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Episode 229 - Exclusive Square

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 6m·analyzed·Sep 29, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

Pinball market shows signs of malaise as pricing, saturation, and lost speculation economics dampen enthusiasm.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss their recent gaming activities and pinball market conditions. While Tony has been busy with video games (Space Marine 2, Dredge, Satisfactory) and a trip to see Big Brutus, Dennis has played mobile games. The hosts provide brief pinball news: Stern's Uncanny X-Men reveal faced criticism for apparent difficulty and gameplay quality, prompting a second video; Jersey Jack's Avatar received generally positive feedback at a media event; Christopher Franchi signed an exclusive artist agreement with Spooky Pinball. The main discussion focuses on perceived market malaise in pinball—saturation, pricing concerns, loss of speculative buying power post-COVID, and collector space constraints making purchases highly selective.

Key Claims

  • Stern released a second gameplay video for Uncanny X-Men after negative reaction to the first reveal, which showed poor playfield performance

    high confidence · Dennis notes the live stream was heavily criticized and Stern responded with a more polished gameplay video showing accomplishments

  • X-Men LE countdown was cut, and LEs are still easily available from dealers

    high confidence · Dennis states directly: 'they cut the le countdown yeah and i mean that's one of those things'

  • Speculation about wider flipper gap on X-Men was disproven by Jack Danger's photo comparison showing same gap as another Stern game

    high confidence · Dennis references Jack Danger's measurement tool photo comparing X-Men to another Stern game (Foo Fighters or similar), showing identical gaps

  • Jersey Jack Avatar media event attendees reported general positive reception to rules outline and UV ink implementation

    medium confidence · Dennis heard from several attendees; general consensus is Elton John plays better, but Avatar reaction was positive overall

  • Christopher Franchi signed exclusive artist agreement with Spooky Pinball and has already completed 2-3 art packages for them

    high confidence · Dennis reports this directly as verified news; clarifies it won't impact pending art for other manufacturers

  • Pinball market is saturated and showing signs of malaise; even Jaws didn't generate excitement of previous Elwynn releases

    medium confidence · Dennis and Tony discuss market feeling throughout segment; Dennis notes even Jaws, a strong game, lacked typical excitement

  • Post-COVID, people no longer make money reselling pinball machines; even good games lose value on secondary market

    medium confidence · Dennis and Tony discuss how the COVID-era flip-game-for-profit model has ended; people now losing money even on quality titles

  • Tournament attendance has grown significantly over the hosts' 8+ years of podcasting, from ~8 people to events so large they discourage attendance

Notable Quotes

  • “People hated that live stream. It's the tube sock, isn't it? Well, some people have mentioned some elements of that. There has been vast blame for the costumes in general.”

    Dennis @ early in pinball segment — Establishes the negative online reaction to the X-Men reveal video, with costume criticism as a focal point

  • “They weren't required to sign NDAs is what my understanding is... General consensus is Elton John plays better.”

    Dennis @ Jersey Jack Avatar discussion — Notes Avatar's rules are solid but not quite at the level of Seiden's mentor Steve Ritchie's work

  • “I can think of the last time Spooky had bad art. Right. That's kind of what my thought when I heard this is like it's like it's I mean, my guess is more that Spooky. Maybe they were looking to get some stability with their release schedule.”

    Tony and Dennis @ Franchi/Spooky discussion — Acknowledges Spooky's already-strong art direction while suggesting the exclusive deal aims for production consistency

  • “It's like the pinball industry can't win for losing. It's like they just no matter what they are putting out, even Jaws didn't seem to have the excitement of of previous Elwynn releases.”

    Dennis @ market malaise discussion — Captures the core sentiment of perceived market stagnation

  • “Now, even if it's a really good game, you're losing money. So it's just not the same atmosphere.”

    Dennis @ secondary market discussion — Explains shift from COVID-era speculative buying to current risk-averse collecting

  • “Why are the le's this price from stern they and they're not like all you get is a powder coat and a little bit... they're in luxury price points at this stage but they're not really luxury products”

    Dennis @ pricing criticism segment — Core criticism of perceived disconnect between luxury pricing and actual value/features delivered

  • “Everything is an analysis at the stage. Something must leave. If something new is going to come in, they're not going to go to the trouble of trying to find a new place to wedge in another game.”

