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Episode 85 - Sword of Lexan

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 30m·analyzed·Apr 7, 2019
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers discusses April Fool's pranks and Black Knight: Sword of Rage announcement.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss the Eclectic Gamers Podcast's April Fool's participation, personal updates including Dennis turning 40 and his dad's Black Knight restoration project, and the major announcement of Black Knight: Sword of Rage by Stern Pinball. They preview the new game's design team, features, and discuss community reception to Jack Danger elaborate Burger King April Fool's prank.

Key Claims

  • Black Knight: Sword of Rage is designed by Steve Ritchie with Tim Sexton as lead coder (his first lead role at Stern)

    high confidence · Dennis provides official design credits from Stern announcement

  • Pro model of Black Knight lacks upper playfield, while Premium and LE models have one

    high confidence · Dennis describes tier differences from official announcement materials

  • The April Fool's prank replacing Zach Menney on This Week in Pinball with Ken Cromwell was orchestrated by Dennis, Ken, and Zach himself

    high confidence · Dennis explains the planning and execution in detail

  • Jack Danger's Burger King livestream April Fool's prank (showing BK instead of Black Knight gameplay) was highly impressive and received better community response than other pranks

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony discuss the prank's execution and reception

  • Dennis's dad found a Black Knight project game in central Kansas two Fridays prior and is restoring it

    high confidence · Dennis describes the restoration in detail, playfield condition, and repair work

  • The Twippies awards showed extremely lopsided voting in some categories with at least one game receiving 0.0% of votes

    high confidence · Dennis references Jeff Patterson's breakdown of Twippies results

  • Kevin O'Connor did art and graphics for Black Knight: Sword of Rage; he previously worked on the new Kiss game

    high confidence · Dennis provides game credits and previous work examples

  • Scott Ian of Anthrax provided music for Black Knight: Sword of Rage

    high confidence · Dennis lists official credits from announcement

Notable Quotes

  • “I haven't decided if I'm going to get if I'm going to replace the motorcycle that I sold when I had kids, or if I'm going to get a tattoo, or if I'm going to get a pinball machine, or if I'm going to get a dog, or whatever. I'll figure it out by 50, I figure.”

    Dennis @ Early in episode — Humorous reflection on Dennis's 40th birthday and midlife crisis considerations, shows personal connection to pinball collecting aspirations

  • “That would have been hilarious. It would have been. But it seemed like... It wins its own award that it shouldn't even be eligible for my personal opinion.”

    Tony @ April Fool's discussion — Critique of This Week in Pinball winning Twippies for Best Podcast despite only placing top 3, suggesting award eligibility issues

  • “He decided not to do the overlay, which I wouldn't have done the overlay, unless you're going to completely redo the entire cabinet... so it's like okay so it's a player's game because the cabinet will never look great unless you sand it and re-stencil it”

    Dennis @ Black Knight restoration discussion — Philosophy on restoration approach—player's game vs pristine restoration, balancing preservation with functionality

  • “That is so impressive... That might have been the best April Fool's.”

    Dennis @ Jack Danger Burger King prank discussion — High praise for the execution and creativity of the Burger King livestream misdirection prank

  • “I felt so much better about what we did on the Twit Podcast after that because I thought, oh, people are going to be way more mad at Jack than they'd ever be about pulling Zach off of his own show.”

    Dennis @ Post-prank reflection — Shows relief that their own April Fool's prank was received better than they expected due to Jack's more aggressive prank

  • “There were people who were pissed. I can understand, but that is so impressive.”

    Dennis @ Discussing Burger King prank reception — Acknowledges some negative community reaction while praising the prank's execution

  • “It's the same reason I don't have a pinball machine yet. Sure. More important reason. But one of these days.”

Entities

DennispersonTonypersonZach MenneypersonKen CromwellpersonJack DangerpersonSteve RitchiepersonTim SextonpersonKevin O'Connorperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Dennis working new job with contract work generating minimal revenue ($60/hour rate, $60 first month); impacting article writing time

    high · Dennis discusses new employment situation and reduced capacity for publication work

  • ?

    community_signal: Eclectic Gamers podcast participating in coordinated April Fool's prank with multiple pinball podcasts including This Week in Pinball, Special When Lit, and Slapsave Pinball

    high · Detailed explanation of rotated host participation across multiple shows on same day

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Some community members expressed negative reaction to Jack Danger's Burger King April Fool's prank, but hosts view it as acceptable joke execution

    medium · Dennis states 'There were people who were pissed. I can understand, but that is so impressive.'

  • ?

    event_signal: Burger King April Fool's prank by Jack Danger, Steve Ritchie, and Tim Sexton during scheduled Black Knight gameplay livestream highly praised by community

    high · Dennis calls it 'the best April Fool's' and notes it received better reception than other pranks

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Tim Sexton announced as first lead programmer/coder on Black Knight: Sword of Rage—significant role elevation at Stern

    high · Dennis explicitly states 'this is his first gig as a lead coder for stern'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.272

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Saturday, not Sunday, April 6th. This is episode 85. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. It might be Sunday by the time I get it edited, though. We don't even know. He knows. We don't know. Let's not be silly. It's not going to be Monday. I'm not that bad. Yeah. Basically, my wife has work stuff going on tomorrow, so I'm not going to be available until, like, super late. Nobody wants to do this late at night. Nobody.
0:44
Probably not. That means the editing's done even later, and I always seem to try and get it out on Sunday, which sometimes means editing just before midnight. But I usually get it done before the clock actually rolls over. Speaking of rolling over, Tony, it's been two weeks. We were remote last time. This is the first time we've podcasted in front of each other since before TPF. Yes.
1:07
Have you accomplished a lot of gaming in the last two weeks? Oh, I've accomplished so nothing in gaming.
1:15
Nothing at all. Right after TPF, like the three days after TPF, that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I played a bunch of Satisfactory, which, Dennis, I know you recall because I actually played it at TPF. Yeah, because there just wasn't enough to do at TPF, so you played a video game. I played a video game at TPF. Yeah. That was Friday morning before it opened, so there. Well, they didn't need to know that, but okay. It makes me sound a little bit better. Maybe. A little bit. Not a lot better. I might cut that part out. I'm sure you will, as you should. It makes total sense to remove it.
1:47

Dennis @ Motorcycle/midlife crisis discussion — Reveals financial prioritization over collecting aspirations

  • “I charge them $60 an hour... I figured contract work would be $100 an hour, four-hour minimum is how I'd do it. I did it at the same rate our contract accountant does it for that group, which is lower than her normal rate.”

    Dennis @ Contract work discussion — Shows Dennis's approach to pricing side work and maintaining relationships with organizations

    • Josh Clayperson
    Jerry Thompsonperson
    Scott Ianperson
    Ed Robertsonperson
    Jeff Pattersonperson
    Dwight Sullivanperson
    Jason Fowlerperson
    Bill Webbperson
    Chrisperson
    Don Hookerperson
    Black Knight: Sword of Ragegame
    Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
    This Week in Pinballorganization
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Twippies Awardsevent

    announcement: Black Knight: Sword of Rage officially announced by Stern Pinball as new title with Steve Ritchie design and music by Scott Ian of Anthrax

    high · Dennis provides comprehensive design credits and playfield feature breakdown

  • ?

    product_strategy: Black Knight: Sword of Rage tiered across Pro/Premium/LE with key differentiator being upper playfield exclusion on Pro model

    high · Dennis states 'The biggest differences between the Pro and the Premium LE version is obviously the lack of the upper play field they don't have an upper play field on the Pro model'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Anthrax's Scott Ian and Bare Naked Ladies' Ed Robertson secured for music and voice work on Black Knight: Sword of Rage

    high · Detailed credits provided by Dennis including 'Music was provided by Scott Ian of Anthrax' and 'Ed Robertson of Bare Naked Ladies has done voice work'

