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Episode 155 - Are You Not Rumortained?

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 19m·analyzed·Nov 29, 2021
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers discusses Stern distribution limits, Spooky game sentiment, and Chicago Gaming rumor with old-school pinball demand.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss pinball news, rumors, and community updates on Eclectic Gamers Podcast Episode 155. They address persistent audio quality issues from previous episodes, then pivot to pinball content including distribution constraints at Stern, negative sentiment around Spooky's Halloween and Ultraman games, and an extended rumor segment about Chicago Gaming Company next licensed movie title potentially featuring old-school pinball mechanics without ramps. The episode concludes with their 'Build a Bank' segment, a community voting game selecting games from Pinside's top 100.

Key Claims

  • Stern has informed distributors that pros and premiums will be rationed in limited quantities, similar to LEs, expected to drive above-MSRP pricing

    high confidence · Dennis citing discussion from recent Pinball Show episode with Zach Minney about 2022 distribution

  • People are dumping Spooky Halloween deposits at a loss to exit pre-orders

    high confidence · Dennis reporting observations from Pinside discussions and personal contacts

  • Chicago Gaming Company's next game is a non-remake licensed movie title

    medium confidence · Dennis discussing established rumor previously mentioned on the podcast; attributed to rumor mill

  • The controlling entity behind the Chicago Gaming Company license is demanding old-school pinball experience with no ramps

    medium confidence · Dennis presenting this as recent rumor corner information from 'my rumors'

  • Pinball Players Podcast has ended and released their final episode

    high confidence · Dennis stating he heard the final episode yesterday; praising Joe and Jeff for properly announcing the end

Notable Quotes

  • “People just want the rumors. They don't care if they're accurate, inaccurate, made up, totally true and proven with evidence. They just want the rumors.”

    Dennis @ ~01:05:00 — Justifies introducing 'Rumor Corner' as recurring segment due to audience demand; shows community appetite for speculation regardless of verification

  • “There are a lot of people, in my view, trying to psych themselves up that this is a good game, but there's another audience that either is like going, whoo, I dodged a bullet.”

    Dennis @ ~00:28:00 — Describes divided community sentiment on Spooky Halloween; suggests post-purchase cognitive dissonance among some buyers

  • “If you love it, I love the theme. I love the idea of Halloween. But if the layout isn't good, Alien was that for me... I just didn't care for that layout. And it's not a terrible layout. It just wasn't worth the money to me.”

    Dennis @ ~00:40:00 — Establishes Dennis's criteria for game value: theme interest insufficient without solid layout; frames his Halloween non-purchase decision

  • “The controlling entity behind whatever license this movie license is, is demanding an old school pinball experience. By that, like, no ramps.”

    Dennis @ ~01:15:00 — Introduces key detail of Chicago Gaming rumor; suggests possible Beatles-style or Total Nuclear Annihilation-style game design

  • “I just... Okay, the old school pinball demand thing, like I said, that screamed Quentin Tarantino. Well, and I'm guessing... Does this mean something like Stern Beatles? We could go further, Tony, and we could say, does this mean EM?”

    Dennis @ ~01:20:00 — Speculates on design possibilities given old-school mandate; connects rumor to potential IP and game mechanics

Entities

DennispersonTonypersonZach MinneypersonLyman SheetspersonJoepersonJeffpersonChris ChandlerpersonSkippypersonStern PinballcompanySpooky Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Pinball Players Podcast officially ended with proper announcement of closure

    high · Dennis: 'the Pinball Players podcast...just ended their show. They just put out their final episode. I just heard it yesterday...they actually said, oh, we are stopping'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Significant negative sentiment around Spooky's Halloween and Ultraman with players dumping deposits at loss to exit pre-orders

    high · Dennis observing: 'people are dumping their deposits at a loss to get out of Halloween' and 'there's a lot of people...who have their game...They're like, I need to get rid of this, but I don't want to lose this much money'

  • ?

    community_signal: Community actively requesting rumor segment as permanent podcast fixture despite accuracy concerns

    high · Dennis: 'he like several have contacted us about wanting the uh the rumor segment to be a permanent fixture of the show. People, they want the rumors.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Halloween layout concerns potentially unfixable through code updates alone despite community hopes for Lyman Sheets intervention

    medium · Dennis: 'there are things about it when I looked at it...where I'm like, I just don't know what you can do with it' regarding layout-based limitations

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Potential move toward Beatles-style or Total Nuclear Annihilation-style old-school design for Chicago Gaming game if no-ramps rumor is true

    medium · Dennis speculating: 'if this rumor is true...are we going to see something kind of like Stern Beatles...which old school style, single level, but modern rules'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.239

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, November 28th. This is episode 155. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. And hopefully the audio quality is better for folks. We'll see. Hopefully. We've had, I've got, I want to touch on, while we do our intros, I want to touch on, we have had a number of episodes, Tony, where we've had issues with audio, as you know. Right. We've had weird transitions to different equipment. We've had transitions to different setups, you know, when we do Zencaster versus when we started recording through Skype, when we do local recordings versus cloud recordings, when we do this in-person setup with virtual mixing boards versus sharing a microphone, all that sort of stuff. So as I noted last time during the episode, I had switched this computer to Windows 11 and my voice meter as the name of the virtual mixing board we have been using for quite a while. Right. It wasn't immediately showing like the drivers weren't there as long and short of it. So but there was a new thing called Microsoft Array, which was running. And when I looked at the feed of the or the waveform, I should say, while we were recording, looked OK. afterwards not so okay and um so we have never had as much feedback about our poor audio than that episode and it was actually specific to your audio so my audio was terrible it was well i i have a theory but so i mean we had a number of emails and messages that came in And so Skippy wrote to us and said – I'll just read part of it. I just wanted to say that I appreciate you guys and appreciate you guys taking the time out of your day while being in the bathroom to record this podcast. It's one of my favorites.
2:07
I did write back to him and I did assure Skippy that you were not dropping a deuce while recording the episode.
2:16
I was just sitting there. I wasn't actually doing nothing. And it's just the only quiet place there is. Yes. So, and then Michael W. wrote to us, and the subject alone is sufficient, and just said, no more tin can telephones, please.
Chicago Gaming Company
company
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Pinball Players Podcastproduct
Pinball Showproduct
Eclectic Gamers Podcastproduct
Halloweengame
Ultramangame
Stern Godzillagame
Stern Jurassic Parkgame
Attack from Marsgame
Stern Beatlesgame
Total Nuclear Annihilationgame
  • $

    market_signal: Stern limiting distribution of pros and premiums via allocation system similar to LEs, expected to drive above-MSRP pricing from distributors

    high · Dennis citing Zach Minney discussion from Pinball Show episode about 2022 distribution: 'the distribution network has been informed that there will be allotments of pros and premiums rationed out, much like LEs'

  • ?

    product_concern: Community perception that game theme appeal insufficient to overcome poor layout design (Alien example cited)

    medium · Dennis: 'if the layout isn't good, Alien was that for me...I just didn't care for that layout. And it's not a terrible layout. It just wasn't worth the money to me.'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Chicago Gaming Company next title is non-remake licensed movie game

    medium · Dennis: 'the rumor mill has been saying that the next Chicago Gaming Company game is a non-remake licensed movie title' with speculation around directors like Quentin Tarantino

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Chicago Gaming Company's next game features old-school pinball design (no ramps) demanded by controlling license entity

    medium · Dennis presenting as rumor: 'the controlling entity behind whatever license this movie license is, is demanding an old school pinball experience. By that, like, no ramps.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Podcast listener base showing preference for rumor/speculation content over verified news

    medium · Dennis noting: 'People just want the rumors. They don't care if they're accurate, inaccurate, made up, totally true and proven with evidence. They just want the rumors.'

