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BlahCade Speculation Zen-style

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 28m·held·Apr 23, 2020
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

BlahCade speculates on Zen Studios' future plans and industry impacts amid COVID-19 disruptions.

Summary

BlahCade hosts Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discuss Zen Studios' operations during COVID-19 lockdown, speculate on details from a previous interview with Mel (Zen's representative), and explore potential future developments including Williams for Zen originals, next-gen console licensing challenges, and the possibility of previously delisted tables returning. The hosts also discuss venue closures, streaming, and community impacts of the pandemic on pinball.

Key Claims

  • Zen Studios pinball division is completely separate from other game divisions (Operantia, Castle Storm 2, etc.) despite being part of the same studio

    high confidence · Chris Friebus citing Mel's statements from previous interview

  • Star Wars on Switch acted as a major gateway drug/conversion tool bringing casual gamers into FX3 pinball

    high confidence · Chris Friebus paraphrasing Mel's explanation about why there was a gap in Williams releases

  • Every single Zen original table will get Williams as an option

    high confidence · Chris Friebus: 'every single Zen original is going to get to Williams as an option'

  • Consoles require explicit licensing negotiation at the beginning of each generation; this is less of an issue on Steam

    high confidence · Chris Friebus explaining Mel's statement about content rating and console restrictions

  • Ubisoft has exclusive digital rights to South Park pinball tables from their contractual deals with Stick of Destiny games

    high confidence · Jared Morgan: 'Ubisoft has the exclusive rights to South Park because of the two, Stick of Destiny and I forget what the second game'

  • A new Zen table is scheduled for May or June release, with June being more likely due to COVID-19 work-from-home adjustments

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus: 'they were having a new table come in May or June. If anything, it's now more likely heading towards June'

  • Farsight's contract for pinball tables only covered Wii U, not Switch, requiring separate licensing for new Nintendo platform

    high confidence · Jared Morgan explaining licensing constraints: 'Farsight thought that they had the Nintendo license to deal with, and in truth, they only had the Wii U license'

  • Zen is able to monitor detailed player statistics including play time and frequency through network login data

    high confidence · Chris Friebus: 'Zen is able to monitor a crazy amount of stats um because every time you log in you're connecting to the network'

Notable Quotes

  • “every single Zen original is going to get to Williams as an option. Yeah, that's huge. That's massive, folks. I'm so excited about that.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~55:00 — Announces a major feature enhancement that could fundamentally change how Zen's entire back catalog plays

  • “Zen is hard at work right now, folks. And they're working at home. They're not working in the studio, but they are working at home. They're continuing to get stuff done.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~12:30 — Confirms Zen Studios' continued development work despite COVID-19 lockdowns

  • “Star Wars is huge, and as Mel put it, that that title wound up as a huge gateway drug into FX3 for all the Switch users”

    Chris Friebus @ ~28:00 — Explains Zen's strategic decision-making around title release timing based on player conversion data

  • “Ubisoft signed their contract, and in that contract it said exclusive digital rights. Oops.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~66:00 — Highlights how licensing contracts can lock competitors out of tables

  • “you just have to do what you can you know yeah i mean i get it you know if i had a switch and i was new like putting myself in their shoes and console owners shoes like i do understand like if i was you know new to pinball and like this opportunity was thrown out for one audience i might feel a little bit you know a little bit salty about it”

    Chris Friebus @ ~22:00 — Demonstrates empathy for different player segments and validates frustration over platform exclusivity

  • “we're aware of the fact that Jared's lips go out of sync or whoever we have as a guest because I'm the one hosting the session we have not figured out exactly why it's doing that”

    Chris Friebus @ ~1:00 — Meta-commentary acknowledging technical issues with video synchronization

  • “If anything, the ones that were would most likely come back would be south park um well you'd hope so i hope”

    Jared Morgan @ ~70:00 — Expresses cautious optimism about South Park tables returning if licensing exclusivity expires

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonMelpersonZen StudioscompanyNetherworldvenue[name withheld pending review]personWilliamsproductFX3product

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: New Zen original table expected May/June 2020, likely June to account for COVID-19 work-from-home transition delays

    medium · Chris Freebus: 'They were having a new table come in May or June. If anything, it's now more likely heading towards June, just to account for the hiccup of having to move everybody back to home.'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Zen Studios planning to add Williams Physics as an option to all Zen original tables, fundamentally changing gameplay characteristics of entire back catalog

    high · Chris Freebus: 'every single Zen original is going to get to Williams Physics as an option. Yeah, that's huge. That's massive, folks.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Zen must renegotiate licensing for PS5/Xbox Series X as new-generation platforms were not contemplated in original licensing contracts; unclear if delisted tables (South Park, Ms. Marvel, Super League) might return with new licensing terms

    high · Jared Morgan on contract requirements: 'in the contract, they would have a – we found this with Farsight anyhow... we want to introduce products to a new platform, for example, Switch... that has to be explicitly named in the contract'

  • $

    market_signal: Star Wars table served as significant player conversion mechanism for casual gamers entering FX3 ecosystem on Switch; Zen monitoring detailed usage statistics to inform release strategy

    high · Chris Freebus: 'Star Wars is huge... that title wound up as a huge gateway drug into FX3 for all the Switch users'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Zen Studios continuing game development from home during COVID-19 lockdown; all physical machines remain in Budapest studio, work productivity affected by Zoom meetings and distributed access

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.264

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap and joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan hello everybody As I posted today on Twitter, we've been practicing social distancing for the longest of time since me and Jared have never actually met in person. That's correct. We only ever meet virtually. So we are very, very good at social distancing. Yes. Very, very good. We are well practiced. We have, what, eight years of practice. Something to that effect.
0:47
I kind of want to say, hey, folks, to you that are watching. we're aware of the fact that Jared's lips go out of sync or whoever we have as a guest because I'm the one hosting the session we have not figured out exactly why it's doing that I'm trying to but strangely enough it's just not revealing itself so I do apologize for the out of sync lip reading that goes on Yeah. We're going to try, like, we discussed that perhaps it could be the blurred background thing causing it, but this is only a guess and speculation, which is what we're good at. But, you know, so if Chris gives me a particular signal in the show, I will unblur and then re-blur my background and see if that pulls the sync back in. The funny thing is, is I was watching a movie the other day, and basically I've downloaded some 3D versions of movies that are not available here in America. Oh, you've downloaded them from the internet. Yeah, you know, from those shady areas. From the backups, the internet backups area. Yeah, exactly, that's it. So, for instance, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and Terminator 2 3D never came out in 3D here in the States. and so you would have had to have bought them European. But the problem is the European versions are not USA region, whereas a lot of movies that get put in 3D and are only sold in Europe wind up being all region. So even if I bought them from Europe and brought them over here, they wouldn't play because I'm region A and those would be region B, if you get what I'm saying. Yes.
2:34
So the only way that I was going to be able to watch these in 3D was to be able to download them. And so that I did, and I took them over to my TV and plugged them in with the USB and started watching. And two things that really annoy me were happening. The first was everything was looking that soap opera, plasticky. Oh, that super realism, like extra smooth. Yeah, it's got motion smoothing on and going at 120 hertz and all that stuff. and I was like, why? Why none of my other movies are looking like this, even the ones that I've downloaded? I couldn't figure it out. And then the other thing that was going on was non-synced lips. They were just like maybe a half a second off. Oh, and that's half it. You can sort of deal with like a .25 a second off, but half a second, it's really noticeable. Well, and it becomes that thing where like somebody gets slapped and it's which is just like not good in an action movie it really takes you out of it so I finally sat down and was like okay fine I'm going to mess I'm going to go into my settings because I thought I had all my TV settings dialed in and nope it turns out that when I'm in 3D coming off a USB stick off the back of the TV that I didn't have my settings and it was doing the motion smoothing and the audio, there's a little function online that will sync the audio to your audio video receiver, which is what all my audio is going through my receiver. So it wasn't set to that. So after I played with that and got it all, it started looking normal again. I was like, hey, this is great. Now that I finished watching the two movies I was wanting to watch.

  • Plants vs. Zombies table will never return because PopCap is now owned by EA

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan: 'I don't think Plants vs. Zombies is ever coming back because that deals with PopCap and now PopCap at EA and good luck with that'

  • TPA (The Pinball Arcade) used to have access to detailed player statistics on game popularity (like Big Shot plays) through network data

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus: 'tpa knew that also just when because they always used to talk about how how many plays big shots got'

  • “It might be two years' worth of time. It's a matter of time. We're actually going to kind of touch upon that. Jared has a theory.”