    • We talked about that game a little bit in E3 episode last year because it was the one that was just casually mentioned. It looked like a first-person perspective Factorio, and that game is in all actuality a first-person perspective Factorio, except for I enjoyed it a lot more than I enjoyed Factorio, which is kind of surprising because I really liked Factorio. That's good. But since then, I've gotten so busy either working around the house, doing stuff with the kids.
    2:13
    I have gotten distracted because I've been watching a lot of stuff either on like Amazon Prime or Netflix or whatever, where it's the shows where I haven't actually seen it. And I watch it and I'm like, oh, I'll play a game while I watch the show. And then suddenly, you know, it's like the episode's over and I haven't even looked at the game because I've been entranced with it, with the show. So it's been Just busy stuff keeping me And then like I worked last weekend And it was a busy weekend And all the stuff this week I've just not played video games It's been such a busy weekend I don't know Happy belated birthday Thank you I am 40 I'm still planning my midlife crisis I haven't decided if I'm going to get if I'm going to replace the motorcycle that I sold when I had kids, or if I'm going to get a tattoo, or if I'm going to get a pinball machine, or if I'm going to get a dog, or whatever. I'll figure it out by 50, I figure. Why not both? And by both, I mean everything. Yeah. It's only money. I probably will at some point, because those are actually all things that I've been talking about for decades now. They're all things I want to do. I've regretted getting rid of the motorcycle since, you know, the day after I got rid of the motorcycle. So I,
    3:31
    yeah, the gold wing. Yep. 1975 gold wing. I remember it vaguely. And then when dad sold his gold wing, I wanted to buy it, but we didn't, we didn't because the, what is our, our current oldest child at the time was like six months old. I, I like how you say our current oldest child. There could be a future oldest child.
    3:56
    It could be, I could adopt an older kid because that's the only way that's happening. But, no, because we sold, I sold my bike right before she was born. And because dad had his. And I still rode dad's bike for a while. But then dad sold his. And I thought about buying it, but I didn't have the money. And we just, it was one of those, oh, we've got kids now thing. So we didn't do it. And I regret it. And I've wanted a bike back for years. And it's not happened. because quite frankly, there's more important things to put money on. It's the same reason I don't have a pinball machine yet. Sure. More important reason. But one of these days. Well, that box the reviewers can't see on top there, that is your birthday present. Ooh. So you can open it. I can open a birthday present live. Live, not live. Not live, not live. I'll give you a hint. It's not any of those things you just said. It's not a tattoo in a box. It's not just a chunk of skin with a tattoo on it. I could have gotten one of those. That would be super creepy. That would be so creepy. It would be fairly creepy, but it could be done. There are ways. It could be done. I bet with Fiverr I could arrange for it. Well, thank you for everybody who can't see it. They can't. It's a, what is the name? A nendoroid. That's what they are. Nendoroid series of Lena from Slayers. That's awesome. They don't know Slayers. You have to describe what Slayers is. Slayers is an awesome fantasy comedy anime series yeah that's a good description where she has the power of darkness and she goes and is always hungry that's all I really remember darkness causes hunger didn't it have like 4 seasons? I only saw 3 there are 3 seasons a new season that was released like 15 years after the third one and like 5 movies I've seen the three I've seen all the movies and the first three seasons I've never seen the second or the fourth season I haven't seen that one either you'll have to talk to Mike I think he has it on disc I actually have access to it now why not we just pimp all the incredible stuff I went ahead and because my daughter has been wanting access to a lot of the anime shows that her friends have watched and she doesn't normally have access to because it's just how our things are. A lot of her friends have the Funimation pass, so she can just watch that stuff. I went ahead and picked it up for the whole family so she can watch her fairy tale and My Hero Academia and all that stuff. And Slayers is in that, including the new season. It's on my to-watch list. Oh, okay. So you didn't just say, well, I'm sorry, you have to stick with Crunchyroll. No, I didn't. I was nicer than that. No, you are very nice. Wow, you've been true. Am I not merciful?
    6:53
    You just have to scream it with drool coming out of your mouth, but no one can see it, so what's the point? One of my favorite lines from Gladiator, though.
    7:02
    Well, you have been busy at least, even if it's not been eclectically gaming, which, incidentally, Jack Danger with Deadflip mentioned his eclectic collection of pinball machines, so I had to weigh in on that, and, of course, he caught the joke quite quickly, because how couldn't you? We are, you know who we are. I mean, come on. Everyone knows who we are. Do you know who I am? No one listens, but everyone knows.
    7:26
    Speaking of listening, I guess I should clarify, just in case people didn't pick up on it, we participated more in an indirect fashion, but nonetheless participated in an April Fool's joke. I thought you said we. Well, because you were in on it. I was in on it. So, yeah, so you participated. I got the warning. You got the warning. So what happened was, I'll go ahead and give a little breakdown here. I don't think people are particularly concerned. But in terms of summary, Zach Menny, who is the regular host of This Week in Pinball, he actually indicated that he had a lot of traveling that he was having to do over the next few weekends. So with that weekend coming up, I just, because I'm nice, I said, do you want me to maybe do it with Ken? and if you give me the sound clips and stuff, I could try and edit it up into an, I mean, normally I would not go to this much effort, but it's like, if you're traveling for almost a month, yeah, I can help out. Because it wasn't the same week that we record. So I have the time. And he said, hey, you know, Monday's April 1st. I was like, I didn't even think about it. I was like, oh, interesting. So we could do some shenanigans here. He's like, yes. So Zach was in on it, folks. In fact, Zach edited the episode. He had the time to do the editing as long as we got him the show put together quick enough. So Ken Cromwell from Special Win Lit Pinball Podcast, who's been a recurring guest on there. A ghost. He's been a recurring ghost.
    8:57
    Play pinball. So the ghost of Ken Cromwell and the skeleton of me got together. It was very Halloween themed. April Fool's joke. Yeah. and uh so we we did that and other than the intro the episode was totally legit we had the news notes we went through it talked about what we're going to talk about today trends no i know that wouldn't have been my original iteration of the april fool's joke was actually probably too far over the top i think that what ken's thought was and so i agree we we pitched it that zach was just too busy because you know he's a distributor he owns up and out pinball so that's what we ended up pitching it. My original iteration of the idea was to say that Jeff Patterson of This Week in Pinball was mad that Zach couldn't win the Twippy for favorite podcast. He only got in the top three. So he had to go. The new people had to come in and then if we screw it up, we're out after the next year. And that's just how it's going to be until it wins its own award. That would have been hilarious. It would have been. But it seemed like... It wins its own award that it shouldn't even be eligible for my personal opinion. Sure, sure. But it's like, okay, well, but would anyone believe that? Maybe not. But would people possibly fall for that Zach has been too busy? Maybe. That would be, yeah, that was very believable. And people did. There I saw on the This Week in Pinball Facebook page, someone was very angry with me, felt I was very mean, which was the point.
    10:32
    And so... It's like, do they know you? No, probably not. But that amused me because I was like, That was the goal. So I was supposed to be the one who was mean and was glad that Zach was gone. You were the heel. Yeah, well, yeah, basically. And Ken was the climbing the ladder of power but wanting to be on the straight and narrow while he does it approach, and that was the spin of it. And because we planned it – we didn't plan it at TPF. This was like three days out. We got some of the other podcasts in on it. Since we weren't recording, I made you aware in case you saw anything on social media, but we didn't really have to generate any content. to social media. Right, right. Well, you're our chief Instagrammer, so there is that. Right, which means I Instagram while we're doing pinball stuff and then I'm pretty much done. Well, we don't have to spell it out.
    11:20
    But, so what happened is, because Ken was now taking over this week in pinball, he needed someone to be on Special Win Lit in his place to participate with his host, his co-host Bill Webb. Yeah. So Jason Fowler, who we met at Texas, at the bar. Yes. Of Slapsave Pinball out of St. Louis. Who gave me some excellent scotch. Thank you.
    11:41
    He hosted, and these all dropped on Monday. We tried to drop them all at the same time. And so he co-hosted with Bill Webb on Special When Lit, but that left an opening on Slapsave Pinball, where he normally co-hosts with Chris. So Zach went and hosted with Chris on Slapsave. So we just rotated all of them. Even though he was too busy to do it. Yes, but he wasn't too busy to do that because Jason still edited the Slap Save episode. So Zach only had to participate. He just had to participate. So and I think Ken still edited special. Everyone still edited what they normally edit was the thing. So that was the idea. But the funny thing, especially Ken, because he's far more popular than I am. He got most. We got I got a couple of messages, but he got a number of messages throughout the day that he was just sharing with Zach and me. And they were just like there. I don't want to suggest there were a ton but there were a lot that were like the show's so much better I'm so glad that Zach's gone and some of those he wouldn't share with Zach so surprise Zach if you ever hear this episode but it's like yeah but there were also a few that were like really? we're not going to keep listening if Zach's not on this show which is ridiculous of course but some people feel very some people are shills, straight down the middle shills that are just listening because they like his YouTube. Every group has shills. That's true. So if you would like to be our shill, please apply. Yeah, at eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. But anyway, it was a joke. I'm still on Eclectic Gamers. I'm not the regular host of This Week in Pinball. Zach's still going to be hosting This Week in Pinball. I don't know if he's doing anything special for these next couple of weeks where he's traveling or what. Because you know how I am. After one episode, I'm like, all right, don't talk to me for like two months. Talk to the hand. Yeah. I know Dennis isn't actually the mean one. Everybody knows I'm the mean one. Yeah, it just depends on the show, I suppose. It's all relative. Let's see. A couple other little intro update things. This one, both of them are kind of pinball related, actually. Black Knight. So I mentioned this on the This Week in Pinball episode, but my dad found a project game that he saw out in central Kansas that he was interested in. So we went and picked that up two Fridays ago. And so that's down in my garage because I have the space. I worked from home all this week. Everything was conference calls. So he would come over on the afternoons while I was working in paint or whatever he's doing on it. He's touching up the cabinet and stuff. So I helped him strip the play field, depopulate it, because he was originally thinking about getting an overlay. How did it end up looking once you got it cleaned up? You said it looked pretty