    • 2:32
    And I had a few others. So, I don't know exactly what the issue was with the array. I'll give you a guess, and I don't know if it's true or not. my guess is based off of the sound differences is even though it said array and i thought it was feeding from both microphones i think it was only pulling from mine which would make sense which would be why everything got kind of echoey with you but my audio was pretty decent now the weird thing though is normally uh what i do is i use the virtual mixing board and i dump it immediately into audacity right and i was using the micro the microsoft array into audacity it must have been auto adjusting the gain because otherwise I should have been peeking out if it was gaining enough to make you sound normal volume your volume was fine so what I think is it was that array program or whatever was dynamically adjusting the gain on the fly and I'm in cardioid mode so it wasn't even pointed at you and that's why it's it was so echoey with you but my voice sounded relatively normal.
    3:34
    The weird thing is, normally, at least with Windows 10, in Audacity, if dynamic gain is going on, the microphone slider is moving. And I watched it while we were recording, and it was never moving. Weird. So, again, but Windows 11, I don't know. We're back to using voice meter. I got the drivers back on. It seems to be working. We did do a test. I put on a headset, too. Because we did do an audio test with the array, but I have potato speakers in the laptop. Right. All that was, was to make sure... You know, like if we don't do wasabi, we use the wrong driver. We get all that digitization and stuff. If we use some of the old school drivers, it doesn't work right. So anyway, people don't really care about that. What they care about is what's been going on with you. What's been going on? We had Thanksgiving, and we did Turkey Day stuff.
    4:19
    I've been – I've got a correction, first of all. You're never wrong. No, no, I'm wrong all the time. No. People just don't call me on it as much as they should. Last time I said that Jen O'Neill came from outside of Activision Blizzard, that's a lie. She was an Activision employee for an extended period of time before moving to the Blizzard side of things to be co-leader. Oh, okay. So she came from outside of Blizzard, kind of. But she was with Activision. Okay. So other than that, I've been working on a bunch of different projects, still organizing. I've completely redone a big chunk of my game room again, which I believe I talked about last time. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my PS4 because I don't have a spot to put it currently. So it's just kind of sitting all stacked up on the corner of my desk until I figure out what to do with it.
    5:13
    I started re-watching Babylon 5 because it's been years and years and years since I watched it. years and uh the creator j michael straczynski is putting out a pilot for a reboot he just finished writing the script and he turned it into i think the cw is where he's shopping it to okay so i figured i should watch the classic before they massacre it uh i mean he's working on it it i'm less fearful of it being massacred by him working on it but i consider some of the acting and some of the roles in Battle on 5 to be some of the strongest bits of sci-fi we've seen, period, to this point.
    5:56
    Like, the entire arc and growth and character arc of Jakar is just one of the truly great things in sci-fi that's happened.
    6:09
    I've also been playing a new modded campaign in Battletech, and I picked up 40k Space Marines and the complete collection of Horizon Zero Dawn on the Steam Autumn Sale because the Space Marine, it's the anniversary collection with everything, and it was on sale for like $15. So I figured, go for it. I started playing them, but, you know, that's the nature of Steam sales. They'll just sit there for – Yeah, they'll be there for you when you're ready. When I'm ready someday. Well, I have not been doing a whole lot. I have been playing a little bit of Halo Infinite. Not a lot. I'm not a huge Halo multiplayer player, but I've been doing a little bit of that. Mostly Battlefield 2042, I did pick that up because I am a big Battlefield player. Right. Not according to that Xbox Museum app. According to the Xbox Museum app, my top game for the last five years has been Overwatch. But now that there will soon not be a Blizzard anymore, I gotta get back into Battlefield. Yeah. So, so, you know, you gotta, you gotta make Tim. Um, uh, and, uh, I have a couple ongoing watch projects, which I've already whined about off air, and I won't put them on air, because both of those I thought would be done by now, and they are not. Uh, I watched the final season of the Amazon, Amazon Prime show, Hannah. Don't know if you've ever seen Hannah. Never seen any of it. The female assassin, uh, show. It's, uh, I guess they've, it's, it's only a six episode, wrap up, but I thought they actually closed it out pretty well.
    7:47
    My wife and I have been watching Wheel of Time because it's her favorite book series. I knew she was a reader of Wheel of Time. I thought you had read it as well. I've read it multiple times as well. It's her favorite book series of all time. I rank it highly, but it's nowhere near the top. It's not even in my top fantasy series of all time.
    8:06
    I've never read it. I've not watched any of it. I've seen that the show has been getting mixed reviews. I wasn't sure if I wanted to start it or not. I think the mixed reviews come from the basic stuff I've seen. Most of the complaints that I've seen is from book readers who are mad because it's not an exact carbon copy of the book.
    8:30
    It's 14 books and like two and a half million words, and they can't direct carbon copy that to the TV. I mean, it's just, it won't, it won't work. I mean, seriously, there would be entire episodes based around like one person having an inner monologue in a bath.
    8:56
    Well, you know, book readers have their needs, though. I mean, to be fair, taking out the description of clothing by just showing the clothing instantly cuts it from 14 books and 2 million words to like 6 books and 750,000 words.
    9:15
    Okay. Well, see, a picture is worth a thousand. It is. And as you know, because I was playing it when you came over, I am still working on Hades Runs in the epilogue portion. So anyway, speaking of our epilogue, we're not there yet. We've got to go through a couple of segments. People have to suffer first. They do. They must suffer. But life is suffering, so they need to get used to it. Life is pain. You just get used to it. I'll get up right this minute, Mommy.
    9:47
    Write it into a clickergamespodcast.gmail.com if you know what movie that's from. I'll give you a hint. It's not a recent one.
    9:54
    Okay, so, pinball. Hey, we're back to the early part of the year again. There isn't very much news going on. People want to pretend there's a lot of news going on. but there really isn't very much. I can tell you a couple of kind of news-ish pieces if you want to touch on them. But before I do that, let me go ahead and mention that I did on our Eclectic Gamers YouTube channel, something we don't use a whole lot of, but I do on occasion. I did release a parody video of the Cactus Canyon remake reveal trailer. So there is a link to the show in the show notes for anyone that wants to see it. It's taking that cutting edge, straight down the middle content. And I've dropped in so many movie references and game references. and there's one part. I don't know if you've seen it. I did. Okay. Then you probably recognize the part where you hear this German guy going, Bier!
    10:44
    Not very many people know that one, but it's in there. So in terms of the not much pinball news, but what there is, I can tell you recent discussions, and this came up on the recent episode I was on of the pinball show. For those that haven't heard that, you can go over to the Pinball Network and check it out. But we had a very lengthy discussion, me and Zach Minney, the host, about what's going on in 2022 with pinball distribution and the limited quantities from Stern. It was very Stern specific. Right. And I think we've touched on it before. I know we at least privately have. But it was really just Zach reiterating that the distribution network has been informed that there will be allotments of pros and premiums rationed out, much like LEs. And Zach's speculation is that a lot of distributors will be raising their prices beyond MSRP. That doesn't surprise me. They're going to have to just stay alive. And so there's a big discussion on – well, I don't know if I'd necessarily describe it as big by pin side stangers, but there is a pin side discussion that's touching on that as well. I think the original poster said that they didn't even know what the pinball show was. So apparently there have been signs of this cropping up as well. and yeah we'll have to see on that but you know again I think it's something we've already sort of touched on another little item that came up on the spooky side that I've been seeing a number of people on and I don't think this is going to shock you but apparently people are dumping their deposits at a loss to get out of Halloween no still haven't played it I still don't say I still don't have an official opinion Tony I don't have an official opinion but there are a lot of people that, or as I saw someone describe it, there aren't a lot of people that are diamond-handing this thing, like it's GameStop stock that they're going for. I still, on occasion, see one of the active, sort of supportive threads on Pinside, and there's a lot of people, in my view, trying to psych themselves up that this is a good game, but there's another audience that either is like going, whoo, I dodged a bullet. I was able to take a few hundred dollars loss on my non-refundable deposit and sell it to someone else or people who have their game, be it Halloween or Ultraman. They're like, I need to get rid of this, but I don't want to lose this much money.
