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BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 8m·held·Mar 14, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Zen's Williams library nearly exhausted; Zachary Pinball delists Android app; Farsight shows signs of activity.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss Zen Pinball's upcoming table releases (Theater of Magic, Champion Pub, Safecracker) and map out the remaining Williams collection pipeline, revealing only 19 non-licensed DMDs left. They also cover Zachary Pinball's Android delisting controversy, where customers lost access to paid DLC without notice, and speculate about Farsight's silence and potential engine retooling based on a visit from Stern executives.

Key Claims

  • Zen will release new table packs every 6-8 weeks

    medium confidence · Chris references this as established information about Zen's release schedule

  • Only 19 non-licensed DMD tables remain in the Williams collection for Zen to release

    high confidence · Chris performed research on unlicensed DMDs and calculated based on manual stack shown in Zen video

  • Licensed tables will not be part of regular table packs but released individually

    high confidence · Chris states 'I can say this because I know things and I've been told things' regarding Zen's licensing strategy

  • There are 23 licensed Williams tables and 30 System 11 tables in the potential pipeline

    medium confidence · Chris references research into remaining Williams library

  • Zachary Pinball (Magic Pixel) was delisted from Google Play due to inappropriate content (nipples)

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discuss the Facebook post and Android delisting details

  • Magic Pixel has the legal right to reinstate Zachary Pinball on Google Play after removing offending content

    medium confidence · Chris reviewed Google Play terms and conditions and found developer not blacklisted

  • Farsight had visited by Stern executives Jay Olbernati, Bobby King, Brian Eddy, and George Gomez

    high confidence · Farsight posted Facebook photo of the group visiting; Chris confirms this occurred

  • Game of Thrones was speculated as Farsight project but Farsight clarified it was a joke

    high confidence · Farsight posted clarification after community speculation based on Twitch stream

Notable Quotes

  • “I can say this because I know things and I've been told things. When licensed tables comes, they are not going to be part of the regular table packs. They will be their own individual because licensors don't want their license mixing with another license.”

    Chris (BlahCade host) @ ~45:00 — Insider knowledge about Zen's future licensing strategy for Williams tables

  • “That's all there is of non-licensed DMD. Wow. So they would be done with all the non-licensed within that year.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~44:00 — Recognition that Zen's non-licensed Williams DMD pipeline is nearly complete

  • “But at the same time, I really don't think what they've done is great for customer experience. They need to live up to that decision.”

    Jared @ ~25:00 — Criticism of Magic Pixel's handling of Android delisting and customer DLC entitlements

  • “Drop some juicy stuff, guys. Otherwise, nope. Not interested.”

    Jared (about Farsight) @ ~38:00 — Criticism of Farsight's lack of news and announcements on Twitch streams

  • “ours is the premier podcast for digital pinball news”

    Chris @ ~30:00 — Self-assessment of BlahCade's position in digital pinball coverage vs. other podcasts like Head to Head

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonZen PinballcompanyMagic PixelcompanyFarsight StudioscompanyGeorge GomezpersonJay OlbernatipersonBobby KingpersonBrian EddypersonMedieval Madnessgame

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Zachary Pinball launches $5 Steam starter pack containing 8 different play styles (regular + EM versions of Black Belt, Farfalla, Spooky, plus Strike and Combat 2017) as low-friction entry point

    high · Chris states: '$5 is pretty good. That's a lot of content' and notes it's half the price of buying individually at $10

  • ?

    product_concern: Magic Pixel's delisting of Zachary Pinball from Google Play resulted in customers losing access to paid DLC without advance notice; developer had option to reinstate censored version but chose not to

    high · Chris researched Google Play ToS and Jared confirms: 'people who have DLC entitlements for the old version of Zachary at Pinball are screwed. They will not be able to access that game and the DLC that they rightfully paid for again'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Farsight Studios criticized for lack of transparency and news on Twitch streams; community expects platform announcements and roadmap updates rather than simple gameplay

    high · Jared: 'Drop some juicy stuff, guys. Otherwise, nope. Not interested' and Chris notes they've been silent for 7-8 months since last Stern table

  • ?

    industry_signal: Zen Pinball will segregate licensed and non-licensed Williams tables into separate release tracks; licensed tables get individual releases to prevent brand dilution per licensor requirements

    high · Chris (with insider knowledge): 'When licensed tables comes, they are not going to be part of the regular table packs...licensors don't want their license mixing with another license'

  • $

    market_signal: Zen Pinball's non-licensed Williams DMD pipeline approaching completion with only 19 tables remaining; will be finished by August 2019 (one-year anniversary of Williams collection launch)

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.206

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan hello there Howdy, howdy, howdy.
0:27
We, uh... This is kind of funny. We keep on recording podcasts before we're allowed to broadcast them live. Yeah, we do. So we're operating in a non-user or non-listener-informed bubble at the moment. But this should be the last one because after... Everything should be in the open.
0:49
After this. Yes, after this. So there'll be another one probably dropping, I don't know, this week, maybe.
0:59
Whenever Zen decide to say, yes, let's release this information. Right. And at that point, you'll know what it's all about. So, hooray! So, basically what I'm saying is, apologies to things that have already happened.
1:14
But good things are going to have, will have happened because I plan on doing a live premiere drop of this podcast and probably the previous podcast. So all I'm really saying, folks, is if you haven't been following us on Twitter, then you don't know what the hell's going on. And you should do that so that you're aware of all this future and past stuff that's mixing and going together. It's like a time travel podcasting, you know? Yeah, where it's time machine. Right. I mean, it's bad enough Jared's already a day in the future, but now we're like podcasting in the future and then commenting on things that are happening in the past. It's so confusing. It's wonderful. Yeah, it is.
Theatre of Magic
game
Champion Pubgame
Safe Crackergame
Attack from Marsgame
Cirqus Voltairegame
White Watergame
Cactus Canyongame
Zachary Pinballgame
BlahCade Pinball Podcastorganization
Head to Head Podcastorganization
Arcade Expoevent

high · Chris calculated: 'That's all there is of non-licensed DMD...That would put us at the one-year anniversary of the Williams collection, basically'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Farsight likely retooling its emulation engine to support full-LCD screen tables; speculation they may shift from aging system to Unity-based platform similar to Zen

    medium · Chris: 'if they've gone with something like unity...they're going to need to retool because there's no way they can do that with their current system' for LCD support

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Stern executives (Gomez, Olbernati, Eddy, King) visited Farsight Studios, suggesting ongoing relationship and possible collaboration on future digital pinball projects

    high · Facebook post by Farsight showing executives visiting; Chris notes: 'clearly if they're visiting Farsight there's still a relationship there with Stern'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Community speculated Theater of Magic would release with Circus Voltaire in paired table pack; instead Theater released alone, suggesting Circus Voltaire may anchor its own future pack

    medium · Chris: 'what shocked everybody was that they were expecting this was coming in twos, and so they expected that Circus Voltaire would be also with Theater of Magic. obviously it's not'

  • ?

