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Episode 210 - You're Gonna Need a Bigger $48,000

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·53m 6s·analyzed·Jan 8, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.039

TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers reviews 2023 stats, then analyzes new Jaws pinball design and Stern CEO strategy shift.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss 2023 podcast statistics showing 44,400+ plays (14% increase), then pivot to pinball news dominated by the Jaws 50th Anniversary reveal from Stern. The game features Keith Elwin design with Richard Dreyfuss call-outs, three-flipper Pro and four-flipper Premium/LE models with upper playfield, captive ball mechanics, and thematic toys. CEO Seth Davis confirmed Stern's return to three cornerstone games per year, discontinued art-style LE variants, and openness to vault revivals if licensing permits.

Key Claims

  • Jaws 50th Anniversary Pro model $7,000, Premium $9,700, LE $13,000 (capped 1,000 units)

    high confidence · Dennis explicitly states pricing for all three tiers; no price increase from announcement

  • Stern secured rights to all Jaws movies for video display, speculation about Jaws 3D modes

    medium confidence · Dennis mentions 'Stern actually got the rights to all the movies for the video display' and notes speculation about possible Jaws 3D video modes despite Pro/Premium being oriented around first film only

  • Richard Dreyfuss provided custom call-outs for Jaws; Roy Scheider's face never rendered, only voice used

    high confidence · Dennis confirms Dreyfuss call-outs secured; notes Scheider voice used (confirmed 'you're going to need a bigger boat' line) but no face rendering, speculating licensing constraints

  • Keith Elwin designed Jaws with typical Elwin feature: third flipper can lock up as captive ball lane

    medium confidence · Dennis identifies pattern of Elwin signature features across his games (smart missile on Jurassic Park, captive ball magnet on Godzilla); infers third flipper mechanism based on Keith Elwin's response to someone 'somewhere'

  • Stern CEO Seth Davis confirmed return to three cornerstone games per year starting 2024

    high confidence · Dennis states Seth Davis 'did confirm that as of this year, 2024, they are back to the three cornerstone model' after two years of two cornerstones due to parts supply issues

  • Stern will no longer do limited edition runs with different art styles; future art variants only on Pro/Premium

    high confidence · Dennis: 'Seth said they are not going to do any more limited edition runs where they change up the art style' in response to backlash over multiple LE art variants like Jurassic Park 30th/35th or Elvira Blood Red Kiss edition

  • Stern open to vault revivals (e.g., LCD, D&D) if licensing and parts supply issues resolved

    medium confidence · Dennis notes Seth Davis said they 'would be willing to consider putting back on the line if they can solve the issue of finding the parts' and licensing arrangements; last vault was Iron Man

Notable Quotes

  • “Pinball drama, and you guys come in and you lap it up like you are a dog that hasn't been given water for two days. And this is everything that is wrong with this hobby.”

    Dennis @ ~40:00 — Meta-commentary on community engagement: Eclectic Gamers' most-played episode (208) was driven by pinball drama/gossip rather than substantive content, which Dennis criticizes as symptomatic of broader community culture

  • “the pro and the le have the same back glass... the le one is mirrored in some way or they got some mirroring effects to it so it should look a little more interesting... but yes... well yes i mean if you want to talk about the back glasses briefly... the le and the pro have the classic version and then the premium has a first person perspective of quint being eaten by the shark... which is... i think the art's well done on it but i would never want that one... it's... when i saw it it was really disconcerting to me”

    Dennis, Tony @ ~77:00 — Reveals Premium LE backglass design choice (first-person shark attack POV) creates divisive appeal; aesthetically ambitious but disturbing to some players

  • “I would be amazed if this doesn't end up like almost all of these games where the pro is the best player just because of the lack of the upper play field.”

    Tony @ ~95:00 — Recurring pattern criticism: Premium/LE upper playfields often underperform compared to three-flipper Pro models in player experience

  • “the pro is a three flipper game The Premium LE is a four-flipper game because the Premium LE has an upper playfield... the boat version... it's got a shark instead. So that's a premium LE dance.”

    Dennis @ ~73:00 — Details mechanical differentiation strategy: Pro vs Premium/LE playfield complexity and toy variation (shark bash vs. captive ball boat)

  • “I think that's a good move. So this is a response to the Jurassic Park 30th or 35th or whatever it was anniversary, the Elvira Blood Red Kiss edition where, hey, look, here's a new limited count run of games with a different art package. It's an LE, but you already sold an LE.”

    Dennis @ ~118:00 — Identifies Stern's LE art variant policy reversal motivated by customer resentment toward multiple LE versions and perceived favoritism to whales

Entities

Jaws 50th AnniversarygameKeith ElwinpersonSeth DavispersonRichard DreyfusspersonRoy ScheiderpersonMichael BarnardpersonStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern leadership expresses anxiety about market cooling and whale confidence erosion; cited JJP's multiple LE fragmentation as cautionary example of brand alienation

    medium · Dennis paraphrases Seth Davis concern: 'they're very worried with the market cooling that they're going to alienate whales... You're like JJP with the 20 different LE versions of Waz'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern discontinued limited edition art-style variant runs (e.g., Jurassic Park anniversary editions, Elvira Blood Red Kiss) in response to whale alienation concerns and market cooling

    high · Seth Davis policy announcement with explicit rationale about brand trust erosion; future art variants restricted to Pro/Premium tiers only

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern piloting pre-recorded gameplay reveals instead of live-stream reveals to eliminate technical failure optics (stream crashes, ball stuck, potato cam) and reduce production bloat

    high · Dennis approves shift as 'really smart change'; notes 'there's really no reason for it to have to be a two-hour stream' and pre-recorded format avoids 'mistake after mistake after mistake'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Pro three-flipper design anticipated to outperform Premium/LE four-flipper upper playfield in player experience; recurring pattern across recent Stern releases (Godzilla precedent)

    medium · Tony predicts: 'I would be amazed if this doesn't end up like almost all of these games where the pro is the best player just because of the lack of the upper play field'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Keith Elwin signature feature pattern: each game includes distinctive mechanical innovation (smart missile on Jurassic Park, captive ball magnet on Godzilla, third flipper lock-up on Jaws) that enables unique rule exploitation

