It's Loisville. It's Loisville Arcade Expo. Reminds me when I lived in Syracuse. I always called Syracuse Syracuse like Syri in a steak, but some people call it Syracuse like a girl's name, Sarah. Syracuse. Syracuse? I don't know which is right. I still say Syracuse, but that might be more Midwestern. That's what I've heard them say when – like sports announcers when they're talking about the – we're talking about the basketball team. They call it Syracuse. So I'm going to go with basketball announcers. All right. Well, they have to know the truth. They are truth seekers. Loisville. I just keep thinking like Clark Clint is going to fly there to save this game. All right, let's talk about a third company. We just talked about two companies. And it's still not Stern. I ain't talking about Stern. We haven't talked about Stern, and we're going to another company. It's amazing. Merca. Merca. Merca Pinball. Merca Pinball. All right, so this is according to Nap Arcade, and I do have a link to this article of his in the show notes. A teaser picture had dropped for the next pinball machine to be coming out from American Pinball. And according to that image, which Tony is able to see through the show notes because I pasted it in for convenience, it indicates that this game is coming out in March. And added information from NAP Arcade, American Pinball is an official vendor listed at Texas Pinball Festival. Are we finally going to get to see GTF, Galactic Tank Force? the image for those because obviously we're an audio medium there's there is no tank in the image there is a rocket ship rocket ship a rocket ship it's cool it's like a 1950s style rocket ship i love it i really like it it reminds me a little bit of my neon sign that uh ryan claytor designed i uh i i had two thoughts in mind actually this ties to the episode because the two concepts when I was having the neon created where I either wanted like 1950s rocket ship or I wanted 1980s Outrun style synth vibe. And he had two mock-ups with both of those concepts. And I just – I liked the rocket ship so much, I went with the rocket ship. Right. Rocket ship. So – but obviously the synth style would probably have been more of a – like if it hadn't been me and it had been Scott Danesi instead, I think Scott would have gone with the 80s design Ryan came up with. That's my theory. I don't know for sure. And then – so yeah, there's just an image of a rocket ship in a very, I feel like, 50s almost matte-painting landscape, kind of Forbidden Planet vibe is what I'm getting. I like it. And then most of the image is actually just the logo American Pinball except it's got like the almost a vintage-y Captain America shield style behind the – not quite that shape. It's more like a Route 66 highway sign. It feels like the opening to one of those back, I'm sure you remember, in the early 2000s, there was all of those, like American Choppers and Orange County and all that. Oh, so good. Yeah, that's the kind of feel I got type thing from it. And just as an aside, because I've seen different logo takes on American Pinball, because American Pinball is such a ho-hum name, like – come on. It's like what it is on the tin. It would be like selling tuna fish and calling your thing canned tuna fish. If – I like this. Make it like Super Murica when you're doing it. Just drip it in Americana if you're going to call yourself American Pinball. Stuff like this where it's just like over-the-top stars and stripes. There's like a hamburger on top of it and chili cheese dog and all that. Yeah. So anyway, so I mean, I think this will be GTF. I do think it will be at Texas. There is so much, but there's so much buzz about GTF. And I think it's for a mix of reasons. Part of it is there are some podcasters, not so much us, but others that have kind of just taken the concept and they've almost embraced it almost like snakes on a plane style. And they're almost like trying to force it to be a good game. And we don't know if it will be a good game or not. Stop trying to make GTF a thing. It's not a thing. Yes, yes. That said, purportedly, there has been a great deal of creative freedom given to Dennis Nordman on this project. And so I am, even if it's bad, even if it's a disaster, I'm fascinated to see it. Because some of the concepts I have heard, like the thing about it folding down, like the backbox folding down and it looking like a tank and stuff. I don't get why you would do it, but I still want to see it. Right. I still want to see it. And who knows? I mean, you know, quirky, like I like certain quirky designs. So if it's like quirky in a, in a Gottlieb premiere style, but it has good rules that could, that could work for me. It could. I'm willing to consider games that are not licensed themes. I still think that a license is the way to go for a company, especially a company like this, which I think desperately needs a hit. but regardless i am i really hope it is in fact tpf that this will be at because i want to see it and i want to play it i i agree with you i definitely want to see it i want to play it um like you i have no problems with a non-licensed theme and i mean i'm a huge fan of the the whole space opera, sci-fi type things. It's like half of my reading list is space opera type stuff. So anything that even plays that way just seems even more fun to me. I think most of the hype masters are still really hoping that American Pinball announces at least a GTF lunchbox. There's been a lot of demand for GTF lunchboxes. We've got to have lunch box. Honestly, I've considered designing a t-shirt for us. Obviously, I won't say Galactic Tank Force. We don't have the trademark to that. Right. GTF. I mean, that's a