    Chris Friebus @ ~62:00 — Teases upcoming discussion about Stern pinball licensing timeline

    • Farsight Studios
    company
    Ubisoftcompany
    PopCap Gamescompany
    Foxcompany
    Marvelcompany
    Lucasfilmcompany
    BlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization
    Pinsideorganization
    Dave and Dave Arcadescompany
    [name withheld pending review]product
    PlayStation 5product
    Xbox Series Xproduct

    high · Chris Freebus: 'Zen is hard at work right now, folks. And they're working at home. They're not working in the studio, but they are working at home.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Netherworld pivoting to limited operations (takeaway restaurant, bottled beverages) and streaming content to maintain brand presence during closure; operator solo-streaming 24-hour Death by Pinball event

    high · Chris Freebus: 'they're sort of trying to do the best they can with the fact that you can't have anyone in the venue by at least, like, keeping themselves relevant and broadcasting'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Console platforms require separate approval processes for content (6-week delay vs. Steam's immediate deployment); content rating changes must be negotiated at beginning of console generation, not retroactively

    high · Chris Freebus: 'on consoles, then you have to submit it and get it approved for the store and that takes about six weeks'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Hosts speculate that Zen will eventually secure Stern Pinball licensing; Jared has a theory about timeline (possibly 2 years or more)

    low · Chris Freebus: 'It might be two years' worth of time. It's a matter of time. We're actually going to kind of touch upon that. Jared has a theory.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Ubisoft's exclusive digital rights to South Park tables may have expired or be expiring (contract signed around 2015 game releases); hosts speculate on potential return with renewed negotiations, particularly if bundled with future Stern licensing

    medium · Jared Morgan: 'I imagine the time of exclusivity has expired and it wouldn't be hard to actually get that license back'

  • ?

    product_concern: Concern raised about implementing Williams Physics on Zen originals with non-standard playfield elements (e.g., Spider-Man's wire habit trail); may require 'railroading' non-standard ball paths

    medium · Jared Morgan: 'you get a table like spider man with that crazy habit you know wire wire habit trail um well you've thrown williams physics will the ball even travel they might have to railroad that'

  • ?

    content_signal: Community expressing frustration with platform exclusivity (Steam vs. console) for promotional content packages; Switch players noting absence of Marble tables as additional gap

    medium · Chris Freebus: 'in the comment section it's just like but what about switch what about ps4 and it's just like people can't be happy for anybody can you'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Multiple instances highlight complexity of digital pinball licensing: platform-specific terms, generational console negotiations, exclusive digital rights, IP holder divisions across studios

    high · Extensive discussion of Farsight/Nintendo, Ubisoft/South Park, and PopCap/EA licensing complications