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyUncanny X-Men (Stern)gameJersey Jack PinballcompanyAvatar (Jersey Jack)gameChristopher FranchipersonSpooky PinballcompanyJack DangerpersonMark Seidenperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Pinball manufacturers struggling to maintain sales volume and enthusiasm despite consistent product releases; market appears over-supplied relative to collector demand and discretionary spending capacity

    medium · Dennis: 'the market currently is i would say saturated and most people are not in a place where they can handle the kind of collecting that used to happen'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern improved warranty terms to be more consumer-oriented, moving away from operator-focused limited coverage; suggests response to collector complaints and market pressure

    medium · Dennis: 'Stern just recently upped their warranty terms actually to being more what a consumer would expect because they were still for a long time doing those very operator-oriented warranties'

  • ?

    community_signal: Tournament participation has grown dramatically over 8+ years (from ~8 people to packed events), but collector-level engagement shows signs of fatigue due to event scale and duration

    medium · Dennis: 'tournaments were like eight people maybe... now there's days where I decide not to go to tournaments because it's just like, I just don't want to be stuck in that room with a thousand people'

  • ?

    community_signal: Jersey Jack Avatar media event did not require NDAs, allowing attendees to share feedback; general positive reception to rules outline and UV ink features reported

    medium · Dennis: 'They weren't required to sign NDAs is what my understanding is... general reaction that I have heard has been pretty positive to the game. Praise for like the at least the outline for how the rules are supposed to go'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.201

0:00
welcome to the collective gamers podcast today is sunday september 28th 29th it's the 29th you wrote the wrong day again because you worked on the notes early again I did the notes early and I wrote the wrong thing. Oh, it's the 29th. Yay. But that makes it work even better because this is episode 229. Yes. Nine, nine, nine, nine. The 29-anine.
0:42
Niner. PXP. Did you put a niner in there? I should have. I am Tony. I am Dennis. And we don't have a lot of pinball. We do have a lot of video games. Amazing. And in fact, you have, I know, it's a shock. But people will, they'll get over it or they'll push stop early. But what they won't want to do is miss all of what you've been doing over the last couple of weeks. So before we go into that, I will say welcome. We have a couple of new Patreon members. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Rodney C. and Jeff R. both joined our Patreon. We appreciate it. And those of you who want to also be appreciated can join us at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. we love you all yes in your own individual special way you're all special tony yes you have not just been sitting playing rule the waves over the last couple of weeks you've been doing much more i have been doing a whole lot it's actually been an incredibly incredibly uh busy couple of weeks.
1:50
I don't even know where to start. A lot of video games obviously I've beaten Space Marine 2. Oh, there was someone on our Discord asking about Space Marine. Yeah, I responded last night, but yes I've beaten Space Marine 2.
2:07
It's just as over the top awesome. Some of the big cinematics in that game are, there's a reason you see them all over YouTube set to different awesome music because they're over-the-top awesome.

medium confidence · Dennis notes early tournaments were 8 people; now tournaments are packed and events last 3.5-4 hours, discouraging participation

Dennis (referencing Loser Kid podcast) @ space constraints discussion — Highlights how full collections prevent new purchases regardless of appeal

  • “The last major leap quite frankly was the lcd when gjp came out and dropped that in”

    Dennis @ technology innovation discussion — Positions LCD screens (Jersey Jack Pinball era) as the last significant mechanical innovation, questioning current feature additions

  • “I can't remember. I mean, I've heard it from multiple people at this point, but I want to think Scott and Josh with loser kid pinball podcast... We're even talking about this... mentioned like their space for games. It's full.”

    Dennis @ collection space discussion — References multiple industry voices confirming space saturation as a limiting factor

  • “I would have to get a machine that I didn't plan on getting rid of, just like the Campus Queen will be with me because that was a grail... Any other game I get is something that's going to be... it would have to be important to me.”

    Tony @ personal collecting philosophy — Illustrates how current market conditions force grail-tier selectivity even for willing collectors

    • Steve Ritchie
    person
    Dennisperson
    Tonyperson
    Jaws 50th Anniversary (Stern)game
    John Wick (Stern)game
    Elton John (Stern)game
    Loser Kid Pinball Podcastorganization
    Campus Queengame
    Godzillagame
    Attack from Marsgame
    Big Brutusevent
    Galactic Tank Forcegame

    competitive_signal: Collection space saturation forces highly selective purchasing decisions; collectors keeping full rosters and rarely making changes, limiting new game adoption

    medium · Dennis referencing Loser Kid podcast: 'Everything is an analysis at the stage. Something must leave... they like everything that they have... that leads to a real tough one'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Uncanny X-Men gameplay reveal video showed poor playfield performance and apparent difficulty; heavily criticized online, prompting Stern to release a second, more polished gameplay video

    high · Dennis: 'The online reaction being the Internet raked that reveal over the calls... People hated that live stream... Stern has since released another gameplay video, which shows like, I guess, like them accomplishing things'

  • $

    market_signal: Post-COVID collapse of secondary market value for pinball machines; speculative flip strategy no longer profitable; even highly regarded games lose value

    high · Dennis: 'Now, even if it's a really good game, you're losing money... I can buy my LE, I can put 100 games on it, and I can sell it and make money on it... but you don't make your money back anymore'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Christopher Franchi signed exclusive artist agreement with Spooky Pinball; represents consolidation of talent to smaller manufacturer for schedule stability

    high · Dennis: 'Christopher Franchi. The artist has done a number of pinball machines. Well, he has entered into an agreement with Spooky Pinball to be their exclusive artist... it sounds like he's already been working on a few art packages for Spooky'