    13:08
    Ouch. Ouch, indeed. And there's a lot of those of the few that I've heard from that are diamond handing seem to be hoping that Spooky can fix it with code. Oh, yeah. Code fixes everything. You know, if you've got Lyman Sheets on speed dial, maybe he can. I mean, there are some people, case in point, there are a lot of people, actually, I would say, that don't think Walking Dead is a great layout. But it's the code that makes it a great game. Right. Walking Dead, in my view, though, isn't a bad layout. It's just not a high-flow layout. And, again, I haven't played Halloween. But there are things about it when I looked at it when it was revealed and what streams I've seen where I'm like, I just don't know what you can do with it. Right. But I still need to play it to really form a proper opinion. So I'm not pushing one way or the other. If you love it, I love the theme. I love the idea of Halloween. You probably prefer the theme Ultraman. I do. But for me, there have been lots of themes that I was interested in. But if the layout isn't good, Alien was that for me. And I liked the code of Alien, as I've said numerous times. I thought Joe Schober's code on Alien was a great idea. But I just didn't care for that layout. And it's not a terrible layout. It just wasn't worth the money to me. Well, maybe when the new one comes out. Maybe. or you know you love the look of rob zombie but oh god it was so bad oh such a terrible player i loved the art i'm like this is cool i remember and then it was like oh i really like to get a translate it's too bad that there's so much yeah money and then and then it was hot garbage yeah we did have to play that one a lot and we did and it got to the point where it's like do i just want to take out do i just want to forfeit so i don't have to play this game so let me go ahead and hit our rumor corner uh now actually before i move to our final thing and we did have an email it was actually from uh chris chandler who was writing in about something you're going to touch on in the video game segment regarding activision blizzard your most favorite topic in the whole wide world of favorite topics however in his email he did say uh he like several have contacted us about wanting the uh the rumor segment to be a permanent fixture of the show. People, they want the rumors. They want the rumors. They don't care if they're accurate, inaccurate, made up, totally true and proven with evidence. They just want the rumors. People just want the rumors. Okay. We are people of the people. Are we not? We are the most people of the people podcast. Yes. Shout out to the Pinball Players podcast. They just ended their show. They just put out their final episode. I just heard it yesterday. So congratulations to Joe and Jeff. Yes, yet another Jeff and Pinball. and it was one of the few shows I still I don't listen to a lot of podcasts anymore in the pinball realm it was one of the few I still had in my phone not anymore though because it's done because it's over you don't keep that subscription just in case they pop some secret thing up eventually but what will happen is if head to head does this like they did a holiday episode just like a year later and when I hear about it I just go and download the episode in that case and listen to it on the computer is. Or I temporarily resubscribe if I want to. I have a couple podcasts that haven't put a podcast out in five years that are still on my, still in my feed. No, it's usually, if you've gone without gone a year without putting something out, I drop you because I'm like, you died and you didn't have the, you didn't have the decency, the decency people to just tell the community that you're dead. Just tell us you died. That's the The biggest thing with podcasts is a lot of times they don't, and that's where like Pinball Players Podcast did it right. They actually said, oh, we are stopping. Here is an announcement that we're stopping. There's so many of them that don't do it. They just stop recording. They just stop.
    16:53
    So usually a year is my threshold of rules, but anyone who's gone six months on the sus list. Right. Like if you've gone six months and you couldn't even scrape together a 10-minute episode, you're on a sus list. Right. Now, I can see putting certain caveats on that. Specifically, there's one podcast I follow that's kind of always been part of their thing. It's that they are three people who record a podcast together. One of them lives in Texas. One of them lives in New York. And one of them lives in Canada. So when they do record, and they all work different weird things. So when they do record, it's basically when they get the chance to. So sometimes they'll go and they will drop three podcasts in a month. And then other times they might drop one podcast in three months. I've never seen a gap bigger than six months for them. But they flat out say it straight at the beginning. It's like, we all have wildly divergent schedules and we record when we can. Right. And different shows do it. It depends on your pacing, too. A good case in point is Hardcore History. I know not to expect a Hardcore History podcast every quarter. I know it's going to take him more than three months to put out an episode. I'm lucky if I get two a year. I expect one a year. That's what I mean. I'm happy if I get one a year. If he doesn't give us one a year, I unsubscribe.
    18:25
    Dan's got... Look, Dan's getting paid. Dan's got to... I've never seen him take a year. So if he goes that far, I'll be like, Dan, goodbye. I don't know if I could do that, though. Revolutions, Mike Duncan's podcast is about to end once it finishes the Russian Revolution. And then Dan will be my only history one left. Dan's my only history one at this point. I like Revolutions. It's a good show. I did start listening to a new podcast and then dropped it because I couldn't keep up with it because they were dropping like three podcasts a week at a time. And it's too much. It's just too much. It's like, oh, no. Now that's a whole other matter of people that do really frequent releases and make their shows really long. Yeah, it's like a two and a half hour podcast and they do it like three times a week. And it's like, your stuff's interesting, but I don't have the time for this.
    19:16
    So with that divergence from pinball, let me divert us back to Chris's email, which is what triggered all of this. Where he said regarding the rumor section, he suggested a couple of names. I'm currently calling it Rumor Quarter. I've basically stolen that from Gaming on 10 and their DDR corner. Yeah. I'm confessing this up front. So shout out to Nick and Don. Confession. Confessions. A new fragrance by Bimbo Clyde. No, it's not. It's the new Game Buy. Jersey Jack.
    19:41
    Confessions. The wizard mode. Our designers telling you things. Chris suggested a couple of names for this segment. And I killing them both but I throw them out here Okay So you know One of them was rheumatoid amyritis I have a high appreciation for that one It a dad joke So it's getting read out. I like it. But we have standards. I can understand the veto. I'm just saying I like it. And he also suggested that we just call it, are you not rheumatained?
    20:19
    I like that one too. Gladiator. I salute you. Good job, Chris. You are a resident gladiator. They're both good.
    20:29
    But not happening. It's Rumor Corner. The boring Rumor Corner. So here's Rumor Corner for this episode. Are you not rumortained? Maybe I'll throw that in at the end. But we're not calling this segment. This is Rumor Corner!
    20:46
    Cool. Falling into a pit of a bunch of nonsense. Ooh, look, it's pretty. Pinball and ramps. You'll find both down there. I'm not dead. I'm quite badly hurt. I'm in quite a lot of pain. Somebody please. Hello? Can you hear me? Can you help me, please? I'm in quite a lot of pain. Why haven't you got Austin Powers 2? Why not? What are you doing with it? He fell down a hole. Just one. There you go.
    21:19
    Okay. So here's the latest rumor quarter. The rumor mill is saying, this is not new rumor news to pretty much anyone, but the rumor mill has been saying that the next Chicago Gaming Company game is a non-remake licensed movie title. We've talked about that. Basic Instinct. We've talked about that before. Just wait till you see the wizard man.
    21:44
    I don't want to talk about it. Okay. All right. Okay. Here's the interesting part that people might not have heard before that I'm hearing amongst my rumors. My rumors are telling me that the controlling entity behind whatever license this movie license is, is demanding an old school pinball experience. By that, like, no ramps. Quentin Tarantino. I could see him doing it. It screams Quentin Tarantino thing. so I'm wondering based off of if this rumor is true and the other rumor about it being a licensed movie is true are we going to see something kind of like Stern Beatles because that's the most recent I mean single level games all we've recently got were Total Nuclear Annihilation which obviously went for an entire old school feel from rules on up and then Stern Beatles which old school style, single level, but modern rules. Both, I think, are really fun games. So it could work. But I know a lot of people instinctively are like, where are the ramps? There was someone who actually added ramps to TNA. Why? Because they can. Okay, that works. Good for you. So that's... I just... Okay, the old school pinball demand thing, like I said, that screamed Quentin Tarantino. Well, and I'm guessing... Does this mean something like Stern Beatles? We could go further, Tony, and we could say, does this mean EM? Oh, gobble holes. Actual electrical mechanics. Like, you're going to put in reels, and you're going to be using a bunch of... You know, that could work with the right licensed movie.
    23:29
    I think it'd be more like Beatles. I think people are going to want... If it's a movie, they're going to want the screen used with... I mean, I know there are some people that are like, they want to just watch the entire movie on the... Which I don't understand. If you want to watch the movie, just watch the movie. And then the next thing you know, we get Bubbly Bobo.