fan-made series of letters. They could just say GTF with a tank, but I don't know what my tank would look like. I don't know. That'd be... A tank in space. Oh. Space tank. I'm going to go with... I mean, it's space. It's a space. It's a tank. Quite obviously, what it needs to be is just the turret of a T-72 floating in orbit. I wondered if you were going to that. I thought about making a little Ukraine invasion reference, but I don't know. Maybe hashtag too soon. They're pop tops. I think there would be a lot better shirt design that we could do just around that. I can't tie it to pinball. Right. There's no way to tie it to pinball. Okay, so we've covered three companies. Let's quasi-cover four. I'm going to say quasi because it's not really news or information per se. On the last episode, you might recall, Tony, if you happened to hear it, that I did bring up the issue that there was a report that Planetary Pinball Supply, or PPS, is looking to continue doing remakes, but not with Chicago Gaming Company. And it's also known that PPS has got the trademark for Big Bang Bar now. So I asked a poll of our Patreon members, which... Would that make it Big Bang Bar Remake Remake? Yes. BBRRR. Or Remake Big Bang Bar Remake? BBRRR. I didn't roll my R right the first time. BBRRR. I've never been good at rolling my eyes. I had to practice. I used to not be able to do it. I was getting downrated in my university Spanish class, and so I had to just go to the lab. This is back when we had to go listen on audio cassettes and just practice it. I got it down within the semester, down well enough for an American like me. So anyway, I put the poll up to our Patreon members, which let me just say, you know, if we want to start doing some games and stuff, we could do them and just do them, I guess, through the Patreon. The polling option in Patreon is so nice. It's like – because we can't do it anymore on Facebook. They took it away. I checked again a few months ago on our page. I think you can do it in groups but not on like business, quote-unquote, business pages. And so we can't do the polls like we used to, like our battles of who built the better – build a bank. But Patreon is very supportive of polling. So anyway, plus these people are giving us money. the least we could do is give their opinion higher weight than everyone else's. So that's what we did. So I asked on a poll to our Patreon members, if PPS were to contract with someone other than CGC, who do they think it would be? And I listed a bunch of companies. Obviously, I didn't list everyone, but I listed a bunch of companies. These were the results. 53% of the respondents said they think PPS would turn to American Pinball. 6% said Spooky. 66 also said stern and then we had 35 that checked other and didn't pick one of the companies and so for people to be familiar the other companies i gave as options that didn't get any votes were jersey jack haggis pinball brothers and home pin so anything not else listed would need to be represented by other a few a few patrons actually left comments and i'll just i won't i won't say who said them, but I'll say obviously the Patreon members can see it. But here are some quotes that came under the comments of that poll. One person said, stern if it's done under contract, AP if they don't go under, and spooky if they realize it will almost guarantee them a good shooting layout. That was a funny one. Another one said, no one on that list has capacity, which, hey, fair enough. And that's one of the struggles I've run with is I've been under the impression that American Pinball thinks it has capacity. I'm not sure anyone else, in my personal judgment, of the ones I listed would be able to take this on as a project. Agreed. And then the third and final comment I wanted to share was someone saying, Stern, Spooky, and JJP appear busy selling and shipping pins, leaving AP as my choice, which would enable them to scrap a non-themed game or two from production. Now, obviously, they're not going to scrap GTF because it's ready to fly out into space. But they have indicated what feels to me like a very original theme, heavy planned production queue. And I still don't think that it's the right business move. I think they could definitely make a hole in that their original theme planning to do some remakes just to restock the piggy bank, as it were. I think that would be a solid choice on there I mean of these options I have a hard time seeing anybody but American Pinball having the capacity to do it and American Pinball has talked this up I've heard David Fix in interviews talk about and even before those interviews they've always emphasized this willingness to do contract manufacturing and in fact that's basically what Legends of Valhalla is that was a Riot Pinball developed game just ap does the bit they made some they made some adjustments i mean i know Steven Bowden was you know we met him at the last tpf where he was watching to make some rules notes on things so they clearly had let's say in my opinion more creative control than spooky did over tna where like scott just agreed on certain manufacturing modifications from the whitewood right the elimination of star rollovers is the thing that resonates with me but he like you don't even download the TNA code off a spooky site. You got to go to Scott's site to get the new rules. So anyway, so I agree with you. The last thing for pinball, Tony, is the award winning, except there are no awards that have recognized it. But other than that, it's the award winning rumor corner. It should be. It should. But it's rumor corner time. Rumor Corner. Dennis Creasel's got the news before Napa Caves. Is that right, Tony? Yeah. Okay, so