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.159

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, January 6th, episode 210. I am Tony. I am Dennis. I don't think we have the longest episode today. No, I don't think so. Not at all. But we do have interesting elements to discuss. But what's been going on? I saw a new ride out in the driveway. Yeah, I adulted, and I have a new car, which I guess doesn't seem very adult-y, seeing as I'm almost 45.
0:49
But it's different because I've never made a car payment in my entire life, and I now actually have a car payment. So I have to adult more. I see. Well, I wish you well. Yeah. It's different because I'm one of those people who I've always just bought beaters. And when the beater died, I bought a new beater. But those don't really exist anymore. Like, beaters still exist, but they might as well be new cars for the prices people want for them. Because I'm used to buying beaters for, like, you know, a couple thousand dollars, and now they want, like, eight. I mean, it's insane. I saw a 1992 pickup with almost 300,000 miles on it. It was over 250,000 miles on it sell at auction for almost $2,500. And it was a Chevy.
1:51
Okay. Well, guess times have changed. Well, I haven't done much. Too much. But I do want to thank... We got a new Patreon member, Doug, who joined at our basic support level. As a reminder, you can go to patreon.com slash eclectic gamers podcast. No, slash eclectic underscore gamers. Remember, it's different than the Facebook page. If you want to support the channel for as low as a dollar a month. I have been playing... One of the games I got for Christmas is Robocop Rogue City. It's actually kind of stupid fun. Really? Yeah, I've mostly only been plugging away at it on weekends. But yeah, you're RoboCop. You're in old Detroit, and you call people creep, and you go around and you do RoboCop things, and you give people RoboCop tickets.
2:39

  • Eclectic Gamers Podcast had 44,400+ plays in 2023, 14% increase from 2022

    high confidence · Dennis reads SoundCloud stats: 'For 2023, we had over 44,400 plays. That actually is a 14% increase from 2022'

  • “I hadn't really thought too much about Jaws because, honestly, while I deeply enjoyed the movie, it's not a pinball theme that I had any interest in... But here I assumed there was just going to be this massive shark bashed away... probably in my head, I cartoonified it to where it was going to be like one third of the back of the game or like Groot or something.”

    Dennis @ ~92:00 — Reveals design expectations mismatch: Jaws playfield is subtler/more sophisticated than typical thematic overload; theme integration through narrative (Quint hunting) rather than scale

  • “I always look forward to playing an elwynn game i'm not particularly excited about this game not really it would not surprise me if it ends up being the best game of 2024 simply because he designed it”

    Dennis @ ~103:00 — Keith Elwin's design reputation so strong that mediocre theme (Jaws) expected to become top-tier game; separates designer pedigree from IP appeal

  • “they're very worried with the market cooling that they're going to alienate whales... we don't trust you. You're like JJP with the 20 different LE versions of Waz.”

    Dennis @ ~122:00 — Signals Stern's anxiety about market saturation and whale confidence erosion; draws parallel to Jersey Jack Pinball's LE fragmentation criticism as cautionary example

  • “I do worry about how well that target – hopefully they've tested it a lot about it bending back or whatever with ball smacks because it doesn't look thick. Obviously, it can't be too thick. Otherwise, that hole would be too big and the ball would get stuck.”

    Dennis @ ~82:00 — Durability concern: chum bucket target toy design requires precise thickness balance; mechanical reliability risk if not extensively tested

  • “pre-recorded is going to solve so much of that and keep it tighter where there's really no reason for it to have to be a two-hour stream”

    Dennis @ ~100:00 — Approval of Stern's strategic shift to pre-recorded gameplay reveals (vs. live streams) to avoid technical failure optics and reduce production bloat

    • Dennis
    person
    Tonyperson
    Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
    John Williamsperson
    Godzillagame
    Iron Maidengame
    Jurassic Parkgame
    Avengersgame
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    LCDgame
    D&Dgame
    Iron Mangame
    Pinball Newsorganization
    RoboCop Rogue Citygame

    medium · Dennis identifies recurring design motif across Elwin portfolio; infers third flipper lock-up mechanism based on 'Keith Elwin's response to someone somewhere' about captive ball lane activation

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Jaws IP licensing includes all four film sequels for video display; playfield and character design focused exclusively on first film due to apparent Roy Scheider rendering/appearance constraints

    medium · Dennis notes Stern 'got the rights to all the movies for the video display' but face rendering limitations suggest Scheider licensing asymmetry; speculates future video modes may include Jaws 3D

  • $

    market_signal: Jaws 50th Anniversary pricing unchanged from pre-announcement expectations ($7K Pro, $9.7K Premium, $13K LE); no inflation despite supply recovery and three-cornerstone return

    high · Dennis: 'pricing has not changed... I'm impressed yes i think it's a good choice not to change the pricing but i i was i'm surprised that they didn't increase it'

  • ?

    community_signal: Michael Barnard (Rush artist) brought to Jaws project for art direction; confirms artist continuity in Stern portfolio across multiple licensed themes

    medium · Dennis notes 'Michael Barnard is on art. I believe he did the art on Rush'; Jaws backglass and playfield artwork attributed to him

  • ?

    announcement: Stern officially revealed Jaws 50th Anniversary pinball with three-tier pricing, Keith Elwin design, and thematic features (Quint narrative, chum bucket toy, shark fin mech)

    high · Detailed gameplay reveal with confirmed pricing, designer credits, actor participation (Dreyfuss, Scheider), and playfield specifications

  • ?

    product_concern: Chum bucket target toy durability uncertain; thinner plastic required to prevent ball sticking but may bend under impact stress; mechanical reliability dependent on extensive testing

    medium · Dennis expresses specific concern: 'I do worry about how well that target... hopefully they've tested it a lot about it bending back or whatever with ball smacks because it doesn't look thick'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern open to vault revivals (LCD, D&D discontin) if parts supply and licensing arrangements resolved; last vault was Iron Man

    medium · Dennis: Seth 'would be willing to consider putting back on the line if they can solve the issue of finding the parts... and course, making new license arrangements'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern CEO Seth Davis announced return to three cornerstone games per year starting 2024, reversing two-year two-cornerstone model imposed by parts supply crisis

    high · Direct CEO statement to distributors regarding 2024 production strategy; explicitly framed as response to resolved supply chain constraints