    23:47
    So, anyway. So, are you not room retained? I am room retained. I'm just kind of... I just... Now, I'm sorry. I'm just like locked now into this what would be a good Quentin Tarantino movie to be a pinball machine. And the thing is, I don't think most of them would.
    24:10
    You know, that's fair. And I've not seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, so I'm not sure. Django Unchained. Django would be okay. Jackie Brown's too slow. Jackie Brown's too slow. Everyone's going to yell about Pulp Fiction. Yeah, Pulp Fiction would be the obvious. I disagree. I don't think it would work very well. What about Inglourious Bastards? Inglourious Bastards could work It's goofy I mean Kill Bill could be good It's got enough over the tops I think Kill Bill could work very well Kill Bill of any of them Because the modes Going after each of the vipers Leans itself to the modes So that's where I think that stands out Versus like a Pulp Fiction Then again I guess with Pulp Fiction You could justify your random mode order By saying well it's not in chronological order as a movie What about Hateful Eight? I really liked that movie I did really enjoy that movie I don't know Westerns aren't really going to sell I know I guess it's not technically a Tarantino movie but I mean he wrote it but Dusk Till Dawn yeah but again I wouldn't think you'd have controlling stake in it and would Rodriguez demand old school pinball is that his thing I think he'd be all like, let's just put a bunch of lines and make it look like gritty film, Planet Terror style and then just do Desperado. Oh.
    25:39
    Death Proof would fit both with the... It's such a bad movie. It is. It's just one bad movie. It's horrible. I will never watch Death Proof again. The only cool thing about it is the car. Yeah, but that whole feel, it would fit in real well with that whole like going back to like 70 solid state machine kind of fits with the whole ground. Yeah. I mean, that's a fair proof. I mean, I just can't imagine CTC agreeing to death proof. No one bought death proof. They all bought planet terror because it was so much better. So much better. All right. So anyway, that's rumor quarter. So we only have one last thing here in pinball, Tony, build a bank. I'm bringing it back.
    26:21
    Now, once again, I dug through, I dug through the Facebook and the poll stuff, and it's like, no. They did it with groups, and then you have to do special stuff otherwise. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to do special easy stuff. This is the way I've seen others do voting, so this is how we're going to do it on Facebook like we used to. It's another straw poll. Yeah. I'm not going to throw up images. I'm just going to put up the list of the games that we pick. I've got my little pen and my paper so I can write down what's chosen. So what I'll do is people will vote with those specialized like symbols. We won't use the thumbs up because that's the default one. Right. So the way I'm going to do it is I'll put the listing up on Facebook. We're, of course, going to go over our picks here. And if you want to vote for Tony's list, use the care symbol. That's the one with the little happy face that's hugging the heart. And then with me, use the wow symbol. That's the little shocky looking face. So that's how we're going to do it. And I'll explain that in the post so people see it there. So and just to see how this goes, we're just going to do four pins, not the six like we used to. So the way I'm going to do it is I'm going to let you start first. And what we're going to do is top 1 through 10, 51 through 60, 100 through 110, and then 200 through 210. All of them solid state, not doing EM. And as I noted, you get to go first, and I'll go ahead. I have it loaded up here. So here are the top 10 games. We're not doing like the random thing. You can pick any of these 10. And, of course, I cannot pick what you've picked. Okay. We'll still keep that. So here they are in order. Number one, Stern Godzilla. Number two, Medieval Madness. Number three, Deadpool. Number four, Stern Jurassic Park. Number five, Attack for Mars. Number six, Jersey Jack Guns and Roses. Number seven, Monster Bash. Number eight, Stern Pinball Iron Maiden. I have to clarify because there is a Stern Electronics. Right. Number nine, Jersey Jack Pirates of the Caribbean. And number ten, Twilight Zone. Obviously there's some bias in here because Attack from Mars is my favorite game of all time. It's your most favorite game. But since we're doing this, we're picking a very specific bank. I am going to go with Godzilla because it's the current hotness. I love that game, both theme and playing.
    28:35
    Okay. You've gone with Godzilla. I will go with Stern Jurassic Park, Elwynn's completed game, which actually has cities that work, unlike Godzilla. Well, no, I understand. You're rolling with the inferior choice, arguing because, well, the code's completed, completed, so it's farther along. Please ignore that at its absolute best with completed code, it's on par with uncompleted code Godzilla fun-wise.
    29:11
    That's a fair argument. And you know what? People may vote and support your overall bank because of that. But I'm just saying that Stern Jurassic Park provided a great deal of approachability that I feel people did not find in particularly Elwynn's Iron Maiden and especially Avengers, which is the one not in the top ten. It's actually 11th currently. But currently, I think there's a lot of confusion with Godzilla. It's so new that we don't really know exactly how the rules will shake out. And while I would be willing to concede with you that its layout is superior as an overall package, I think Jurassic Park is actually the better game. Oh, see, I disagree. I think not only is the layout superior, the overall theming is superior. And because Jurassic Park Stern intentionally steered away from the movies into its own little side story thing, you're going to get more of a nostalgia draw from Godzilla and more of an interest draw from Godzilla over the Jurassic Park. Over the multi-billion dollar Jurassic Park franchise. Yes. With the creative chains unleashed because they didn't have to tie to the movie. Yes. With the Jeep toy. Yes. And the T-Rex. Oh, yes, because the Jeep toy and the T-Rex are so much better than the collapsing building and the bridge. The bridge that no one ever gets to collapse. Yes. What a great toy to point out. Because, oh, yeah, if you're Raymond Davison, you can do enough shots to drop the bridge. Everyone else has never seen that bridge drop. All right. Just because you have your own personal issues. That's round one. So I think we made some pretty compelling arguments. We'll see. The people will decide. But of course, it's not just about one game. It's about four. So next is the 51 through 60th range, and I will pick first there. Yes. And the options here are 51 is Cactus Canyon. 52 is Led Zeppelin. 53 is Bram Stoker's Dracula. 54 is Game of Thrones. 55 is Whirlwind. 56 is Aerosmith 57 is Kiss 58 is Big Bang Bar 59 is The Getaway, High Speed 2 and 60th is Congo and I will actually go ahead and go with Dracula, BSD and so before I argue it, I guess we'll do it like before, what one do you want to go with? I'm going to go with High Speed 2 I thought you would But I couldn't just take it to take it away from me. You could have, because I had two other choices. I mean, I liked a lot of these games. Yeah. I mean, in terms of, I like Game of Thrones, Pro Model in particular. I like Whirlwind a lot, and I would have been happy taking Kongo, too. Those are actually the other three I was thinking about. I was debating between. So, anyway, so just for me with Dracula, I think the reason why it stands out so much to me is, The goal is to do the thing, the stacking, the three things. You know, you want your bats and your rats. You want your 30 million. It's got, in my view, the best, and I'm not a huge video mode fan, but I like the Shoot Wolves video mode better than any other video mode in pinball that I have experienced. And so it just overall as a package was such a goofy movie with Gary Oldman. I just think, yes, you're dealing with her, ah, sounds all the time. Which, of course, I just wish they'd snuck in for her to say, ah, try two shot. But she never says it. But just overall, it's a really simple concept that's really hard to execute. Plus, missed multi-ball, pretty cool. Pretty cool to look at. Understandable arguments. And, you know, you forgot one other good draw to Braum Stoker's Dracula. when you're playing it in tournament and you fail to get everything set up on ball one and your opponent does, you can just quit because it's literally impossible. You could absorb the powers of the top 100 and you're still not going to win because it's too late. I don't know. We saw that really excellent game of BSD at the international tournament where there was a comeback. Though I don't remember what all was actually on ball one. All I remember was there was a major malfunction that they had to resolve. Right. That's not forever. But anyway. I mean, that's the. So your argument is that's the bad thing. That's the bad thing. With high speed, it has very clear goals, much like Dracula. I feel that it is a more balanced game because if you do miss the very clear goal, You still have a chance.
    34:05