on this episode of Rumor Corner, this is an interesting one. Obviously, let me put in my little disclaimer. I try and remember every time, but people should be able to tell from the fact that it's called Rumor Corner that this could all be lies. It could all be false. There's no necessary truth to it. It's for entertainment purposes only. So qualification, qualification, cavet, cavet. For external use only, room or corner. Yeah, do not swallow these rumors. Do not swallow them whole, especially. You could choke even if you're over the age of three. Very dangerous. So this one in particular, I'm starting to suspect is more wishful thinking than anything, but it's interesting, and I could see it. So the rumor is that Stern Pinball may be in production or in – not production as in building, but in planning production. I guess pre-production would be how I should have said it. To do Rings of Power, the Lord of the Rings series, TV series that Amazon has on Prime. Which was very okay. It was – I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. I did – because of this, I did go and check this morning. at least its first couple of episodes rated significantly, viewership ratings were a lot higher than House of the Dragon on HBO. So it did well, is my point. Yes, it did. Whether you liked it or not, because it's also very polarizing, and the critical review score is actually quite a bit higher than the viewer rating, because this is one of those that got reviewed, bombed pretty hard. It did. Saying all that aside, though, a lot of eyeballs have watched it. So I could definitely see a company saying this is a good franchise to play in, especially because it's in the Lord of the Rings world. But here's the rumor. Not just that they are looking at doing Rings of Power, but that they would reuse. This is where I especially think it's wishful thinking. But the idea being they would reuse Gomez's Lord of the Rings layout outright. It would be a reskin, except the art's going to be different. It'll be Rings of Power, and it's not going to be the old rule set on the white star boards. LCD screen is going to have new rules developed and obviously clips from the show, not dots from the trilogy of movies that are 20 years old at this point. So what do you think? I think that is so wishful thinking, but I can agree with them. They're not going to be able to vault Lord of the Rings. I would love them to vault Lord of the Rings. It would be great. They have never vaulted a White Star. Right. But this would be a way for them to do it without doing it. Yeah. So, I mean, it would definitely, and they wouldn't have to worry about the licensing issues of trying to get back Lord of the Rings licensing to revolt it. If they have new licensing, they can use a known tried and true layout. Some rules of changes. I think it would be great. The main things for me would be it would make a lot of sense in a lot of ways. Obviously, it's one of the most beloved fan layouts that's ever been developed. I believe it still remains in Pinside's top 10 on their top solid state games. In terms of rule adjustments, starting over from scratch in a lot of ways could make good sense. Kiefer doesn't work for Stern anymore and he was the lead on the rules there. He works for Jersey Jack. So having someone else take a crack at the rules, maybe making it a little less chop your way to a multiball and then move on, that could be a positive. I think in terms of buyers because it not a vault it I still think it could sell well It just the biggest thing I think of concern is one the movies are more loved than the show because the story of Lord of the Rings is a better overall story. Correct. And then the other thing is one of the greatest things that you would give up, just like when they did the comic vault edition of Spider-Man instead of the Sam Raimi movies, is you're going to lose all those call-outs. so right john James Rees davies's call outs are beloved in that game uh but you know obviously if you're not doing the movies anymore then you're not going to have sarah mongo to war for the twin tower multiball and so it's just you're going to lose a really the sound is tinny as all get out at this point like it really deserves to be redone but people love those call outs yes they don't make any sense for rings of power so you got to start over um and so that will that would upset some people but that's people that are wanting a true vault right but and i think this is here's like i don't think this is likely i think it's more likely than a vault though uh yes i agree i agree with both your statements so are you rumored i am and actually it brings up a thought I think that if any company could get a step in to Amazon's new library, there are some good, good pinball fodder shows and stuff that they have. Are you thinking a little Machina? That would work. That wasn't actually my first thought, but it was my second thought. my first thought was the expanse oh oh gosh but i mean they're done with it now well yeah but half the stuff they're doing anymore is the same way also uh reacher wouldn't be bad for that type of thing uh i don't think it'd be good but i think vox machina would be excellent i think uh yeah that's an interesting point because to my knowledge no one has ever worked with amazon for a license on doing one of their series. So who knows how easy or hard they would be to work with. But, I mean, mine that I would pick, Vox Machina, for those that don't know, is an RPG cartoon. It's based off of a critical role, which is like a live stream where they role play. Tony watches it. I'm familiar with it. But anyway, the cartoon that they put together based