    • 4:26
    I didn't even realize that Terminator 2 had got a 3D release here. It did. um this was two years ago i believe so they remastered it they remade a 3d movie yeah completely remastered uh cameron was supervising it so i was really excited about that because it wasn't going to just be some crap some hack hack doing like a algorithm bad perspective sort of view of terminator 2 right ruin that movie right um they did some new color timing on it i mean they did a lot of tweaks to it and so i really wanted to see what it looked like because i missed it in the theater and uh yeah it was just one of those things where it was like i want to see what this came out with um it's it's fine it didn't it it had one or two poking you know they did properly when they're pointing gun directly at the screen to actually have the gun popping out the screen but uh those moments were kind of few and far between yeah but anyway i was that's why i was really disappointed though when i first watching this i was like oh the audio is out of sink and it looks like a soap opera yeah that wasn't worth the download yeah no that wasn't worth the download so i've been um uh i i basically have now plowed through every single movie that i was interested in on downloading and so now i'm going through tv series again all right boy the fun when you have nothing to do you know this lockdown business is very very unusual particularly for places like netherworld because you know they're they're closed to the public but they still have some pinballs on the floor so they're doing twitch streams of games and this weekend being what they call bad saturday for some reason is um uh in netherworld terms it's bad saturday but it's the um uh death by pinball weekend this weekend and normally the place would be full of people um you know playing pinball for 24 hours non-stop um but with social distancing and and the laws we have here at the moment you can't basically have anyone within two meter radius of each other and and large gatherings are prohibited basically so it makes it a bit hard to do death by pinball so jimmy um james angliss one of the owners is uh doing it himself so he's there for 24 hours playing pinball and streaming it on twitch and it's just him just him yeah well you know somebody has to sacrifice for the the denizens of netherworld otherwise they get angry so you know he had to do it otherwise you don't know what will happen like you know um so yeah he's doing it and he's i don't know he will be he would have finished by now because He started at 9 o'clock yesterday, and he would have been finished about 17 minutes ago at the time of recording. All I know is I feel for his forearms because I've done, when I went and visited, well, two things. When I went and visited Pinball Hall of Fame in Vegas and was there for about 12 hours, and then even when I went out to Banning for the Arcade Expo and I was there for probably 10 hours, your forearms it gets to the point where you can't not twitch your fingers to push the buttons i mean it just hurts extreme pain yeah it does yeah so i can only imagine what 24 hours by that point i'd be using my palms yeah just be like monkey bashing the side of that machine yeah oh it would be it would be he would be in a world of pain um but they do have unfortunately it would have been really cool to be there because they have a premium stranger things that we actually get. We've got them down here in Australia now. So it's a premium stranger things with the projection screen in it. So yeah, apparently it's very cool.
    8:19
    And a couple of the, the arcade supplies Dave and Dave arcades who, who's supplies a fair few machines. They dropped off a couple of ones. There was a defender pinball machine, which I'd never seen before there on site. So, yeah, they're sort of trying to do the best they can with the fact that, you know, they can't have anyone in the venue by at least, like, keeping themselves relevant and broadcasting and trying to remain in people's minds, because that's all you can really do as a business at the moment. Well, especially if you're doing any kind of streaming. You have to. We even know that. Yeah. If we go too long, it's like people then just completely forget about it, and you look at the numbers on YouTube and you go like, oh, yeah, people didn't realize that we even put anything out. So that's why you've got to be regular with the stuff. You do. So we have, of course, over in the U.S., I'm sure you have a similar stimulus package sort of deal, but there's one here where businesses are eligible to get $1,500 per employee that they keep on per fortnight for about six months. And I think that's enabled Netherworld to consider reopening in a very limited capacity just their restaurant or their bistro so they can actually do takeaway meals and also sell some of the beer products that they had put down for the events coming up that, of course, have been cancelled. that no one can actually attend. So what I think they're doing is they're getting the breweries that they partnered with to actually can them and bottle them so they can actually sell them as takeaways.
    10:02
    Well, that's a pretty good idea, yeah. Because we can do that. So you can still, like, bottle shops and everything, sorry, liquor stores open still here. We call them bottle shops here or bottlos because we're Australian.
    10:14
    But they're all open. You can actually purchase beer and wine and everything through them still. So being a licensed venue, I think there's provision for them to actually do that as part of this new arrangement. I think the liquor licensing laws have relaxed a little bit for this particular time. As everybody tries to make do with what's going on, yeah. Basically, you know, make lemonade from lemons. Yeah. So I don't know if we're past it now, and I know that we tweeted about it and mentioned it in the forums, but hopefully everybody saw. It's one of those things that we were aware of while we did the podcast with Mel, but we obviously couldn't say anything about it, and that was the care package that they put together with three alien tables, with that, I forget which Marvel packet it was. I just know it had Deadpool and Civil War and Venom in it, and then the Star Wars pack that was Empire, Boba Fett, and I believe it was Han Solo, if I'm not mistaken. I think so. Yeah. But anyway, that was, A, really cool of them to throw together, because they were just like, we need to give you guys something to play with. And I know that a lot of people in the forum were like, well, but I already have those. Well, again, keep this in mind, folks. our forum and us hardcore, what Zen considers the hardcore people, we make up but a fraction of their customer base. They have a large casual base.
    11:49
    Who are new to pinball through Williams Pinball and other franchises. Or just don't buy every single table. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, that's, you know, them throwing that together,
    12:04
    they had to get together with Fox and Marvel and Lucasfilm. And the interesting thing is, because we all assumed that, well, now Disney owns everything, but then I realized, wait a second, no, they're actually, they all have their own gaming divisions. It's not just under one umbrella. So there was some coordination that had to go together and they wanted to throw it together quickly and the reason why it's not out on consoles, or why the consoles didn't get it, was because consoles, then you have to submit it and get it approved for the store and that takes about six weeks yeah so that's why they were able to throw it really quickly together and put it out on steam um but couldn't do the same thing on consoles on consoles so just another reason to get on steam i know the funny thing is on their announcement you know they're announcing it's cool and then in the comment section it's just like but what about switch what about ps4 and it's just like people can't be happy for anybody can you no no the thing is you do it's it's always the case you you will never make everyone happy no you just have to you just have to do what you can you know yeah i mean i get it you know if i had a switch and i was new like putting myself in their shoes and console owners shoes like i do understand like if i was you know new to pinball and like this opportunity was thrown out for one audience i might feel a little bit you know a little bit salty about it um but But at the same time, it's like you have the convenience of not having to worry about setting up your PC. And in the case of Switch, you can take your games anywhere you like with you. Well, and also in the case of Switch, there is no marble tables. No, it's true. Yeah, they haven't done that. So that's a problem as well. Yeah. Slight problem there. Yeah.
    14:00
    But anyway, it was very cool. And per conversations that we've had, just know that Zen is hard at work right now, folks.
    14:12
    And they're working at home. They're not working in the studio, but they are working at home. They're continuing to get stuff done. So it's not like their studio has come to an absolute standstill and nothing's happening. It's just now things take a little bit longer because obviously all their meetings are going to have to be by Zoom also. That's right. And anyone who's been working from home for the last four months will know what that means. Yeah. And then on top of that, it's not like any of them got to take machines home. No. So all the machines are still stuck in the studio. Yeah. Makes me wonder, though, do they're like, okay, hey, I'm going to go to the studio, and then that person goes to the studio, does their thing, and then they leave, and then a cleaning crew comes in and cleans up after them, and then another person can come back like two days later and do the same thing. I don't know how it would work. I don't know what the social distancing laws are over there in Budapest, but I'd say they're probably pretty similar to everywhere, right? Yeah, but that's what I've heard, though, is some places where an employee has had to go back into a facility. That's what's happening. They go, they do their work, they leave, a cleaning crew has to come in, clean up after them so that it's sterile again for the next person to go in. That's crazy. yeah i know where i work the office is actually locked shut at the moment so not even you can't even get in with your access card it's like key locked the door is key locked and you have to contact the the general manager of the the state to get access to the building and it's like of course you know for me living so far away from the office anyhow if i was to drive into the office i would you know i would probably get pulled over by the police and say why are you traveling into work, you know, and risk a $1,100 fine. Wow. You guys are on strict lockdown then. No, it's not strict. Like, we can still move around our suburb. We're not locked into homes. But if we have to go outside our suburb, like, they'll just check your license. They say, well, you're from North Lakes. Why are you in West End? You know, which is like 30 kilometers away. And, you know, workers basically said, look, we will not vouch for you if you come and say, oh, yes, I'm here for work. we're not going to back you up so don't come in so i'm curious so is there something on your car on your license plate that would give it away uh if the police i mean the police like i'm sure they have in the usa they have technology that will scan license plates as they drive um they usually have cameras and patrol cars but you know if they if they see your car and it's like north lakes and they're registered in north lakes and they see you driving around in west end or in the southern suburbs of brisbane they'll go what are you doing mate and they'll probably pull you over i wouldn't be surprised interesting all right um okay so today what we want to kind of uh delve into we want to uh sink our teeth into some of the things that mel said and uh spin our our give our own take and speculate on some things because as you may have noticed if you listened there are moments where we went and mel just smiled and continued on yes you can guarantee that those are the moments where we went oh noted for blockade speculation and here we are and here we are um and then also just in case you didn't feel like watching the entire episode uh we'll give kind of a quick summation of uh of some of went some of what went down um uh so let's let's dive right in here we're going to kind of uh we're going to cheat where this is where my my detailed show notes that you can gain access to on blockade pinball.com full slash episodes coming to quite handy because i listen to the show back i thought basically it's so nice i listen to it twice when i do it so i listen to the show make notes for all of you so you can do exactly what we're doing now exactly we're talking to you that are in the comment section so that you'll notice what parts we skip um that's right but so i mean we already we touched upon right at the top of that show with just how it was affecting their game production and uh obviously while it's affecting the trade shows and everything it's not affecting per se the development of the game um there are some aspects that have been uh tweaked or limited but in terms of you know now they were saying that They were having a new table come in May or June.