good. It's pretty good. There's not a lot of wear on it. Someone had mylared the main play field, most of it. So what looked fairly kind of scuzzy is the mylar. It's not wear. So the Magna Slaves have wear, very narrow, just around the dot, where they usually get it. And the upper play field has a couple of wear spots. And there's a spot of wear around the horseshoe that you can't really see when the plastics are on it. So he looked at that, and he was like, okay. He decided not to do the overlay, which I wouldn't have done the overlay, unless you're going to completely redo the entire cabinet. like are you going to is it going to be a player's game or is it going to be a restored piece right and he didn't want to stencil the cabinet he's just manually touching it up so it's like okay so it's a player's game because the cabinet will never look great unless you sand it and re-stencil it right like ideal like mint so why have a minty fresh looking play field it looks really good it looks better than like way better than my xenon looks better than my firepower play field which is okay yeah so the only significant wear is down at the out hole or beneath the field to play from because no one milered or waxed it or anything so anyway so yeah it looks pretty good so he's uh chipping away at that yeah i think he has most of the boards out and he's taking those to he's got a whole board soldering workstation set up at his hobby shop his little hobby shop my old bedroom i'll have you know and um it's all just boxes and solder and components now yeah there's no there's like boxes and solder but for a split second i could have swore you boxes of solder and I was like holy crap how much solder does he get? He just gives cases of solder delivered every week. He said he ordered some of this copper tape, copper wire, it's not wire but it's the copper that goes on circuit boards that are the traces. He said he got several lifetimes worth in the order. So he said it's a roll and it was measured in meters. That's what I understand it to be. So he's moving forward on that. I actually sent a message yesterday about a project that I'm interested in, but I haven't heard back. So I don't think that one's going to pan out. It's even further away. It's not a big deal if it doesn't. And then the last thing is streaming. I actually streamed this week. I actually streamed four times. So in a row, in fact, four days in a row. Because now that I've been working over a month, I'm finally at the point where I don't feel like I just have to sit in the chair for nine hours a day working on stuff. I'm getting a sense of what I can do and that I get it done in the time frame that I allot and then my evenings can be free sort of stuff. So I streamed Hoops and I streamed Silver Slugger. No, Silver Slugger may have been the prior week. But this week in the row, I did Hoops, Sharkies, Star Trek, and then this morning I did Hollow Knight. So I did a video game too. Nice. And so we're actually showing, we got new followers, Tony, because people were hungry. I need to get back to streaming. I mean, I need to, like I talked to you before we started recording, I'm looking at picking up some extra stuff to make my streaming rig easier to set up, pull down, and use. Yes, it's a big help. So it's not as much of a hassle. The biggest thing is, yeah, like moving the rigs on the pinball machines because I don't have a convenient thing. I actually usually would, since I was working from home, when it was about lunchtime, I'd go down and move the stuff. And then when I was done working, I could just go down and plug in the laptop and go. So that's where I run since I don't stream off my desktop, which is my main setup on my desk. I use the laptop because it's so much better than my desktop to stream with. I have to set it up and pull out extra monitors and run it to my TV and everything else. So, yeah, it's a chore. It is. But the sacrifice is worth it. We got a dollar worth of bits. So you'll be happy about that. Oh, man. So now let's go ahead and. Extra taxes. Maybe. Only if you earn enough, I think. Yeah. Isn't it like $600 or something? I think it's like $600. I think so. I have to look at it. Before they'll bother sending you a 1099. So, okay. So, no, not a 1099. Or is it a 1099? It'd be a 1099 MISC or something. Yeah, it'd be. Because that's, I know when I did, nobody's going to care about this. When I did airplane washing on the side, some people would 1099 me. It was a 1099 MISC. Yeah, and I'll have to see because I'm actually working for my old employer on the side. So some contract stuff they were afraid of, especially IT. They were really worried. But my whole first month generated $60. So I'm not sure we're going to – Ooh, look at you. You generated $60.
    18:56
    I charge them $60 an hour. That's what I was getting ready to ask. I gave them a really nice rate, I felt. Do you know how much I normally command? Less than $60, but still. I figured contract work would be $100 an hour, four-hour minimum is how I'd do it. I did it at the same rate our contract accountant does it for that group, which is lower than her normal rate. I'm trying not to be mean here. I still have to work with this organization because my new employer is an affiliate of it. Right. So I need them for things too. And you share office space. We do.
    19:29
    Yeah, I sublet from them. Yeah, you sublet from them. I was thinking there's like the new fancy word for office. It's shared office space they use now. Oh, yeah, that's a little different. It's like co-something or other. That's where you're actually sharing the physical offices and stuff. It's to make it look like you have a real presence when you're really actually just virtually working, which might be the model we move to in 2020. We'll have to see. Speaking of moving on, though, we will finally move into pinball. Okay, for the stuff that people are actually here for. Yeah, well, a lot of that was related. Not the tax stuff, granted, but a lot of the other stuff was related to gaming. So I feel we were pretty legitimate, but we have been recording in about 20 minutes. So first, we'll start again with the Twippies. We talked about that after our TPF episode, but just so people can. We're not going to go through it all, but Jeff with This Week in Pinball has released his breakdown of those results. So I have a link in the show notes so you can go and read those if you're curious. So in the case of the best categories, which were the ones all the games are up for, where you got to do the drop-down choices, it'll show you the vote allotments that all of those got. That was impressive. It was. Some of them were extremely lopsided. Yeah. And so I... There was, like, I think one that was, like, super close, and, like, all the rest were pretty... Mm-hmm. It was pretty... Some of them were, like, surprisingly lopsided. Yeah. And there was at least one instance I saw with a 0.0% for a game. Yeah. So that was interesting. And then honorable mentions, just narratively, and I think that's how he did it the prior time, on the favorites, because those are all write-ins, so people describe things differently. We were not honorably mentioned as podcasts. Someone had thought we were, and I was like, I don't think we have the listener base. No, we had at least two votes. Yeah.
    21:20
    But our listener base is, I mean, just mathematically, our listener base is significantly lower. I can see a lot of the other, unless they hide it, I can see the other SoundCloud host listening bases because I follow them all, and it's like, no, we don't have the big enough recurring. And it's definitely gotten bigger every year, but we don't have a huge chunk of people. We'd need, like, everyone to vote for us. Right. And even then, it would be... Why would they? A lot of those people who listen, we're not their favorite. No. I mean... We're their second favorite. Let's be honest. We didn't expect... We're their third favorite. We didn't expect to be in there anyway because of our split format. Exactly.
    21:58
    Amongst other things. That would be my... That would be what I primarily... But I think the split format is the primary reason that we wouldn't... There are too many people in the hobby that only care about pinball. I don't mean that as a name. We would have to become purists to have a show. But that would be a whole different show. Yeah, we'd have to change the name even. Well, maybe not. Maybe not. We could talk about eclectic types of pinball machines. It's because we love all pinball machines. We're very fair. EM, everything. Ramps, Rampless, Stop and Go, Flow. Not Flipper, but no, we don't. Sorry. I really did enjoy it. You didn't. I did Don pander to him I did enjoy it I honestly always thought the whole concept of the bingos and the flipperless games was silly Until I actually played Nick Baldrige's multi-bingo. And I actually enjoyed it. Even though I tilted out really quick. But I really enjoyed it. To the point where I'm going to look forward to trying some more bingos. Okay. I'm not going to go crazy and say I'm going to look to buy a bingo as the first machine in my collection. or nothing. But I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for some bingos. Okay. I never found them silly. I found them exploitative. That's my problem. Oh, I'm not saying they wouldn't be that. I would full on see that. I don't like pretending that they contributed anything healthy, other than on the engineering side, where they were very impressive. The engineering was impressive. Sure. Don Hooker's a master. I think it was enjoyable. But maybe I'm one of those people with that addicting personality. I don't know. I mean, it was fine. I didn't hate it. I'm addicted to so many things. You are. That's true. I'm addicted to working. Yeah. And working. Yeah. Money. That I get from working. Yeah. There we go. See, I'm an addict. Pretty much.
    23:50
    I will say a quick thank you to anyone. I did see that I did. It said, like, various. But apparently there were a number of write-ins on my publication, for various publications, for articles. that or Jeff just wrote that in there so that I would keep writing articles that would be tricky so basically what you're saying is if we want to get in on that one we're going to have to start assembling our own magazine to count for everybody else's I was glad that Pinball Magazine won versus say Pinball Adventures because Pinball Magazine was a real publication with real work put in and real content and I read it and I enjoyed it I didn't love every element of it I would do a magazine differently if I were doing one, but as far as publications go, it's a top-notch publication. I was the obvious winner. But yeah, it would be very hard for an article to ever be something so – I mean how can 3,500 words, which is like one of my biggest articles, compete with 360 pages? Right. People are just going to look at it and they're just going to go, he did more work than you did, and he did. So there's that. even if my article was so good that you wished it was the cover of the magazine. I'm not saying that it should have been. I'm just saying if it was. It would make sense. I'm actually working on a couple of articles. With the new job, it's been difficult to invest that time because I've been spending so much research time trying to figure out how to make an organization that needs grant money get grants.
    25:23
    Not my strong suit historically. I'm used to working more with government. So, okay. So, anyway. So, the link in the show notes is WeNote. So, we only really have one other pinball news item to talk about. It's the big news. Of course, it came out to everyone's knowledge the day after we recorded last time. Of course it did. I sent you a message that morning when I saw it. You did. So. They did the same thing to us last year. I swear they did. Do you think it's deliberate?
    25:51
    I think you pissed Steve Ritchie off. No. He didn't say hi to me this time at TPL. Like I said. That could be the case. Could be the case. He could have seen that I spoke with Dwight Sullivan and been like, I'm mad at Dwight still. He didn't want to program my game as much as I wanted to. Play better, Dennis. I don't know. Black Knight, Sword of Rage. That's the game. I'm sure everyone's heard about it already. I would hope so. I have a link in the show notes again to This Week in Pinball because Jeff put together a deep dive very quickly after the game was announced. So you can go there. In fact, I have it loaded up right now so I can see the photos. Me too. Well, he's got them all nicely put together. It's just nice because I can click on them. So if you hear mouse clicks, that's why. I kind of wish my mouse was quieter when I do podcasting, but it's not.