off of these campaigns they've done is actually a lot of fun. And they just finished the second season of it, and it's still going. I would say Vox Machina would be good. I would say The Boys. The Boys would be excellent. I mean, I don't see Stern necessarily doing it, but if you're willing to get full-on dirty and do an adult theme, The Boys would be a good option. Invincible could also align with that. Yes. I mean, these are both hyper-violent. One is a live action and one is a cartoon, but both have interesting characters and their structures would lend themselves to pinball modes. So I would say those two also stand out to me. That would probably be the three, Vox Machina, The Boys, and Invincible, that I would say would be the prime ones to farm aside from Rings of Power. Right, which makes – it just makes sense of those because like you said, the experience is done. I mean, I don't think Amazon would refuse to license it. I just don't see a pinball company at this point because it's been a few years now. Right. Like two years since it ended. I just don't see them going to that well at this stage and saying, let's do this now that it's done. Yeah, not unless they come up with the spinoff series. I mean, that's always been. And again, things can change and it all depends on what people want to do. But that's been the common argument or theory that people have argued as to why Stern hasn't vaulted Disney's Tron legacy because they weren't, at least for a long time, planning any additional Trons. The second Tron movie flopped. Actually, the first Tron movie flopped for that matter. And so Disney didn't have any interest in working that license or continuing a license on a property that they have no real financial benefit. And the licensing agreement alone, like that's not big money for them, for pinball. So anyway, so you said you were room retained. So now why don't you entertain the listeners with video games? Because there's a few things here. There are a couple things here. Let's see. We have a note here. It looks like you added it. We got an email. Oh, I did add that this morning. I didn't tell you because I added it into the one note. michael w emailed us at eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com and he asked about hogwarts legacy now let me before i go into the rest of it have you played it because i have not i've not played it i haven't even looked i've read some reviews and looked at it uh it's it is it looks interesting but not enough to trip on my have to grab at full price type right trigger Yeah, no, I honestly, because I've never played a Harry Potter game. I just haven't looked into it. It's popped up in a lot of my gaming news because there's all the controversy with J.K. Rowling and her political ideology and people protest debates on this. But the game has been doing very well. Right, and seeing this thing, that's overshadowed the story, if it were, about the game. But it's reviewed well. People who have played it seem to be enjoying it. Yeah, I haven't heard anything negative about the actual gameplay. So anyway, continue with Michael's email. And this is just a paraphrase from it. Specifically, he wanted to know, though, if this sort of game, Hogwarts Legacy, is the right sort of game to start playing if one is a non-gamer or hasn't been a gamer in years. And in his example, he said the last game he put really any serious time in is Gabriel Knight, which that's like from the 90s. Okay. We have a mutual friend, Shane, who was a big Gabriel Knight fan. And even I, who was a Sierra fanboy, didn't really play Gabriel Knight, but I remember when it was out. Right. Yeah, no, no kidding. I think it could be. This is the type of game that I feel like a lot of people will really like. But the truth of the matter is any game can be a good gateway game. The big thing is it has to have fun gameplay, and the premise of the game needs to grab you. I wouldn't sit down and sell Hairbrain Schemes Battle Tech to somebody as their first game when they haven't played games in forever. But I've got like 1,000 hours in that game because it hits all my wheelhouses and it's what I play. It's my, like, I would want something utterly relaxing to play. So I think with your last game of note being Gabriel Knight, I mean, there's a lot of games. Gaming has really changed since Gabriel Knight. Yeah, I would. Broadly, I agree with Tony. basically whether or not you're a seasoned gamer or a new gamer most games are approachable and the one nice thing that's happened with gaming over the years is they have gotten a lot better about guiding you to teach you how to play the game yes they have so even if i might normally say to someone okay you've never been a gamer before my biggest concern would be getting too frustrated with not seeing progress. So I would normally say because of that, maybe stay away from a Souls series game or an ultra aggressive platformer like Super Meat Boy or N Plus, things like that, because they're very, very difficult to even see a lot of initial progress in. All that said, even Dark Souls has a pretty good tutorial section that teaches you how to play the game. So even if you're coming in not familiar with games, the whole first area of Dark Souls, you're going to die in it, but they will teach you how to do the mechanics. And most games are like that at this point. Older games, actually, it was more problematic. We didn't have really good tutorial setups. And now a lot of times there's not even a tutorial, quote unquote. They actually integrate it into the early areas of the game, so it's seamless and lets you just learn almost more naturally. So while I don't know anything about Hogwarts