    If you don't hit that ball one goal, it's okay. Your game's not over. You still have a chance. And I think that is very important in this type of format. It's something that lets the players have some hope that they can actually pull off what they need to pull off. And I just think it's a funner game. Yeah, I mean, I really do enjoy playing Getaway. The thing is, you raised a good point about you still have a chance. In fact, I'm really glad that they went with a car theme because it's got some of the worst rubber banding in all of pinball. Right up there with Mario Kart or Burnout or anything else. Hey, look, I hit the supercharger and I got two million points. You got ten. Oh, that's super fair. Welcome to catch-up mode. Welcome to miracle points falling from the sky. and whilst uh braum storkers dracula does actually have a number of bugs holy cow so does getaway um it's just it's i wouldn't argue it on competitive standpoint because i don't think getaway is actually very well balanced competitively i think it's got way too many catch-up features but it is a fun game so yeah and i do like getting the beacon going but yeah for me uh braum storkers is uh just a little bit more special on the neatness front so that's why argument, but let's go to the third set, which this is going to be the 100 to 110, and you get to pick first yet again. So I'll read the games real quick. Game number 100 is Medusa, the Bally from 81. 101 is The Who's Tommy. 102 is a tie, so you can pick either of them, Demolition Man or Paragon. 104 is a tie. Dirty Harry or Firepower. 106 is Earthshaker. 107 is Time Machine and The Sopranos. And 109 is Whodunit and Bride of Pinbot 2.0. The Dutch pinball modification. Interesting. And then there's no 110 because obviously where there are doubles, it skips a number. If people are getting confused, understand this is how math works. Interesting.
    36:16
    Tough choices. We're getting to the ones where it's kind of like, I could do without any of them. But actually, I like most of these games too. Yeah. It's just the choice of the two, much tougher. I'm actually, you know what? I don't know. I'm going to go with Demolition Man. Okay. And I will actually go with Firepower. That's what I was debating going with. but I figured my bank already has with high speed. I wanted to get something more between the two, because I've got Godzilla and then I've got high speed. So I felt like Demolition Man felt better in between. Well, Demolition Man is a really fun game.
    37:09
    And that would have been the other one I would have considered taking. So we were debating the same two games. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, for me with Firepower and all these, I do own Firepower. So in one sense, I guess I could always go with the, well, my money with my mouth is build a bank here.
    37:26
    Granted, it's one of the more affordable games in this section, or it was back in the day. No games are affordable anymore. Firepower is just, it's simplistic brutality. It is. Those stand-up, six stand-up targets are the way to activate your multiball. if you're playing for multi-ball which is not the competitive strategy because there's no scoring bonus for it but if that's your goal that's the casual goal of the game very difficult to achieve obviously you get to have an interesting bonus multiplier build up by going up top to the top lanes it's got a super fun spinner in my view to rip again got to hit those stand-ups if you want to light it and actually make it worth anything but it is worth a lot if you can do it and will stay lit until you drain you know it's got a kick back on left and it had speech, it had triple multiball. It was a really fun experience, especially if you take it in the context of the time it came from. But it's early Steve Ritchie before he was flowing. Because it's not really a flow. It's a fast game, but it's not a flow game. Right. So for those reasons, I think it's one of the best 80s games, especially when we're talking numeric, pre-alphanumeric pinball experiences. It's really hard, but not in that even the right shots are unfairly hard Flash Gordon way. Did that make sense? Yeah. Flash Gordon's unfair. It's completely unfair. Firepower is fair. You decide what you want to risk. You want to keep going up top and just building bonus multiplier until you get it maxed out? You can do that. You want to just shoot spinners and not like them? You can do that. You want to go and earn all the big points? You've got to go for those center targets at some stage. That's why I picked Firepower. Yeah. See, with Demolition Man, I feel that it is one of those interesting games that falls from that time period of licensing where the games were really hit or miss compared to the movies.
    39:21
    And Demolition Man as a game is a lot of fun. And the movie is very special in its own way. but just some of the little gimmicks in the Demolition Man makes it enjoyable if you can find one with a working claw I personally like the vertical handles oh yeah the trigger handles I like those but just overall it a game that I feel maintains its enjoyment during playthroughs without being so I just chopping wood
    40:04
    And it could just be that I don't know how to play it right, but I enjoy the game, and I think that's a big, important combination.
    40:12
    Okay, well, I'm not really going to criticize Demolition Man. You already said the main thing, the claw never works. Yeah, I admit claw never works I think I've only ever played one that had a working claw Well sometimes they disable it too Because of the scoring Like everyone just goes for ball lock Right Alright so last set Is going to be our 200 to 210 range I will pick first here The game options are Rank 200 is Doctor Dude 201 is Nazcar 202 is Sega Godzilla 203 is Maverick 204 is Atlantis 205 is Alien Poker 206 is Gladiators 207 is a tie with Joust and that's the Williams dual joust there's an EM Joust but obviously we're doing Solid State and also Data East Simpsons 209 is World Poker Tour and 210 is LaserQ and I will pick Dr. Dude which is interesting to me but not a surprise I will go with World Poker Tour.
    41:18
    That is not a surprise. So in terms of Dr. Dude, it was one of the that game is so obnoxious in terms of what it is. It's so cheesy 80s, like weird science-esque sort of thing. But it's one of my favorite System 11 games. Not my favorite at all, but it's up there because I, when we, we actually had one on a location. I finally got to put a lot of time on it then. And just the layout is so weird. You know, going, you go into the mix master, you're trying to go and get the shots off on the left. You've got the bully target to hit. It's just, it feels like there's a lot to shoot for in the game. And yeah, because it's a system 11, the rules are pretty straightforward. What you're trying to do and go for, and you're, you're making your progress to your multi-ball, but just like mechanically, it's really diverse style game. And I think the way they went with it, with the cheesy theme, it works. So, yeah, it's one of my, I think, one of the better System 11 games. So that's why I pick it.
    42:23
    Yeah, I can definitely see that argument. I always kind of preferred Party Zone to Dr. Dude. I think it's just a little bit better game, but that was a little higher rated. So obviously other people think the same thing. card games in pinball have a long history and world poker tour was the last of them that i can think of but it is just a fun combination of drops and the more modern aesthetic of games i mean it's an 06 game so it's from the dark times and for being from the dark times and how things were. It's really enjoyable even if the theming is a little weak. Overall, I've always enjoyed that game. We had it on tournament rounds for quite a long time. Always had a good time with it. So I think that it is a good modern example of the classic poker game that was so much of pinball's history back in the day when everything was poker or pool. Between poker and pool, that at one point in time was like 60% of all pinball games.
    43:50
    Yes. Trust his scientific analysis of it. You can take that to the bank. Alright, so those are our picks. So again, Tony's Bill the Bank is Stern Godzilla, Getaway, Demolition Man, and World Poker Tour. And mine is Stern Jurassic Park, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Firepower, and Dr. Dude. So we'll have that up on Facebook, and people will do a little icon to vote, and we'll see if that works. And who knows? Maybe we'll have more news, and I won't have to run a contest. I won't have to run a game. But I was like, nah, we'll go ahead and run a game. It's been a long time since we ran a game. Yeah, I looked at our website, actually. I was looking at it earlier, and And I was like, when was, because I was trying to remember our past Build-A-Bank, because I actually have a page on our Eclectic Gamers podcast website. We last played Build-A-Bank on episode 120. That's not as far back as I thought. No, we actually only ran it from 114 to 120, not every episode. Right. But, yeah, we actually only did it four times, and then we lost the pull feature. Right, and the pull feature had made it so easy. Yeah, I make cool little graphics and all of that. So anyway, so build a bank. It's back, baby.
    45:06
    It's back. And speaking of back, we're back to the video game segment, Tony. It's the video game segment. And I'm live. You might as well just rename it the dumpster fire segment. Flame on.
    45:17
    Fantastic. Which version? They're all bad. Take your pick. I mean, yeah, that's true. There's not a good one. There's Captain America as the Human Torch, and then there's Fan Force Stick, which I never saw. I saw the trailer, and then I had to go through therapy. It had the guy with the punchable face from Whiplash. That's all I remember.
    45:47
    So we'll go ahead and dive straight into this dumpster fire, starting, as always, with Activision Blizzard. As always. Your favorite topic. It's an important topic. You keep putting it in, so it's your favorite. It is an important topic. So the Wall Street Journal, just a few days after our last episode, dropped a frankly article about what's been going on at Activision Blizzard and with stuff going back several years.
    46:18
    And I highly recommend if you've not read it to go out and read it. I didn't include a link because it's behind a paywall. Yes. So if you – and it's not a soft paywall. It's a hard paywall. But, I mean, there are places where you can read chunks of it. One of the authors put most of it up on their Twitter.
    46:38