    event_signal: Arcade Expo (Banning, March 15-17) features 500+ freeplay pinball machines and arcade cabinets plus swap meet; ticket prices increased to $50 (Friday) and $65 (Saturday) due to late purchase

    high · Chris announces dates and pricing: 'it is a good time because it's 500-plus pinball machines on FreePlay'

  • ?

    content_signal: BlahCade hosts corrected Head to Head podcast (ep. 81) on three factual errors about Zachary Pinball: developer attribution (Zen vs Magic Pixel), game title (Time Fantasy vs Time Machine), and Google delisting context

    high · Chris: 'they suggested that Zachary of Pinball was actually produced by Zen. No...it's Magic Pixel' and describes sending correction email

  • ?

    community_signal: Android users organizing to contact Magic Pixel support and raising disputes with Google Play regarding lost DLC entitlements; Xenia (show friend) attempted escalation with Google without success

    high · Chris: 'There's actually an Android thread on digital pinball fans...Xenia, has actually tried to contact Google Play and raise a dispute' but 'we're not going to do anything about it'

    • 1:49
    It's rather difficult. before we go terribly much further so speaking of things that have happened in the past so my birthday was this past week but it's my fake birthday because I'm a leap year baby so I don't actually have a day so what you say is actually like you know 15 oh I'm much younger than that I'm only 11 right now only 11 oh that explains a lot it does doesn't it though So, I went and saw for my birthday present, I took myself to the IMAX 3D showing of Alita, Battle Angel. So, the real 4x3 IMAX 3D show? No, they're not broadcasting it in 4x3. No, it's normally a 2.40 projected aspect ratio, and then when it flips in the IMAX, it goes to 1.90. also it flips between the ratios yes certain key moments it goes and goes a little bit bigger it's not terribly noticeable unlike when I went and saw Dark Knight which was in true 4x3 IMAX where you'd go from 240 to 6 story tall image and then go back to normal view so that one really grabs your attention that one grabs your attention when it does aspect ratio change it doesn't grab your attention so much but I did want to comment yeah it's good, a lot of fun movie definitely worth seeing on a big screen because there's a lot of visual information you tweeted about this through I think it was the Blockade account you were saying that you don't necessarily have to see it in 3D because it's more depth of field yeah which I mean I know some people hate 3D that's poking you in the eye but to me that's the fun of 3D is poking in the eye, please. Let me get that visceral thrill. And there's a way of doing that without it drawing away from the movie and making it just feel integrated in. This was predominantly depth. You know, I was going to say, the last 3D movie I've seen in the cinema was Avatar. You sound like the first one.
    4:03
    Oh, yeah. It was a pretty good one to see. That was excellent in 3D. Yeah, and because they used the poke me in the eye stuff, but it was done really tastefully. Yes. And it looked really good from memory. I still remember it. Like, it's made that much of an impact on my brain cells. So, yeah. And I had high hopes for the 3D in this because it was shot natively. Ah, yes. And... And Alita was. Yeah. So not only was it shot natively, but also having Cameron as producer, I figured... It would be pretty amazing. ...there'd be heavy influence on that.
    4:38
    But... Why he wasn't a director? Why he didn't direct it? I mean, Alita? Yeah. Sorry, I was just wondering, because it wasn't Cameron who did it, eh? It was someone else who took Cameron's idea. Robert Rodriguez.
    4:52
    Yeah, I see. It should have been Cameron all the way. Well, then we would never get the other four avatars that he's got planned.
    5:00
    The different takes on the other Pocahontas. The four different Pocahontas spins. As I keep on saying, though, you know what? I never saw Pocahontas, and I never saw Ferngully. So, hey, it was all new to me. here's the thing so here's the kind of two of the comments that I came away from this or three one is highly entertaining I really enjoyed it was a good movie it didn't blow my socks off but I was entertained so that was a positive two if you suffered through the live action version of Ghost in the Shell which was just this completely soulless thing which is also based on an anime same as uh which was an excellent anime oh and no i didn't suffer through it based on your terrible review of it well good review yeah ghost in the shell both the movies and the tv series are phenomenal amazing yeah the live action is completely soulless it is just paint by numbers it has no heart or soul in it it just it's it's different it's a street fighter the movie version of Street Fighter. Yeah. And the reason why I bring it up is not only is there the anime connection, but also you're talking about cyborg bodies, which is a key component of Alita, is this cyborg body thing. Yeah. And it was like cyborg body with just, like, not uncanny valley stuff, because it's clear that she's an android, right? Well, yeah, she has android parts, but the thing is that there's other cyborgs in this world where literally the only thing that's remotely realistic is their face. Everything else is just completely robotic and everything.
    6:44
    But they got what it is to be placed inside of a mechanical body. More than Robocop did. No, not more than Robocop. Robocop really... But it's that, what is it that makes a human human? At what point do you cease to be human and instead are just parts.
    7:09
    You know what I mean? And that's a huge topic in Ghost in the Shell, just not in the movie. Right, yeah, just never covered in the movie. And in this one, they touch upon it. It's not a huge theme of the movie, but it's definitely there, and it's what gives the movie its heart and soul. And so you care about all the cyborgs that are in this movie. You actually have a feeling for them. They're not just faceless, mindless things to hack and slash and destroy.
    7:40
    Right. That's good because you need that character. You need that connection. Yeah, that's a good thing.
    7:46
    Bad thing, there is so much story that they're trying to cram into this, probably because they knew that getting a sequel would be thin at best. Yeah. So the problem is that there's not a lot of breathing going on with some of these stories that you know could have been breathed more likely. Is it like a sentence that just has a lot of ands as the conjunctions rather than... No, what you get the idea of is that it's a lot of world building so that the sequel would be phenomenal because you wouldn't have to do any of the world building. Right. So that's why it isn't... Like, I hate movies that are franchises that aren't. In other words, they desperately want to be a franchise, and so they're all set up and no payoff. This has plenty of payoff, but it does feel very much like a lot of setup also. It just doesn't leave you on a cliffhanger like, oh, don't you want to, you know, it wraps up all the storylines, but obviously leaves plenty more open. So it sounds like they were hedging their bets. What's that? They were hedging their bets big time. Oh, they absolutely are hedging their bets. The other thing that I wanted to mention was, okay, so the first Avatar sequel is going to take place a lot underwater. and they actually were having their actors with the cams that record their faces or whatever underwater doing stuff. I think Cameron said Kate Winslet was the winner of being able to hold her breath for something like seven and a half minutes. Seven and a half minutes? Yeah.
    9:15
    Wow. They ain't messing around, right? So there was an underwater sequence in Alita and it looks phenomenal. If they did not actually film it underwater, then they have me fooled because there's so many tells to me that this looks real, especially when you compare it to Aquaman, which 100% all their underwater stuff was done CG. And it looks like CG, and it sounds bad, and it doesn't just – I never bought for a minute that I was underwater. This whole sequence, completely 100% bought it. So my question is, was this done as a proof of concept for Avatar, or was it because it's the same production company, both movies are using Way to Digital down there in New Zealand, was it just that they were simultaneously done together and one happened to benefit from the other? Well, if you think that the leader was at the same time, well, that was on the cards at the same time as Avatar, the first one. Yeah. And Cameron decided not to do it because he didn't have the effects that he wanted to use. He had to use the computing power to do the CGI. Yeah. it might have been like a drawing board scene underwater, but I don't know if it would have been what you saw on the screen would have actually been what, you know, right. And what is it? 2002 that avatar came out? No, but this is for, I'm talking about for the sequels here. There wasn't a wonder water necessarily in the, in the first one. Yeah. Oh, sorry. In the sequel, in the sequel, the sequels, they've been filming for the past year and a half, I think, all the WIDA digital stuff. Yeah. So it would have been going on close to the same time as Alita, but if I had to guess, I would say that they did the Alita footage first because it was a single character underwater. Yes, the digital works underwater. Hey, we can go whole hog on Avatar with multiple digital characters and do all this. That would have made sense because they would have absolutely tried it on the experiment on a smaller scale first. Yeah. So, yeah, you're probably right. That bodes well for Avatar 2, doesn't it? It does. It bodes very well for... Yeah, because they pulled it off flawlessly here.