Legacy, inherently, just based off of modern game design, it shouldn't be a barrier, even if you haven't played in years, to go ahead and start with that as your first game, if you think it sounds interesting to you. Yeah, if you are a Harry Potter fan and it sounds interesting to you, go for it. Yep. Okay, Tony, now your content. Now back to the content. I don't know if I'd consider it content. Well, it's in here, so it's content. It's in here. Um, big news rolling off of the Activision Blizzard side of things. Uh, we're heading rapidly towards when the, the completion date for the sale, which is slated for like July of this year. Um, well, Blizzard had a company wide meeting, uh, just the other day to discuss an internal employee satisfaction survey. and they made some announcements that left the staff rather unhappy. Specifically, they announced that they had Slash the profit-sharing bonuses to 58% of what was expected and that they were expecting that all employees would be required to return to the office three days a week from their fully remote structure starting in a month or so. and all of these announcements came less than two weeks after the quarterly financial results showed that they'd actually had a 90 increase in operating income so they've doubled almost their opera their income in the first quarter and decided that, you know what? We should go ahead and cut bonuses by 42%. Because the bonus, we only doubled our income. We definitely need to cut bonuses by half. Yeah, they're just struggling to make ends meet. It's tough times, but there was a lot of questions, and the responses were not well received. in response to returning to the office Mike Ybarra the president of Blizzard replied that at the end of the day we want people to be happy and if decisions about being happy don't align with where we're going and you won't be happy then you'll have to do what will make you happy which looking online there's a lot of thoughts that because they're not the first company to do this lately a lot of companies seem to be, instead of doing major layoffs, they're forcing office returns so people quit. I did, and I don't know if you've seen anything on this or not. It was someone's claim, I'm sure, in a subreddit comment, which is why I'm not necessarily putting stock in it, though it did kind of make sense to me. Someone had indicated that they thought a lot of these companies actually have arrangements they got for tax breaks and stuff to define employed people that mandate that they actually be on site in the location that gave them these arrangements. And so those were perhaps suspended during the pandemic. And now the companies are like, well, in order for us not to lose some of these breaks that we've got, we have to have people back at the office. And that's what they're trying to do is why they're doing it, even though there's no efficiency or production angle to it. They keep saying that to try and sell it to the employees. We'll be more productive when we're all in the office. But in reality, it's more like, no, we got all these breaks and discounts and stuff from the government, and we want to keep those. And we have to be able to show that these people are in the city doing the job. I didn't know if you'd heard anything. I've not heard that, but it would make sense. I know that Blizzard in particular went on a large hiring spree that had no requirement to be based near a Blizzard location. So they've got people hired all over the place. So they are reportedly opening up hub facilities in other major cities for people to be able to go to work to, and they're keeping some people will be allowed to stay remote, specifically those who it's in their contract that the remote workers that were hired on a temporary contractual basis. Okay. Also, when speaking about the profit sharing in the meeting, Ybarra suggested that workers who believe executives are making more money than the workers are, are living a myth. Now, did he mean like that surely the executives do make more money than most of the staff? They do. Does he mean like that they are now making more than they were like last year? I think it was a poorly worded point to say that they'll be getting the same amount of bonus. Oh, like their bonuses are also down 40%. Yes. Okay. That is my assumption from the way it's been – seems, but it was terribly worded no matter what. Otherwise, it sounds like a lie because – Right. Come on. And what corporate structure do the executive team make the same amount or less than the people who work under them? Yeah, exactly. That's not how any hierarchy works. Yeah. I mean, they've got people who make $14 an hour, and I can guarantee you that's not the vice president of something or another. The executive team does not make the same as the quality assurance testers. Exactly. Come on. Come on. Figure it out. So, yeah, no, I think that was just a poorly worded thing. But overall, Activision supports his comments and said he did a good job. Okay. Well, I guess he'll have his 40% off bonus at least. Yeah. And then he'll get his extra special bonus. Don't forget his stock options. His stock options and all that stuff. So, UK regulators have decided that the Microsoft Activision deal could harm gamers, potentially resulting in higher prices, fewer choices, and less innovation. So that is their initial results that they published, and they're going into the final stage of looking at it. The interesting thing compared to the EU and the American looks into the buyout is the UK's looks don't have a trial phase. whatever the regulatory body decides is it is there no appeal process there's an appeal process but you appeal to the body to