  • $

    market_signal: Disconnect between luxury pricing and actual feature/innovation value; RGB toppers and minor upgrades (Insider Connected) justify significant price increases without corresponding substantive improvements

    high · Dennis: 'they're in luxury price points at this stage but they're not really luxury products... these games like they they're not they've not grown by leaps and bounds... why is this game twelve thousand dollars now as the cheapest version available'

  • ?

    product_strategy: X-Men LE countdown was cut and inventory remains available at dealers, suggesting demand fell short of expectations

    high · Dennis: 'they cut the le countdown yeah and i mean that's one of those things that part of that is definitely going to be the market currently is i would say saturated'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Broader market malaise and loss of enthusiasm for new releases, even from strong designers; shift from speculative buying to selective, grail-focused collecting

    high · Dennis: 'It's like the pinball industry can't win for losing... even Jaws didn't seem to have the excitement of previous Elwynn releases... it's just like there's a malaise'

  • ?

    technology_signal: LCD screens (Jersey Jack Pinball era) identified as the last major mechanical/technical innovation in pinball; subsequent features lack substantive advancement despite premium pricing

    medium · Dennis: 'The last major leap quite frankly was the lcd when gjp came out and dropped that in... minor innovations because this sort of technology has existed in other industries for quite a while'

    • 2:22
    I purchased and beat Dredge. It was one of those things that was super cheap. It's been on my wish list for a while. Okay, beat's a strong word. I completed Dredge and got the bad ending. I'm pretty sure. I don't know if there's actually a worse ending than the ending I got. The fun ending. Yes, it's the fun ending. so uh that was definitely a a thing that happened um i mean i'm sure the destruction of the world is the good ending right right yeah depends on the state of the world i mean it was a pretty crap sack world i think i did okay uh also satisfactory which i've talked about multiple times in the past actually got its 1.0 release it came out of early release and became a live the actual finally wow with all their stuff added in so i have started building uh i started a new game on the 1.0 and um i remembered most of the controls which is good because it's been a long time since i've played it uh my factory my beginning factories are absolutely ugly and disgusting and at some point i have to destroy them all because they're that bad but but for now For now, it's a good start, and it's been eating a lot of time.
    3:38
    It's been – I've found part of my ongoing obsession with various things is I have found it works very well as a game to play while doing stuff like either watching things I've already seen that don't need to watch, or what I've really been doing a lot lately is listening to audiobooks while playing Satisfactory is freaking amazing. So I've just been doing that a lot, like, for the last, like, three days.
    4:07
    Like, Friday night, I didn't go to bed Friday night until, like, a little after midnight because I was playing satisfactory and listening to a book.
    4:15
    And then my last big thing was Saturday, actually, yesterday. Oh, wow. It's been insane. This isn't even everything. This is just, like, the good, fun stuff, not the other stuff. So yesterday I took a two-hour drive south of our location down to the big metropolis of West Mineral, Kansas.
    4:42
    Okay, I don't know it. Yeah, I'm assuming it's very – Is this near Pittsburgh? It is southwest of Pittsburgh. It is southeast of Parsons. Okay. Uh, so, but yeah, no, it is, it is, it is down there, but they have a museum specifically. They have big Brutus. Big Brutus is the largest still existent electric shovel in the world. Hmm. Or as I would say in the top, the top gear in the world. Wow. It wasn't the largest one was built. But it's the largest now because the other ones have all been broken up. So, I mean, talking about, like, size, it's literally a giant crane shovel thing, like the old school steam shovels, except for it's, like, 15 stories tall.
    5:42
    And it's just quite simply enormous. So I went down there and took a look at it and did a tour. I was down there for another thing. They had a big overlanding show down there this weekend where they had everybody with their fancy camping rigs and the rooftop tents and their Jeeps and all that stuff. So I went down there to partake in some of that stuff. But I don't have a fancy off-roading rig. I have a minivan that I can throw my, like, sleeping pad and stuff in the back and go car camping on, which is the best I can do right now. But someday. But it was actually really awesome to go and see the history and just the size of that thing and the sheer insanity that is that machine.
    6:33
    So, yeah, no, that's just one of those interesting little fun things, driving through little back road nowhere. Road looks like it hasn't been paved since the late 90s roads to get out there. But it was pretty cool. I mean, it's just a huge shovel crane digger thing. So you've been really busy. I've been super. I mean, like I said, this is just the good, fun stuff. This isn't everything else. So it's been a hectic, probably the busiest two weeks I've had, all told, in a while.
    7:10