    11:38
    Wow. Yeah. That sounds good. It's one of these movies that I totally went watching it on probably too much of a technical scale. And so when I watch it again, I'll be able to just enjoy it for what it is. Yeah.
    11:53
    Which is good. I like those films. I would pay for the 3D on that one. because it still sounds like it's not like there's some 3D movies that you just go, just don't bother with the 3D because it's just a waste of time. Right. But this one sounds like it's, if you could get the opportunity to see it in 3D, perhaps on like a large format screen, then yeah, spend the money. Yeah. I don't think the IMAX 3D is necessarily needed. Necessarily. I will say. But regular 3D. Find a good audio system. Dude, there are some bass rumbles in that that are just like, we'll just sell it. yeah all right okay cool i mean like the size of some of these robots and the you know when they're when they land on the ground i mean the whole theater's like rumbling so yeah yeah wow that sounds awesome yeah right so it sounds like that's what i'm going to do yeah because i'll be looking at it going yeah i want to see that we're actually uh for work we're going to go and see captain marvel in a private screening yeah so we're going to go and see that in a private screening coming up this week, I think. So that's going to be pretty cool. Yeah. So I'll get my movie action in this week, I think. Finally. But the rare times I set foot in a movie cinema that isn't a kid's movie. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah.
    13:05
    Okay. Let's table all the movie talk and go straight into some pinball. We got a pinball smorgasbord going on here, folks. All sorts of things to talk about. Let's see. Where should we start? Why don't we start with... Let's start with Zachary a pinball. Okay. Because there's a couple of things we got. A couple of things to touch upon. First, we're going to touch upon, they've got a new thing for sale on Steam, and that's the Zachary a starter pack. And what it is, is you get Black Belt, Farfalla, and Spooky, both in their regular, what you saw in the real world, pinball, and then the retro version, which is basically where the Pixel Magic turned them into EM machines. So they kind of rearranged the parts, turned them into just a classic EM.
    13:57
    And then they have a table called Strike. No retro version on that. And then Combat 2017, which would be one of their remake tables. So it's a good sampling of just what Zachary Pinball is like. And all that, it's $5. $5 is pretty good. That's a lot of content. Yeah, if you never have jumped into the mix with Zachary Pinball yet, and you don't know what it's all about and whether or not you actually want to do it, for five bucks you get essentially eight different styles of table to play. And it's good enough that once you play that, you'll be able to go, yes or no, I want more.
    14:39
    Yeah, that's a pretty good way of introducing people to your product. yeah and if you bought all these tables individually it would run you $10 so it's basically half off that's good Magic Pixel have always been ones to offer pretty competitive pricing deals on their tables like to buy a full membership or like what they call a membership but essentially a full unlock is something to the order of I think $50 so it's pretty well certainly $50 when it's on discount it might be $100 when it's yeah I think it's $100 when it's not yeah that's still like there's a lot you get like you get all the tables regular get all the tables as like ems pretty much and then you get all the tables as remakes for what those remakes aren't junk by the way they're actually really really good no the remakes are quite eye-opening uh yeah because really the designers have had fun with those remakes exactly so that's a pretty good like for 100 bucks that's like if you're really into pinball and you really like the Zacharias. That's a good investment. Yeah, but $5 is certainly an easy way of sampling all the different styles that they have available to you. Again, so you'll get exactly what was in the Arceus, you'll get the EM versions, and you'll get a remake version.
    15:57
    And they're probably their best tables that they've got, including Fafala, which is the one that got deregistered on Android. So look at the nipples. Enjoy the nipples. so that was the other area I wanted to touch upon because I re-read the Facebook post that Zachariah had about it and one of the things to note was they full on planned to come out with a new version of the app anyway and when I say new version I mean basically the Zen Pimple FX3 version versus Zen Pimple FX2 right so more or less you were going to have to rebuy everything anyway. Anyhow. This getting delisted off of Android basically just kind of jumped the gun, or Google, just jumped the gun from what they were going to be having to do anyway. Yes and no, right, because the thing is that if they were going to delist their app, the problem is that people have paid, in some cases, 40 or 50 bucks for the DLC that's in the app. Now I have bought games back in 2013 right They still up on the Play Store and I can still download them access my DLC entitlements and play them Yeah Now by Magic Pixel like not deciding to re-upload their game after the breach, which I had a look at the Android and Google Play terms and conditions for app takedowns, and from what I could interpret from the guidelines, they are within their rights to actually reinstate it on Google Play. They're not, like, blacklisted. Their developer account has not been in disrepute, so they should just be able to remove the nipples and then upload the nipple-free version, and then everyone's happy again.
    17:49
    No one will have to worry about things looking cold. So they could do that, and then everyone who didn't want to initially upgrade to the next version of the Android app, which, as an aside, I'm sure will be amazing because the version of Steam is amazing. But it leaves a bad taste, certainly, in my mouth. There's actually an Android thread on digital pinball fans that goes into the lengths that people, including me, have done. A friend of the show, Xenia, has actually tried to contact Google Play and raise a dispute with them about DLC. and basically the response back that Google said, look, yes, your dispute is actually with Google and not the developer, but we're not going to do anything about it. So bad luck. So what that means is without any shadow of a doubt, people who have DLC entitlements for the old version of Zachary at Pinball are screwed. They will not be able to access that game and the DLC that they rightfully paid for again. So what you can do in this situation is that you can basically bombard MagicPixel's mailbox and make their lives hell. If you're an Android customer. And seriously, they've made the decision to do it. They need to live up to that decision. So if you're passionate enough about you losing entitlements to the game, then you contact MagicPixel support and you make them a little bit uncomfortable. that's what I'll be doing because it's not fair they have the right to, they would be able to upload and then put the game in, look we will not update this any further which is different to we will not bother reinstating this game after it's been taken down without any notice whatsoever because if they said look we are about to delist this game, if you want to play the game you need to go download it from Google Play and then you need to go and reinstate all your DLC on the device that you wish to maintain this version on because after that, in two weeks' time, it will be removed from the store and you won't have access to your DLC.
    20:05