    • I would have never assumed that there was any real enjoyment in that game. Actually, I see people online because I'm noticing it's showing up in Reddit threads and stuff because people are like, RoboCop is soon getting a new game plus mode. And then you'll see someone go, people are playing this game. And other people are like, yeah, it's actually decent. It's not great. It's not going to win any awards. But you feel like RoboCop, and it feels like the world of RoboCop. And it's quasi open world. Interesting. Yeah. It's kind of like how Witcher 2 was, that style of open world. So I've been playing that. Also did the 12 Days of Kaiju. You got all your stuff? I did. I had to kick it up to 10 ball. Did you? Yeah, because the last badge I needed was in the time frame of the 12 days to get $25 billion cumulative on Godzilla. And on the last day, I had $10 billion to go still. And I was just like, okay.
    3:40
    I looked at just having it auto-plunge. Even on 10 ball, on auto-plunge, you barely get it. You won't even get like $20 million on just auto-plunges and hitting the slings. So I'm like, okay, now I've got to play through it. But let me kick it up to 10 ball because I can start getting into the tier two modes easier and such and start really earning points, which, yeah, I mean, none of my scores were super great. I did. I had to wipe all the high scores. So now it's back on default high scores because I wiped all the high scores after that because I was like, no, it doesn't count. These are fake. I did one and I set every record. So I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. So that one badge, I think, was a little excessive. I think they should have just had you do all 12 days and that'd be enough. But everything else I earned legit. So all my max points in game, I got those on three ball games. But holy cow, what a mess. Well, I heard, and by heard, I mean I saw a picture that you got the Golem. I did, and it's sitting on the TV stand. My sister and niece and brother-in-law got me Lord of the Rings Golem. So my plan, I got three games. I got Golem, I got Robocop, and I got a Double Dragon game that I had on my list. So I am going to finish Robocop as the plan, and then I need to decide what to do with Golem. Like, Golem, this is a celebration, really. So I'm wondering if I should just take, like, clips from all the issues in it and, like, maybe do, like, pre-recorded and drop them on our EGP YouTube of stuff, or if I should just livestream this. I don't know because it's a console. I have the stuff. I have OBS on this laptop. I can plug in a separate webcam and position it because I play in the living room. And I have a capture card that works on PC and console. And I could do that. But this must be a rejoicing, really. So I haven't decided, but I need to do something, I think. besides just give my impression. I can see the highlight reel. Yeah, that's kind of where I'm wondering if I can take clips, because it's an Xbox game, I can have it record certain clips as I go along, and then I can... I just don't know if I'm going to... That may be the way to do it, because I don't want to do too much work. But yeah, anyway, so that was a surprise, because I didn't put it on any lists, because the rule was that's a dollar game, and I don't think they spent a dollar. I think they spent more than a dollar. Agreed. Kong is also a dollar game. this might be my thing.
    6:14
    Let's play really bad games instead of guessing on it. Robocop was a guess. I had no idea if it was good or bad. I just thought, you know what? It sounds cool being Robocop. I'll put it on my list. It actually worked out. There are plenty of other games where I put it on the list and I'm like, this game sucks. Why did I do this? I saw Diablo on your list and I was like, no. I've decided you're wrong and it's fine. You're wrong. you just you they fixed they went back and fixed it no they fixed it sure i gotta fight the butcher let me fight the butcher i fought the butcher okay well speaking of fighting we have stats yeah fighting games have stats so we have stats so i have as as i usually do in one of the first couple episodes of the year i usually try and make it be the first one well last year we actually did the second episode of the year it turned out because i went back and looked let me go ahead and give our annual uh stats for the podcast for those that care otherwise you might want to fast forward maybe about five minutes would be my estimate um i'm not going to do as many this time in part because unfortunately with the custom date range thing soundcloud was having issues when i was trying to pull some of these these stats are just from soundcloud i don't trust using other site stats because i don't i don't think they count accurately and soundcloud is the host so for example anyone who goes and plays our audio through pod b or well, the Spotify maybe, or iTunes, all of those should count under the SoundCloud stats because none of those places individually host the audio. So here's what we've got for folks without further ado. For 2023, we had over 44,400 plays. That actually is a 14% increase from 2022. And that's a, we were a single percentage digit increase from 2022 to 2021. This was quite a big jump for us actually i don't know why it just it is what it is our top five countries of uh of our play the origin of the player bearing in mind that vpns could be in play and we're going to get the vpn place so we talked about that last year but in order usa australia canada singapore and the united kingdom the only difference from last year is the uk and singapore flipped positions on the list and i think that's because last year we talked about how singapore is probably there from vpn or something yeah because singapore i'm not aware of as being a hotbed of pinball play we could be completely wrong if you're in singapore and you love listening to us let us know yes you gotta let us know um so our top five cities these were uh a lot of these were different so columbus ohio is our number one city followed by tacoma washington then renton washington then Ashburn, Virginia. All three of those are new to the top five list. And also from last year's number five was Chicago. I think some of those cities are VPN cities. VPN cities, okay.
    9:11
    In terms of our external sources where people who don't subscribe to us through RSS or go to SoundCloud to play, where do they come from? The main place they come from is actually our website. Get a lot of plays that way. Facebook is our second largest source. people just googling us is third pinside is fourth and tilt forums another pinball forum is a fifth only real change here is facebook is higher than it was last year and pinside is lower than it was uh i usually am able to tell you the main rss applications that people who subscribe use but that feature just was not working it's just like sorry there's no data so it noted there was an issue so i don't have anything to share there uh there were also weird things going on with the least uh played uh episodes like when i'd go and put in the date ranges the counts were wrong like i would say like an episode like a month ago had 400 plays and then when i look in the master list and it's got over a thousand so it's it couldn't be trusted but the top five seemed fine so our top five plus who cares about the least played one so here are our top five shows of 2023 from the most popular to the fifth most popular. Number one was episode 208, Kojima Twippy Massacre.
    10:28
    So what a shock. Pinball drama, and you guys come in and you lap it up like you are a dog that hasn't been given water for two days. And this is everything that is wrong with this hobby.
    10:42