    Well, I don't have anything nearly that interesting. I should have asked you if you wanted to go see Big Brutus yesterday Yeah, you know I went and saw my folks So I did that That's not the same as Big Brutus Because there are probably lots of folks out there That exist in the world So we were like, yeah, probably That's probably true So gaming wise Actually I started playing a phone game called Last War I think I saw it promoted on Reddit Is it actually what it looks to be? How dumb is it? It's – all right, so I'm not a whale, but I went into guppy state this morning. I spent $2 and – yeah, $2 plus tax on it. I figured that was – To be fair, I can't say anything because my waifu game I normally spend like $50 a year on. Most of the game is actually base building. Which is not what I expected. So, yes. So, yeah, so you go around and you're leveling up and there's like PvP and that sort of thing. and so uh yeah no it's fine i i'm trying to think if i've really played a game like it before not so much all the ones i've played i don't play many phone games like i didn't that's the only phone game i have on the phone right like i took off everything else so like the closest i've ever done is is some of those what gotcha style ones and such where maybe it's like leveling the characters and get a whole bunch of characters this has elements of that um some of the stuff they promoted online were picking the right things coming at you. That's a very, very small portion. Of course it is. But I'd already put in about two weeks on it to figure out exactly what they're real about. I like those little elements. As you level up your base, you can do more of those. So, yeah. And some of them actually get kind of tricky because they get more into being like a math problem. One of the ones is it'll be timed and it'll actually be a group of you and it's like, do you want to do plus 200 units or times two to whatever your current count is and then they'll start stacking the shield like do you want to do times five plus 100 or do you want to do plus 300 times two like it gets and you have like three seconds to decide and and stuff like that so yeah it's it's all right so anyway i had a i had a amazon or google play store uh one dollar off so i i took a their a $2 upgrade so I can do two things at once, base upgrades, and went ahead and bought that this morning for $1. And then I bought a $1 legendary character that they've had available since the start. But I've been like, I don't need them. I'm still like, I'm not sure. Is this Homelander? Because I see he's doing the commercials now. No, it's some rocket launcher lady. She's like, I'll give them some rockets. They all have really bad lines and stuff. I got your back. or my favorite is my poison tank person because every time you click on it she just goes anybody got poison it's like i mean it's like it's basically the voice cast of stern's uncanny x-men it's pretty rough so but it's just a stupid thing to waste time with but that's like what i'll do when i just throw on something that i'm not paying attention to right tv and then jim's award you know me and jim's i know i can never be free of it it is it is the one ring and i am shmeagle and I am enslaved to Gems of War. I don't even bother uninstalling it anymore. I know inevitably I will be like, you know what? I just want to match some gems.
    10:39
    I need a new Bejeweled or something. That could possibly displace me from Gems of War for a decent period of time. Maybe. I knew when I came in this morning and it was on the screen, I was like, oh, look, it's Gems of War. I've not played that in a long time. I know. I'm not proud of it, but it is what it is. It's your crack. It's your smack. It's my... My comfort thing that I always just go back to. Well, another thing I always go back to is pinball. And we have a pinball segment. We do. Oh, there's barely anything, guys. So I hope you like video games today because that's what we're going to spend a lot of time on because I am not padding this thing out. We did have an email, but we'll get to it in the video game section because it is about video games. However, I want to go ahead and start with Stern and the Uncanny X-Men. So you and I, Tony, we talked about our reactions to the footage we saw from the first gameplay reveal, the photos, all that on the last episode. So people want to hear our first thoughts about the game itself. They should go and listen to that episode. However, I thought it might be worth having a little bit of a conversation here because we did not watch, or at least I did not watch, the first game reveal live when it was streamed. I went back and watched elements of it to see. Yeah, jumped around. OK, well, well, I thought, OK, this looks the biggest thing that we talked about. It was it looked harder to me than what I had anticipated looking at the layout.
    12:06
    The online reaction being the Internet raked that reveal over the calls. In fact, that apparently had started while we were recording or before we even recorded. There were people again. We didn't go and check the forums or anything. But right. Oh, my gosh. People hated that live stream. It's the tube sock, isn't it? It was.
    12:28
    Well, some people have mentioned some elements of that. There has been vast blame for the costumes in general, but mostly in the context of that. Why does this game look that hard? And I guess a number of people.
    12:46
    Pulled back on their orders. Really? I, I, I, how often, how true that is or, or, or whatnot. It was enough that Stern has since released another gameplay video, which shows like, I guess, like them accomplishing things. Like they weren't getting anything done. Apparently I'm just, you know, I'm jumping around on it. I didn't sit through and like try and see if they could clear a mode or mission or whatever. Apparently, no. Apparently they all looked like they were amateurs. and people have blamed like, well, maybe it was the costumes. Maybe they, but there are other speculations like maybe the game is really just that hard. Maybe it wasn't designed that well. Maybe they, maybe they had to set the, you know, I speculated that maybe they set the game up harder because sometimes they blow up the games on the live streams, but it's like, oh, the code's not deep enough. Now they can't go anywhere. So it's like, am I going to buy this game and there's like no modes in it? I mean, you know how people are. They just start, they just start piling on all the theories of what might be happening. They hypothesize and everything. left and right so they've put out a more polished version of the gameplay since then i've heard there are still le's easily buyable from dealers if you want one and they cut the le countdown yeah and i mean that's one of those things that part of that is definitely going to be the market currently is i would say saturated and most people are not in a place where they can handle the kind of collecting that used to happen and that may be something for us to discuss here at the end but i want to go ahead and and uh get through um a couple other news item elements um i do want to also mention though on the x-men game apparently there was and i mentioned in the last episode just that there was speculation on this we didn't give an opinion one way or the other on it but there were some that were talking