    Now, that is very different to going, oh, hey, by the way, we got delisted and now we're not going to upload it again, so you're screwed. Okay. So, yeah, that's how I feel about that. Okay. That makes sense. Yeah. So it's a bit dirty, and I'm not really happy about it, nor are many loyal Android customers that actually help Magic Pixel test all the games and provided detailed feedback. So the scrolling banner at the top of the game says, thanks very much to the Pinball Arcade fans for their support. Maybe it's time to actually give some of that support back and do people a favor who can produce the purchase receipt, Because I know that these guys don't track their purchase receipts. Not currently. Yeah, currently in their old app. So if you can provide evidence that you purchased a pack, then that pack should be either refunded to you or used as a way of getting entitlements for the next game. In part. I'm not saying that it's a... Like, you know, they've got to make money. They're a small studio. I get that. But at the same time, I really don't think what they've done is great for customer experience. I don't know. maybe Mart has comments about this. I'm sure that, you know, I'll be flagging him in the, um, the, uh, posts that are doing Twitter. So perhaps he can come on and, um, and talk about it while they did it more. Okay. Yeah. Uh, so a little good, a little bad from, uh, Zachary there.
    21:32
    Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah. I don't like it when it goes down like that, but it is what it is. Right. Uh, let's move on to the next item, which is, so everybody's always, uh, okay. I get messages all the time going, so have you heard anything from Fireside? What do you know about Fireside? What's going on with Fireside? No, actually, I was thinking, is there one thing that we didn't cover yet that's actually related to Zachariah? Okay. And it concerns one of my favorite podcasts I like to listen to, and that's Head to Head.
    22:01
    So Head to Head had, I think in their last episode, the most recent one, I think it was episode 81, they were talking about Zachariah Pinball. and I sent the guys an email. Probably one of the rare times I actually do send them an email because they're usually pretty on point. But, of course, I don't think Digital Pinball is their specialty. They're very, very good with real-life pinball, like better than I would ever be covering the news. But, yeah, in this case, they got a few facts wrong with Zachary of Pinball. So they suggested that Zachary of Pinball was actually produced by Zen. No. No, which is not correct. Of course, it's Magic Pixel. So I corrected them on that. They were having trouble remembering the name of a game that had a big circular disappearing play field. They were calling it Time Fantasy, Time something, and it was Time Machine, of course. Very good table in Zachary's collection if you haven't played it.
    23:02
    And I've heard that people who have actually seen that thing in real life, that disappearing play field is an engineering feat. It is so smooth when it goes up and down, right? It's amazing.
    23:15
    And then I educated them about the whole problem with the Google takedown and all that sort of stuff. So it was just a quick email that I sent them just to help them out a bit. Just one more reminder that, folks, ours is the premier podcast for digital pinball news. The premier digital pinball podcast as alluded to by Zen. I'm sure we sound very similar on the opposite end of the spectrum when we're talking about real tables.
    23:42
    Oh, I have no doubt. I'll be perfectly honest. Interestingly, Head to Head sort of lifted the veil, a bit of inside baseball, of what they do to prepare for a show each week. And it's like they pretty much spend the entire week scouring news sites to get the show together. Right. Which, you know, we do to an extent, but the amount of information that we have to scour is far less than what they would need to try and decompose. Yeah, we're not having to go through 500 Pinside messages.
    24:17
    I'm very thankful for that. I'm happy for the very niche, niche nature of this podcast because it makes preparing for it a lot easier. Much easier. Okay.
    24:29
    Back to then what I was going to say with Farsight. Back to Farsight. Yeah. So, no, the answer is we have not heard diddly from Farsight.
    24:39
    Somebody noticed in one of their Twitch streams that Farsight and Matt, I think they were asking about tables or whatever, and he wrote on a piece of paper Game of Thrones. And so everybody went, oh, that's what Farsight's working on. And then this week he posted, no, that was just me joking around.
    24:58
    So he goes, would love it if we got to do. But, yeah, so you can scratch that one off your list as a machine that's coming to the pinball arcade. That being said, though, they did just post a picture up on Facebook of Jay and who was the other guy that was in there? It wasn't Barry.
    25:25
    Well, Jay Olbernati and Bobby King. That's who it was. Oh, yes. Standing next to Brian Eddy and George Gomez from Star Trek. Oh, yes. When we heard about them being in Budapest, we all went, ooh. But clearly, if they're visiting Farsight, there's not so much. They made the trip up the Wintry Mountain to go and visit Farsight, because it's pretty bad up there at the moment, I think. Oh, at the bad, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So just want to kind of throw that on the speculation fire. and you know beyond that I really don't have any more to speculate with it but clearly if they're visiting Farsight there's still a relationship there with Stern so well let's hope it'll be great to see I'm hoping as far as speculation goes because this will be good I'm hoping that they're redoing their engine completely in the downtime they've had how long have they really had since they've released Stern table now on the product. It's been a good seven, eight months, hasn't it?
    26:33
    Oh, since they released a Stern product? Well, no, because they had Woe and Ellie and Big Buck Hunter. That was in October or November, one of those two. Yeah, but those ones have been in the works for a while. We've known about those for a year before we actually released them.
    26:55
    I would think that they had a year essentially to retool. So I'm hoping that they've done something like Zen have done. And if they've gone with something like unity, I'm pretty sure that Zen's using unity for their mobile offering.
    27:11
    Because it's, I've seen unity ads in their mobile offering, which suggests that that's what they're using. So yeah, retooling and re-imagining of their system, which let's be honest, that they're going to be doing the screen tables, the new full LCDs, they're going to need to retool because there's no way they can do that with their current system. Well, I hope that's the case. Yeah, I really do.
    27:37
    They need a shot of, I don't know, something to the arm. They've got to put out, though, some kind of a hint, something that they're working on. It's been much too quiet up there and just saying, oh, we're working on stuff that's not going to cut it for, People forget about you. They do. I look at the Twitch announcements and I go, why? Why would I want to watch? Because there's no... It's just playing a game, watching a game. The reason why you tune into Twitch before is because they were discussing things about the platform. They were talking about things in the future.
    28:13
    You know, there's like just watching a game. Drop some juicy stuff, guys. Otherwise, nope. Not interested. I mean, I'm not interested in watching Twitch streams anyhow. But I'm even less interested in watching Twitch streams from Farsight when there's zero news happening in them. Right.
    28:31
    Yeah. So anyway, there you go. Guys up at Farsight, just tell us what you're not, not necessarily what table you're working on or whatever, just are you working on anything new and exciting for the platform, that the platform is still live and you've got big plans. They're just taking your time. You're doing it right. Yeah. You're taking your time. You're taking your time to make the absolute best product possible. That's enough. Maybe it's time to dust off the NDA with those guys and see if they're willing to pay for it. Fire that up, yeah. Well, I'm presuming it's still valid. Geez, we signed it like about five or six years ago. Oh, I'm sure it's still valid. Probably is in a perpetual one. Who knows? I'll go and read it again probably.
    29:16
    I never got a copy myself, so there you go. All right. Let's shift over to, let's see. We'll have to shift gears. Shift gears, yes.
    29:31
    Oh, I should make mention, the Arcade Expo there in Banning is March 15th through 17th. And tickets are quite expensive now because you didn't buy them early. Then the price went way up. I think Fridays are $50 and Saturday is now $65. That being said, it is a good time because it's 500-plus pinball machines on FreePlay and 500-plus arcade cabinets on FreePlay, plus there's a swap meet of pinball parts outside.