    But more information has come out about Jen O'Neill's announced departure. It turns out that she wasn't being paid as much as the male co-leader. so it was more like a 60-40 co-lead split yeah basically because which you know that Activision Blizzard put a co-leader up that included a female because they wanted to change the look because of how everything is but that's literally all they did was they changed the look tokenism she was a token they didn't even pay her as much they apparently offered her equal pay after she turned in her resignation how generous of them from some of the other things I read they had argued or they were attempting to work out a contract and both employees were working under their old contracts while changing while working in the new position and that's why they hadn't made equal pay yet because they had after four months not yet been able to put together a contract to offer them that maybe... I don't get it. I don't... Maybe it's different in that size of a corporate world, but it's just like normally, like, the contract negotiations don't seem to... This isn't Bobby's job. What the heck? No, that's the whole thing. I don't understand. Maybe it's too big. Maybe it's too... But the very fact that you transition someone over, you're like, oh, they're going to be co-leaders. Look, we included a woman as part of the leaders of Blizzard. And then after months, you're like, oh, no, we're still off. We're not going to pay you as much as the other ones. I still don't understand the excuse because it's like – and maybe this is just me, but if I was told, as I have had happen before, hey, we want you to do this new higher responsibility thing, the very first thing I say is, what's my new pay? Right. It's never been, oh, yeah, make me responsible for all of this and keep my pay the same. I would love to do that. Yeah. No, it doesn't make any sense to me. I'm not an artist working for fame and credit. You know, the old fame and credit. You'll be able to make a big impact. You'll get so much exposure.
    48:52
    What a joke. In the report, it also claims that O'Neill contacted Activision's legal team to discuss her resignation after only a month in the position,
    49:06
    writing, I have been tokenized, marginalized, and discriminated against. Ouch. Ow. That's bad. Included in it are more talk that Bobby Kotick, CEO, has known about allegations for years and has been actively protecting people, including at least one executive who HR was like, yeah, we need to terminate this guy. And Bobby's like, nah, he's good.
    49:37
    So he's got to got to read. yeah that guy didn't leave Activision Blizzard until he started getting questions about the whole situation while they were writing the article suddenly he's like I gotta go so good luck I'm not even going to touch all the allegations it is a huge article there is a lot of stuff in it I highly recommend you read it there are calls within Activision Blizzard from employees and from a very, very small number of shareholders asking for Bobby Kotick to step down.
    50:19
    And when I say very small number of shareholders, I'm talking like less than 1%. Yeah, yeah, that's been the main, I mean, I've seen online some new, you know, like journal sites or editorial, I'm assuming they're editorializing because I see a lot of headlines saying Bobby needs to resign. Bobby needs to resign. It's like the headline for a lot of stuff. But whenever I've read any of them, when it comes to the shareholder stuff, if some of them have kind of made it, there's a little bit of puffery where they try to make it sound like maybe there's momentum. But most of the stuff I've seen in neutral style articles that seem to suggest there is currently no, even with the drop in the stock price, there's no serious effort to. In fact, I have read that a number of the board members are friends of his. Yes, they're all friends of his. they're all people who've had dealings elsewhere and tied together the board flat out came out and said that they fully support Bobby and he's doing a great job so your really only chance in my view would be to have enough of the shareholding groups that are upset replace the board at the next annual election and there's not enough because the people calling for it is less than 1% of the shareholders so it's not something you're going to actively see happen a lot of this is that they're calling out is because there are allegations now against Bobby himself but they're all older, they're all more than a decade old and they've all been settled out of court with them being settled out of court there's nothing they did have to defend, the leadership had to defend Bobby because the question came up in a company meeting because they have a zero tolerance policy that they put in place. That doesn't apply to Bobby in relation to these other things because they happened a decade ago. So they don't apply.
    52:19
    And I'm not talking about these other things. I mean, the allegations are that he left a voicemail with an assistant threatening to have her killed, and he fired the flight attendant on his private jet because she claimed one of the pilots sexually harassed her. So he fired her. Both settled out of court. So who knows? I mean, they're technically resolved. They're resolved.
    52:46
    Activision Blizzard did come out and announce they've got more plans to make everything better. They are forming a new workplace responsibility committee in response to these reports and allegations and to really write the company. The committee will be led by the only two female board directors, and the company has announced that they're planning on adding another diverse director to the board, which means, I don't know. What does it mean? They're either looking for a third woman or a person of color to add to the board, would be my guess. Okay. I agree with your guess.
    53:26
    The committee will be setting key performance indicators and will be measuring the progress of the company. I love progress.
    53:34
    The only known members of the board of the company are those two members of the board of the committee are the two members of the board. No non-board employees have been invited to join the committee.
    53:46
    And I mean, it's made up of people who've already stood up and said, hey, man, Bobby's doing a great job. So obviously they're going to, we investigated ourself and from our investigation, we think we're pretty awesome.
    54:02
    Now, Bobby did say that he would consider standing down or stepping down if the company's issues cannot be fixed with speed in quotation marks. That's vague. Yeah. Basically, it's like, would I step down for this? No, I make way too much money. It's like the speed thing is vague, and then, of course, what's the metric for success? Well, what's consider?
    54:31
    Consider stepping down. What's consider? Well, I thought about it at one time and decided no. Yeah, it's got maximum flexibility. Yeah, and this situation is not getting any better for Activision Blizzard, and their last few moves have been very...
    54:53
    For how bad the situation is, their last few moves have made it look worse for them. Yeah, and actually the item that stood out to me the most wasn't even the allegations, the sexual harassment, the flight attendant stuff. It was an item where there was a letter that purportedly came from, I don't remember which woman it was at the studio that ended up, it was the super tone deaf letter early on. Yes. And it turned out to have been written by Bobby. Right. Yeah. He had her send it out under her name. Yeah. That to me was the most, actually of all of this, even if though it's not the most egregious thing he did, it's the most shocking one. Like, because I remember he put out an announcement afterwards, like saying how tone deaf that was and just threw her under the bus. Not only did he drive the bus, He was the person who was supposed to be under the tires. Yeah. He wrote it. He wrote the whole thing. And I was like, holy cow. What? But you can't put a letter like that. Bobby couldn't put something off. It had to come from a woman. It was the only way to make things look better. So that was interesting in the sense that I thought if anything could turn the stance internally, it would have been the blunder of the CEO sacrificing an employee like that. I don't think anything. Right. For his own tone deaf letter. Because if it had been out under his name, he would have just been the tone deaf CEO, which is already coming out by the fact that he's allegedly harassing women left and right at least a decade ago. Right. But doing this and being like, nope, you're like, I, because in a way it reeks of I know something's bad with this. I'm going to make her do it. It does. It very much screams, hey, I need you to read this for me. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, just weird. It's just the problem is I don't think we'll see anything change because I don't think the people at the top actually want change. All they want is for the hassle of dealing with angry people and the bad PR to go away. They're not actively wanting changes to the company.
    57:12
    I'm going to insert an apology sounds like someone's mowing or chainsawing yeah sounds like they're I don't know if I'll be able to strip it out or not so I'm just going to throw in the words here so people know so yeah I don't know I mean the one thing that changes companies is shareholder value that's the only thing so the question because this is my stance obviously but I don't think from everything that you've described that Activision and its current state of leadership is capable of making the reforms they need. That said, if Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo make them change, they have the power to do it because the three console manufacturers control so much of Activision's game sales that there could be serious repercussions. And we've seen Sony and Microsoft come out and be pretty critical. they have and nintendo made an announcement as well that fell right in line with the criticality of the other two they control so much of the gaming market share at this point uh that if they start to take actions that could affect the share price right that could result because that's about it because all three of them basic i mean basically all three of their statements amount to well we're viewing this with concern right right there's only so much they can probably get away with as well. And of course, they have deep tie financial ties as well to the success of Activision Blizzard. In fact, Microsoft on their Xbox stage has often partnered with Activision on some gaming titles. I think Call of Duty has had a super strong tie. It's not an exclusive to Microsoft, but they've often been the one to feature them. So they've really leaned on... I mean, it is the most popular FPS in the world. It is.