    18:38
    If anything, it's now more likely heading towards June, just to account for the hiccup of having to move everybody back to home. But that new pack is going to be coming on its way. That hasn't been necessarily delayed by far. So just something to keep in mind there. And then I did want to hammer home again the point that the pinball division is completely separate from the Operantia Dreadnoughtical and Castle Storm 2 Division of Zen. Yeah. They've gotten big.
    19:09
    They're a big studio. I mean, for an indie, they're still an indie game studio, but they've gotten big. Yeah, they're a big indie game studio.
    19:18
    And then the other thing that was kind of just interesting, and that was because a lot of people were questioning about when Star Wars got released back in September. Was that September or October? I don't know. I don't remember which. On the Switch. where it was like, well, why are we spending, and why are they delaying the release of the next volume from Williams, and we're having this large gap and all this jazz, and it's because, in a word, Star Wars is huge, and as Mel put it, that that title wound up as a huge gateway drug into FX3 for all the Switch users. um zen is able to monitor a crazy amount of stats um because every time you log in you're connecting to the network so they know when you're playing how long you're playing for i wouldn't be surprised if they know what tables you're playing um just tpa knew that also just when because they always used to talk about how how many plays big shots got and i always thought Unless because they're short games. Yeah, that's right. Very short.
    20:21
    So, yeah, they definitely... Just because you feel a certain way about how gameplay is going doesn't mean that that's necessarily true, because they're actually looking at raw, hard data to determine that stuff. And obviously with Star Wars, they realized that, yes, they got a lot of people that got the game purely because of a Star Wars title, and then because of that went, hey, this pinball thing is kind of fun. And I've even read some posts where, on top of the Star Wars, but then it was just because of this care package giveaway, where people were going, you know, I really was enjoying the aliens table, and I want to download a couple of other tables. What is good for a beginner to hop in on?
    21:05
    Which, of course, is a whole other ball of wax, because... It sure is, Chase. Where do you start? Well, I know where I start, but it also comes down to what aspect of the game do you enjoy?
    21:21
    And I can almost tell what direction to send a person based off of, with this care package, which tables they gravitate towards. because there's kind of three different packages completely in terms of gameplay and layout in terms of how you can interpret the rules based off of insert lighting and blinky lighting.
    21:46
    Is it a spell ramp, or is it just shoot the ramp four times kind of thing? So, you know. Yeah. But anyway. and then we going to kind of skip past the challenges of the studio that you can listen to on your own But then we go into the censorship on the consoles
    22:07
    And the short answer there, folks, is don't be looking for it on this generation of consoles. Because it's just not going to happen. They need to change the rating overall for them to be able to do that. And it sounded like, from what Mel was saying, that that's very much dependent on something that you negotiate at the beginning of a generation's console when you're actually developing games for it. Right. Which is a hurdle that they don't have to deal with on Steam. But consoles, absolutely. Yeah.
    22:43
    Which I wasn't really aware of. Because, again, not really being super into consoles until only recently with legacy consoles.
    22:50
    Yeah, I'm not really sure how that all works. So it was interesting to hear that. So here's what I'm curious about. Since he mentioned, obviously, PS5 and Xbox, whatever the hell they're calling it, Scarlett or whatever. You think it's called Scarlett? Again, consoles. I don't know. Yeah.
    23:08
    Now, according to Google, PS5 is supposed to arrive holidays 2020, which everybody kind of puts as October. So it's the fourth quarter of 2020. In time for Christmas, so people can start putting them out of their trees. Exactly.
    23:27
    Knowing Zen, they're going to want to be having that all ready at launch. Yeah. Which, if you do the math, means that they've got to be doing something about that now, right?
    23:41
    Yeah, I mean, getting them ported over to that architecture. Yeah. Now, something that we also know is in terms of licensing, because there were initial contracts with whoever they did licensing with, there wasn't such a thing as a PS5 or next-gen Xbox when those contracts were done. So obviously, they're going to have to go through a little bit of that contract.
    24:10
    Renewal, essentially. Yeah, renewal. And make an adjustment to it. Because I'd imagine that they wouldn't be – so in the contract, they would have a – we found this with Farsight anyhow. Exactly. When they go and they say, well, we want to introduce products to a new platform, for example, Switch, in the case of Farsight, that has to be explicitly named in the contract. Yeah, because Farsight thought that they had the Nintendo license to deal with, and in truth, they only had the Wii U license to deal with and not the Switch license. Not the Switch license, yeah. so you gotta dot your T's and cross your I's yeah so I'm gonna be really curious to see then what that means for in other words so like with the Switch or like the marble table is not going to be able to go over yet to the new Playstation or Xbox is that gonna be an issue or how about this if they're going through licensing again might we see the two South Park tables come back and Super League come back and Ms. Marvel and I don't think Plants vs. Zombies is ever coming back because that deals with PopCap and now PopCap at EA and good luck with that. Yeah, I really don't of all of those five tables, I think Plants vs. Zombies is the least likely to ever be seen again. Yeah, that is very much an FX2 only right yeah yeah um and i think that super league would only come if they were able to come up with new teams um which i keep on throwing out the idea that we should have like a team blockade and a team spaces arcade and uh you know uh uh some of the other streaming uh platforms that do you know pinball um have those be your soccer teams or your football teams per se yeah they haven't really gravitated towards that but i just want to be in the game that's all yeah have my have my ugly mug as a player because that would be the funniest thing ever me being in a soccer game because i am so very very unathletic yeah i don't play that sport um but uh so that one's kind of daisy but i think if anything the ones that were would most likely come back would be south park um well you'd hope so i hope this suck like uh they are fox no yeah south park is viacom actually viacom but that's not what's that who owns viacom are they cbs is the giant parent company.
    26:58
    But that's not even the issue. The issue is that Ubisoft has the exclusive rights to South Park because of the two, Stick of Destiny and I forget what the second game was that they put out.
    27:14
    And it was one of those instances where the contract, Farterstrike's contract wasn't up for renewal, and while they had their contract, Ubisoft signed their contract, and in that contract it said exclusive digital rights. Oops.
    27:31
    And so then when it came time for the FX3 switchover, it just wasn't even on the table. There was nothing they could do about it. Couldn't do it. So it's been, what, two years now? or a year and a half since that game came out from Ubisoft. So I imagine the time of exclusivity has expired and it wouldn't be hard to actually get that license back.
    28:02
    Whether... Hopefully. Yeah. Now, the other thing is, does Zen even try? Because if anything, you would want to save it for when they eventually get Stern. I'm saying when they eventually, because we know that EPA is not doing anything.
    28:22
    It's basically, you know, it may as well be confirmed, but not confirmed. It's a matter of time. It might be two years' worth of time. It's a matter of time. We're actually going to kind of touch upon that. Jared has a theory. We're going to touch upon that in a moment.
    28:38
    But it would make more sense, actually, though, to sign a new contract then so that you could actually include the Sega South Park table. Not that I really want that one, because it's kind of terrible. It really is kind of terrible. Yeah. It's great for the first five games. I laughed my head off at the quotes for the first five games, and then I went, ugh. Yeah, boy, these get repetitive.
    29:02
    Yeah. Yeah, it is what it is. Actually, it was always harkening back to System 11 days of how you program a game. It was very strange. It was basically Spellathon, really, but with little lights instead of words, which is better than... And one ramp. Yay! One ramp, yeah, really. It was back to, like, Data Reese designs, really. And there was also, like, next to... There was not even a storyline to it. No. It was just, basically, there were... For each of the characters that were on the table, there was a mode, and it was like... I still remember battling and trying to get Kyle's mode, which you have to shoot through the pop bumpers for. that was so hard to actually unlock it might have been Chef, I don't know one of them was really really hard to get and there was no way you could finish it without dying yeah but it's certainly again it harkens back to another era of programming and game code yeah that's right very odd which I've been so a lot of this goes into the hey while you're in there tweaking for the next system. Because the other thing that Mel said was every single Zen original is going to get to Williams Physics as an option. Yeah, that's huge. That's massive, folks. I'm so excited about that. You have no idea. That's going to change literally the entire back catalog. Oh, yeah. To completely different games. And I just wonder, obviously they're going to have to think about how they're going to implement leaderboards for that. because that's like the scores that you've been able to get on those tables in the past are going to be invalid.
    30:52
    Presumably, because you still have single player, and then you have classic single player. Classic single player eliminates, with the Zen Originals, eliminates the ability to do the passive upgrades and the active upgrades. That's all it does right now. Now, when you're playing Williams tables, it obviously also adds in the Williams physics. Yes. The classic single player has a separate leaderboard from standard. So actually all you're doing is adding a leaderboard. You're not having to do anything with the old leaderboard. Oh, that's okay then. So, yeah, right. So they'll be saying, it'll be like essentially, yeah, right. I see where you could go with that. And that would be an easy way of doing it. Yeah.
    31:35
    But when you think about it. gives you a whole new set of leaderboards to try and strive to, which is great as well. That'll get people in. But it's like, when you think about it, so a table that I really enjoy is Iron Man, which I know everybody hates it, but I like it. But, if you play it, the ball is a lump of lead, and the rubber has no bounce at all.