    I'm not surprised at this, but I am disappointed. However, we can take comfort, Tony, because maybe they didn't come there for that. They did. Let's be fair. They did. However, we could tell ourselves in reality, we did talk about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Looney Tunes reveal. Those reveal pins from spooky pinball were in that episode. So it maybe was driven by new pinball. Whatever helps you sleep at night. It wasn't. That also was the episode where you ran through all the main trailers from the Game Awards. So, I mean, there was some real substance, but I think the drama is where it was the drama of people to why it's number one. Number two was episode 185, Time of the Orc. This was one of our earliest 2023 episodes. This is the one where we ended up actually covering our 2022 listener stats. It's an interesting coincidence.
    11:38
    We actually had almost no pinball or video games in that episode. But you had the tabletop segment in there because this was when we were hearing about the D&D OGL. And this was the response from the company, from Hasbro, after the initial backlash. And so there was this huge tabletop section that you ran through. Episode number three in the top five is the episode just before that, episode 184, which was called 0020,000 Dollars. So this one had a few things. This one had the first part of the D&D OGL tabletop segment. Right. So we had that big meaty portion. And then the other big thing was the James Bond 60th anniversary Elwynn pin. That was the reveal of that. It was the D&D. It might have been the D&D. People loved D&D. Because who cared about a $20,000 game that they couldn't afford? Maybe that's what we should do is put together a one-shot D&D game for one of these days when we go to a convention.
    12:42
    Maybe. Number four of the top five was episode 190, 2023 post-TPF. This is not a surprise. Our post-TPF episode is usually one of our stronger episodes because we talk about all the – particularly the new games that we go and try and play. And in 2023, there were a lot of new games that revealed that TPF for the first time for player interaction. And so there was just a lot to really cover. Some of them are even out for in production now. Yes some but not all Speaking of not all our number five of the top five was episode 189 Royale with an Offer You Can Refuse So this was the Godfather reveal the Pulp Fiction reveal and a quasi for Galactic Tank Force Because they hadn't fully revealed yet, but they had been trying to drip-feed their game. And we knew what the cabinet looked like at that point, like the tank-shaped one. you also had a significant portion of the video game section doing an update on star citizen so we also had that so those were our 2023 egp stats and we thank you for listening so speaking of listening it's time to talk about pinball hey will this be one of our top five episodes it could very well be because we got to talk about jaws in fact that's almost all we're going to talk about there's not much to go into in pinball it's that time of year there's not a whole lot anywhere there is uh i have not yet seen there i think it might be today the day we're recording maybe it was yesterday but i don't think so where they're going stern sometime soon or sometime just recently is dropping like a pre-recorded gameplay video on their youtube so i regardless of when that is or has happened i have not yet seen that right so because i got other things to do but uh i do have a link in the show notes to pinball news uh pinball news has an article about jaws i i'm recommending that one because it has a lot of really detailed photos of the play field and has a good summary information so that is why it is linked pricing has not changed i'm impressed yes i think it's a good choice not to change the pricing but i i i was i'm surprised that they didn't increase it so pro models are going to run seven grand premiums are going to run ninety seven hundred dollars LEs are going to run $13,000, and the LEs are capped at 1,000 units.
    15:05
    This is Keith Elwin Design. Michael Barnard is on art. I believe he did the art on Rush, and they did get Richard Dreyfuss to do custom call-outs for the game. Which is good. That's good. I didn't think they were going to be able to get anybody because, you know, I think everybody but Dreyfuss is dead. So the – yeah, there are. And I missaid this on the pinball show because people have had no end of glee in correcting me. And, Zach, we recorded in the evening on Thursday once the reveal revealed. And I did not confirm Roy Scheider's name. And I added an N and it said Schneider.
    15:45
    So it's Scheider. What was that Water Baby show you liked with him? Sequest DSV. Sequest, thank you. He was a water baby. They had the little smart dolphin, and it was the, hey, let's do Star Trek but underwater. Okay. And then the alien showed up, and then they brought in Michael Ironsides. And then it got violent. Really militant. And then it got violent. And then it got canceled.
    16:08
    You can't go full militant. There was like an episode where they fought like a god. Wow. Did you see all of it? Oh, yeah. Okay. I've seen every single episode. Okay. I saw like two. okay so art wise they went very blue very water themed I think very world under glass with this because we're an audio medium and we're talking about visuals I don't want to spend a ton of time on trying to describe what this game looks like because I think it's an exercise in futility when you can just look it up which is why there's a link in the show notes to the pinball news article what I will note is the pro is a three flipper game The Premium LE is a four-flipper game because the Premium LE has an upper playfield. Describing the differences between the two models, other than the upper playfield, which features a couple of shots, the Premium LE model has a boat kind of in the center right of the, I guess, of the Orca, or actually it looks smaller than the Orca, but basically it's a captive ball boat, and that raises up in play to being a shark bash toy. Whereas on the Pro, you see the shark. There's nothing that raises up. It's a fixed bash toy with a picture of the shark, but it's got the three lanes with optos with the captive ball that you would bash. It's more like the boat version, but it's got a shark instead. So that's a premium LE dance. You know what I find is the most impressive thing? that the pro and the le have the same back glass yes though i think the le one is mirrored in some way or they got some mirroring effects to it so it should look a little more interesting i guess but yes yeah that was a it's the better back glass i i agree because it's the classic poster yes i i think well yes i mean if you want to talk about the back glasses briefly as you've noted the le and the pro have the classic version and then the premium has a first person perspective of quint being eaten by the shark right from the movie uh which is i think the art's well done on it but i would never want that one it's i when i saw it it was really disconcerting to me and i didn't realize it's because it's a first person perspective and i don't like it i don't like that it's too creepy like i wouldn't want that i would rather just have the the iconic poster but it's interesting it's an interesting take on it yeah um back on the play field the other differences are the far mid left uh are stand-ups on the pro there are three drop targets there instead on the premium le and uh the quince shack in the back right corner is uh more of a 3D sculpt on the Premium LE, whereas it's like the flat plastic style on the Pro. And I think that's all the main stuff. The main stuff in terms of the differences, they both feature the captive ball chum bucket toy, which as you bash that, just before the right-hand ramp shots and such, there's