about that maybe the flipper gap was bigger on x-men on the main portion of the playing field, and that's why there was a center post. Jack Danger had posted a photo of a measurement tool showing that game and another Stern. I can't remember if it was Foo Fighters. Ghostbusters. No, it wasn't Ghostbusters. I looked. I just don't remember the game. And it was the same gap. So basically to try and put to rest the notion that this gap is wider, it's not. So anyway, there is that. Okay. I don't have a lot to add about Jersey Jack Pinball and their reveal of Avatar. There was the media event. We mentioned that we were invited and did not go. I have heard from a few others that did go. They weren't required to sign NDAs is what my understanding is. Well, that's good. I can appreciate that. And general reaction that I have heard has been pretty positive to the game. Praise for like the at least the outline for how the rules are supposed to go. But it, too, is not as far along as perhaps some people might want. And it sounds like this is very dangerous to say, but we like to live dangerously. General consensus is Elton John plays better.
    15:46
    OK, so but of course, this is Mark Seiden's first professional game. And Steve Ritchie has been at this for quite a while. But overall, the reaction has seemed pretty positive, especially to the UV ink stuff.
    15:57
    So there's that. And the third piece of pinball news to go over really quickly is Christopher Franchi. The artist has done a number of pinball machines. Well, he has entered into an agreement with Spooky Pinball to be their exclusive artist.
    16:14
    This is not going to impact – this has been clarified – this is not going to impact, and I don't think this is surprising, any of the games he's been working on for other companies. He has – and I've heard this for quite a while – he has a number of art packages that are pending from a variety of manufacturers. We just haven't seen them yet. Right. And it sounds like he's already been working on a few art packages for Spooky, like I think three, two or three games already. So I think this will be widely praised by and large The only thing that surprised me about it is like I can think of the last time Spooky had bad art Right. That's kind of what my thought when I heard this is like it's like it's I mean, my guess is more that Spooky. Maybe they were looking to get some stability with their release schedule and just having someone one single person tied into the arc. because we know they've had some other issues lately. But yeah, no, their art has, by and large, been pretty solid. Yeah. So, I mean, this doesn't change that. A lot of people I have heard really lament that they do not see Christopher Franchi's artwork very often in pinball anymore, ever since he quit working with Stern. Right. And Spooky releases on a pretty consistent schedule. So I think we will see more of his art. Because what have we seen in recent times? I think it's only Galactic Tank Force, really. And I can't think of what he had out prior to that. It feels few and far between. It does feel few and far between. And his style is quite different than Jeremy Packer's. It is. He definitely has a different – I don't mind his style at all. I know he's gotten some pushback for some of the stuff he's done in the past and some of his things. But his overall style, I've got no problems with. I think anyone – obviously, style being subjective to a large degree. I think we're even seeing now with Jeremy's work, a lot of people are looking because Stern uses him so much now. And there's a sameness that you start to feel if someone likes to lean on a particular style a lot because some artists have multiple styles that they might employ. But we also have to remember that some of this could be driven by licensor demands like, oh, I like what you did for Avengers. So I want you to do the same thing for X-Men. Like I want comic book panels. Right.
    18:30
    I don't know all the nuances to that. But anyway, I think for those who are fans of Christopher Franchi's artwork, they'll probably be quite excited by this news with Spooky Pinball.
    18:40
    You brought up something before we moved to the video in some section that I thought we could have a little teeny tiny conversation on since this is all I had for us on pinball. About you mentioned the saturation on the pinball market when we were talking about the LEs and how they last I heard aren't all sold out at the distributors for the uncanny X-Men pinball machine. what do you think is going on with with pinball right now just like in general do you think in terms of because i have the same vibe um it's i i i struggle to put put it to words i feel like it's almost a malaise like there's just and i don't know if this is me and having i mean we have podcasted on pinball for what over eight years now it's been we have talked this a long time and it starts to become rote. And is it just me being get off my lawn? Is it that the machines, the price got too high and everyone is really upset now? Is it just post-COVID people are doing experiences, people are spending their money on other things and the market never adapted to that? Is it that everyone's got really awesome games by and large that collect at this point and they just, there's just no room for the new stuff. They're not done with the old stuff and they don't want to get rid of it at a loss. And I mean, I don't know, but I have that same vibe. Like, it's just like the pinball industry can't win for losing. It's like they just no matter what they are putting out, even Jaws didn't seem to have the excitement of of previous Elwynn releases. And I think it's one of his stronger games. I think you're right on that. But it definitely feels like there's a malaise, as you put it, that has kind of settled over things. I don't think it's like a collapse. I don't think it's like a falling away. You can see just by looking at numbers of people playing tournaments and stuff that there's more players all the time. I remember when we first started doing tournaments play, the tournaments were like eight people maybe. and now there's days where I decide not to go to tournaments because it's just like, I just don't want to be stuck in that room with a thousand people. So yeah, I haven't, I have not gone to a tournament since I started my new job and I've been on my new job over a year now. Yeah. And every time I think about doing it and this is a dentist issue, but no, you know, it's not their, it's not their fault. The success is great, but there's tournaments every weekend. And I'm just thinking, well, how many people are going to be there how long am i going to have to be at the event i i like the social aspect but for me it should be like a movie i want to kind of be out after two hours yeah i don't want to be there for five and i i can understand and that was the kind of the it's been a while i think i think i've been i know i went to a tournament in december i think i've been to another one since but i can't remember for sure.