    31:59
    Now you add bounce to that table, now it suddenly plays like a regular pinball machine because it has the reason why i like it is it has a fairly classic pinball layout um it's not an odd but like if you look at ghost rider that thing is just wonky weird it is um it is very much as in original in it in the way it's laid out yeah yeah whereas iron man is more of a traditional you can see it somewhat being an actual machine um so yeah you throw in williams physics oh my god that's gonna be amazing but here's the question you get a table like spider man with that crazy habit you know wire wire habit trail um well you've thrown williams physics will the ball even travel they might have to railroad that yeah they might have to railroad that um i there's there's only really one way they can do that i think i mean um yeah they'd have to railroad it which i mean i'm fine for those certain areas that you would have to do that in yeah but if it's on the playfield and it's interacting with wood or like a ramp that actually has an entry to it which which then can lead to you know a disappearing section of the ramp or whatever those bits would have to be managed you know differently but you know at least when the ball travels up the the ramp and it's contacting a traditional playfield surface like a bit of plastic or something like that then yeah apply those those williams physics to that element of the playfield and i think if they did that i'd be totally totally jazzed by it it'd be great well i think all you have to do is look at portal uh because that has a lot of invisible ramp it does yeah um and it plays pretty dang good pretty well yeah it does it actually plays very nice.
    33:46
    What I'm saying is, while they're in there doing physics tweaks, I want code update. I want them so badly to go back to some of these tables and tweak the code so that your order of progression of what you need to shoot, how and why and what pops up and goes, is more reflective of modern zen pinball design and a classic example of what they did that to the Mars table when they went from FX2 to FX3 they changed the code a little bit and it makes the table more intuitive playing wise yeah it's just a little bit more accessible let's not forget classic games like Shaman which is just good luck trying to start a mode if you don't understand how to start a mode in that game because you'll be flying around for hours trying to find the way to do it. Or you always go to Tesla where the mode hole is essentially shooting the ball into Rudy's mouth kind of shot.
    34:55
    Or any other game with a side flipper. It would be – it's so difficult. And that's how you start the mode. It's like, no, no, no, that should be a jackpot kind of thing.
    35:10
    Instead, this is your main thing. forget about it. Yeah, exactly. Change the location of your start mode hole. It should be within easy reach of the lower flippers. Yeah, yeah.
    35:21
    Yeah. And then it's just a matter of also, again, designing it so that it just makes more sense. There's more flow to what you're supposed to be doing. I don't know. I just think it would be really nice. Even putting in ball pauses so that you can read the DMD while it's telling you important information rather than hurling the ball at you at the exact same time oh just just those little things and also like the thing i would love to see and we we've talked about this in last shows about how they can make these games these older games play better is like doing exactly what you said putting in like the time that you would normally get on a traditional machine to read the instructions on the screen that will make a big difference but also don't scroll the text on a DMD as fast as you do. Like, you've got to speed read some of these things going across the screen. There's been times where I was just like, okay, I'm going to lose the ball on purpose just so I can read what the heck they were telling me so that I can know this for a future game. Yeah. I'm going to sacrifice balls so I can learn the game, which is ridiculous if you think about it. Like, that's not how you play pinball. No. So those little – I totally agree with you, Chris. If they could spend a little bit of time just doing a bit of a spit and polish on some of these tables, number one, the physics will make a very big difference to how they play. But number two, if you can make them more accessible to people, because there's going to be people that are new to pinball, and they're going to go back to these old tables out of curiosity and go, why did I even spend my money on them? Because they're horrible to play.
    36:59
    It's not going to be a good experience for them. going in. So, spending a bit of time sprucing them up and making them more accessible will be really good. Yeah, because you want to see somebody not buy any more tables, they're going to purchase a V12 first, and then go, nope, I'm never buying another table again. If that's a gateway into the core pack release, because that was essentially core pack games when FX2 released, wasn't it?
    37:25
    Okay, so here's where it gets weird. Because I was on PlayStation, and And Zen Pinball got released. The first four tables were V12, Shaman, El Dorado, and Tesla. And then they came out with DLC of Earth Defense.
    37:43
    That's a weird game, that one. Earth Defense is very weird. Oh, talk about needing code update. Earth Defense needs one badly. Because it's a cool layout, but God help you figuring out what the heck to do. Oh, it's nothing. And you know what I'd love to see? Like, on those older tables, it's almost like they had the Vaseline filter on the main. Oh, yeah. It's got that sort of weird bloom going on to it. And I'm going, oh, it's not good. Like, there's no need for it. Just take that off. Yeah. I want to say there was a total of four other tables that got put out on, and that was just Zen Pinball. And that was Pinball FX on the 360. and there were games that were in Zen Pinball that weren't on the 360 and vice versa. And it wasn't until Zen 2 and Pinball FX 2 came out that any of those merged some of the tables. Again, not all the tables crossed over. It wasn't until I got onto Steam that I played things like Biolab, Rome, Pasha.
    38:49
    As far as I know, those weren't originally available on the PS3. I've got those tables just because I wanted to collect them all, and I don't really... I think I could have actually lived without them.
    39:02
    I actually kind of like Rome. Pasha is a Tales of the Arabian Night wannabe. Yes, it is. You can kind of tell, actually, with a couple of the Zen tables, you can tell what table they were trying to imitate that was a real table without blatantly ripping it off, but there was certainly a lot of indicators of who they were focusing on. Yeah.
    39:31
    Yeah, I do like how Zinn do play homage to a lot of real Belly Williams tables in some of those early designs. Like, you know, there's definitely large nods, like, you have to meet with some of those tables. It's good. Yeah. Okay, moving on beyond then. I mean, like I said, we don't know what's going to happen with the next gen. This is why I'm happy to be on Steam, because I don't worry about it. No.
    39:59
    But it is something that... There's going to be some kind of a shift, obviously. Hopefully, it's all for the positive. And I imagine, like I said, one of the things that's probably going to happen is the SRB rating is going to get upgraded and changed, so that on the next gen, you're not going to have to worry about censorship. I imagine Xen is still going to do the... You'll be able to transfer your tables over from one generation to the next, just as they did from PS3 to PS4. I don't think every single table transferred over, but a good chunk of them did. No. There was like three or four that didn't quite make the cut. But, you know, if you spent your money and you had everything unlocked, you wouldn't be that disappointed like, or the ones that had to go, I think I forget which ones they were, but they weren't really super appealing ones to me at least anyhow, I didn't miss them. Yeah, oh I just noticed PinballWiz over here in the chat says hopefully when next gen arrives we get the same updates on Steam I think that's inevitable Steam is always going to be, as far as I would think identical to consoles, especially since we'd probably get to beta test it all before it ever went And we're all beta testing on Steam, so there you go.
    41:15
    I mean, that's certainly what happened with FX3. We all beta tested FX3, and then that rolled out to everybody else. Yeah, that's right. I imagine this is... It's just easier. It's easier to get people on Steam doing it. Because you can't beta test on consoles. It's literally impossible. Yeah. So, yeah, Steam's the platform if you want to be ahead of the curve.
    41:36
    Yes, yes, yes. So that'll be all very interesting. I just want to kind of expand upon that idea. Obviously, if we started asking Mel a whole bunch of questions, he was going to be scrambling for his pre-read statement. Yeah, please refer to the statement I read earlier. Which he didn't read a statement earlier regarding that, but that's what I'm saying. He'd be scrambling, oh, crap, why didn't I write one? Yeah, exactly. I don't know how good his poker face is.
    42:02
    But moving on, we talked a little bit about the one-up cabinets, And obviously there's a lot that Mel couldn't say because most of that is 1UP. Obviously, they're the ones building the hardware, building all the specs. Zen is purely providing the software.
    42:21
    But the one question that I found was very interesting was that it did get kind of confirmed that, yes, their partnership with 1UP is going to be beneficial for licensing. And I wanted to know that because, obviously, in terms of the Williams-Bally DMD stuff, all that's left is the licensed tables. And you've got to believe that's going to be cost prohibitive to just bang one out after another of those. Oh, yeah.
    42:52
    And some of those are going to be rather difficult to acquire. And again, I keep on going back to NBA Fast Break, not just because I really, really, really desperately want it, but because I know that sports licensing in particular is terrible. There's so many parties involved in that license. Oh, it'd just be hard to negotiate. Yeah. So if you already have a partner that has done just that, then they can go, hey, here's my friend Mel. Yeah, that's right.
    43:23
    Let's just copy past of this contract and change the names. exactly all right you know because you know that's how contracts are done because you know we're lawyers a good bit of white out and that's all that's all that's needed yeah that's fine just put your signature on it easy um but yeah so i mean i imagine that and we all know the tables that were kick-started on on farsight because they were rather expensive so you know i kind of believe that that would be the same the same deal with those tables are still going to be expensive and so wouldn it be good to know that you got a partner that can maybe help absorb some of those costs or not even necessarily absorb the costs but give you yet another outlet with which to sell which is having a physical item in a box store that you could probably make a whole heck of a lot more profit off of.
    44:12
    Potentially. I mean, you've got to think for Farsight, the profit margin is going to be much higher just by the very nature of boxing and manufacturing and putting something out there. 1UP's going to have their profit margin be good, and you've got to believe that Zen's got it kicked in, too. No, yeah, they wouldn't be doing it out of charity. Yes. Let's be serious. I did notice a little bit of the dig there, too, with Mel saying, we adamantly want to have this running at 60 frames a second. Yeah.
    44:49