a track where a shark fin comes up and moves through the water and can drop back down and there are color changing led lights under there that will start to make that water glow red with blood the more and more chum you throw and that's where the chum's going and then the shark comes up so it's all integrated into the into the rule set um another so that's also on the pro the uh the the third flipper so the non-upper playfield flipper on the right-hand side. That is designed so that it can capture balls when it's held up. That becomes a captive ball lane. And I'm not clear on it yet, but the way, I think Keith Elwin had a response to someone somewhere, and the way it sounds is there may be a point or a feature in the game where you hit the action button or something, and that might lock that flipper up and just turn it into a captive ball lock. so that's probably the elwynn feature you know it always seems like every elwynn game seems to have like an elwynn feature like the smart missile shot on jurassic park uh on godzilla i think it was the captive ball magnet which would fling the ball into the upper lane uh upper excuse me left hand orbit so that you could do the upper flipper shot uh iron maiden it might have been the the the target uh bullseye shot so he's always got like something in there that's sort of interesting that feels pretty creative. I think that's what that little flipper is meant to do. And it also has more shots than just those drops slash stand-ups off on the left. There's a path there. It's kind of hard to see how the ramps work because most of the stuff looks like you're shooting almost a single-level play field, but then those shots in the back start to turn into and feed into bean ramp returns, habitrail returns, which both versions of the game feature habitrails, not plastic ramps. A couple 180 ramps are going on. That's how they fit so many, that's how Keith has fit so many in there on those tight shot areas. So anyway, lower portion of the play field, relatively open, I would say. We got, once again, a one pop bumper scenario, kind of like Godzilla, except this time it's over on the right, near where that chum line ends, just above that third flipper.
    21:55
    So in terms of, we already mentioned Dreyfus on the call-outs. The way the game plays is you play as Quint, catching, hunting, however you want to think of it, sharks. And so on the play field and such, there are, you're going along getting other, like Mako and other types of sharks as you work your way to trying to deal with the great white jaws. At some point, though it sounds like it's not yet ready, there will be another option where you will play as the shark instead of as Quint.
    22:25
    They do have the clips and audio from the movie. They did get John Williams' score. The one thing, and it's pretty obvious when you look at the center of the play field.
    22:35
    Well, I guess, and I heard the you're going to need a bigger boat line, which sounded like Roy Scheider from the movie itself. So I assume it was. You never see his face rendered anywhere. And he's clearly not in the montage with Quint and Hooper. so there must be some limit i there's got to be some limitations to where they could use roy because i would have thought that with him not being featured that there was i assumed there was a challenge on that licensing wise and that they were going to then have you play as him because kind of like the what what they tried to do with what highway did with alien where the argument was oh you're playing as sigourney weaver that's why you don't see her or you're taking her place in the movie. Labyrinth did the same thing. You are the person in the labyrinth. Right. So I thought, okay, I guess we're playing as the sheriff, but we're not. We're playing as Quint. So anyway, what are your overall thoughts?
    23:37
    I think it looks interesting. I like the concept of the moving shark fin target, and the chum bucket is just hilarious to me.
    23:50
    Well, he had to chum the water in the movie. He did. I'm interested to play it. I think I can say pretty safely I would be amazed if this doesn't end up like almost all of these games where the pro is the best player just because of the lack of the upper play field. Yeah, your reaction is actually really similar to what I expressed over on the pinball show when we gave our first thoughts. I like the idea of the chum feature, though I do worry about how well that target – hopefully they've tested it. I'm assuming they tested it a lot about it bending back or whatever with ball smacks because it doesn't look thick. Obviously, it can't be too thick. Otherwise, that hole would be too big and the ball would get stuck. And like you, though, the upper play field does not look – like most upper play fields – does not look particularly interesting to me. I will give them full credit. But I'm assuming Jerry Thompson did the sound package for this. And when you hit the ship wheel on the upper play field, it makes that sound just like in the film. Does it? Yes. And then over to the right of the captive ball bash toy boat is the reel of Quint's fishing pole, which does the ratchet sound. So again, the theme immersion on this is truly, truly excellent, as you would hope. It's far better than I thought they would probably do. So I think – I hadn't really thought too much about Jaws because, honestly, while I deeply enjoyed the movie, it's not a pinball theme that I had any interest in. Not that that means anything. I know people have been calling for it. It's one of those magical ones that everyone says will be great. Sure. We'll find out. And it's like – but I wasn't this humongous Godzilla fan, and the game is the game, and the game is good. Yeah. But here I assumed there was just going to be this massive shark bashed away. I probably in my head, I cartoonified it to where it was going to be like one third of the back of the game or like like Groot or something, you know, just some sort of style.
    25:46
    See, that's what would happen if it was JJP because it had been Jaws 4D. Speaking of 4D, Stern actually got the rights to all the movies for the video display. Really? Yes. And so there's some speculation about – obviously, the play field is completely oriented around the first film. Right. And Quint is completely oriented around the first film. However, possible video mode, Jaws 3D, people are wondering. I am assuming that it was just kind of like a, hey, we want Jaws. And it kind of like oh yeah you get all of them because who cares about any of the other ones especially after two Because after two there no Roy Scheider anymore and I mean each one progressively worse Not like a little bit worse like a lot And there are bad movies like Blood Rain, where I would recommend you should see Blood Rain. It's so bad, it's good. It's so bad. That might be true for Jaws 3D. I don't recommend anyone see Jaws the Revenge. It is truly, truly awful. Michael Caine is in the movie. He doesn't even remember doing it. Well, he does. He remembers because it's what he did by his house or something. But it's really bad. It's really bad.
    27:09