    26:38
    I have a program on my thing that if I hover my mouse over an image, it goes full screen. Oh, well, you know what? I have a program on my thing, and it's called the Internet Browser, and that's what I'm using to browse. That's what I'm using. You know what? It's an add-on for my browser.
    26:52
    Fine. Click. all right um so uh just a quick summary uh as tony had mentioned uh steve richie this is his playfield design tim sexton is on code this is his first gig as a lead coder for stern the art and graphics kevin o'connor did the art packages i believe josh clay is the one who handled a lot of the other graphical work uh i'm guessing maybe that's related to the display work I'm not quite sure what Josh did versus... I think the play field in the back glass, that's Kevin. Yeah. Which he's done. Last game that comes to my mind that Kevin O'Connor did was actually the new Kiss game. But he's been in the game for a while.
    27:36
    Sound design by Jerry Thompson, who's the lead sound guy with Stern at this point. And then music was provided by Scott Ian of Anthrax. So a lot of people... I don't know Anthrax, but a lot of people were very excited about that. and voice work Ed Robertson of Bare Naked Ladies has done voice work it sounds like he did one of the more prominent characters in the game but Steve Ritchie did of course reprise his role as the Black Knight and so he voices the Black Knight yet again the biggest differences between the Pro and the Premium LE version is obviously the lack of the upper play field they don't have an upper play field on the Pro model all the models do have a knight toy in the middle He has a motorized flail, which guards the left ramp. He also has a shield, which appears to function as a ball lock on the player's right-hand side to the right of the figurine. There are various modes that you can activate. There's a retro mode by spelling out knight.
    28:38
    There's spelling war, which advances your ability to fight the Black Knight himself, and a bunch of other stuff.
    28:44
    Obviously, we've not seen gameplay yet. I believe that's supposed to be coming out later this week. The 9th. Yes. It was an April Fool's joke on the part of Jack Danger and Dead Flip saying that they're going to be live streaming BK. And they did, but it was Burger King. Steve Ritchie, Tim Sexton, and Jack were sitting there with paper crowns at Burger King eating spicy chicken sandwiches and a Whopper. Talking about how they'd not been to Burger King in years. That's... It was pretty good. There were people who were pissed. I can understand, but that is so impressive. That is such an impressive to me. That might have been the best April Fool's. It was. I felt so much better about what we did on the Twit Podcast after that because I thought, oh, people are going to be way more mad at Jack than they'd ever be about pulling Zach off of his own show.
    29:31
    So, I mean, I guess we can start wherever in terms of talking about this, but... Let's start with just the art is where I would like to start. All right. If you're okay with that. Yeah, fine. We'll start with that. I know it's the most important thing to you. Apparently, everyone tells me this is what sells games now, is art. I think it does. I think it's super important to people. I'd like to start there. Because this is one of those sets of art that has been put out by Stern lately that surprises me. Because the LE's art is my favorite, and it's awesome.
    30:10
    Followed by the Pro. The Premium art, I don't like as much. And are we talking, is it the... I don't like the back glass on the Premium as well. Okay. Is it because he's got the sword instead of the flail? Is that what you think? I think that could be it. Because for, obviously it's very difficult audibly for us to describe it, but if I were to describe the differences in the Pro and the LE's back glass, it seems to be the LE has the knight on a horse. That's what stands out to me. Right. And the Pro does not. Right. Whereas on the Premium, I believe the knight is on his pony, but he's got a sword now. which incidentally I don't know because on the cabinets the sword's on all of the bodies of the cabinets and the knight's hand in the two upper models and not just the sword in the lower model my understanding was in the play field the knight has the flail he doesn't have a sword my sense was the sword of rage was supposed to be the player that you have the sword and you're fighting the black knight I guess it doesn't really matter because I don't think the sword's actually prominent. See, very true. And I like a flail. I like a bludgeoning weapon. That's kind of my thing. And the very concept of the motorized flail in this game, I don't know how well it's going to work, but it sounds amazing to me. It sounds evil and amazing. Yes. I heard a little bit more because the Slam Tilt podcast that we were on with Ron and Bruce, and we spoke with Ron at length actually not about this interview because it hadn't happened yet but at TPF Tim Sexton was on that show after the Coast to Coast show and he gave some additional information about the function of that mech during that show explaining the challenge of figuring it out so the game will know when the flail is positioned, it can be positioned to stay open to allow that shot without interference, it will know that it's placed properly and so it's designed so that it won't just hang there and brick shots inadvertently it's supposed to be out of the way sometimes and spin sometimes and it can spin either direction so to reject or to speed things along you have to help so to speak so it sounds like and the way i thought of that is on sharky shootout you're familiar with the eight ball and it's got a bunch of windows people that don't don't know what there's a one ramp in sharky shootout and there's a magnet inside of a magic eight ball and that's your mystery awards and there's a screen in front of it and it shows you what the award is going to be before the dmd shows you yeah but it's always synced up it knows where it's spent it must be there they know what position the flails and so yeah there's some sort of detector yeah there's some sort of detector yeah it either it either only installs one particular way so it always knows its its state or or it's got some way to measure it yeah there's so many different ways that that can be done easily because it's done and stuff all the time that I'm sure. Yeah. So, yeah, art-wise, I agree with you that the back glass is worst on the premium in my view. However, I don't like the side art on the Pro. You don't like the fiery air? Or you don't like, that was the LA, you don't like the just sword there displayed on the side? I think it's just like with Deadpool. I just don't seem to like light blue on the sides of cabinets. Oh, I could see that. Because I also didn't really like the Megalodon on Deadpool. It was my least favorite package. And I thought it just had, I just didn't like the blue. I don't know. Dark blue, I don't mind. You're not going through your blue period, right? Apparently not.
    33:46
    But the LE had my favorite side. The LE, yeah, the LE is everything about the LE. The LE is the best art package. And I can't remember the last time I said that. That's true. Because normally for me, it's the premiums that tend to be the best art package. I agree. But in this case, no, the LE is definitely. The flaming arrows and everything on the side art. The back, everything about the LE on this is just, I'm in love with the art package on the LE. Now, playfield art appears to be identical for all the games. The upper playfield for the Premium LE is clear Lexan, so there's no art that is embossed on it in any way. You just see what's beneath. And looking at this, it appears that internally all of the art packages are the same. So there's no issue there. I like how it looks. It's very reminiscent of Black Knight 2000, in particular with the lightning bolt wheel, which I always associate with that game specifically. And the same sort of insert style, very, very red. Something that people have spoken about on the other podcasts that have already come out has been that you see at the back of that art, there's like that grill with the flames. They've got that set up with the flame LEDs that flicker and do the fire effect. That could be amazing. So it's supposed to look really, supposedly, those that have seen it have said it looks really, really good. Because with the art in front of it, it gives it a better, more flame-like look than if you just saw the LEDs. Right. That's awesome. So, yeah, I thought that was pretty neat. I like that the upper play fields are Lexan so you can see under it.
    35:25
    That's very nice. I do wonder if that will lead to a point where we end up with a lot of scratch damage. I don't know how well Lexan will really hold up to that kind of use. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, the nice thing is people like to clean their play fields with Novus. Novus 2 and Novus 3 are polishers designed for plastics. Right. So I think it'll buff out would be my quick answer. I know Steve Ritchie said on this Coast to Coast interview that the Lexan, he even gave the thickness of it. He said it's a very thick piece of Lexan, so in terms of it being sturdy, it should be pretty good. Um, and obviously the ball should be in an ideal world. Your ball should be smooth. And if it's not, you need to take it out. So there shouldn't be a lot of stuff getting on there to scratch through it, but it's a fair point. I do think that I could envision it getting cloudy over time. Right. Um, do you, what do you think about the pro not having the upper play field? Cause that I think is the only really big discussion point that's triggering anything. it's a shock to me because Black Knight started multi-level playfields yep so for there to be a version of a Black Knight game that doesn't have multi-level playfields and let's be honest with Black Knight and Black Knight 2000 even though they were multi-level playfields it's not like you got a whole lot of extra space because everything was hidden underneath it so it's not like it really added or subtract I mean it added stuff but it's not like it was a huge difference where with this Lexan, since you can see what's under it, it'll help a lot. But at the same time, I was shocked to hear there was a version without the upper playfield. I was surprised too. Like a lot of people, I've always sort of associated Black Knight with upper playfields, obviously the first Black Knight being the very first game to come out with one. I do like the look of the upper playfield in these games. Yes. And I think I've said it here before. I know I've said it before. I don't actually care much for the original Black Knight or Black Knight 2000 from a gameplay perspective. And part of that, as you noted, here you have a full playfield and then an upper playfield. On those games, it's more like a bi-level where you've got your main playfield, but it doesn't keep going beyond where the new upper playfield, not very far at least. It's really just like one's higher and one's lower, but you don't have a full length to shoot. It's a reduced lower playfield, essentially. and on both of those games there wasn't a lot of especially the first black knight there wasn't a lot of point to being on the lower play field yeah it was like stay up on the upper the entire time and then black knight 2000 was very much right flipper all day it wasn't very balanced in terms of flipper use no you're right it wasn't very neither of them were i think a lot of what was going on with both of those games and why they're so popular is a the aesthetic is amazing and the music specifically, yeah, the music and the call-outs and all that stuff. They're one of those games that while, and for their time, the play was fine. I don't think that the kind of levels that we're expecting in play were the same as we're expected back then. I make it sound so long ago. Well, it has been quite a while. But, yeah, I think I'm interested