tell the body that we disagree with you so it's not like having an actual trial phase which is what they'll have in the eu in america okay interesting um and microsoft Optus also has a meeting set up on the 21st, which is Tuesday, I believe, at the EU that is part of their last-ditch effort to salvage the deal in the EU, which is supposedly going to be including a large number of concessions because the EU is leaning against it as well. I have to admit, I'm not surprised that they took a close look. I am surprised that the regulatory boards have actually been citing, at least in their initial assessments, against Microsoft on it. I am too. I do not understand how – I just don't understand it. It makes no sense to me how the merger of two companies that won't take them to the top of the list, it won't even take them to second place in the list, is such a big deal and causes so much harm to the people in first and second place. Because most of this fight is coming from Sony, who is the number one producer. And even this merger is only going to move Microsoft to three. So I don't understand it. It's been interesting. I have to say, Sony's game plan on this has been working very well for them. They have been extremely effective about throwing up challenges that the regulators are finding to be credible. I've noticed Microsoft has become more and more vocal publicly about Sony's meddling in this process, namely noting – I believe I saw one article that said in the discussion of concessions, Microsoft has indicated Sony doesn't even respond to them anymore. There is no negotiation going on because he refuses to engage because they quite happy with how this process is going presumably all the way to pointing out like why is it not okay for us to do the merger and have Call of Duty, for example, which Call of Duty seems to be the main thing that keeps coming back up, and they keep pointing out how they've offered, like, decade-long guarantees, and then they've also gotten very vocal about saying, why is it wrong for us to do this, including offering a multi-platform guarantee for 10 years? and Sony gets to go in and you guys don't say anything when they strike a deal with Square Enix to keep Final Fantasy off of our console forever. Right. And so they're, I mean, Microsoft got pretty pissed about it because they're like, this is a double standard. You're siding, you're letting the number one console maker in the world do whatever it wants with any other companies. I guess as long as they do it through contract and not through merger, you're cool with it. but we want to do a merger, put in concessions on the property you are specifically concerned with, and you still want to say that you have to look at this whole deal. I've seen some, this is just gamer rage, but it amuses me. I have seen some gamer rage that have said, because Activision, I can't imagine Activision ever doing this if they could not be acquired by someone. But so I said, based off of all of this feedback, what Microsoft should do is, you know, terminate the deal, contact Activision and just buy Call of Duty from them and make it exclusive. That would be hilarious. For no other reason, just as a middle finger to everyone in this entire process, because apparently that's legal. It's OK to do that. But but it's not OK to actually buy Activision. So, yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I do think ultimately this still goes through. There will be some more concessions that will be offered up. There will probably be some pretty major concessions offered. I don't know if it's still going to be all around Call of Duty or what because, honestly, from a business perspective, even after 10 years, I'm very skeptical that Microsoft makes Call of Duty exclusive. They would just make so much more money keeping it the way it is. That's what they did with Minecraft. Exactly, and that's why. But Microsoft way further back in its past did have monopolistic strategies. So I can understand regulators wanting to look at it closely. It should be examined closely. It's just – it seems like everyone's a Sony fanboy. That's what it feels like. It does, and it feels weird because, I mean – and I'm one of those people who falls into the thing. In some situations, specifically with certain games like Call of Duty, to me it makes no sense to ever take Call of Duty off. The Call of Duty sales are so high on, yes, it's somebody else's console, but you get the money from it. So it's like, yeah, there's more people who buy it, but nobody's buying a PlayStation to play Call of Duty. You can play a Call of Duty on literally anything. I mean, I remain – my theory is I think Microsoft mostly wants Activision so that it can day one Game Pass the entire Activision catalog. And that's because their whole growth strategy on the gaming side is around Game Pass at this point. Yes. And it's working for them. I mean, it's the best deal in gaming. And that's so having Activision in it and being able to say, well, you know, you can own a Sony and play all the games because we're going to make money that way. Or you could be on Microsoft, have Game Pass and not have to spend anything more than you are paying for Game Pass. Right. Obviously, I get why Sony is threatened by it because it is a threat to Sony. And they have – Microsoft has mentioned recently that – or admitted, I should say, that Game Pass does scavenge sales numbers. How could it not? And it's like, yeah, no kidding. How could it not? Who's going to buy a game after – yeah, I could go back to trying to get all the achievements and judgment. But if I had played it on Game Pass and finished my 35-hour run in it, why would I go back? I'm