    Yeah, it's terrible. Right. The wife of Brody, Mrs. Brody, I don't remember her first name, it's in that movie. She has a psychic connection to the shark. I don't need to tell you anything else. Yeah, you probably don't even remember that part of that movie because there's nothing about that movie other than that it's really bad. about that movie is other it's in the bahamas she's got a psychic connection to the shark and there's a scene where he attacks a banana boat i remember that well the problem that whole movie is let's constantly show the full full shark all the time it's just which it looks no better than it did in the first movie so anyway i'm whining so i'm hoping they basically do nothing with any of that but maybe they do maybe they put some of that stuff in i don't know um it's an l1 game i'm sure it's going to play great um there's not really a whole lot else to say the the release schedule kind of followed their usual by and large up until the gameplay stuff which might be a new take i like that they're doing it pre-recorded i think the live gameplay reveal is easy and an accident waiting to happen and we've seen plenty of instances where oh look the ball got stuck oh look the stream went down oh look the potato cam is potatoing just mistake after mistake after mistake and pre-recorded is going to solve so much of that and keep it tighter where there's really no reason for it to have to be a two-hour stream right so i think that's a really smart change um i'm not i always look forward to playing an elwynn game i'm not particularly excited about this game not really it would not surprise me if it ends up being the best game of 2024 simply because he designed it but we'll see i mean that and there's a valid argument to be made for that we're gonna we're gonna see he he can make even the dumbest themed games fun sure sure but the question of course will be is this going to be a godzilla is this going to be an avengers right which are all very respected games but avengers is definitely in the mind of the public a notch below where iron maiden jurassic park and godzilla are which i think all three of those may be top 10 on pin side avengers is not i know it's not we'll see where jaws ends A lot of people are pretty excited about it, but they've been excited. This is one of those rumors that's been around for years and years and years. So anyway, we will learn more as things progress. And hopefully once Tony and I get – I mean we will play this at some point. We'll be able to give our thoughts once we actually have some hands-on time. Before moving to video games, I do have a little bit more Stern news because CEO of Stern, Seth Davis, did have a discussion with distributors and touched on a number of things regarding their strategy that I think are of interest to the listeners. And apologies if you already listened to Pinball Show because we did touch on most of these, actually all of these on that show as well. But hey, we don't all have the same audience. So one thing, no shock here, I don't think to anyone, but Seth did confirm that as of this year, 2024, they are back to the three cornerstone model. Last two years, they were doing two cornerstones. I think that's a good move. It makes sense. I think the only reason that they shifted was because of the part supply issue, and they had that horrible backlog, and they had to. But they clearly have for a long time been structured to try and do a three-cornerstone-per-year build approach. This one was new. This one was a surprise, but will appease, I think, appease a lot of whales out there. Seth said they are not going to do any more limited edition runs where they change up the art style. I think that's a good move. So this is a response to the Jurassic Park 30th or 35th or whatever it was anniversary, the Elvira Blood Red Kiss edition where, hey, look, here's a new limited count run of games with a different art package. It's an LE, but you already sold an LE. Right. Well, it's a different looking LE. But why do they get to get the best version and I bought the crap version? That's kind of – It's because it's L-L-A-E. Right.
    31:06
    It's limited limited. Well, and purportedly, these newer LE versions have all sold very well. I'm assuming this is a – they're very worried with the market cooling that they're going to alienate whales. And the whales are going to be like, we don't trust you. You're like JJP with the 20 different LE versions of Waz. We can't trust you. um so but but bear in mind this does not and he did stress that there would be the potential to do pro and premium versions with different art packages as time goes i think that's a better move that's what they did in the old day like the like the lucy edition of acdc that's not an le that's a premium yeah so it's just with a different art package so so yes so they they said that he He did also say he didn't call them vaults, but he did also say some of the games that have been discontinued, be the LCD or D&D, that they would be willing to consider putting back on the line if they can solve the issue of finding the parts. And, of course, making new license arrangements with the licensors just because they might not be interested. But they are and there's demand. They're open to that. So basically back because they haven't done vaults since Iron Man. I think Iron Man vault last built in like early 2020 or so so it's been almost four years since we've seen a vault at least a DMD vault and in fact I don't know if they vaulted any of the LCD games I don't think so I think everything once it's been they've said this is the last run it's been the last run they've not gone back since then whereas we used to see that a lot yeah there used to be a fairly large number of vaults and in all honesty in a lot of cases the vaults had better art packages yeah they've sometimes that have gone and touched them up, like Spider-Man, a comic edition, was probably the case-in-point example with a whole new art package, but inspired by the look of the old one, but also Star Wars comic. Though that was still in production when they did that shift, so we didn't count it as a vault. That was more in that pro-premium gets a different art package style. I liked that. Yeah, a lot of people did.
    33:09
    Seth did stress that they don't have, this is no surprise, Any plans to introduce Insider Connected into DMD-era games? Well, that makes sense. I mean, for Sam games, it would probably be a nightmare to figure out because the system was never designed for Wi-Fi. For Spike 1, maybe it wouldn't be so hard, but are there really enough to worry about? Do we really want that on WWE? No. It's like Ghostbusters and what? Kiss would be like the two people would want it for. But whatever. um as you saw with jaws he did note they they really strategically do want to try and hold the line on pricing they need to and i i agree and so they're looking at what they can do to try and do that while dealing with inflationary issues because while inflation has gone down i'm not saying what he said but i'm saying to the audience inflation is lower now here in the united states than it was last year. However, we normally, I think the Fed has an official inflation goal of 2%, and we're floating more in the 3% to 4% range. So it's not to the sticker shock level that we were seeing as consumers, but it's still higher than government would want it to be. Right. So that could mean a variety of things. My assumption would be if they either, if they can't do it, obviously, they will have to raise prices, but they either have to cut their profit margin or they're going to cut the bill of materials.
    34:34
    Right. But the thing is, is they have to think about it because if they don't do any of those and they keep increasing the prices, they end up like some other people have gotten to where they're starting to have problems selling machines.
    34:45
    Well, the issue with inflation is if your paycheck isn't inflating at the same rate as inflation, you have less buying power. And that's by and large what's happened to people. So the final thing I wanted to note from his discussion was he did say that Stern was going to try and get these accessories for these games out a lot faster. And by faster, I mean closer to the release of the game. They can't do it a whole lot slower. If they did it any slower, they'd be CGC. Yeah, it's almost a running joke about expression lighting kits.