    21:33
    I'm kind of the same way because the last time I do specifically remember the last time I was at a tournament, it was so jam-packed and so tight and so hot.
    21:44
    It took so long because it was like three and a half, four hours. By the end, there were points where I was sitting here going, maybe I should just lose so I can go home. That could just be me, like you said, being the grumpy old man at that point.
    22:01
    So, but it's definitely, it feels like when it comes to the excitement that it's not as much as it was. And I think it is a combination of things. Most specifically, everybody during COVID, everything was gold. Nothing could go wrong because everybody was stuck at home and they had money and they would spend it on stuff. And I do think, like we've talked about in the past, people are doing things. people are going out and and and that extra money is gone and then with inflation and the change of cost of everything and just the the the the cost of housing and everything anymore uh the kind of disposable money that existed three years ago is just not there so i think you're down to the point where only like the truly whale collector collectors can manage to buy everything where four years ago, a lot of people were buying just everything, seeing if they liked it, and then reselling it and getting their money back. But you don't make your money back anymore.
    23:02
    It's not that world where I can buy my LE, I can put 100 games on it, and I can sell it and make money on it. Our bare minimum, even if it's a bad one, break even, but make money on it, especially if it's a really good game. Now, even if it's a really good game, you're losing money. So it's just not the same atmosphere. Yeah, I think that might be the biggest element to it. I think because people know now that they can't just get anything they want and put plays on it and then somehow miraculously get all of their money back or then some. Now they're judging the games under a lens, and that lens is revealing that while the prices have gone up in part because of inflation, in part because of some minor innovations like Insider Connected and such. I say minor innovations because this sort of technology has existed in other industries for quite a while. You and I have often made fun of the RGB toppers. Like, why are these things $2,000? Because they do a simple hologram effect. And we were not all that far away from the, why is this topper $500? It's just a bunch of plastics and color-changing RGBs. This is not advanced technology. and that's where i suspect part of the issue at this point is people are looking and noticing that these games like they they're not they've not grown by leaps and bounds the last major leap quite frankly was the lcd when gjp came out and dropped that in yeah and and given that i think people are looking and and seeing that and are saying you know what why is this game twelve thousand dollars now as the as the cheapest version available it doesn't make any sense to me why is uh you know why are the le's this price from stern they and they're not like all you get is a powder coat and a little bit you know i think i think they're looking and there's nothing you know they're in luxury and i've i've talked about this with zach before they're in kind of a lot of them are in luxury price points at this stage but they're not really luxury products and And they – Stern just recently upped their warranty terms actually to being more what a consumer would expect because they were still for a long time doing those very operator-oriented warranties where it's like this stuff is not guaranteed very long and good luck figuring out how to fix it yourself. And so many people who are getting these things don't know how to fix them. So it's – yeah, it's – I think there's a lot about that and just the general – there's unease in the market because people are unsure of what's – I mean we're seeing inflation come down. We're seeing in the US interest rates finally coming back down because that was an attempt to control the inflation. But I know a lot of people are still really worried. They have recessionary concerns. Certain people, depending on what occupation they're in, have faced harder times than others too. So there you've mentioned like this is not this is just not all the money that there used to be available versus what is used on necessities. And even if people have it, some of them are playing it much safer now because they worry. And this is less of a sure thing when you look and you see people who bought games that didn't do well, like John Wick and how much they have to discount them to get rid of the used game. Right. And so if someone's like, you know what, I can quote unquote afford this, but if a bad thing happens, getting rid of assets is going to be part of my strategy, and this is not going to be as value retention of an asset. You know, this comes up with watches, and people talk about the value retention, and some people feel icky with it, but there are those that are in wristwatches who get really, I feel, get really, really worried about losing their shirt trying to sell off their watch collection, and so they just buy Rolex because that's the value. The value is going to retain better than almost any other brand. Like it's kind of a – it's more of a sure thing.
    26:52