    30:05
    That sounds like a hell of a day out. It's a hell of a day out. Yeah. No, it's good stuff. But just kind of wanted to make mention of that. Okay, let's look over at Zen. So obviously we've got the table announcement with Theater of Magic, Champion Pub, and Safecracker, right? So the question now remains, what's left? So I did a little look-see on the old interwebs here and was looking at what DMDs that are non-licensed are left and putting together also the information that we have of, hey, if they're going to be releasing a new table pack every six to eight weeks, where does that put us? So let's, and the other thing is, so far, there's that list of table manuals that, yes, it is, Jared.
    30:59
    Going for that. There's that stack of table manuals that Zen showed in their video. And so far, because that stack started with Medieval Madness, and then Fishtails, and then Attack from Mars, and then Black Rose. Hmm, seeing a pattern here?
    31:23
    Order of Execution list. Right. The next one was Theater of Magic. Now, what shocked everybody was that they were expecting this was coming in twos, and so they expected that Circus Voltaire would be also with Theater of Magic. obviously it's not, but maybe that's their next table pack is Cirque du Soleil, and then after that is Tales of the Arabian Nights and capping off with Whitewater. If we assume that those three each anchor the next packs,
    31:54
    this was kind of shocking to me. Here's what's left of DMD's, folks, that are not licensed. Hurricane, Jackbot, No Good Gophers, Roadshow, Cactus Canyon, And whodunit, exactly enough tables to go add two per this next group, and that'll take us to August, basically. That's not a lot of non-licensed DMDs. That would put us at the one-year anniversary of the Williams collection, basically. 19 tables. That's all there is of non-licensed DMD. Wow. So they would be done with all the non-licensed within that year. So that would leave you with licensed tables, of which there are 23. Lots. There's 23. They're the ones that everyone wants. Yeah. So, obviously, there's going to be a shift then in terms of what happens in the program. Are they going to go to System 11? There's 30 of those.
    32:58
    Yeah. Of the System 11s. So, you know, again, are we going to see a shift in what they do with the tables?
    33:07
    I can say this because I know things and I've been told things. When licensed tables comes, they are not going to be part of the regular table packs. They will be their own individual because, and we've gone over this before, where licensors don't want their license mixing with another license. They want all the attention on themselves. Yeah, and that's totally fair enough. Right, right. So when licenses come, they're not going to be part of these volume table packs. They will be their own entity.
    33:42
    So again, that means that once we get done with these 19 unlicensed, we've got to be going heavily into the System 11 machines then. Yeah, and if we're going into System 11 machines, I wonder what the Zen mode would look like on those. I wonder if we'll actually get DMD overlays. That's what I'm wondering. I don't see why they wouldn't. It would make perfect sense to just create your own DMD for the use. Again, you can play it in classic mode,
    34:11
    or you can play it in Zen enhanced mode, and Zen enhanced mode happens to have DMD on them. They got the artists that do really great DMDs for their originals So you know what have they been doing I don know It be very curious. I've got a feeling they're actually the table designers as well that probably do that. And, you know, Deep's been pretty busy doing things.
    34:37
    But yeah, it brings a question. I've already started the campaign on Twitter that is when Zen gets around to doing Cactus Canyon, they need to do Cactus Canyon continued included. Oh, yes. So, folks,
    34:51
    get on the Twitters and at SymbolFX and Zen Studios and just be like, or want Cactus Canyon continued because we need to squeaky wheel this. Definitely have a chat to Dutchos and get that going because it would be pretty cool. Well, I mean, it takes a good game and makes it a great game. That's all there is to it. There's nothing wrong with the layout of the vault. No, that's what I'm saying. It's a perfectly good, enjoyable table. It's just that it feels not quite fully baked. I mean, there's no two ways about it. Well, it's imbalanced. It's all about the ramp, which is very classic System 11 gameplay because it usually is all about a ramp in System 11 or a shot. So, yeah, it would be very good to see that in there. I've actually seen someone convert. There's a Twitter account that I follow where somebody is doing up their brighter pinball cabinet to the 2.0 kit. And wow, the side decals look amazing. Like all the cabinet art and everything. Because you get like full decal kit in it as well. Okay. Where you can do everything. So you get the, I think it's a P-rock, and the side decals, and you've got everything you need to re-theme it basically. I think you might actually get a new speaker panel as well. Okay. I don't know. I don't know whether you actually get the hardware, whether you have to supply that yourself, but this person certainly did the whole hog. So it looks pretty cool.
    36:32
    At least they got the actual license to do that, unlike the guys that converted Johnny Mnemonic into the Matrix.
    36:39
    Yeah. Because those guys were doing it. They had a full kit ready to go. Oh, they did? Yeah. I thought they were just doing it as a homebrew. They did a homebrew and took it around. Everyone said, I want that. Yeah, people were like, I want that. I want to convert my giant mnemonic into just a full-on matrix.
    36:58
    Because, I mean, it's a completely different playfield, art, cabinet, everything. That thing is a complete redo. Redo, yeah. And if I'm not mistaken, it's been a while since I've looked up the information on it. But if I'm not mistaken, yeah, they were going to start gearing up to actually sell this, and then those pesky licensing issues cropped up.
    37:25
    They often do. They often do crop up. Yeah. This was right around the same time that the Predator fiasco was going on. So I'm sure anybody that was doing that kind of thing got really gun-shy real quick. continuing on the Zen front of things so there you go there's your speculation I did all your speculation for you I don't know any of this information for 100% what the future tables are I'm just as in the dark as you all are but look there's your writing on the wall for I mean clearly they're doing only DMD machines right now and that's what you have left that aren't licensed. And I didn't include things like Indy 500. I know that's kind of a soft license, but it's still licensed. They'd still have to talk to someone about it. They couldn't just go, oh yeah. Right. Yeah. And the only reason I included Roadshow was because they already did Lagrange from CZ Top in the getaway. So I figured doing the country song and Roadshow, same Same deal. The table itself isn't licensed. It's just a piece of music that's in it that is licensed. That's right.
    38:47
    Let's talk about the Williams app, because there's been some things that have come to light. I'm the first one to say, look, folks, sorry. the information that I had in front of me while playing the app, I didn't realize was different than what other people were playing. This has nothing to do what I found out. This has nothing to do with me being a beta, a beta tester, because when the beta was over, I started from square one again with the app.
    39:24
    And you still have the same, um, IAP, uh, leveling. No, Oh, the requirements did change a little bit. Between beta and what went live, certain requirements changed.
    39:39
    But what I found out was, though, that my requirements wound up being different than some of the other beta testers' requirements on iOS. Huh. Yeah. So I questioned Zen, and sure enough, they're running A, B, C. comparisons basically or different models for different who knows i don't know if it if it's regional i don't know if it's random i don't know any of this kind of you know scenario and what i also don't know because somebody brought this up where they were saying that one day they were two parts away from being able to max out a table and then the next day they were suddenly 68 parts away from maxing out because it went from being needing 38 or 30 parts to being 100 parts so they had 28 so you'd imagine how happy they were about that you know right um so what i don't know is when this next table pack drops what my table requirements will be that'll be a very interesting to see if i'm still on the other model or if my model also changed well you would think that when they release a new table pack, they will readjust everyone's buckets, you would think, their AB buckets, because it's an opportunity for them to get fresh data with a fresh cut of the app. Because at the moment, they'd be collecting information for essentially volume one and volume two. So when volume three comes along, I would think that being a data-driven company, Zen would want different data based on the fact that there's going to be three new tables that people need to grind towards. Right. And they're going to want to measure that pretty tightly, I think.