    35:19
    They're always like a year behind the game. And as you know, so many of these people in this hobby flip their game before then. So it's like, yeah, no, I already sold my game. I don't want the expression lighting anymore. I already sold my game. I don't want the topper anymore. I'm waiting for them to drop the topper after they've already taken the game off of the line completely. No. It would – I was going to say – I mean they just now a few weeks ago came out with more Black Knight toppers. When was the last time they made that game? I can't remember because it didn't sell that good. Yeah. But anyway. So that's Pinball. That's the – it's all Stern. Sorry. That's the only company that's done anything of note that I feel like talking about. What have you got for us in video games? Video games is the same way Most everybody's gone off for the Have been off for the holidays and everything But there's a couple interesting little things Tetris Has been beaten I didn't know you could beat Tetris Technically There's not like You beat the game, you're the best, whatever But there is a kill screen Where it gets to the point where the game just stops It just locks up and it doesn't run anymore And a A 13-year-old competitive player, Willis Gibson, became the first human to get the kill screen. He posted the video last week. And in 38 minutes, he hit level 157, maxed the score out at nines because that's as high as it goes, and he got the kill screen.
    36:51
    It's one of those things that AIs have done it. Okay. Bots have done it. Task bot. Yeah. But no human has done it before because it was one of those things that wasn't thought possible because I'm not going to go into it because I only know a little bit of it. But there's like this whole thing where there's a maximum because of the controller, a maximum number of moves you can do. And then somebody figured out that if you move the controller a different way and hit it in a different way, you can make moves even faster. Controller rolling. Yeah. I don't know what that means, but I read the phrase. Right. So people were able to start getting – when that got figured out, it got to the point where anyone who wasn't doing rolling couldn't even keep up in competition because they were so much faster. But it turned into a whole thing. But, yeah, somebody has gotten the kill screen. Cool.
    37:40
    A human has. So that's pretty cool. Twitch had to update their policies again. What? I know. It's amazing. After their changes to where they were letting, allowing nudity, and then they took away nudity in art, specifically in art, and they made their rule changes, they had to go out and make a change to update their policies to prohibit implied nudity. because one of the changes they'd made that didn't get reverted originally, it became a very big thing for people to have, like, objects blocking themselves so it looked like they had no clothes on or whatever, because they wouldn't actually be nude, but they would be, you couldn't see any clothing. Was this because of Boogie? I don't think it was Boogie. Okay. Because he got suspended for a nudity thing. Yeah. I don't know. So it got – Boogie, he so wants to be relevant. He wants to be relevant again so bad. I've not talked about Boogie in years. But he had a financial audit. He's got that documentary on. The financial audit documentary came out. He's tried so hard to become relevant again. But ever since he fired that gun when that guy came to his house, it's just been downhill for Boogie.
    38:56
    But, yeah, no. But I found it interesting where they put the rule change because the rule change specifically says that cleavage is okay as long as there are no nipples shown. But it has to be clear that you're wearing clothes because there's got to be a big – and people have to be sure that they are listed in the correct places. because like the Just Chatting and some of the other groups have started getting a lot of streamers that are either not – they're making it look like they're not wearing clothes or they're wearing like bikinis and stuff, which are only allowed in the hot tub section or the pools, beach, and hot tub section of the thing. Yes. Poor Twitch. They trying to walk a line and it not necessarily going great for them Apparently not Though I did see an article I wish I saved it talking about how Twitch is one of the primary feeders to OnlyFans Because a lot of OnlyFans people will do stuff on Twitch. Oh, okay. And then link to their OnlyFans. Oh, okay. So it's like marketing. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I play video games, and if you want to watch me play video games, otherwise, go to here. So much like Stern talked about their upcoming year plans, Square Enix talked about their upcoming year plans. Oh, Square. Remember last year they talked about how they were leaning into the blockchain and NFT. Yes, very, very, that was so 2020 of them. Right, and that worked out so well for them that the blockchain game they released, like, reviewed terribly. It is gone. Their Final Fantasy trading card. Well, yeah, but it's not a thing anymore. Their Final Fantasy trading card NFTs didn't go great. Oh, the NFTs flopped? Oh, no. But this year they let us know what they're concentrating on. This year they're going to aggressively apply AI to their content development and publishing functions. does square want people to hate them it feels like they're deliberately taking every edge lord like 13 year old old edge lord this is how you make money nfts and crypto and blockchain because blockchain says it sounds fancy and you wouldn't understand boomer and now ai you guys don't understand ai is the future you boomer that's what it feels like it is definitely yeah It's going to be interesting because I know there are two lawsuits out there right now. One of them because I don't remember which AI it is, but it came out that that AI was fed and taught to do its stuff by basically being fed the last 100 years of the New York Times. So there's a big lawsuit over that. And there's another one because one of the image creation AIs that is out there was fed every magic card ever, and it was first taught and built and designed making custom magic cards.
    42:14
    And so its entire backbone, its entire existence was created off of the work of magic card artists. That's nice art. I see why they do it. No, I understand completely. But now, for obvious reasons, they're getting sued because that was use of that art. Yeah. You basically stole people's copyright content to make your brain work, and your brain's a machine. Right.
    42:40
    Shenanigans. Square Enix is disappointing me. They are very, very disappointing. Well, I mean, the AI thing might actually annoy me more than the blockchain and the NFT thing last year. Just because if they start applying it to the art, it's, yeah.
    43:03
    Baldur's Gate 3 came out on Xbox. I've been waiting for that. And it had a couple issues. If people had their clips set to automatically upload and be published, and they clipped a mature scene, they were getting one-year bans.
    43:22
    That would be bad. So Laren had to work with Microsoft to start getting those bands lifted. It took a few days. There's also a save glitch that is occasionally causing saves to fail. So Laren put together a workaround so that you can enable cloud saving. And if the save glitch happens and all your saves get lost, your last five saves will be in the cloud. I thought modern Xbox already was doing cloud saving It is But this is a special save They had to design that saves to The Layern cloud Because it's A firmware issue that Xbox Is working on but due to the holidays They're short staffed That's unfortunate because it's such a popular game How much popular is Diablo 4? Diablo 4 I was sad when I saw it on your list don't be sad i was sad there's a promo come on the list too i'm so sad it's fun it's like diablo four diablo's fun i told him no i warned him like went in and deleted it's like i warned him and then he kicked me in the nuts and said yeah it's like it's like it's like when you tell your kid not to touch the stove because it's hot and they keep preaching towards it eventually you just gotta let yeah eventually you just gotta let him touch it this is fine blizzard's gonna be fixed now Microsoft's going to save them. Well, no, you did hear about their new lawsuit, didn't you? No.