to see because I enjoy both of those games, but I'm not the connoisseur of pinball that a lot of people are. If I like the way something flips or if I just enjoy myself playing a game, even if it's a crap game, it'll be fine. So I don't get as dug into it, but we'll see. We'll see how this one does compared to the others. Now, one thing I do like on the premium and the LE, I like that physical ball lock up top. well and that's the that's the thing that my understanding from how it was described to me is that ball lock is only a ball lock on the premium le that that ball lock the it's not like a virtual lock oh that lock is not there that's what the upper play field adds adds a multi-ball that's what it is so we're going back to the the stern thing where there are significant like very significant differences between the pros and the other i think in this case if i'm if i'm Not in all cases, just in this case. Well, if I understood what was – and I have to look at the feature matrix, and this is where I should have done some more homework. But if I understood what Steve Ritchie was explaining on Coast to Coast Pinball, it was on the – I think the way he described it was on the premium and LE, you have the opportunity to stack what I'll call the shield multiball, which is on all the models by the night, and that upper three-ball lock multiball, we'll call it upper playfield multiball, to have a six-ball multiball. You can stack those two multiballs. but he said it on the premium in le which makes me my understanding is that means the upper playfield multi-ball isn't like a virtual ball lock there's just not there on the pro which would make sense uh one thing that it does have the magna save being on the button on the lockdown bar ah yes that's a big change i don't like that and i'm going to be 100 honest i don't like the buttons on the lockdown bars because i hate reaching over to hit them. But don't they make it easier for new people to know that they're supposed to hit something? They very much do. And I think there's probably something that's solid for the hobby. It's just a personal thing that I don't... I'm already slow enough on going, oh, hey, I need to hit the MagnaSafe when I've got a MagnaSafe. Then to have to reach all the way up onto the lock bar, well, we'll see. Maybe it won't be as bad as I fear. Yeah, I don't know. And I could be. I want to clarify. I'm going through more of the deep dive stuff to see i haven't i'm not certain that there isn't some sort of substitute multi-ball for for the pro i'm not seeing any mention of it like i guess they're calling that upper one catapult multi-ball and the lower one is the triple knights challenge multi-ball which is the one that's on everything right so uh the rules i mean the story i don't really care about the story i don't need to you're going and you're fighting minions to try and lure the black Knight out to fight him. It's perfectly decent for pinball. I don't care what the story is. If it's taking me through a journey or not, I don't care. Looking at it, the Magna Save, I actually would have rather probably them dry and drop the Magna Save rather than drop the upper playfield, though again, I get it. People are like, well, Black Knight has Magna Saves. Black Knight has upper playfield. I agree with you from a playing perspective. It would be better to have the button on the side. I'm not surprised that they moved it to the action button. More people will actually press it now because they can get it glowing in your face right now which i've noticed people who don't play pinball as much they they notice that button so i think it makes sense from that perspective uh plus i usually was never even fast enough to honestly save my ball with the mag to save anyway unless it's rattling around in there in which case i probably still have the time i wonder if the if it's super easy to get those balls in that upper playfield ball lock or if it's like do you have to do a bunch of stuff to light it, because that was the thing with Black Knight 2000 was it was pretty easy just to keep reloading balls into the ball lock. Some people had that same thing with the original Black Knight, which, unless you put it, I believe, on hard settings, you don't have to go to the lower playfield to reactivate the lock. So everything's on the upper.
    42:55
    My default rule, my default position is the one that I have on pretty much any of these games that have the upper playfield additions. The Premium LE looks like it plays easier and safer than the pro does but yeah i don't i don't know this is like this is the closest i've been torn on if i were to want want to buy one between pro and premium since walking dead yeah where with walking dead it was like okay so the ramps after i finally got to play a pro which was years later it's like okay so the ramps feel better on the pro but you lose the walker bombs and i could live with losing the bicycle girl shot and the magnet. It had more magnets than the premium, but it's like, I don't know. The walker bombs were a really cool feature, and this may be a really cool feature, whereas who really cared if you had the upper flipper play field on Aerosmith versus just a ramp? That's very valid. I think that's where, on this game, I think I'd need to actually play both of them to make that decision, especially considering how little I like the premium art package compared to the pro art package. But whereas I wouldn't, I wouldn't let the premium art package start, stop me. But that said, I'm not going to defaultly be one of those people. And there've been a lot of those peoples in this hobby on this game right now, that is just going to by default say, can't have black night with an over play field. Boom. It has to be a premium. I'm not willing to say that may have been their plan. They're being Stern's plan to sell games, but I don't work that way. This might be perfectly good as a pro game. I don't know that we've played, but we played plenty of Stern games though. Game of Thrones. Oh, yeah. I prefer the pro model. But people didn't go into Game of Thrones with the default mindset of Game of Thrones has to have an upper play field. That's true. That's the difference. And like I said earlier, that was the shocker to me that there was a version without it. Yeah. My bias is towards the upper play field. Yeah. Even though the one thing that holds me different than a lot of those people is the bias aside, historically speaking, the upper play fields have been my least favorite parts of the Black Knight games, Which is why I would have rather seen High Speed 3 than a third Black Knight High Speed 3 is what I was holding out for But everybody who's listened to this show For any length of time knows that I love The High Speed series It's got a lot of supporters but Black Knight May there's a lot of good reasons To pick Black Knight Because of the iconic sound package And stuff but I mean High Speed had Important firsts as well The first High Speed was the first game to tell a story period So I mean it was a first There are lots of firsts. Now, speaking of the previous Black Knights, that's one thing that I like the very concept of is the retro mode in this to get the speech, sounds, music, especially the music from the older Black Knights. And my Tim Sexton on Slam Tilt spent more time. The write-up, explain that. The write-up suggested to me both versions of the game. When Tim was speaking, it was very much the original Black Knight game. Okay. Which does have speech and such, but not the cool. It does have the.
    46:06
    Granted, Scott Ian has redone that as a more hardcore metal version for this game. The Black Knight theme from Black Knight 2000 is back. It's just raw. Which sounds amazing because that song was already awesome. Yeah. I mean, that song is a reason to have Black Knight 2000 in your collection, just to hear it going, because when it goes, you just want to rock. Yeah, you can do it. Well, that's pretty much all I had to touch on with Black Knight Sword of Rage. If there was anything else you wanted to bring up. I'm not going to spell out all the modes and stuff to people. There are other shows you can go. Just follow the link and read the This Week in Pinball. Read that stuff. it's too painful to explain. Well, before we go into video games, Tony, there's something we haven't played in a while.
    46:52
    Chess. That's true. I haven't played chess against you in years. I haven't played chess against anybody in at least five years. Okay. But we're not going to play chess because that would bore people because they can't see it. Right. It's a very visual game. Unless you're Lex Luthor and have all the moves memorized.
    47:08
    Knight to king's rook four. But we can play 20 questions. Woo-hoo! That's right. You've got to reprieve because the last time. I didn't put any of my stuff right, so I'll just have to type it into the notes. Yeah. Click, click, click. I don't have my keyboard. It still kind of clicks quietly. Okay. So I have a pinball machine. For those that don't remember, we did this with Nick not too long ago, but hey, there might be a new listener.
    47:36
    Tony will ask a series of yes and no questions. It will be about a pinball machine. It will be a flipper pinball machine, and it will be a pinball machine that I know he has played at least one ball on in his lifetime.
    47:52
    After the first 15 questions, if he still has not guessed the game, he may use Internet resources to help him sort out and suss through the truth on the last five questions. And that's pretty much it. So whenever you're ready, go ahead and ask your first question. Is it strike or extreme? No. You know, I imagined that you would actually have said that, and I thought, I wonder if Tony will actually guess a game straight out from TPF. Let's not do that.
    48:21
    I had to try. I don't blame you for trying. I had to try. I mean, you would probably forever hold the record as the person who got it on question one if I had worked out. It was worth the risk. Let's go with that. Well now that brings up the question It's just how evil are you I'm not evil at all Is it a DMD game No Is it electromechanical No Is it Pirates of the Caribbean No I had to try Not an EM, not a DMD Not Striker Extreme Not Pirates of the Caribbean Was it made The year 2000 or after Yes That's question five. Oh, it would have to be, actually, because I did know DMD, didn't I?
    49:11
    Well, no, there were solid state things that could have been. I didn't waste a question there. Is it a stern? No. 2,000 or later, not a stern, not pirates? See, I think where you're going to get me now is especially if you didn't go with something from TPF. My mind's now locked into TPF, which would make you evil. It doesn't make you evil. It makes you have even gone with a good play because now my mind is fully locked into TPF. Yeah, but you could easily unlock your mind from TPF. Because you have the power. Is it a spooky game? Yes. Is it Alice Cooper? No. Is it America's Most Haunted? No. Is it Rob Zombie? No. That's question 10. Is it TNA? Yes.
    49:54
    Yay! You got it. Yay! That's right. It's a 2017 game. Spooky pinball. It uses a screen, not a DMD, a TV screen or a laptop screen. See, that's the thing. Several of those I asked used DMDs because I just didn't think about it. It was at TPF, though I doubt you played it. I didn't play it at TPF, no. But you've played it before. I've played it before, yeah. I'm real bad about when I lock out something. Oh, it doesn't have a DMD. And the first thing I ask is, is it this that I know how to DMD? So that was solid. That was a good one. I think that was my fastest, personally. I'm not off to check It's close I think you've been sub 10 Question 10 before But question 11 is obviously very good Even though you ran through The entire spooky repertoire And picked the last one You didn't do their contract games So there was that Right While they're contract games I don't consider them spooky games I think they'll be counted as a spooky Right But hey, anytime I don't have to pull out the computer, I am happy.
    51:03