    59:02
    Just looking at the last five years of their stock prices. So five years ago, December 2nd of 2016, Activision Blizzard's stock prices were at $35.71.
    59:18
    They peaked a high of $103.81. That was in February of this year. Yeah, I remember when they fired all those people after they had record profits. Yeah. They must have done a really good job. Yeah, they did. And it really pushed their stocks up real good. And currently they're still sitting at $60.62 is what they're sitting at right this second. So this isn't even the low point of the last five years. It not even the low point of the last few years because they spent most of a big chunk of 2019 sub You know and you want to talk super low I've actually considered taking some of my invested savings and shifting it to Activision because I think the board's going to win this. I think you're right. And the stock's going to go back up, and I could get it low right now. Yeah. I can see it because in the end, with the full board on it, With everybody on board and the shareholders, except for such a small portion, in complete support of what's going on.
    60:25
    The only way anything's going to change is if they end up losing the suits and get hit hard. Yep. So. There are risks.
    60:34
    There is some serious chainsaw time going on. That's right. It's time for all the trees to die. The end's not right yet. The right time. I had two neighbors decide. while we were in the middle of our Thanksgiving dinner they decided that's when they were going to start mowing so they're out mowing their leaves and everything in the middle of our Thanksgiving dinner while we're trying to talk and they're all around us so we're just like amongst us we were in the house mowing leaves because there were so many of them mowing it was loud enough at one point I'm like are they mowing my leaves?
    61:08
    they must take all the leaves I had to check out the window. I was like, what's going on? So, continuing drama.
    61:21
    The Roblox Corporation, makers of the incredibly popular game Roblox. Oh, super popular. It's my daughter. It's the game my daughters play the most. They play it all the time.
    61:33
    They are suing content creator Benjamin Robert Simon. He's a YouTuber who's been banned from Roblox for years due to sexually harassing users, which is really disturbing considering most of the users are like 14 and under, using racist and homophobic slurs, attempting to upload photos of Adolf Hitler into the games, and just doing it. His whole shtick is basically being a massive troll on Roblox. Okay. but he's a content creator so I know you can like people build their own games and stuff no no no he's a content creator he's a YouTuber who creates videos oh okay I thought he was a Roblox programmer no no no he's not he is a YouTuber who just makes videos but he has been banned to the point but he still uses he gets other people to create accounts for him and he'll use their accounts so that he can still play and still make his videos but he might have gone a step too far Really? Because he is accused of posting terroristic threats during the Roblox Developers Conference in October in San Francisco. he was posting stuff on Twitter and elsewhere talking about, oh, the police are there searching for Islamic terrorists. And he had an open discussion with a bunch of people online about the 2018 shooting at the YouTube studios, where he was saying, oh, I'll just wait till that happens at the Roblox convention. and putting up a whole bunch of stuff like that to the point where they actively shut down. Oh, and they were putting out posts warning people, don't go to RDC, the Roblox Developers Con, the next day because it's not going to be safe. So they actually ended up with a temporary lockdown of the conference while the police and security secured the buildings and searched because of all of these online threats that are all traced back to this one guy. who then rapidly started trying to delete his stuff on Twitter when it started blowing up huge, and now they filed a lawsuit against him for damages.
    64:00
    So will anything come of it? I don't know. I just thought it was interesting. Maybe. Maybe they'll finally spook him from doing this, but I guess if he's making money off of this content. And that's the thing.
    64:11
    Is he deeply popular? with a certain segment of people. I'm just kind of like wondering how much money he makes off YouTube. Probably enough that he doesn't have to do any other job. Okay. So he's a successful content creator. Yes.
    64:26
    There is a surprisingly large number of like troll content creators that are just terrible people and make – I mean, they're not rich. They're not, you know, XQC or – Right, right. They're not making millions. Yeah. But I see we have that on watches on YouTube. There are some that are basically just like trolling, making fun of units and stuff. And they get enough. They do live streams and stuff, and they make enough money that you could live on it. Yeah. I mean, they're not rich, but they're making enough money they can survive on it.
    65:01
    So it's just becoming a very common thing. We'll see. I did want to follow up on the last episode's Star Citizen discussion. They crossed the 400 million mark So nothing else has changed They just made 400 million dollars Total now Halo Infinite and Battlefield Like you talked about, they're out Battlefield is One of the most negatively reviewed Games on Steam currently Battlefield launches usually are Battlefield 3 And I think 4 especially Had a very troubled launch Battlefield 1, not so much of it. Yeah, I think this is one of those sets of reviews that it's just more around the launch woes because oh look, it's a launch of a multiplayer game that is having server problems.
    65:54
    Friday, I tried to play and I ended up playing Halo Infinite because I couldn't get in because of the servers. Yes. And that's what almost all the complaints I saw when I scrolled through. The complaints fell into two categories when I went through them. Category number one is about stuff that was in other Battlefield games that they took out. Yeah, I mean... They changed stuff up in all of them. Right. Yeah, there's some stuff I missed, too, but... Like, people were talking about, you know, you can't peek around corners anymore, and... Anymore. They've done a lot of revamping to the builds, is mine, so now, instead of... It's like, you have to pick a class for one particular piece of equipment, and things you used to be able to combine, you can't combine anymore because of how they've done it. I can't have a repair tool and a rocket launcher anymore. The rocket launcher is flexible. Any character can take a rocket launcher, and any character can take a repair tool, but you can only choose one of those selectable items, and so there's not an engineer build that comes with that. I saw a lot of complaints that it's more hero shooter-like, and they don't like that with how the builds are. Historically, there were always four classes or so in the game, and now it's like there are 12 hero types that you can pick from. But I wouldn't compare it the same way. It's not like I disagree with that in the sense that it's not like they have different health amounts and stuff. It's more like this hero has a sentry gun turret. This hero gets the cluster grenade. This hero gets the Healy dart gun. It's like they all have like one thing. Right.
    67:28
    One or two things, that sort of thing. And then the others were the server problems. So I'm sure that that will come back positive. Yeah. In fact, I'll tell you my biggest complaint. This is one that the PC people haven't complained about because they probably love it. Cross-play includes PC, so they were. I had to go and disable my – on Xbox, I had to go in. I can't – Sony allows you to toggle in the game. In Xbox, I had to go into the Xbox system and turn off all my cross-play because PC people are farming console players.
    67:59
    They're bullying us. You've got to leave us alone. We have our training wheels. You're going out there kicking us over on our tricycles. I've got my controller in my auto-ing. I've got my controller. And then people are going around with mice going, pew, pew, pew. And I'm like, where is my head going? And, yes, then someone told me no. I saw these little PC icons, and I thought, is that just the symbol for cross-play? And I was like, no, those are PC people. They're here to farm you. They're here to kill you. I have switched it. I have switched it to just Xbox for the time being. Because in a lot of other games, like Overwatch and such, cross-play is console people with each other. Right. Not PC people because it's too hard to balance. Yeah. And mice are more accurate. So it's either, you know, there was a game called Shadowrun that tried to do that way back in the 360 era. And I had the PC version. And I would go along and I would play. And, you know, the console people had an auto-aim, but it still wasn't the same as what you could do with a mouse. So I'd play that with a mouse, or I could plug in a controller if I wanted the auto-aim. But anyway, I don't like being farmed. Don't like being farmed. You see people farming me.