    And so that's what I always think when I see people with a solid collection of just Rolex is you're afraid to lose money. That's why you're doing that. You're not buying anything that is more interesting because you're scared. That may be true for some and not true for others, but it's my assumption. And there was a – at this point, we've seen this in pinball too. Like the Stern Pros were like the – or at one point, the Stern Pros would often lose the least amount of money before the pandemic, but they'd lose a little bit. And the LEs were like, these would go up in value. These would go up. Well, now we've seen LEs that they don't go up in value. They go down in value because they make a lot of them. Well, and when it comes to just collecting in general, you also run up against the point that, like you were talking about watches, they retain value, especially the Rolexes specifically retain value quite well or go up. But they also take up much less real estate, and they're much easier to sell than a pinball machine. It's the same thing with people who collect cars or motorcycles or guns. They retain values quite well, depending upon what they are. And while vehicles and motorcycles take up more real estate, they're actually even easier to sell than probably watches, in all honesty. So it is a balancing act of cost, value, retained value, and the ease of ability to move it into liquidity. So I think that's one of those things that any collector of anything has to look at. Because, you know, grandma's collection of big old fancy John Wayne ceramic plates, they might be pretty and they don't take up much room, but they have zero value and they're almost impossible to move into a liquid state. So as opposed to grandpa's collection of like old guns. Right. So. Right. And that's a really good point about the space issue for some of these. collectibles and pinball machines being a good case in point. And I know we talked about it a little bit ago, but for,
    29:00
    I guess the listeners do not discount that. Like that is a, that is a huge factor. I can't remember. I mean, I've heard it from multiple people at this point, but I want to think Scott and Josh with loser kid pinball podcast on maybe their most recent episode. We're even talking about this on one of the, I can't remember which one, but mentioned like their space for games. It's full. Yeah. Everything is a, everything is a, an analysis at the stage. Something must leave. If something new is going to come in, they're not going to go to the trouble of trying to find a new place to wedge in another game. But they like everything that they have. Right. That's tough.
    29:34
    I mean, if you don't have a game that you're like, oh, I'm kind of done with this one. This one, I think it's time for this one to move on.
    29:42
    That leads to a real tough one. I have space for one game. And I have an enormous computer desk. I spend all of my time at home on my computer desk. I'm not a lazy boy guy or a couch guy watching TV. All of my time that's not doing family stuff is sitting at my computer. So I have an enormous computer desk with my computer where I can do all my hobby stuff and read and work on models or whatever I'm doing, like painting my figures if I ever get around to painting them and all that stuff. but it's an enormous desk and it takes up an enormous amount of space.
    30:23
    My desk takes up enough space that if I got rid of my desk completely, I could fit in three pen ball machines. It is a big desk. And I am deep into the consideration of getting rid of my desk, just to downsize to make more room.
    30:40
    But I don't think I would replace it with pen ball machines. And it's just I don't know that it's worth doing that and then shifting to and then adding more pinball machines in because of the cost and the value. And I'm at the point where I have my Campus Queen. I love my Campus Queen. And I think if I got another machine, if I cleared up room and got another machine, I would have to get a machine that I didn't plan on getting rid of, just like the Campus Queen will be with me because that was a grail. that you helped arrange for me to receive and all of that stuff. So to me, it's more than just a machine. There's emotional ties to it. And I think any other game I get is something that's going to be, for me, it would have to be not necessarily as big of a tie, but it would have to be important to me. So it's going to be a Godzilla or an attack from Mars. Right, right. So it's going to be something huge that I'm not going to want to get rid of. And quite frankly, I'm at a point that even if I downsize my desk like I've been considering, I would not necessarily want to fill that space back up because I'm a middle-aged fat guy. And I am deeply entering that minimalism stage that a lot of people do when they hit middle age where they start getting rid of like anything. It doesn't bring you joy. I mean, I wasn't going to put it that way. I wasn't going to put it that way, but there's a lot of stuff that I used to have and that I had. It was just stuff.
    32:22
    It's fun to throw things away. Is this just because we're old now? That makes it fun? I actually really enjoy going through and getting a little section cleared out, even though I'm not going to do anything with them. Right. I got rid of stuff. Yeah. Look at me go. And that's why I will sit there and I will stare at my desk and I'm like, man, half of this desk basically just ends up gathering junk until I go through it and clear it out. Then I'm always like, oh, it's nice and it's clean and it's beautiful. And then it starts slowly gathering junk again. So that's part of the reason I thought of getting rid of it just because it's like, well, I'll have less space to gather extra junk. But I mean, I don't – I used to like those – those boxes that they send in the mail that you get random, you know, fandom stuff. Right. And I don't get like any of that. You've seen my gift list over the last several years has been pared down to. It's basically gift cards and like a few things, most of which are like very practical. I was like I looking for this specific picture So I because I really like this picture for for mixing drinks in or I looking for this specific tool to do something because that that the point where I paring myself down to and and all of that So it's just.
    33:44
    I could be just that we have another large segment of people that are moving into that kind of category and and and with the cost of housing. and everything, they're just paring down.
    33:59