    Definitely. Yeah, there was a definite undertone to that, I think. yeah yeah yeah so that's good to know uh and obviously they don't know yet what it's going to be running on um whether it's again that becomes a question for one up yeah are you running raspberry pi are you running a linux uh system what are you running who knows yeah with with minimum graphical output you know as well so they need to like lock down whether doing like system on a chip graphics or whether they're actually doing a dedicated like entry-level GPU or like whatever they're going to bundle in on the board like it's really I think it's by the sound of things they're still going through those final decisions yeah um to work out what the bill of materials is going to look like and I do wonder because he said that yeah you know wave one wouldn't have uh the wi-fi but wave two would and there's where I wonder, okay, so is wave one, let's say wave one is Star Wars, is wave two the Belly Williams? I think wave two would need to be Belly Williams because that will constantly be getting updates and new releases. So you would think that there would somehow have to be some way of getting access to the new tables. And the older franchises, they're locked down. They're not going to get any more updates.
    46:10
    Well, theoretically. Okay, over here in the comments, Pinball Wiz says he stands by the fact that eventually Pinball needs to go to 120 frame option, and that 60 frames per second Pinball is nothing new. But again, tell that to Farsight.
    46:26
    Who were clocking in Generation 1 cabinets at 30 frames per second, and wondering why all the problems with physics were happening.
    46:36
    Yes. So, I agree, eventually, because when I played, I think, Stern VR is at 90 frames per second. And believe me, you notice you have way more control over the ball. And that's what was happening when I didn't have VSync on FX3, and when I was playing Black Rose, I seemed to have a lot more shooting angles, but it was also causing havoc.
    47:15
    Because it wasn't meant to be going at 104 frames per second, it was only meant to be going at 60. That's what it was tuned for. So, yeah. But I'm curious, and maybe our comment section knows this, what does Pinball Wicked play at?
    47:36
    I'm not sure. I don't either. I played that again the other day, and I'll go into that after we go through the summary, because I've been playing around with screens as well. Oh, okay. But, yeah, I did play it the other day, and it seems to, like, when you have it bumped up to ridiculous settings if your video card can handle it, I don't think it's actually capped at frames per second. Like, it goes pretty high. So then we got the nod and the wink moments.
    48:08
    Oh, yeah, yeah. First one being, or I don't know if it was the first one, but the first one I'm going to touch upon, which was there was a complaint that there's no control support for iOS.
    48:18
    And even the Macs, apparently, is really dicey. at which point Mel then didn't say they were working on controller support, but he did say that they were working on, or he made mention of services like Apple Arcade, which Zen has put their games onto. And then I don't know what Xbox has, if they're still doing anything of that nature. But he said, in order to be on Apple Arcade, you have to have controller support.
    48:46
    So it only makes sense, and this is what we were inferring, that pinball effects is probably going to get put on there, and obviously that means they would have to have controller support. That's right. That was one of those prepared statements that we just kind of went,
    49:05
    okay, let's interpret this one. Yeah, that's right. In fact, I think you interpreted it live on show. Yeah, I did. And Mel even said, I didn't say it, somebody else did. so our research team and the comments are coming back with anything between 30 to 144 frames per second depending on if you have v-sync disabled or enabled or or you sacrifice the right amount of goats so yes uh you can pretty much it'll run crazy oh there's no doubt i've tried running it at ultra and my vid card just screams at me yes yeah he goes no please don't not against uh What have I done, CE? But the cool thing is to know that that particular game has that much cooking in it that you can really go hog wild with graphical settings. Which, again, that one was made on the Unreal Engine, and I've told the story before that Stern Pinball was almost made using the Unreal Engine and Farsight got cold feet about it. And can you imagine if they hadn't have gotten cold feet because it would have been so much better. Amazing. Yeah, it would have been incredible. If they knew how to optimize. If they knew how to optimize, yeah. And I wonder, you know, I wonder in hindsight if they went down that path, what we'd be looking at for the Ellie Williams license now. Well, because certainly they would have been able to scale and do beefier tables. And even if we're not looking at the Bally license, I believe that they would have been able to maybe put out some of these modern sterns with the LCD screens. Potentially, yeah. I think they would need a framework like that to support it. Because they were saying that they could do it, but the proof was in the pudding and we never saw the proof. So, in other words, they couldn't. I'm sure they tried, but maybe. I'm sure they tried. I don't know.
    51:13
    Yeah. They tried on a whiteboard, and they went, look, it goes right here. See? Easy. Yeah. Make that.
    51:21
    You. It's your job. Go. Make this. And that person's like, no, not me, not me. Not me. Do not want. Did you see what happened to head-to-head pinball? No.
    51:35
    Yep. Exactly. Which, that reminds me, I saw a note with regards to Zachary at Pinball, because they just did an update again, and somebody was asking about Head-to-Head Pinball, which I guess is only on Steam because it's still considered beta for them, that they're still working out the Kings on. So it's good to know that that is a beta and not final release, because I think the actual fun of Head-to-Head is there, but as I've stated, the UI for using the Head-to-Head is kind of a mess. It needs a few extra iterations to make it to the standard of the rest of the game. Yes. And to which, when I posted that question, that was the other prepared statement, wasn't it, Jared? It was, about, you know, on the whole Reddit tournaments thing.
    52:20
    That was a very calculated and very scripted announcement. Which was kind of surprising, because I didn't think that that was anything that needed a statement. A statement, but the sheer fact that it needs a statement is a statement. That's your wonder.
    52:38
    Yeah, it's very much a statement. Yeah. So why would they be being coy about self-organized tournaments that you could spin up yourself?
    52:51
    And reading between the lines, it's like, well... well tournaments and head-to-head is kind of all kind of lumped into the same thing yeah so i don't know there's competitive play and that sort of thing here's hoping that basically the match-ups portion of fx3 goes away and instead it gets replaced with head-to-head oh that would be nice oh you know i've actually noticed on the subject of steam in a couple of the other games that I have, whose names are unimportant because they're not pinball,
    53:30
    they actually have this play with another person feature in the game itself. And I have a feeling it might be something to do with a Steam API that they've released. So I just wonder if Magic Pixel are actually just using something that Steam has got in beta at the moment to actually enable head-to-head playing games. Like, it's a framework that seems to be part of Steam's ecosystem now. I would love if, in addition to the head-to-head, that it would automatically go to, also that you could talk to the person without having to have a third-party app for talking. Oh, yeah. Yep. Because Pinball is such a trash-talking game. Oh, yeah. Exactly right. Like, you need some way of actually talking to your opponent. Yeah, because if I'm going to have to sit there and watch you play, then I want to comment on your play. Yeah, exactly right. And not via chat message. This is what I'm really missing. Like, every fortnight I used to catch up with a mate, not to mention all the pinball tournaments and stuff that were happening, obviously, but we used to catch up and we used to just have bloke chats about stuff, and it was over beer and food at Netherworld while playing pinball. And, you know, we actually used to play a lot of Willy Wonka together, actually, and just have fun on that table. It seems to be the one we always, like, gravitate towards. And I'm really missing that. You know, it's like, yeah, I'm really feeling the need for that sort of interaction. So having this sort of feature in games where you could literally sit down with a six-pack or however many beers you want and go and actually have games with people and speak to them and everything, it would be almost as good as being there, you know? So, yeah, Pinball Wiz, I think that you're right, that there is voice chatting in Steam, but I'm talking about automatically in-game. You go into a head-to-head and it automatically connects. You've got a microphone there, boom, you're talking. It's not that you have to activate it so that you can do it and chat that way. Or make it in the menu when you're setting up the game. Do you want to have voice chat on or off? You flick it on, boom, it's automatically chatting away. Yeah.
    55:47
    Shoot, you can even maybe activate the webcam. You can see the person. I don't know if I'd want to do that. I think that'd probably get weird really quick. Maybe. It becomes, what is it, a camera-let? Oh, yeah, Chartrelette or something. Chartrelette, yeah. It would be not good. It would be a lot of, yeah.
    56:11
    Yeah, you'd have to maybe just turn that on just for your friends list. Maybe. Trusted people only. Yeah.
    56:22
    Because you'd be like, you're distracting me with what you're doing. Stop doing that. It's really gross. Stop it. Seriously, stop it.
    56:30
    Stop it. I can't not look. Yeah, I can't unsee what you're doing. Stop. That's right. Do up your pants.
    56:40
    Both hands on the keyboard, please. Look, I know I'm taking a long time to play this game, but that's no excuse.
    56:51
    Okay. Anyway, all right. I think that was kind of everything that we wanted to touch upon with... I think so. Okay. So, Jared posted a theory or an idea or something regarding Stern in the forum, and I'm going to let him do it, and I'll react. Is that about the idea, like, you know, how Stern would be feeling about digital pinball now? That would be exactly the idea. So I thought, you know, we have heard news that, unfortunately, Stern has had to actually shutter operations from a manufacturing perspective. because of the restrictions in the US. It makes me wonder, would Stern, would Gary be going, well, since I can't actually produce any physical tables, maybe these digital pinball tables that are coming out now, digital pinball in general, is something that I need to actually pay a little bit more attention to now. Is that a way that I can actually make money? Because Stern is well known for being creative in the way that they actually keep afloat. They've been in the business for a long time. That means they would have to be pretty resourceful when it comes to actually keeping the doors open in tough times. So this, to me, seems like a prime opportunity for them to start ramping up discussions with whoever about getting digital tables more up-to-date with their current offerings that they actually have out. Now, I think that wouldn't essentially mean we would see Stranger Things come out at the same time as The Table.
    58:31
    But at the same time, I think we can do a little bit better than what Farsight was able to do with their release schedule with Stern Digital Tables. And, you know, with that in mind, with digital cabinets as well, you know, digital pinball cabinets as well, with that resurgence happening or that, you know, initial market now opening up, But there's an opportunity there to get, like, essentially do away with the pin and actually have these tables in people's houses, these digital tables. So what do you think about that?
    59:08
    Lots of things. Okay, first off, I do agree. They're probably going, hey, we need some revenue right now. And I doubt that they're getting any revenue or what little revenue they're getting from Pinball Arcade or Stern Pinball Arcade. I'm sure that well has long dried up.
    59:28