    41:29
    So what this made me think of was, because look, obviously they've got a business model, but they've also got different batches of customers. You've got the hardcore customers like those that are on Digital Pinball Fans who are kind of set in their ways and want a certain kind of thing. And then you've got your casual gamers that just, you know, hey, look, a pinball app. I mean, there's all sorts of different things, and we don't know the data. Zen obviously does know the data, and they're going to make their business model run around the data. But is there a way of making fixes to the app that will make a lot of the people on digital pinball fans happy? Yeah. Or at least more accepting to the app and what the business model is. More importantly, though, what about the people who are just starting the franchise, perhaps 20 tables in as well? Oh, yeah, because that's going to be daunting.
    42:20
    I mean, yeah, when you're only picking between nine cards and hoping to flip a certain table and then picking between 20 cards and hoping to flip a certain table and get collect parts, there's a world of difference in terms of how long that's going to take you. So the first thought I had, because here's what I noticed. when I was at the end of my collecting I was only getting table parts for the tables that I needed if I'd maxed out and upgraded it fully I no longer got that table part which was great and when I look in the store for table parts there is no price for table parts for any of those tables because I've maxed them out and so I have a feeling that the two are tied into each other like once it was maxed out and new it was like well there's no sense we're not going to charge you for table parts because you don't need them anymore. Yeah, that's right. And then that's probably, yeah, one probably helps the other know where you are in the collecting things. Yeah. But it made me think, how about, so when you first start up the app and they ask you, what table do you want to start with? How about just asking what table pack do you want to start with? And that table pack is what you earn tickets or your table parts for. It focuses the earning on just that pack. Exactly. And then once you've collected all of the parts for, let's say, that first level upgrade across all three tables and fish tails, gethro and fish tails because that's not part of any of the table packs. But once you're ready, then have it re-ask the question, hey, do you want to continue earning parts for these table packs or do you want to earn for another table pack? Do you want to unlock for the – do you want to level to three other tables? Because really, from a player's perspective, you get a lot more gameplay options when you get your tables to level two because you can play them any time, providing you're connected to data. So that is a good way of essentially baselining the experience for people. Right. now that would also on the other hand somebody was just like well I really desperately want to fully max out medieval madness so give me table pack one and then they just keep on re-upping table pack one and again you give them that choice but have it be that you have to have all three of those tables max out to that so you'd be able to max them to the next level and then you ask that question yeah I think that's a really good idea that would solve a lot of the problems with like just scattering the parts far and wide exactly exactly and it gives the people a sense of that they're in control of what their gaming habits are yeah that's right they get a choice as a consumer what they target first and you know when you're first on board into the app you do get asked what table would you like to unlock first it wouldn't be a big extension to go what what volume would you like to focus on and list the tables that are in the volume so you know what you're getting. Very easy to do.
    45:23
    Because initially I thought, oh, how about they just ask you to pick three tables? And I was like, no, because everybody's just going to pick the AAA titles. And clearly they have them split across packs for a reason. So it would make more sense to do that.
    45:36
    Now you brought up an interesting point that I don't have the answer for, which is when you have collected, the way it is currently, when you have collected enough parts to max the table, you're still able to collect more parts, but they don't show that you have them anywhere in the app. So when you upgrade that table... From, say, level 2 to level 3, and you've got say, you know, at the moment on Android, it's 50 parts to upgrade from level 2 to level 3. When you upgrade to level 3, would you then have the balance of parts that you've collected, I guess, you know, So carry over. Yeah, carry over and display as part of your total towards your level four unlock.
    46:24
    I'd hope so. Or are you just collecting for nothing and they're just being thrown into the dumpster? Well, let me ask this question. From level, if you upgrade to level three, to upgrade to level four, you don't have table parts, do you? You have coins and tickets? No, you're still needing table parts to upgrade to level 4. It's 100 parts. I believe that's what people are saying, yeah. For me, it was not 100. For me, it was 30. Well, yeah. So in that case, then yes, I would really hope that those parts are actually invisibly being tallied up and carried over.
    47:02
    Because if you're just being rewarded with parts over and over again for the party zone, which I mean, I've maxed out party zone, and I'm currently changing my grinding habits. so I'm not spending my Zing coins and I'm not doing tournaments and I'm not doing anything that will burn down my tickets. Yeah. So my goal now is just to like laser focus and getting up to 3,000 so I can start unlocking these level three tables. And see, it's hard for me to answer this because I had more than enough tickets so that every single time a table was ready to be upgraded, I just upgraded it. Easy. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so I never saw if I was losing table parts in the upgrade process. Yeah, so what is it? seven tables to unlock, 3,000 tickets. That's 21,000 tickets I'm going to have to earn to upgrade all these tables. So that's a lot of grinding. That's Clash Royale grinding right there. Thank you for coming.
    47:55
    I've got a new game that I've been, I'll maybe talk about that I've been playing that puts the Clash Royale grinding to shame.
    48:03
    And the currencies of all this stuff, it puts everything to shame. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay, here's another idea that we have that would be a huge plus. So right now people are starting to experience the, they load up the app and all of a sudden it says, hey, you can buy all the tables for X amount of dollars, right? Yeah, and they're all level fours, amazing physics, cool overlays. Right, but some people are going, well, do I really care about the enhanced physics? Do I care about the enhanced graphics? They're just, I don't know because they haven't seen them. Yeah, they can't try them. Because they're not on Steam. I don't have access to steam. Right. So how about giving people a day or giving people just even a couple of games with the pro physics?
    48:52
    Inside of the daily challenges, and this might actually already be happening, I'm not sure, but in the daily challenges, throw in randomly, hey, now you get to play with the enhanced graphics. and do a daily challenge, like not the pro one, or not the advanced, because the advanced one can be very difficult.
    49:11
    So what is it? It goes basic advanced pro? Is that how it goes? I think so, yeah. Okay, so in the advanced one, because it's the pro one, the point totals can be really brutal.
    49:21