    Now we'll go ahead and flip it and see if you can get better than my 11. Okay, let me minimize my listing. Okay. All right, whenever you're ready. Is it electromechanical? No. Is it from the year 2000 or more modern? 2000 and up? No. Is it from 1990 to 1999? No. Is it from 1980 to 1989? Yes. Is it city slicker? Yes. Nice Wow That was impressive A belly What is that 85 87 Oh wow Impressive We played so many Mid 80s games I'm surprised you jumped On it that quick I almost picked it For yours Ah That would explain Yeah Wow I did not realize That was so It only had 300 units Produced Wow No wonder we've never Seen it around Yeah Golly Yeah that was Interesting I'm pretty sure that is our best ever. I don't know. I have to look. That was pretty quick. That was solid. I mean, I guess I could just go to the Eclectic Gamers website because I do keep it updated. Eclecticgamers.com for everyone who ever wants to go there. 20 questions.
    52:14
    Our previous best was seven. That was you on three coins. Oh, yes. Okay. My previous best was ten on Rob Zombie. I need to quit picking spookies for you Because you get them faster Because there's so few to go through Yeah but I always like to think That it'll take you a while to get to them Yeah You had 11 before on Avatar as well I see Yeah Well still that's fairly good That's tied for your second best speed I honestly almost made my second guess After I guessed Striker Extreme NFL Because it still would have been Striker Extreme, except for it wouldn't have been the obvious answer. That's true. I had not even remembered that you'd played that, though. Because that was the one where the one flipper didn't work, but we still played an entire game on it. Yeah, we did the best we could. I had Pindigos that needed to go. Oh, I just now look back at our OneNote and I see your little grid of questions. Because I don't have a pen and paper. Yeah, I just assumed you'd opened up Word or Notepad. I just created a grid. Welcome to the grid. All right. Welcome to the grid. And now, I guess, it's welcome to video games. Welcome to video games. All right. So first, some news on this good transition category, of course, virtual pinball. Right. A lot of our listeners like pinball and at least like some parts of virtual pinball to learn about games or rules or something. It's a good way to learn rules at the bare minimum. It can. And, of course, it depends. Some of their fantastical tables, like on Pinball FX, are not available as physical games. But that's not about Pinball FX. It's about Zacharia Pinball. So a couple, actually several things.
    54:02
    Zacharia Pinball is now out on Xbox One. So if you want to play it on Xbox One, I knew it was coming out, and I've confirmed it is out now at this point. Have you set it up that way yet? I have not, because I mostly play this game on the Steam version. So I'll consider it. I'd probably wait for a sale, though, because I don't usually like double dipping on video games. Now, was this the new – aren't they doing a new version? They're doing a new mobile version. A new mobile – just the new mobile version. The last time we talked about Zacharia Pinball was when they announced that Google had, out of the Google Play Store, pulled down their game because of the nipples and Farfalla. Right. So they had already been in the process of working on a new mobile game. To my knowledge, that is not out yet. Okay. So they have announced that they are in the process of bringing Zachary Pinball to the PlayStation 4. So they've started that process, but obviously they're not through that stage yet. So that's going on, though, for people like you who own the PS4 and not the Xbox. It is already out on Switch, though, incidentally. We've covered that before, too. Yes, we have. We cover all this virtual pinball stuff. they now on steam have a new pack a starter pack so and i have a link in the show notes if anyone wants to go and look at that so this way if you want to typically you either had to buy the tables individually on steam right or they have like a bronze silver gold platinum pack which is like everything or a whole lot of something so you get a whole ton of tables but the pricing would run around like buying a full game right so if and much like pinball arcade They do the, you get to play up to a set score. So I guess if you don't like doing that, the limited demoing option, and you want to just own a few games, they've got a little assortment of tables to try out, so to speak, that you can get to fully own. So that's what the starter pack is. So that's a new thing that they've put together for people that are just sort of thinking about it. So if you want to check that out, you can. I already owned all of those tables because I bought the silver pack quite a while ago. And in fact, as I often do with disclosure, someone with Zacharia through the Zacharia Pinball Facebook account reached out to me direct, not to the podcast, but to me individually, because I shared a number of things through the podcast and they'd heard our episodes about it and wanted to give me the tables I was missing. And I said, I'd rather do a drawing for the listeners. And they're like, well, we'd really like to get you the tables. I'm like, okay, well, full disclosure, so people can assess all bribes. Because I bought the silver pack, I thought I'd already owned all the tables, except the high score ones I hadn't unlocked. I didn't have their new remake tables. So they gave me codes for the remake tables. Those aren't real, physically existing machines. Zacharia Pinball is mostly about simulation of actually built games from the Zacharia company. So I owned all of those. I was missing three EMs of games that were rare that weren't part of – I don't even think they're really Zacharias.
    57:10
    Like Granada, which is the European version of Spanish Eyes. They have that in there now. I didn't have that because it wasn't a Zacharia pack game. So they gave me codes for those. So FYI, I've been bought. They should have sent you codes. You love virtual pinball too. But anyway, so all of that and, as noted, links in the show notes. So that was the news item that I caught during this last week. I know you have a number of updates for us, though. I have a number of updates. I know because I'm looking at these notes. I'm like, holy crap, this is huge. It could have been even crazier because there's tons of stuff that has happened because we didn't talk about – we haven't talked about video games really. No, because the post-TPF is so long on TPF. So I'm going to go ahead and get a start. Just a little bit of catch-up.
    57:54
    The war continues between Epic, Store, and Steam. And Borderlands 3 was announced. Very popular game franchise. Extremely popular game franchise. Gearbox's most popular franchise. By far. Yes. Yeah.
    58:13
    And starting with what was initially released as an accident on April Fool's Day, there was a teaser trailer that included a title screen right at the end that showed the gearbox icons and all that in the bottom and included the Epic Store icon. The No Steam icon. That video was pulled after like 15 minutes.
    58:39
    And then on the 2nd they re-dropped the trailer with the announcement of the actual release date. The release date is September 13th. They also released the information that it will be exclusive to the Epic Game Store for six months.
    58:55
    With that announcement, the review bombing that has become the standard response for the childish diehards in Steam. Which is one of the things that developers hate about Steam is the propensity for this behavior to happen, despite what Valve has tried to do to mitigate that. Yeah. And it launched. It happened. It hit hard. Borderlands 2 went from having 451 negative reviews in the last year to having over 2,000 in the last three days.
    59:32
    Oh, Internet, I love you. Yes. but as of yesterday the 5th Steam went ahead and activated their new off topic system that they put in place because of the review bombing that's been happening almost completely because of the Epic Store since the Epic Store became a thing in December and what that does is when you look at the reviews on the Borderlands any game in the Borderlands library now any reviews put after April 2nd are now tagged with an asterisk and a warning that periods of off-topic review activity detected excluded from the review score by default. So what that means is none of those negative scores, the reviews are still there. They don't delete the reviews. But they don't count in the game scoring. So where the game went from being very positive to mixed and negative, depending on which of the games it was because Borderlands 2 got received and had the most negativity hit it, but every Borderlands game got hit by tons of it. Hundreds of them. Where Borderlands 2 got hit by thousands of negative reviews. Okay. But it returned all of them to where they were because it basically just removed everything, every review that's happened since April 2nd. We've talked, last time we talked about this war between these two, about the review bombing and how it's an issue. And I'll be the first person to admit the Epic Store is not perfect. It needs some work. But like you know, Dennis, like you've mentioned in the past, when the Steam Store first hit, I hated the Steam Store.
    61:14
    And one of the things I hated about it was about the required online to launch a game that had no online in it. And the Epic Game Store has that problem right now. I had to go in and to play Satisfactory without being logged onto the internet. I have to launch directly from the games the EXE and the game folder because the game, I can't use the launcher because the launcher won't work offline and even though I had it create a launch icon on my desktop, that launch icon launches the launcher then the game but all I had to do was go and go to the game and launch the game physically we used to have to do that back in the 90's A lot of people aren't familiar with going and finding EXE files anymore. I'm not saying they're idiots. It's just not something they're used to. It's not their wheelhouse. It's not something they've ever had to deal with. But it's still an annoying thing. It's a thing I think they do really good to get rid of.
    62:15
    They don't have the review system that Steam has. They don't have the social interaction system that Steam has. They don't have the achievement system that Steam has. But stuff like that is stuff that Steam didn't have when it launched. And Steam is over a decade old at this point. And they've built themselves and they've added that functionality. I think the Epic Store, if they're going to continue, will do the same thing. Okay. At least some of that functionality. The whole reviews and the chat rooms and this and that, that stuff might not hit. It depends upon if they're going to go up for that or not. But I'm sure they'll add a lot of the other stuff. I'm still not in favor of having Epic let's rephrase that so that doesn't sound super confusing I've got no problem with there being multiple companies doing the same thing in the same zone I'm not bothered by the whole well I bought these games on Steam I want to buy the rest of this series on Steam because it's like if I've got the game and it's on my computer and I can play it I don't care what the launcher is as long as I have it my biggest concern with and it's my biggest concern with digital downloads, period, is the fact that what happens if the store goes away? What happens to the games I paid for? Right. Yeah. It's, I mean, I get the convenience, but from a developer standpoint, Steam's not a good deal for them. It's really bloated in terms of the share that Valve is taking, in my view. I think it's a valid thought. And so Epic, thanks to the success of Fortnite, had the financial resources to go ahead and try and launch a competitive service that they think can make them a lot of money without gouging. And hopefully with the drop in money that Fortnite has been taking, they can continue that process. We'll have to see. I wonder now if they wish they hadn't. Fortnite has taken huge hits thanks to Apex. to the point where Fortnite is coming out in their multiplayer. So if you're running duos, trios, whatever, when you're running as a group, they're adding a respawn thing like Apex has. So when you're doing team play, you can respawn down team members. They've been adding a lot of stuff that Apex added since Apex came out. The nice thing for either of those games in terms of competition with each other is since they're free to play, winning back people isn't a big ordeal. Yep, that's very true. They can do it. In fact, I think Apex had a huge issue where they were telling people, don't log in because there's some sort of crash costing people their progress. Yeah. And it's like, okay, well, I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of people jumped into Fortnite that day. Yeah. And that's been sorted out. I mean, of the two, I prefer Apex. I really prefer to watch Apex.