    I'd agree. So it would be good for them to get new blood, and the only way you're going to get new blood is by releasing newer tables to digital, not necessarily the same digital tables that have been out there. We already have surmised that Farsight's done when it comes to pinball. certainly if they weren't done they would have been cranking out a machine at least sometime in the last two years well you would think so yeah i mean why sit on a license and not do anything with it you know yeah so uh on that aspect i think it would make sense now even if they signed a license today with zen yeah how long would it take for zen to be able to produce because it's a whole different architecture, whole different set of emulation.
    60:23
    They'd have to go in, totally break down, scan table, have an infrastructure within the game. Hopefully the FX3 can even handle the stern engine that's driving it.
    60:39
    Or would it be enough that a license in general is signed, there's your money up front that would be given, that would float them for a little bit, longer um so that when things get ramping up uh you know when manufacturing is able to start ramping up then maybe there's something out there i don't know it seems like the timetable i think would be kind of crazy to think that this would be a savior moment you know that for zen to swoop in uh that's my thought on that look it's it wouldn't be a it certainly would be a short term savior moment like there would be you know like like you say if they were to do this today like it would still be i would think at least at least 8 to 12 months before they would actually see anything from them because you know there's licensing to sort out there's well yeah exactly the licensing alone with your third-party licenses you've got to deal with unless you again we know that stern started incorporating into their licensing agreements digital rights so that i presumably that path is easier that you basically that the the fees have already been determined you just need to go in and pay the person rather than go in with your own lawyers and negotiate and blah blah blah blah um i don't know the only thing is that you you would hope that they're still doing that. But after the taste that they got with Farsight and what they did with that license, I wonder if Stern would have gone back and rethought that as part of, is that essential when we're actually negotiating? I don't think it would have cost Stern hardly anything to include that in the contract. Basically, all you're saying is, hey, we also reserve the right to make a digital version of your table. If a digital version is made, these are the same fees that we're paying right now for your license, those fees will also have to be paid by whoever is making the digital version. Yeah, right. So essentially you get double-dipped, essentially. Yes, but rather than what Zen is having to do now, so you take the Monsters pack, where obviously long ago Williams struck a deal with Universal for those two tables, but now Zen is having to go back and not only are they having to go back and approach Zen or to go back and approach Universal but they're having to find all the parties that were responsible for it. I mean that's a whole lot of lawyer fee going on and if you can cut through all that so that's what I think that Stern did. They basically cut through all the tape so it's just like hey this is the fee that's going to be agreed upon should it plus you know, inflation.
    63:37
    Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, because if they go back to, like, doing something like Metallica, for example, there'd be some cost increase. There'd be some cost increase, but you're not having to go and re-license every single song and Metallica name and the likenesses and all that sort of stuff. Exactly. It's all rolled up in one, boom, here's the cost of the license, yeah. Okay, so let's toss aside, then,
    64:02
    those hang-ups. That I'm throwing at you. Let's go into the major hang-up, which is it's not so much that Gary is opposed to digital pinball. He doesn't want whatever's for sale now competing with a digital version in cabinet. Yeah, that's right. He doesn't want to have Stranger Things in physical form next to a Stranger Things virtual pinball cabinet. Exactly, because he wants to sell the physical machines. because he makes it when he sells it and he makes it when he sells the parts so he gets double dips but that being said most of their tables are only for sale for two years I think and then they lose the license to sell them at which point then you could do a digital version and you'll make money off of all that and you're not competing with yourself because you're no longer producing that table when it goes off production line you get the digital version coming out That would make a lot of sense. Operators have already bought all the tables they're going to be doing and already have put them on locations and you've already put them in homes. So now all of a sudden if you have a digital cabinet that's in a pub, well, it doesn't matter. You already sold all your tables. If they buy a table, they're not buying it from you anymore. They're buying it from a used aspect or a dealer that had them for a while. yeah yeah so i think i could see that playing a factor that it's yeah so long as we're not actually making the machine right now you can do a digital version of it and then i do agree with you about the the pin which is like the the pin star wars yeah i'm looking at that going that's almost better than the pro yeah but you're still talking about a two thousand dollar one table machine I think it more than that Okay maybe I don know but it still that a chunk of change as opposed to the presumed five to six hundred dollar mark of a digital pin that's going to have you ten tables on it that's well that's very true like that's a very different argument but at the same time those pins will never make their way into the arcade so that will be safe from gary's perspective because exactly they're never going to end up side by side beside another pinball machine taking coin drop precisely so i would imagine that the way the contract would work is those big machines that for uh that zen has that they're putting on these locations that it would probably be but you can't put stern titles on those on those yep um but you can put them in one-up machines walmart's yeah and come on that's what stern wants they want to get their name out there in front of people it's just another it's basically like giving people a really big bag of swag that they can put in their house that's got Stern branding all over it. It's just another way of advertising their product. Which then it becomes, hey, when I really like this, I want a real machine. Who's that person that makes machines? Oh, yeah, Stern. Not American Pinball, not Jersey Jack Pinball, not Spooky Pinball, Stern Pinball. That's right. It's all about name recognition. If you're looking at that apron and you're looking at that back box all the time, you see that Stern label everywhere.
    67:21
    And that goes back to what Mel was saying, where he said basically Zen is now the face of digital pinball. They really don't have any real competition. Not really. So when you think digital pinball, you're going to be thinking Zen. And that would be the same thing with what Stern has always been. I mean, why do you think Stern is sitting there bragging about how we saved pinball and we're the number one pinball distributor in the world or manufacturing in the world and doing all these things to tout themselves up,
    67:53
    there's a reason for that because that's how they want to be viewed. Yeah, that's right. They have a market position that they need to maintain, and that is to be the number one.
    68:04
    Yeah. So I do see that as a very real possibility that down the line, how this would work, that's how it would work. Yeah, you can't put the storm machines on a full size. virtual cabinet.
    68:22
    But you can guarantee that if Xen was to do it, it would be excluded from cabinet mode. 100%. In fact, it would probably, I would imagine, I don't think Sturm would basically allow anything less than a dedicated standalone app for their Sturm Pinball product. It would not be part of FX3 or whatever. It would be a standalone app. I think it would be. You reckon? I reckon it would be. I do. I think it would be one of those things where you can buy... Kind of like what they did with Marvel Pinball. You buy Marvel Pinball, it's cross-buy into FX2 when they were doing that. But they still want that marketplace listing with some branding on it. Just like they did with Doom and all those ones. Right. It didn't need to be there. You'll get that, but then you can import it into the actual hub. The core, Mothership. Yes. As for excluding cabinet mode, I don't think they would necessarily exclude it because right now Zen still doesn't even have full cabinet support. And what I mean by that is second screen. You have to provide your own imagery. It's not animated. It's not functional in that respect. and I think anybody that puts a virtual machine in the market, out there for public consumption, if any kind of policing was done on that, you would shut them down and say, hey, you have to pull that machine because it's not licensed for that purpose. Because when you're applying for a cabinet license, you sort of have to take a photograph of the machine set up. You indeed do, yes. so you know if it looked like a pretty professional looking pinball machine with a coin door on it I think Zen might be going not sure what you're doing with that so maybe not as much as I hope that Zen could be the saviour of the moment and swoop in and we could be playing a Zen table in three months I don't think so it's so unlikely as a bit of silver lining though you have to admit that if Zen did have to go into partnership with Stern, the way they would need to consume and build a table would be a hell of a lot easier than what they're doing at the moment with Belly Williams because they'd have all the CAD files, they'd have all the digital assets like the playfields are just one massive CAD image, they wouldn't even need a physical table I don't think they would even need emulation I don't know they need something well no because the whole point God, talk about going back into the way back machine remember long long long ago when we had the guy who used to work for Belly Williams and he said there was an actual key that would unlock the ROMs to be read but Farsight didn't have them and I don't think Zen has them necessarily either Zen might, I'm not sure but you're also dealing with computer boards and everything. They ain't clocked to today's computers. That's true. They are essentially a computer. So if you can tap into the framework and get access to the actual game code that's running the pinball machines, it's going to be interesting.
    71:54
    The whole way those machines work now with Spike 2 is all distributed logic. So they have like daughter boards all throughout the play field connected with essentially network cables that go back up to the main board. So that's an interesting architectural challenge that you need to emulate. But I agree. It would be significantly easier, I would think. I don't know. Here I am saying it's easier and I don't have the first foggiest clue about programming. Certainly from an assets perspective, I think that would be the silver lining. Like being able to quickly spin up a table would be easy. because even Farsight said that when they were doing Stern Pinball Arcade Stern sent them all the CAD files yeah that's right they had basically all the assets which is why those games look so great to Farsight standards because they actually had all the assets and they didn't need to scan them they didn't need to recreate artwork they had them all in digital files yeah all they had to do was build the toys as objects in digital realm. But again, they had all the cat files for those too. So I don't even know if they needed to necessarily 3d scan any of that. No, that wouldn't. They just render them. Yeah. That's right.
    73:10