done. I won it. I'm done. See, that's one of those – I think people are playing a lot more games than they would normally play because they're on Game Pass. So a lot of games that wouldn't get very big sales numbers anyway are getting a lot more play time because people are willing to play it and give it a try. and things that are really big people might eventually purchase so that they have it when it leaves Game Pass. Stuff like The Outer Wilds or you know, big games like that. Get you hooked and then you go out and you buy it for $25 after it's out of Game Pass and it's on sale and keep playing. We'll see how this goes. I figured this would have been a done deal by now. I'm surprised it's I figured by this point they would still be talking about it but it would be an over writing on the wall thing and it's not it is still such a large fight that I've been actively surprised by it just a quick touch just because it's interesting to me Fraxis has announced they're working on a new civilization Civ 7 is under development so yay civilization I do like civilization and then in another bit of the tangentially video game related stuff that I've been finding interesting lately Saudi Arabia's public investment fund has become the largest outside investor in Nintendo Saudi Arabia now owns 8.26% of Nintendo and this is an ongoing trend they've done with this public investment fund. They own similar stakes in Capcom, Tecmo, EA, Activision, and Take-Two. They actually own a 51% majority of SNK. Oh, I did not know that. Yeah. So this is part of this overall fund. The public investment fund is where they just take, you know, the government takes governmental funds and buys stocks. Right. Well, I mean, I don't think it's a bad strategy. Gaming just seems to be on an overall upward trajectory. I would assume these are relatively safe investments. Yeah, I mean, I would think so as well. It seems like a pretty safe spot because, I mean, gaming companies are the companies that when the pandemic happened, they made out like bandits. So they weren't the Antonio Cruz lines and the airlines and all that stuff. But I think it makes good sense. It's just interesting because of the connotations of a country that has the perceived human rights record of Saudi Arabia purchasing all of these companies or stocks in these companies up to having a majority of like S&K. That has elicited some comment online, especially for something as beloved as Nintendo. Yeah, well, you know, I don't really think there's a way that they can discriminate against who gets to be an investor. So, I mean, you just have to accept it. Yep. I mean, there's no real way to go around that. And now for what is quite probably the final tabletop section in a while, unless a bunch of more news comes up. Just a lot of this is stuff that was would have been talked about last episode, but I wasn't here. The OGL has been rolled back It's completely removed their proposed changes So this is the Wizards discussion The Wizards discussion, yeah The D&D OGL from Wizards of the Coast They have dropped the SRD Which is the main core rules, lore and everything For 5th edition into Creative Commons And once it's in Creative Commons They can't take it back So it's out there. So that's a very major change from what they had been looking at doing. During a call with investors, Hasbro's CEO stated that they had misfired on updating the OGL. He also stated that the mass cancellation of D&D Beyond accounts shouldn't have a – for 2023. He said that a lot of follow-up contacts between Wizards and those people who had dropped the D&D Beyond accounts said that a large majority of them were willing to resubscribe at a future date once they no longer feel like Wizards is be doing what Wizards was basically doing. At the same time, Bank of America has downrated Hasbro stock, saying the company faces a steep decline in its share price if it continues to destroy customer goodwill. Within its wizard segment, Hasbro continues to destroy customer goodwill by trying to over-monetize its brands. Those stock analyses are always fun. Yeah, and they followed that up just last week with an addendum saying, we remain especially cautious on Hasbro's wizard segment given its over-monetization of magic. Wizards recently tried a similar tactic with D&D proposing changes to its licensing agreement which led to substantial pushback from the community including calls to boycott the D&D movie. But Chris Pine. I know. It's Chris Pine. He's playing a thief. He comes up with the plans. It's Chris Pine. It's being Chris Pine just like he is in every single movie. Poor Chris Pine. I heard someone say that about Denzel Washington. I feel Denzel Washington just plays Denzel. I can see that. Well, I don't know. In Training Day, he's bad. Training Day is so different than Man on Fire. Is he just bad Denzel? In Man on Fire, is he just cold dish reserved, revenge style Denzel? I guess maybe that is the same as the Equalizer Denzel. That is kind of. There is that. But then what about like the Philadelphia where he's the lawyer? That's lawyer Denzel. Totally different. Completely different. Totally different. So, yeah. I don't know if Denzel really matches that as well. Okay. But Chris Pine. But Chris Pine. He's always just Chris Pine. I mean, it's pretty much just. He's just one thing. He just pines it up. Yeah. He's always Captain Kirk. Yeah. That's exactly. He's always Captain Kirk. Maybe he'll use a phaser in the movie. You won't know if you boycott it. But I think that has a lot to do with how I think the D&D movie And the rollout of D&D 1 Is what's going to have the overall largest impact On Wizards of the Coast this year For obvious