    But in the advanced daily challenge, now and then let people play with the pro physics. Give them a taste. The first hit is free. Exactly. and then ask hey did you enjoy that because if you did you want to unlock the tables all the way to four hey pay this price and you'll get this all the time that's exactly how you should do it not just sign on the scene hey you want to spend 30 bucks for this product that you may or may not like it's a big investment for mobile I mean 30 bucks on mobile is like 500 bucks anywhere else so it's yeah i mean you think about the daily challenges you're already spending tickets or having to watch a video in order to play them regardless so you are using some of your currency so give a little bonus in the currency with i could sweep yeah with being able to to check out these other enhancements because it is true there's a lot of people that are like what do i care about this other stuff i was like well once you play it well then how do i know if i'm going to really like it and yeah, we said, well, if you've played on team, I've not played it on steam. I only have mobile. Okay. You know, this would have been me. This exactly would have been me before I had access to a computer that was compatible with steam. I would be going, well, I don't know if I do like, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would have probably seen the screenshots and everything that we would have been covering and listening to you talk about it right in the steam. I would have gone, yeah, it's probably worth it. But if you, if you're not this podcast listener, which I've noticed a fair few people have actually come in that I've never seen before into the forum. So it's definitely grabbing a lot of people. Obviously, the Google search is directing them to the threads, and they're joining up, which is great. It's great to have new people in the forum talking about things.
    51:09
    So, yeah, I mean, these people won't have any of the prior knowledge, so they need some help. I don't know. Do you have any other fixes that you would like to see implemented that would just kind of – Yeah I think one that was brought up actually originally for iOS would be something that really kind of needed at the moment and that is landscape mode Oh yeah Yeah I really surprised that it not a view option I don think the phone users it such a big deal but it's a huge deal for tablet users, and I think specifically because of the nudge zones. Well, it's a big deal for the phone users. The reason why I'm saying that. Big phones.
    51:52
    Yeah, but big phone, here's the thing. Here's my phone, here's my thumb down here. I can reach up to a nudge zone. I can still reach it in a single thumb push on a tablet as a whole. I mean, that's a giant, you can't do it on a tablet. So if you're in landscape mode, now you're about the same height as a phone and portrait. And so you're going to be able to do the, the nudge zones. So yeah, I know that people have been asking for landscape and I know it was kind of been kind of coy about, about it.
    52:24
    Um, we'll see what happens with that. Because I think there's landscape mode on the Switch. I'm not as positive there is. Well, they have to because that's the orientation. Oh, yeah, because you can go on a TV. Yeah. Because they implemented the portrait mode that you can put it on the Switch and use with your flip grip. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, I mean, it's there in Switch. Yeah, they have the knowledge. They have the power. And, you know, I did at one stage, like, hey, that was a view option very early on for them. So, you know, that's something that they definitely did right because they knew that they were actually having this on tablets as well as phones and all that. And, you know, people were going to have troubles with grip. The other thing I'd like to see implemented is more intelligent tilting. so you know as a phone user like even as you were demonstrating before on on the youtube video like i don't feel comfortable at all taking my thumbs off the flip zone i never tilt on android that's fine when you're playing the zen physics because they're pretty forgiving but you know if you unlock tier three physics um you're gonna want to tilt because it's very, very different. So what I think, what I've learned in the last couple of weeks is that certainly on Android, they have a library that allows you to detect swipe versus tap. It's generally used for scrolling. So if you're scrolling a website, for example, on your phone and you're tapping on something, it will have a tap zone plus an error correction of plus minus 10 pixels or something like that. So if you apply that to the tilt zones and allow your thumb to swipe left or swipe right, you could do some pretty cool things with tilting that way. So you could actually, like, trap on the left and then use your right hand to actually tilt in multi-ball, which is super valuable. It's like a skill that most pro pinball players use. Right. And in regular gameplay, you could also do that as well. Like, you could do that as well, and it will feel much more natural than having to move your thumbs. Yeah. So I really would like Zen to consider that as a suggestion because it's doable.
    54:53
    There's libraries in place that allow you to do that, and I'm absolutely certain that iOS would have the same sort of libraries as well because, you know, it is all about touching the screens, so they would have libraries to help you with that sort of thing. And just apply it to the game, and it would change the way you play the game.
    55:11
    This made me think about that, and I'll show the YouTube viewers. this is how I hold my phone when playing pinball. I interlock my fingers and kind of cradle the bottom of the phone with my pinkies so that my fingers can go and yeah so my flip zone I never want to move my fingers out of the area because there's been a couple times when I didn't quite master how I was holding the thing and I pushed the flip and clearly my thumb was in the wrong spot and then I missed the flip and I was like oh this wouldn't happen if I had buttons this is how I hold mine so mine's similar but I sort of like curl my hand oh yeah and rest it on the the little divot in the phone port and you'll see that I've rested it on the phone port so much there's got a big bow because of the port so he's got a big bow because that's where I rest it because it's like a little anchor point you know you can do it like that and rest it there and sort of it feels right but as you can see like when you're doing it it's like really quite sort of hard to just keep your thumbs there so yeah i often sort of go wide like that it's hard to do because they're right in front of the boom but like that so yeah there's no easy way to do it on android so once you're in that position you don't want to move even like even reaching for the shift gear button in that um orientation in that way of holding is awkward yeah because i have to i literally have to readjust my grip to get to it yeah and then it needs to be lower and i know a lot of people have complained about that too like the the shift controls they're way too high and you know farsight albeit had a lot of trouble when they actually allowed you to adjust the position because it interfered with touch zones and that was a problem within itself but um that's something that you need to do if you are um offering it on mobile because phones are very tall now and what feels like 50 i mean the buttons at the moment are sort of placed around of 50% in the horizontal axis and that may seem fine, but if you've got a large phone like a Pixel 3 or an iPhone X or one of those big phones, that's way too high.
    57:19
    Let's not even get started on tablets. Yeah. It always does make me go, well, maybe I should buy one of those iCade things, but the iCade, I'm not going to put that in my pocket, so then I just kind of like, yeah, it's a waste. yeah i think they're on android you do have some i think what is the phone manufacturer that um the controller manufacturer was um mad cats no it was another one that actually had a i think mad cats actually have an offering like this where it actually has a phone holster where you clip your phone into it and then you've got a control bluetooth control that will hang off it so you can sort of hold it like that and that's great in theory but again that's not something you just slip of your pocket and take with you. Yeah. And, you know, it's, what they need to do is make a flip grip for mobile. Yeah. And make it, make it just like all those phone holders that have like, you know, the stretchy, the stretchy sort of like guides at the side. Right. Make it really slim and just have it so it's a very slim little trigger or slim button or something like that. Slim and folds in half. Yeah, that's right. Like one of those folding keyboards. And then that'd be fine. You'd be able to slip that in your bag pretty easily. I mean, I'd carry that with me in my bag. It's going to be fine. A big bulky controller?
    58:35