    And it would be one of those things that obviously too, that, uh, I wouldn't be surprised if in partnership with Zen, that, that as they were building a new table, they could be like, here, you guys build this so that we can have a digital version to test with and use for our qa in terms of figuring out code um seeing how it plays and works rather than always relying on a whiteboard um just as an option production like they would be able to make fast iterations on software oh sorry software choices and potentially raw raw playfield tweaking um faster if they were running in digital first but it'd have to get to a point where they would need to be very confident about the physics engine because you know we know that you know physics will never quite be able to match a real world table um but they've got to get close i reckon and and again if we're talking about needing higher frame rate and all that this is where i go again i don't think we're going to see stern come to zen until zen goes into fx4 if you will i don't even know what they would call the next one but let's just assume fx4 um because then you know that they would be doing enough yet another new engine and they would probably cater that engine to the demands of something like a Stern or Jersey Jack or Spooky or any of these modern pins that are out there. That's what they did with FX3. We learned unequivocally that they made FX3 to support Williams Pinball.
    74:58
    That's publicly known information from Mel because he confirmed it when we interviewed him. So that logic applied to the future generation of things. I don't know. It seems to add up. But that's why I say My personal feeling is I don't think we're going to see that next iteration for a little while, but that's just my guess. Because to me, FX3 is still so new. I don't know. I don't remember what the time gap was between FX2 and FX3. I don't know how many years there was. Me neither.
    75:33
    So I could be completely wrong, too. I mean, if there's an equal amount of years between that and FX3, and we're at that point between now and whatever. But I just seem to remember that FX3 came out right at the time that the PS3 switched over to PS4.
    75:52
    And usually there's a five-year gap, I think, is the lifespan. But I could be again wrong. I don't know. Yeah, it's tricky to work at the time. But we know that. Hold on, hold on. We're getting a response on the message board there. Let's see. FX2 came out before TPA. summer of 2013 yeah september 27th on steam it's about five years yeah so that's what i'm saying and we're two years are we two two and a half years into fx3 now i think so it feels like that that's what i feel so that's why i'm thinking we're still if i had to guess i'm saying we're two years out from seeing Stern on with Zen.
    76:37
    And part of that, too, is, again, I keep on going back to, that'll give them plenty of time to play with the Williams license and to really pump out a good majority of the tables that they want to. Yeah, really take advantage of that license and do good with it.
    76:55
    Because I think that was, again, part of the problem that Farsight faced. They paid all this money for the licenses, and then they had to spread it out, which means you're not returning your investment fast enough, as opposed to being concentrated on just one license that you secured.
    77:15
    Because they pretty much wasted the Stern license. Again, we're talking of the 100 tables that they put out, 66 of them were Bally Williams. so the other 44 were a combination of stern and gottlieb yeah that's that's not a great use of a license and that's over the course of eight years we'll see we'll see how uh we'll see how good the gut feelings are um once we get closer to christmas i guess christmas yeah because i think that's when i'm going to see these new shiny consoles coming out yep and that's when i think anything would be revealed. Again, it goes back to all that, is there going to be licensing issues? Is there going to be some tables that don't make the cut, that don't come over?
    78:05
    What's going to happen with all the marble tables? I'm still surprised they're not over at the Switch.
    78:11
    Yeah, it's just like, we've already, like Mel said, it's a huge market for them on Switch. And Switch is very much like an introductory platform for a lot of people. They'll go, oh, Pinball. This is good. Let's have more.
    78:26
    Yeah, I wish my son would get into it, but too bad. That's right. He's too busy playing Smash Brothers and whatever else he's playing on. What is he playing? Hollow Knight?
    78:39
    He's playing all sorts of other things on Switch, not pinball. So I wanted to just close out the show, because I think we're probably done with the interview. Yeah, we are. So I'm going to close out the show with, since you've been telling us all about the fancy vertical orientation of your screen and doing cabinet mode and everything, I thought, well, I've now got a nice fancy new screen that I borrowed from work as part of all this lockdown stuff, and I've got it on a monitor arm so I can rotate it and stuff like that. I'd be crazy not to try that on FX3, right? You would absolutely be crazy not to try it on that. So I did the other night. And yeah, that should be the way you play pinball.
    79:18
    That should be, honestly, the way that you play FX3. number one for those of you probably i'm well and truly a late adopter with this i'm sure but if you if you haven't tried it yet the things that you get are super clear inserts that you can read number one even if you have a big screen in landscape orientation when you move it to portrait and then you start playing some of these games you go wow that these inserts are like amazing when you see him. So there's that. The fact that, you know, even in the regular view angles without any sort of cabinet mode enabled,
    80:01
    the playfield view is just much better. And it's just the way to play. It is really the way to play. And, you know, then you get the benefit of running in tape mode for things like Demon's Tilt and all these other games that are Tate-enabled.
    80:21
    So, yeah, do it. If you can rotate your monitor, rotate your monitor and, yeah, play it vertically because you won't go back. It especially makes View 8 in the Williams tables make sense. Amazing, yeah. It looks amazing. Yeah, you get so much of that wasted real estate cut out. That's the problem with playing Landscape. you know you get all this like you know decor that really means nothing um but when you're playing portrait everything's like zoomed in and it looks amazing the detail that you can see like i was playing you know a couple of tables and realizing things on there that i went oh i had no idea that those things were there in portrait mode i mean landscape mode so yeah it's it's amazing i'm not going back that's for sure not to mention that as far as like the the insert lights at the like say on medieval madness um that are at the very top in lanes that are obscured completely by all the plastics and everything in portrait mode you can see them and that's right like i i think that you know during beta testing you know i would you know raise the problems with positioning of some of the cool visual extras, go, oh, yeah, they're obscuring bits of the play field. But when you do it in portrait mode, those problems disappear. So I just wonder if the developers are actually also doing all their development in portrait mode as well, because it seems that when you go into portrait mode, a lot of the problems with the visual extras, like hiding things, are gone. Well, there's some things that work out better in that and some things that don't necessarily work out better. Like, for instance, the scary clown in Hurricane. In top-down mode, you're basically just seeing the top of his head. And when he throws a pie, he's throwing it vertically down the screen, not at the screen as if when you're in landscape mode. Some of those visual enhancements are obviously made for landscape mode and not cabinet mode. But I would also argue, who cares?
    82:45
    Exactly. I mean, the visual mode enhancements are nice. And in most cases, the characters I could take a leave. They're nice, but it's the other things that I like in the enhanced mode. It's not necessarily the characters jumping around on the screen. Not to mention, now you have a longer play field, which makes more sense when selecting your angles of shooting off the flipper. You now see the angle clearly, as opposed to having to apply a perspective view to it and figuring out how that affects where the ball goes. Definitely games with upper flippers change dramatically when you're playing in portrait mode or tape mode. It really does make a huge difference to how you shoot. And the same thing applies with, because I've played it in Zachariah Pinball, and, oh, it's a world of difference on those tables. I have to give that a go. A world of difference. I have to fire up Zachariah, I think, and see what that's like. Speaking of things that you had in the house, and this is where I'll finish up, that you go, well, what the hell. So I moved my friend's Oculus Rift from the garage into my office here, and then let it taunt me for a day, and I was like, okay, fine. I'll hook it up.
    84:05
    So I hooked it up, scrambling to find the proper amount of USB 3.0 ports that were on my computer, having to disconnect my second monitor because I only have one HDMI out from the back of my computer, and that's what's feeding my second monitor because my second monitor doesn't have the, what is it the dvi port or whatever that everything is now using oh yeah yeah the um a display port yeah yeah um so it doesn't have a display port where my computer has three display port outs so there's a monitor issue but anyway so i got the thing hooked up threw it on my head hoping that maybe it was just how it was set up at my friend's house that was the problem that i was experiencing with it and i can say nope that's not the issue right it's still a case of the backgrounds, you know, your environment that looks all fine. The second you see text, it's so hard to read. It's not clear. There's a massive amount of ghosting coming off like the white text. It looks like, uh, it's not calibrated where all the colors kind of shift, um, a little bit to the side. So you're getting like a little bit of red bleed and a little bit of blue bleed coming out of the white itself and then because you're in a 3d environment you move slightly or you move forward it'll kind of bring in and it's playing with it too much it's too hard to read the text and it's fuzzy um the oculus rift doesn't have the best uh resolution so there's kind of a bit of a screen door effect going on and i literally within a half an hour was and all we were doing was playing with the demo that was in it i didn't even hook up the touch controllers and within half an hour I was just like I can't handle this I don't own any of the pinball in VR so I wasn't able to play it in VR I do want to I did want to try it out with my box but I didn't want to download Stern VR and like I said I don't own Zen VR so I just disconnected everything and was like I'm going to be happy playing in portrait mode and yeah i'll deal with that unless for some amazing reason i'm able to uh be gifted the zen vr um but i'm not crossing my fingers at all for that so no anyway that's my well look you know you gotta give it a go like i've been i've been sort of going through my collection of tech and going back to things like you know i've got a set of bluetooth headphones that are compatible with the ones I'm wearing now, the little in-ear ones.
    86:52
    Plugging those back in and trying to go wireless for a bit and seeing if that improves things on a day-to-day basis. It's time to just rethink things at the moment. That's right. What else have you got to do? You might as well dig through your closet and see if you can't. Something that made you frustrated earlier, see if you can't unfrestrate yourself. That's right. yeah because Zacharia VR also costs more money so I don't want to spend any money right now yeah that's right like many other people yeah alright so anyway hey folks thanks for tuning in saying hi to us yeah this will be a longer episode today we sort of like talked a fair bit but that's okay that is okay alright as usual kind of the mode of things that we're doing, we're probably not going to be around next week. But we'll be back the week after that, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. We'll talk about more stuff and things, as you've come to expect from us. That's what this show is apparently all about. Until then, folks, bye-bye. Bye-bye.