reasons If the movie flops If there's so much backlash That D&D 1 does not have as strong of a rollout As they're looking at There's a new Baldur's Gate game coming out All three of those are going to be a huge portion of Wizards' profits for this year. So I think if they do well, Wizards is going to do well, and Hasbro is going to do well, and they'll probably see it as the OGL issue as a stub toe, but no major damage. but if they have large scale failures on those three items this year uh the ogl failure could be a much bigger problem for them well i mean they did do basically what you said they would have to do with the ogl i mean they didn't they just they totally not only totally world everything back but just toss it into creative commons to indicate that they won't be able to do it again And there's not much else they could do to try and fix it. Yeah, no, that's literally, that is far beyond what I thought they would do. I didn't think they would actually pull the trigger on going that route. That is the route that makes them, it works the best for them publicity-wise. It works the best for what people wanted. It gives everybody exactly what they wanted. Now the question is just damage control after the fact. Yes. So we'll see. All right. We'll see how that goes. Well, we got through all three segments yet again. We did it. We did it. For those that want to help us do it in the future, you can always join us at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. You can reach out to us, though, via email, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. Also, facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast is where you can post or send us a message through the messenger tool, though email does work better than the messenger tool. I don't like the messenger tool on Facebook. Facebook feels so slow now. They have. They've changed something. I've never liked the business page side of things. It's so much – it's so poorly done, it feels like. It feels to me like a third of it is dedicated to trying to get you to buy an ad. Right. And do market analytics. And it's like I get it from like a business that's selling stuff, why they would want all those tools. But for a podcast, it's pointless. Right. Anyway, some people do like to send through Messenger, and I do try and check those and follow up. But it takes like five seconds even just to change profiles. Yeah, it's really annoying. And I mean I've got – because I've got – I do have access on the Pinball Networks profile. I have my Watch YouTube profile. I've got my personal profile. I've got my nonprofit association for my job profile. So I've got all these profiles, and I get all these notifications. So I do prefer email at this point if you want to send a message. It's just cleaner, much cleaner. And we're also available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram at Eclectic underscore Gamers. And we should be back in a couple of weeks, probably without a tabletop segment. Probably. Probably with the other two. Yes. And that should be, I'm trying to think, will that be the pre-TPF episode? Well, I mean. I guess technically, I think. I think we're going to have two pre-TPF. So, okay. So we're going to have an episode on the 4th of March. That's going to be, or I should say the 5th. The 5th is when we're supposed to record next, 5th of March, and then the 19th of March. And TPF is like the 24th, 5th, and 6th. So our post-TPF episode is going to be a week after the end of TPF around April 2nd. Okay. Which is good because actually no one cares about this. So we plan to, like we often do, drive down on Thursday the 23rd for TPF. We are going. I booked the hotel room back in July. So we have our space at our nearby facility. We come back on Sunday. I take Monday off of work to recover. Me too. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Governor's Public Health Conference. That's rough. Tuesday, maybe I could weasel out of it because that's a pre-conference day. But I'm on that. They put me for the last couple of years on their planning team on it. Things, just as a whiny moment here at the end, It got so weird this last week on, I guess, some of the planned workshops that couldn't get the speakers confirmed. I had someone ask me the day before the registration was to go open if I would teach a session. Oh, no. And I'm like, I was so busy with the legislature that day. It wasn't until like 7 or 8 at night that I went back and read the text. And I'm like, it was on a topic I don't normally present on also. So it's like I don't have a presentation in the can that I can just modify. I have to do it from scratch. So I was like, okay, sure. But, okay, so one of those days, I don't think it's that pre-conference day, but one of those two, I think it's the first, I think it's the Wednesday. I have to be there now because I said I would teach this morning session on how the legislature works. That's what they want to know. Oh, interesting. Okay. I've been asked to throw together in a similar vein a training thing for May, and it's like I've got nothing. at all prepared. I wanted to poach from someone else's slides. I thought I knew someone had a presentation like this, but I couldn't find a copy. I've been on these. I was familiar with what I needed. I just wanted to save time. Actually, I already got most of it done because I was like, okay, I'll just build it. In between hearings, I'll just build it from scratch, whatever. It's not like you're doing anything else. This is the worst time to ask me to do anything. February and March are my worst months of the year but anyway until two weeks from now I'm Dennis I'm Tony goodbye everybody see ya