    65:06
    I mean, I'm terrible at it, but I'm terrible at a lot of those games. But I really enjoy watching Apex when you've got good players. I tried the Battlefield 5 one It came out So I finally played a Battle Royale It was alright I really like the concept of Battle Royale games And the ones I've played I've enjoyed playing But I like the way Apex deals with their stuff And does their multiplayer And their team setup and stuff I think it will lead to A good place between the heroes and all that And I'm almost positive I've said this before talking about Apex I think it will lead to something that could allow some solid esports tournament and play. So we'll just have to see where that goes. I'm hopeful.
    65:54
    So let's go ahead and segue off of that to our next bit of sad news. Kind of sad news. It depends upon how you feel on it. But GameStop announced their worst annual performance and their first loss since 2012. They've only announced losses like three times in their existence. Yeah, they had a good model. Had a good model. Yeah, because this loss wasn't minor. Their loss was $673 million due to the collapse of the pre-owned software market because of digital downloads. And that's what it is.
    66:36
    That market is going to continue to collapse. It's going to go away because as more and more companies go to digital only, Xbox, rumored, is launching a disk drive-less machine, rumored to be next month. The last set of rumors I heard about is they'll probably start taking pre-orders in a few weeks when they make the announcement.
    67:00
    So it's a disk drive-less Xbox One. and as more companies start doing that, the loss of the used market means they're going to have to pivot. I don't know what they're going to have to pivot to. I know they're big because they've got lots of the pop culture merchandise, figures, clothes, stuff like that. So they become hot topic? So they become more gaming-centric hot topic. That's one thing they could pivot to, that and actually selling hardware. but the truth of the matter is between the ability to go to Amazon or wherever you order from online or the ability to walk into Walmart and pick up your Xbox One as you're going to go on your way to grab a spare battery for the car and then over to do your grocery shopping means brick and mortar stores like this especially such very specifically targeted brick and mortar stores are going to have it harder I mean why I don need gamer knowledge I don need to have a specialist It not like when I walk into AutoZone looking for a specific part to fix my wife's car, where I need to have somebody knowledgeable with all the information to help me get it. And I need it now, so I can't have it. I can't go online and order it. It's not like that with video games. I don't need to go in and have their guy tell me what video games I'm looking for what I'll like.
    68:29
    So with the loss of the used market, that's almost all of their business. Yeah, I don't think they stay in business. Long term, I don't see them pivoting. I think it goes the way of RadioShack or anything else and it either shrinks significantly and moves to like an online presence or goes away entirely. And they do have an online presence and it actually had growth where all their other damage, their online presence had like a 16% growth. But it was so small, the 16% growth still does. I think ultimately they'll probably, though, if they want to just continue to exist, just have to contract and just become that. They're going to have to. An online store. They're going to have to because you can't maintain. And the sheer number of GameStops. I mean, this is not a big town. And there are three GameStops in it. Yeah. Yeah, a lot. And I mean, that's not like, I'm not saying there's three GameStops in the Kansas City area. I'm talking about this town. This one suburb of Kansas City has three GameStops. So, yeah, no, it's definitely going to be something that we're going to see changing. And not just with GameStop, but with a lot of these specialized brick-and-mortar places. We're going to see those changes.
    69:37
    So, continuing on again to more sadness. Wah, wah, two. EA, on the 26th, so immediately after our last episode came out, announced another round of playoffs. They laid off 350 people. That's about 4% of their total workforce. Their layoffs were concentrated in marketing, publishing, and the operations teams, which is where Blizzard's layoffs were also concentrated. It was mainly in the marketing and publishing. A lot of those were assumed on that Activision Blizzard side to have been related to the Destiny marketing campaign people. Right.
    70:17
    And it's become a thing that I'm sure anybody who follows video games has found out is there's a growing discussion about unionizing in the gaming industry.
    70:28
    And Game Workers Unite is one of the big groups pushing for it. There's several. Game Workers Unite has definitely probably been the most vocal one.
    70:40
    And their UK branch has actually become recognized as a legal trade union inside the UK. And I think it's going to be interesting over the course of the next couple of years to see how this plays out, especially in the U.S. Because the U.S. hasn't exactly had, they've kind of had a love-hate relationship with unions for the last 30 or 40 years.
    71:07
    Yeah, I mean, unionization in the U.S., it's complicated. It was once, I mean, obviously, when you set aside the bias of socialism and this fear that unions were a gateway to communism, I think it's a minority of the population that would have that opinion at this stage. But what strength in unions there were in the U.S. were oriented around manufacturing sector. And because the U.S. is not a manufacturing economy anymore, those positions don't really exist, and the other service fields didn't really get into unions the same way. There's still sometimes punching bags on unions in terms of like teachers unions and stuff, which are seen as having a degree of power. but most industries just aren't unionized because most industries didn't have a culture for it so i don't know if it'll take root or not the thing with us that complicates is even if you get the unions in place so many states went right to work that they don't allow closed shop unions it's all very voluntary and that limits union power it's designed to limit union power yeah the states also pay less um surprise yeah i know it's a shock so yeah it will i agree with you It's definitely, given the background, I just don't know. I think without knowing a bunch about the demographics of game developers, I think ideologically it's probably not a big leap for them to, like, I don't think they'd feel bad trying to make a union as developers, as programmers. but the with the industry pushback that will inevitably happen because they will fear having to pay higher wages and providing better benefits coupled with a fragmented US system in which most states aren't very union friendly though most of the states that I think have the development studios may be I mean California is union friendly they are and they've got a lot of development studios it'll be interesting to watch because it's such a mix I don't know how it will pan out I have no idea I've held a lot of blue collar jobs I've never held a job that's been unionized I've never worked anywhere where anybody was unionized in any of the groups and I know that's the big thing in the US unions are either everybody in one type so like electricians the pipe fitters, they have their own unions but then there's also the groups where this would be more like the industry like auto workers, everybody involved in auto work can join the autoworkers union. That's what I would assume this would go into. But I don't know. I don't know how it's going to play out. I know the way a lot of these things have been handled.
    73:46
    I don't know how many of them could actually have been helped by a union. Right. As horrible as the Activision Blizzard layoffs were, I don't know what real arguments the unions could have had for, well, you can't lay people off. right i that i don't i don't really envision and i haven't thought a lot about it so that could be part of it was just being short shot short-sighted but i don't really envision that sort of strength of a unionization setup but maybe things along the lines of oh telltale people you actually get severance right stuff like that like some sort of agreed upon defined package of what happens when Because this industry downsizes a lot. It's cyclic. It's like how pinball manufacturing often was with the lines. You couldn't keep the lines busy. You let people go, and then you bring people back in. And that was in the EM era. Gottlieb and Chicago Coin would exchange employees depending on who was building what. It just had to be done that way. And that's how game development is apparently gone because they decided when it's crunch time, they bring in people. And people are desperate for experience. And much like pilots, it's an industry that's dominated by people who are very passionate about wanting to work on games. And that can be exploited. Whereas people like Eric, my brother-in-law, who chooses to not go into game development because doing boring programming is much more secure and pays well, pays better. And that doesn't surprise me at all. See, because I kind of look at it like I have several friends who work for the railways. and in working for the railways the way one of the big things they do is when they hit a slow period they lay everybody off or they'll lay large swaths of people off and then when things start picking up again they'll call them it's like yeah i know we we laid you off six months ago but we're busy now so can you be here on monday and that's the type of work they do and the people who work there They expect that, and I'm still in shock every time I talk to one of them and say, hey, what are you doing? Oh, I've been laid off, so I'm just working, you know, I'm just doing side work here. I'm going to labor ready or whatever. It's like, okay, you're looking for a job? Oh, no, they'll call me back soon enough. It's just weird to me. I've read a couple articles where part of the problem is because developers are so spread out and you can be laid off so quickly that it makes it hard for people to really put roots down.
    76:29
    It's hard to buy a home when you're working somewhere and you might not be working there in a week. Several of these companies have gone through layoffs. Telltale, for example, when they laid off everybody, they hired new people three days before that announcement. And then they laid everybody off. And that's one of those things. I was like, how were they still hiring people? They had people who started three days before they were told they were fired. And a lot of these companies I've been reading on, they'll do where it's like, okay, we've done all of our work in this engine. And our next game is going to be in this new type of engine. So you're all fired. We're hiring a whole bunch of people who know that engine. Instead of retraining their current staff to like, oh, we're going to Unity. So instead of retraining their staff to use Unity, if they weren't using Unity before, they'll just sack them and hire a bunch of people who know Unity. Or their staff is like, anybody in their staff who knows Unity, congratulations, you get to stay. Everyone else is fired. And I don't know. It's interesting because, like I said, it's not an issue I've ever had to deal with personally with any of the jobs I've had. So, again, this is Kansas. We're a right-to-work state. So there's not a lot of union here in Kansas. There's not a lot of union strength in Kansas.
    77:53
    So I'm really going to be watching. I'm going to be interested to see how things go. Not being a developer, not being in that industry at all is not going to affect me, but I'm really interested to see how things go. I think we'll go ahead and finish our video games on a high point. Oh.
    78:08