    44:55
    They have been sued by some executives they let go because the backlash from their prior suit has now caused them to discriminate against old white guys. and because of the comment back when all that was going up where uh bobby had said that the the executive levels don't have enough uh the he said specifically the executive level has too many old white guys in it uh a couple people got passed up for promotion uh for younger for for younger diverse people and then they got let go in the round of let goes and now they're suing for being discriminated against by white guys. So I didn't have that in here. I read that this morning. Oh, okay. It's breaking news, folks. Breaking, breaking, breaking.
    45:51
    My last thing, because like I said, there's just not a whole lot going on right now, but Star Citizen. Oh, Star Citizen. It was one of our top five episodes last year. Maybe top five 2024 episodes. This isn't a major Star Citizen update. Bobby. but they have released their new everything pack. It's got the whole game? It's got everything that you can get in the game. Every ship, everything they've ever offered for sale, ever. Wow, even the old stuff. Yes. Wow. Yeah, for a game that's still in alpha.
    46:23
    So you can have it when a game comes out of alpha. Well, let me rephrase. So your great-grandkids can have it when the game comes out of alpha. They're very much looking forward to this game. It's beautifully priced. it's only $48,000 that's a lot of money I mean that's a lot of video game money that's a lot of Ninten bucks wow okay really $48,000 wow so how do you feel about buying like 10 LEs it's Or not 10, but – Right, right. But I'm sorry, five LEs. Five, yeah. I mean, I could resell those. Even if they take a loss, it wouldn't be – I don't think I can resell my, what, 170 ships or whatever I get out of the Star Wars. Yeah, it's over 175 items. Okay. But, yeah. It just seems like a lot for a virtual thing.
    47:29
    It's not even an NFT. It almost feels like the ultimate outgrowth of the whole Kickstarter thing has gotten to the point where you've got to have everything, and then you get into this whole sunk cost fallacy. Well, I've already paid – it's just $50,000. Here's the thing. Setting aside the dollar amount, which I don't know what sort of whale – like I always classify like are you just like – sometimes I see people and they play like the gotcha games and stuff and they're like, oh, I don't know. I spent a little bit of money and I'm like, are you a whale? And they're like, I'm not a whale. I'm like, well, maybe you're like a beluga whale. You might not be like a full size, like a sperm whale or a blue whale, which is the biggest whale. But in this case, maybe we need to like have a space whale from Ahsoka. These are space whales when you're spending $48,000 on a video game that hasn't reached its final version, hasn't reached beta.
    48:31
    Here's my question to you, Tony. How do you think someone stays hype enough to spend $48,000 after this many years of sunk cost? Okay, I get it. I get the argument. I totally understand sunk cost policy. I've seen plenty of people. I myself have been in the instance where it's been like, I've been in this line already at the grocery store for so long. I'm not going to change lines. Sunk cost. That's what that is. But to want, I mean, it's been so long to all of a sudden see this and go, well, I might as well after so many as might as wells. It's just, it's a long time. We see over back on our other segment in pinball, we see hype die all the time when these companies mismanage. We've seen hype issues where companies know there's a hype risk. And that's where you see American pinball with Galactic Tank Force do like this full court press at Expo where they bring in all of the actors from the screen. And we see Final Resistance get a relaunch with multimorphic people going out on the podcast months after it was revealed that Texas and, you know, doing promotional streams because they know the hype is important. And this was all stuff within a year.
    49:46
    But Star Citizen, I think, has been a thing for over a decade. It has. I think it was 12. I don't expect you to know the answer. I'm curious how many of these do you think they sell? I don't know.
    50:00
    They might not sell any. The very fact that it exists might be just to create hype. It seems insulting. I don't see how they can get hype back. I feel bad that over a decade ago I spent $100 on this game, and I still don't have a game to play. And it's been over a decade. And I feel bad. I can't imagine the people who spent thousands. But if you go onto the forums, there are people who have spent thousands and tens of thousands of dollars on this game. And some of them are absolutely happy. And every year you see a certain percentage of them, some of them that have spent tens of thousands of dollars, give up on it and be angry. and you always see the open letter, angry, leaving posts that they put on the forums and Reddit and everything.
    50:48
    But it is one of those things that I think just the very fact of putting it out there because it gave them a headline. They've got a headline that there's a, you know, $48,000 nets you blank. Okay. So I do think it's interesting. In the United States, it's $48,000. In Europe, it's 47,000 euros, which does not come across at all. There's like a $6,000 difference there. Yeah. That should be over 50 if you do the straight conversion. Yeah, the dollar is stronger as last I looked. So the euro amount would be fewer dollars than, right? Is that the way? Yeah, the euro is stronger, so it should be a higher dollar amount. Right. In fact, let's do a conversion here. But the difference is like 1,000, but I know that it's way stronger than that. So you thought it was about 47,000 euro? Yeah. All right. So 47,000 euro would be about 51,500 U.S. dollars. So, yeah, that's a weird. Okay. That's weird. We're just going to make it like about the same a crime, except for that's not the conversion rate. But in whale speak, that's about the same amount of money. Yeah. Well, in whale speak, they probably lose that amount of money in their couch cushions every day and don't even notice it. That's true. I would like to spend a couple of years seeing what that life is like, but...
    52:21
    I guess. Well, I don't have anything else, Tony. Yeah, no, that's it. Like I said, video game snooze has overall been fairly quiet. it's pretty standard for this time of year yeah yeah normally we had the stern reveal in december so this was we actually had a little more on pinball than we normally would but but if you want to reach out to us you can uh email us eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com you can go to facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast or support us on patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers we're on twitch and instagram as eclectic underscore game and we wish you all a happy new year and we plan to be back in a couple of weeks to give you all the latest news. But until we reach that point, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, y'all. See ya.