    Made out of wood. It's going to be the next FinCab. Exactly. Okay, so I want to... All of you that are complaining about there's too much currency in the Williams app, which somebody was complaining about the table parts being a currency. No, those are just collectibles. That's not a currency. You never spend table parts other than to spend it on a particular table. But there's plenty of games that have card collecting or whatever. In a way, yes, but they are still required to upgrade a table. So in and of themselves, they are actually a currency. Okay. You still have to buy them with Zen coins. So they are a sub-currency of Zen coins. This is tickets are a sub-currency of Zen coins.
    59:19
    So it's multi-tiered in every single way. Right. So I've been playing this game called Gems of War, and it's a three gem match type of game but there was an old game if you all remember this, it was on the Vita or not the Vita, it was on the PSP it was called Puzzle Quest and Puzzle Quest was phenomenal because it was you had it was kind of like RPG slash gem matching match three because it was you take a turn, and then the enemy takes a turn. And you had warriors, and they had different classes of magic, and depending on what gems you matched, that would power up their magic, and then once it was fully maxed, you could attack with that instead of attacking with gems. Loads of fun. Very easy. It was very simple to play and everything. So I did some app store searching and found this, Gems of War, made by they're saying by the same people that did Puzzle Quest, and it has a lot of... I mean, I can tell clearly somebody used to work at Puzzle Quest that worked on this.
    60:30
    Or played the game a lot on PSP and totally copied it. But, that being said, it is confusing as hell what to do in terms of all the upgrades and there are a bazillion characters that you can find. You pick four for your team. you can still collect more cards and if you have more cards you can apply those to your character to even like you can level them up to say level 15 and they're maxed out but if you have five more cards of that then you can ascend them and that will allow them to even max even higher wow okay but the problem is just based right off the bat you're talking about probably 50 or 60 different character cards alone.
    61:20
    And now you're continuing to collect these cards. You collect these cards via wars, player versus player battles, quests, all manner of stuff like that. This is just collecting the cards themselves.
    61:33
    You have gems, which I haven't really figured out what the currency for that is, but I know it's a currency. You have coins, which is a currency. Both of these are things you can purchase in the shop, but you can also earn in the game. In the game, yeah. There's also four different types of keys that unlock different sorts of games that are within it.
    61:54
    And let me guess, the keys take coins and or gems to unlock. I don't even know if they do or not. Probably. There's souls that you can collect that help power up, or that if you want to upgrade any of your troops, you need to use these to upgrade. I'm telling you, there are so many different currency methods. I'm playing this thing I have no clue what I'm doing half the time other than just just give me to one of these matches and then I'll get put against a competitor sometimes where I'm like how the heck did they get their characters to be able to do that you know it's like my attack is seven points their attack is 29 I'm like well I've got my character maxed how do they do that um and the game has next to no tutorial in it it's like hey met street and have fun and go right and then a little message will be like you should join a guild why i don't even so then you join a guild and there's quests and tasks and and i'm like i don't even know what even this stuff does you need to go online probably they have it all online on their support for them and you need to go there and go hey so we couldn't fit because the game is so terribly complex and the irp is so convoluted we couldn't there's no way we could onboard you on that in the game so we're here here's the faq it's only a it's a very light 100 pages long and um and it'll be very easy to read it does have pictures in it well you know what it reminds me of It would be like if you were somebody that played Madden or Tiger Woods Golf on the first two releases ever of the game, right? Where it literally came down to just, oh, you pick the play or you pick your club and that's the end of it, right? That's the only choice you need to make. Right. And then you pick up the latest version of the game and it turns out that you have an intimate knowledge of football and or golf. and down to the point of you need to know what kind of cleats and, oh, but those cleats are for a quarterback, not for a running back. And, you know, you get so bogged down in the minutia that you're like, I just wanted to play a simple game of football. You just go hunting through the menus looking for the arcade mode and going, can I just play a game? Right, right. If you don't mind. So I kind of suspect that this game might suffer through that, because I don't know how long it's been out, but maybe when it first came out it was relatively simple and easy to figure out and then they just kept on adding things and adding things and never explaining things and assuming that people have been following along from the very start and they trickle feed them and yeah it's fine so yeah to all of you that are complaining about the currency that is in the Williams app just download Gems of War for all of five minutes and just have a look-see in it.
    64:53
    And at the end of five minutes, if you're still complaining about the currency in comparison, then clearly you just have a currency issue and don't like currency at all. But yeah, it's mind-boggling. That sounds horrible. That's definitely one that I will not be downloading at all.
    65:13
    Except I was just like, I just want to match gems a little bit, but I don't want to play Bejeweled. That's, you know, because I really liked Puzzle Quest. Yeah.
    65:24
    Well, yeah, it's the nature of mobile games. It is the nature of mobile games. But you know what? I'm not paying one damn cent for it either. No. Hey, get screwed. They're not getting a single dime. Take your torture.
    65:37
    Yeah, cut me a thousand times. I love it. All right. Well, hey, folks, again, for YouTube, look at that. I'm wearing my Blockade t-shirt.
    65:46
    Hey, look at me. not wearing my blockade t-shirt. You just ran over your blue t-shirt. But if you would like to be able to wear a blockade t-shirt, you should go check out redbubble.com and give a search for blockade. There you will find a whole mix of different styles of shirts and merchandise that you can purchase and have our lovely logo slapped on. A cornucopia of merchandise. In a myriad of colors. Indeed.
    66:14
    Also, as we mentioned at the head of the show, be sure to follow us on Twitter and I state that because things like when Zen goes on sale on PS4, well, hey, we can retweet that right away whereas by the time we record a podcast to mention it and the podcast gets released, the sale's probably over. Most likely.
    66:35
    Our Twitter account is used sparingly, so you're not going to get spammed by lots of rubbish. Yeah, we're not a Kardashian posting 40 times a day. we're just not that interesting basically I'd be surprised if we've had 40 tweets in a month yeah I don't think we have I don't think so either I don't think so but anyway that's at blockade or you can follow myself and Jared is at Jared Morgz I am at shutyourtraps and we're both on Instagram as well the show does not have an Instagram no and my Instagram I barely touch so I'm not much of an Instagrammer. Sorry, folks. I do. Because it cross-posts to Twitter, it means I don't have to do another thing because I'm lazy. Ah. So you do it in Instagram, and it automatically goes to Twitter, you know, if you think about it. Yeah. Easy.
    67:28
    What else, what else, what else? Oh, hey, why don't you go check out the website? It is blockadepinball.com slash episodes. There you will find all of our past shows, as well as the show notes and links and whatever else we decide to post up on there. And if you really feel like it, you can drop us an email at blahblahblockade at gmail.com. All right.
    67:54
    Yeah, so next time we do a podcast, we'll be able to actually do it live with an audience. Do it now. Do it live. Yeah.
    68:03
    Until then, folks, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Sayonara. wizardamusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter modes easy to install, totally unique mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order wizardamusement.com sales, restoration, customization don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blockade is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some pinball