    69:13
    So we'll see. It'll move up, I'm sure. They pretty much always do all these games launch pretty negatively.
    69:20
    Most of the Call of Duties have done the same. They launch super negative and then end up moving up to at least mixed. Halo, that one's been pretty smooth mechanically. and server-wise, my biggest issue with Halo has been, and it's probably just me not being smart enough, it's not clear to me to search for game modes. I can see easily how to set up custom servers where I've set the game mode, but I almost feel like I'm just being thrown into either 4v4 or Big Battle. Maybe I get Capture the Flag. Maybe I get Oddball. I don't know. It's a mystery. And I'm kind of like, the first day I played, all I got were variants of Capture the Flag. I was like, can I please play another mode? I was actually asking for Deathmatch. My least favorite thing. Just give me Deathmatch. Just give me something different. I don't want to have to eat this flag. I keep taking the flag. Leave the flag alone.
    70:13
    That flag can do anything to you. Leave it alone. One of the biggest complaints I've heard about Halo Infinite is it feels very familiar and it feels very much like playing the old Halo games. And the biggest complaint is at the same time, it's very much like playing an old Halo game.
    70:35
    Because, you know, there's certain groups of people, they always want the old, but then sometimes when they get it, they're like, I might have wanted a little bit more than this. The thing is, the multiplayer is free. So I'm like, whatever. Yeah. I've never been a huge Halo multiplayer fan. Right. But I've always respected it. It's just not, usually I just don't pour a lot of time in it. So like me losing in Halo Infinite, it doesn't surprise me, but Yeah, they've changed some stuff up I don't really have time I can't play multiplayer games for the most part You could, all you have to do is give up on Your battleship simulator See, the thing is, all the games I play They have this wonderful thing and it's called I can stand up and walk away because I'm going to have to do that You can stand up and walk away in Halo Then you can be farmed I can stand up and walk away And then not get kicked or slaughtered And not come back when I Finally get to come back and sit back down Ten minutes later and the game's over and I had two kills and 173,000 deaths because they just farmed me because I just stood in place until I got auto-picked. Yeah, you're corn. You're wheat now.
    71:39
    I did want to put in, I saw a video for a new game that just cracks me up. Bandai Namco is putting out a Dragon Ball Z horror game. Yeah, you sent this to me and I read it and I was like, what is, who came up with this idea? I don't know. Basically, it's using the Dead by Daylight type thing where there's like one super powerful bad guy and then a bunch of regular people and they're trying to escape. Except for it's set in the Dragon Ball Z universe, so you have a bunch of zero power people. Humans. Humans trying to escape from the giant big bads from the Dragon Ball Z. I'm like, you're talking about bad guys that literally blow up the planet. How do you escape from that? I don't know who came up with the idea I watched a little bit of the gameplay The video didn't have a whole lot of gameplay It was more deep explanation I watched some of it Okay, it's just so weird to me as a concept I think, honestly, I think someone said Hey, World War Z, Dragon Ball Z Let's merge genres and have a horrific Dragon Ball I don't know if it works To be fair, pretty much all Dragon Ball games are horrific There's that one good fighting one There was Yeah the Budokai game Was it Budokai? I think so No it was Fighters with a Z I didn't finish the campaign But it's good And the last thing I want to touch on This actually kind of straddles the line between video games and tabletop Straddle Tabletop Forgotten Realm For those of you who do not know We used to have a tabletop section. Permanent. Permanent tabletop segment. Like over a year. Yeah. The problem was is I got to the point where I wasn't going to the tabletop store anymore because I didn't have enough time to do everything. So something had to go. But now you have plenty of time. Here it is. Oh, yeah. Here it is. But basically at a tabletop 40K tournament in Spain a couple weeks ago, there was a player who wore Nazi paraphernalia to an unofficial tournament. and players complained, and the organizers did nothing.
    73:55
    He actually did very well in the tournament because so many people he was playing against forfeited rather than play him that he actually ended up with a very high score in the tournament overall.
    74:08
    And this is kind of an issue that 40K has been dealing with for the last several years because its aesthetic and lore is being used by fascist groups and white subprime. Aren't the space marine humans, aren't they kind of like, that's a fascist? Oh, yeah, they're super fascist.
    74:25
    And they're being kind of upheld as like an ideal and a goal, and they're using their iconography and their lore for their own uses. And it's gotten to a point where Games Workshop, the makers of 40K, decided they wanted to make their thoughts very clear. So I wanted to go ahead and read their note. It's not terribly long. I don't know. it's like eight paragraphs. It is like eight paragraphs. Oh, no, I smiled. Sorry, guys, but it's not long. We'll just listen. But I just, I think it's one of those things that with the kind of things we've been dealing with in video games and honestly in pinball lately, uh, to see a company making a very, very specific, obvious stand is, uh, something we're not used to seeing. So there, uh, Press release. The Imperium is driven by hate. Warhammer is not. There are no goodies in the Warhammer 40K universe. None. Especially not the Imperium of Man. Its numberless legions of soldiers and zealots bludgeon their way across the galaxy, delivering death to anyone and anything that doesn't adhere to their blinkered view of purity. Almost every man and woman toils in misery, either on the battlefield, where survival is measured in hours, or in the countless manufactoriums and hive slums that fuel the Imperial war machine. All of this is in slavish servitude to the living corpse of a god-emperor whose commandments are at best only half-remembered, twisted by time and the fallibility of humanity. Warhammer 40k isn't just grimdark, it is the grimmest darkest. The Imperium of Man stands as a cautionary tale of what could happen should the very worst of humanity's lust for power and extreme unyielding xenophobia set in. Like so many aspects of Warhammer 40k, the Imperium of Man is satirical. For clarity, satire is the use of humor, irony, or exaggeration displaying people's vices or a system's flaws for scorn, derision, and ridicule. Something doesn't have to be wacky or laugh-out-loud funny to be satire. The derision is in the setting's amplification of a tyrannical genocidal regime turned up to 11. The Imperium is not an aspirational state outside of the in-universe perspective of those who are slaves to its systems. It's a monstrous civilization and its monstrousness is plain for all to see. That said, certain real-world hate groups and adherents of historical ideologies better left in the past sometimes seek to claim intellectual properties for their own enjoyment and to co-opt them for their own agendas. We've said it before, but a reminder about what we believe in. We believe in and support a community united by shared values of mutual kindness and respect. Our fantasy settings are grim and dark, but that is not a reflection of who we are or how we feel the real world should be. We will never accept nor condone any form of prejudice, hatred, or abuse in our company or in the Warhammer hobby. If you come to a Games Workshop event or store and behave to the contrary, including wearing the symbols of real world hate groups, you will be asked to leave. We won't let you participate We don't want your money We don't want you in the Warhammer community For those heroes out there running their own Warhammer events We'd love for you to join us in this stance Over the years we've been fortunate enough to support events like Adepticon, the Las Vegas Open, Blood and Glory and many others With terrain prizes and goodie bags We've also provided staff to help with organization and rules queries And to judge painting competitions and run seminars If you need help running an event Including creating a safe and rewarding experience For your attendees We're here to help Just drop our events team an email We'd love to hear from you We're ready to offer any support we can I think that's a very clear point Of what their stance is in this So instead they're just the company That doesn't pay their employees anything Worthwhile And rips off Lots of other ideas To help form the universe Yay! I don't know They said at the start That there's not any goodies in the Warhammer 40k universe And then they end by saying That they support events with goodie bags That's true There are goodies, there are goodie bags But It's one of those things that's just I think Interesting to see Considering the way So much of the news around video games Have been lately so we'll see where things go maybe we'll have good fun stuff to talk about maybe we'll find out in two weeks when we're next back but in the meantime if you want to reach out to us about any of these particular topics we've covered you can always email us eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or you can go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast we're available on twitch twitter and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers and next time maybe there won't be any Activision News. Fingers crossed. Maybe there'll be a new rumor to share. Maybe there'll be no lawnmowers and chainsaws in the background. Maybe we'll... We should know the results of the bill of the bank. It'll be fun times. But until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye. See ya.