    So a bunch of rumors have hit the ground coming out of Microsoft. We talked a little bit earlier about the rumors of the disk drive list system. That rumor has been around since like November. Yeah. So, but the rumors coming out now is that Microsoft is going to be making some changes and adding a couple to some of their subscription services.
    78:30
    One of the things is they're looking at what they're going to call, supposedly, the Game Pass Ultimate subscription, which is a combination of their Game Pass subscription and their Xbox Live Gold subscription.
    78:43
    And currently, as I recall, the Xbox Live Gold is $20 a month if you do it monthly. It's $15 a month if you do it monthly or like $60 a year. Yeah, I'm more familiar with the annual rate. Right. Which is usually a baseline of $60. Yeah, and the Game Pass is $10 a month. Right. So they're doing a combined pass that does both for $15 a month. So for people who are monthly into Game Pass and monthly into gold, this will save them money.
    79:17
    And it should break even, from what I've heard, on people who do annual. But there's a lot of people who get the annual passes at a cheaper rate. Right, I've never paid $60 for an annual. At least not for the last five years or ten years or something. I mean, I haven't had gold in years because I don't have an Xbox. anymore. But when I did, I always got it for like $45. Amazon's always got one on sale. Right. So that's how I always did it. So it'll be interesting to see because I know a lot of people do use these on a monthly basis.
    79:46
    So it'll be interesting to see how popular this system is. The other thing is reports that they're putting out a Game Pass subscription for Windows PC users. It doesn't surprise me. Not at all. They've been pushing the whole games that are launched as Xbox exclusive are also available on PC through the PC Windows, through the Windows Store because that's what their whole market, and we've talked about this in the past, as they're pushing it because it's just that's what it is naturally. It's one of the reasons I so much more went for a PS4 over an Xbox One because while there were more exclusive games I wanted on the PS4 because all the ones that I might have wanted to play on the Xbox One I could just get on play on my PC.
    80:33
    But I can see with this Game Pass subscription for $10 a month, I could see getting it. Some say it's the best deal in gaming. And I can see the argument. I still haven't done it, but I know a lot of people love it. And they do a lot of promotional specials on it to get you hooked. Like $1 for the first month, $5 a month deals for a set period of time. So it's very attractive because the library is vast and it's new games. That's what's attractive about it. In a lot of those games it's like, okay, I want to play this game, I want to beat it, and then I don't ever care about it again. Yeah, no, I can definitely see the attraction. I do wonder, with the growth of subscription services, period, because, I mean, I had this whole conversation with my wife the other day about subscription services, because we cut the cord years ago. Right. We've just relied on Amazon Prime, Netflix, our antenna, and stuff like that for all of our watching needs. But we're adding more. Like I said earlier, I added the Funimation this year, this month actually, so my daughter can watch some more stuff and I can watch some anime and this and that. There's Hulu out there. I don't have Hulu, but Disney has their new streaming service coming out. CBS All Access. CBS All Access, which is the only one of those ones that actually calls to me, and it's just because of my love of Star Trek. My love of Star Trek's not strong enough for me to do it. There's YouTube Premium, which I did do, and I'm extremely happy with.
    82:08
    But this is becoming a system where while I've cut the cord and I no longer have cable, I'm probably paying as much as I would have with cable because of all the subscription services at this point. so that's part of the reason I've stayed away from Game Pass is for me I think I would actually still end up spending more on gaming than I do right because you tend to get games on sale for Christmas for your birthday as special yeah and you tend to play they still do Xbox Gold people still get to have like it's at this point it's like four games a month two are going to be Xbox One games and two are going to be backwards compatible 360 or Xbox original so it's like I'm getting free games constantly with that that I paid $40. And that's what I do with the PlayStation Plus. I get free games. Some months it's four games. Some months it's like this month it was The Witness and Conan Exiles. I've got them both. I haven't played them. I've got Hitman, all of Hitman Season 1. I've got all sorts of games. I've not played half of them, and I probably never will play some of them. But they're free as Department of Health Access, so as long as you take the deal when it's there, I think it'll be interesting to see going forward but I'm going to tie this back in a strange way do you see this as being not now but if the growth is there and the growth remains for systems like the P3 that let you use one set and change digitally could you see something like this being active if they got enough titles to use the same basic tile set with just different games and different rules and different art packages built into your P3. I mean, I could technologically, I can envision it.
    83:50
    The thing that, and this is less of an issue than it used to be for me with the P3, and for those that don't know, we're talking about the P3 is a platform built by a company called Multimorphic. It's a physical pinball machine, but the play field is itself a screen. So the ball is rolling on a screen that can detect where the ball is. It's very, very cool. It's awesome. I do like the P3. But the I mean, for me, the problem isn't the potential of the P3. The problem is there's no killer app for the P3 that makes it better than practically any output pinball game that's built right now. And it's like, okay, Lexi's better than Thunderbirds. Yay. Lexi's not a bad game. No, it's not. Lexi's the only regular pinball game in a pinball platform. And I think that's their biggest issue. And I believe Jerry has acknowledged that something's coming out that he thinks will address that.
    84:45
    That said, the other thing is that the price to get in is very, very high. Different than things like this where you've got Microsoft saying, here, why don't you get a Game Pass? Oh, you don't want a console? You can do it on your PC. We don't care. You're playing on Microsoft no matter what you do. We win no matter what. That's the philosophy they're going with now. And then here, maybe you'd like a diskless one since you're playing through Game Pass anyway.
    85:09
    We'll save you a hundred bucks because we didn't have to put a drive in. Console gaming in particular is very dominated compared to PC gaming by people who are lower income.
    85:22
    It's different. The dynamics are different. I read two in-depth articles about the truth of the PC master race and how it's very rich and very white and that console gaming is much more diverse because the money needed to get in is much less. and that there's a gulf in there and that gulf is seen in esports. It's a really interesting idea about how few console games are esported. There's some. But I think most of the ones that are like the sports games. But I'm not... I don't want to say I don't care about that. That's not the point of the discussion. But the point of that is that the thing with video games is the lower the barrier to entry, the more people you can get hooked on to your architecture. And console gaming has always been about getting in and having that price point where people can one of the attractive things about the switch is that it's affordable it's affordable and it's fun and has a lot of stuff so those sort of steps these things like game pass i mean think of it we're we're holy we're big boys we're all grown up we're 40 we have income we have jobs imagine someone who has an allowance and that allowance is able to cover a 15 a month game pass and they can play what they want in that it's huge that would have been life-changing when i was a kid. It's huge. I mean, when we were kids and it was like, what, I don't remember, 60 to 80 bucks to buy. I mean, games are like the same price as they are now. Right. How often did you get to have games? And I had an allowance of $20 a month was at least what the last amount was. So I could get a game every quarter if I saved my money. That sounds about right for me too. And spent nothing else and did nothing else with it. Because I normally bought, for me it was birthday's Christmas and I'd buy myself a game. Back to what you were tying this to the problem with p3 is it ain't got any of that going for it the closest thing that it has is that buying additional modules is less than buying a full pinball machine but the investment of getting the platform is so much more than buying a pinball machine that i think it loses a lot of that you still have to be rich to buy one is what i'm saying yeah not in truth no you could anyone could save up and then get one but what's helping though is that the price of pinball machines like JJP and such is getting so high that it's making the multimorphic P3 platform look like a better and better deal every year. As long as Jerry doesn't raise his price and Stern keeps raising their price $200 a year, JJP keeps raising their price $500 a game, it's going to get to the point where you're going to be like, yeah, I would rather pay $10,000 up front and then another $3,500 and half six games. It's going to get that point. It's going to hit that point. And things like Hooping It Up, which we didn't get to try when we were at Texas, but that was a free add-on for the Lexi Playfield, I think. Free. Yeah. So that stuff helps too. That's their Multimorphic Gold Pass. Their Multimorphic Plus. That stuff. Now, that would be interesting. Subscription service for the Multimorphic. that could get but it's just the barrier of entry is so high on the price is the real problem that's half the price of my new car it's like that's a lot of money come on for a toy you wonder about and I don't know because I've not looked into it if people because I know there's some talk about being able to do your own programming and put together your own stuff on that system if that could be made freely accessible to other people. I don't know how that works. Yeah, right. Because, oh, sorry about my microphone. Yeah, I know that Nick Baldridge was on. He got a P3 and he's looking forward to developing for it. Well, and that's great. What if I wanted to develop for it, but I don't want to buy it? Is there a dev kit I have access to? I don't think so. I don't mean I don't think so snarky. I mean, I don't think so, but I don't know. You're right. I don't know if there's a way that I would be allowed to develop without having already bought the product. and that's a pretty big buy. That is a huge buy. I mean, that's more like me paying them to work. You see, because the dollar amount sort of thing, because I don't think, I imagine you get a share of a module you develop. So it's just, yeah, it's a big, it's not like how I think, I don't believe Microsoft goes to Activision and says you have to spend a whole bunch of money with us to develop with us. They recognize them as a valued partner. Right. Here's the kits, go do your thing and then fire all your people. Right. No, maybe they don't say that. And to be fair with them on this side now, because of how the console architecture has gotten, they're so much closer to video games. Now, that's the nice thing now is that transferring stuff between – well, I mean, that was a big thing with – Blizzard was a big company known for its PC games. I think Overwatch, part of the reason why it was so easy and they updated it at the same time as the PC is because the architecture is so similar. It's not a big deal. Well, I think that's everything. All right. Well, folks, we'll be back in two weeks, but you can always reach out to us, facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast we're available on twitter instagram and twitch where you've been doing a bunch of streaming as eclectic underscore gamers yep and until next time i'm dennis and i'm tony goodbye see ya