    I mean, just look at the rise in popularity of people going hyper-minimalist. I mean, I'm not a hyper-minimalist, but I'm definitely paring down to just really big, important, basic things. Yeah. Well, another, I guess, final thing to tie in on that is, like in your instance is a good case in point, a lot of people live where there is pinball available to play on location so that also alleviates a lot of the pressure uh if you're into it for the gaming purpose and not the collecting side of it if you can go and play a godzilla at the nearby bar and grill then that's less of a reason to have to own it very much so and and honestly that's what i've been finding myself doing more often because we used to go to tournaments all the time i go to tournaments less, but I actually still go out and play location. Yes, I do too. A fairly large amount. It's just, it's at the point where it's like, oh man, I've, I've, I've got a half day this day for whatever reason, or, or, oh, this is a holiday. So I'm off for this holiday. Uh, especially since, uh, we get like all of the holidays off. So holidays that most people don't get like, like, like I'll, I can almost guarantee I'm going to go play pinball on veterans day because very few people get veterans day off but we do so and i and it's one of those things it's like okay i'm going to go have lunch at one of the random local places that has pinball and play and that's a thing that i that i do quite often if i have some extra time off so that's i do still do a lot of location pinball okay well that was our pinball in the state of the market malaise discussion so we're ready to move into video games and i gotta get my voice right i mentioned we did have an email it's from robert g and it's a video game oriented email so i will attempt to read this and you will think about it tony and then we will be ready to kind of try and discuss it so here we go apologies to the listeners up front hey dennis and tony love the show thanks for the entertainment fortnightly I was just listening to a podcast called The Legend of Sword Quest about a contest Atari ran around a series of games for the 2600 console back in the early 80s. I am not a huge video game guy. I came to your podcast for the pinball, but I'm slowly getting back into video gaming, especially retro gaming. But I did play a lot of Atari 2600 and 7800 back in my youth. Yet, this old story was completely new to me. The podcast has only released two episodes so far, but it's got some actual interviews with folks who were involved. It's seemingly well-researched, if not overly exciting in its production values. I am a huge fan of the kind of business, cultural controversy surrounding such a contest, so it's been really fun to learn about a whole new bit of gaming history. Were you guys familiar with this old quest story? Are there any other strange gaming stories from the 80s? In other words, business strategy gone weird stories like Sword Quest, crazy myths like Polybus, or specific satanic panicandas-related stories that I should dig into? Or do you have any resources you'd point me to to learn more about them? Thanks again. I really appreciate the podcast, Robert. P.S. Dennis, I hope you'll read this in a French accent. It is not my actual accent, but I haven't heard you do that one yet, and I think it'd be fun. All right. Well, thank you, Robert. I don't know if it was fun for the listeners. I enjoyed it. And I know I broke out of it a little bit, so apologies, but I did the best I could. I kept waiting for you to smoke a cigarette halfway through just to stop and drink some wine. Yes. If you heard about the Newtonian for the watch, we will not bring it up because it's political.
    37:56
    All right. So, Tony, I wasn't familiar with Sword Quest. I knew it existed, and I've just heard some of the basics about it. Most of it is where it's come up just in reference to other things I've gone into. I've never deep-dived it or known the whole background to it. To me, it's the same level as all the ET cart buried in the landfill-type mess. Right. And so I was going to mention, well, they actually did bury them. Right. So that was going to be the one. It's so low-hanging fruit. Robert probably already knows about it. But in terms of giving him a suggestion for other kind of weird things, stories, that's the easy one to cite is the ETs going into a landfill. And so they actually did – there is a documentary. I cannot remember the name of it right now. I watched it on Amazon Prime years ago about them actually going and digging them up to find the Ataris. And they even had the creator of the game and all of that. That part is interesting and it's true. There are some aspects that may be more mythologicalized. So, for example, I have no – and I don't know if it's true or not. But I remember one of the things I had heard is purportedly, like, they made more ETs than there were 2600s. Like, there were stories like that going around that I'm not sure were actually true. But it was a weird time in the early 80s where they were just – I mean the shovelware was being turned out hand over fist. It was a big thing. So that would be one. Do you know of another like weird or like a game? I'm sure there must have been like video games that they named them and the word was like a swear word in the – like I've heard about cars that like would go to Portugal. And the name of the car though that we went with like translated meant doesn't run or something like that. Is there some things like that with video games? It wouldn't surprise me. There's a lot of, especially from the 80s, there were so many weird things. There were so many weird ongoing special event type things and trying to get the draw, drawing more people and more players and stuff. I'm sure there is. I've never made a deep study of any of it, so I don't know for sure. Most of the stuff is just at the level of heresy and myth. I will say having a few, okay, probably a decade or more ago, done a deep dive into all of the satanic panic type stuff.
    40:29
    After having listened to a podcast and watched some videos about it, I can't even remember. Like I said, this was before we started doing the pinball podcast or started doing our podcast. It's been so long ago. but some of that stuff especially when you start seeing some of the interviews especially like archived clip interviews from like news stations in the 80s and you just compare it to the kind of stuff you see nowadays is downright hilarious and kind of scary I highly recommend a deeper dive into that kind of thing just for that kind of blast from the past thing, just to see the interesting bits. There's a, I can't remember the name of it specifically, there's a channel that I've watched occasionally on YouTube that a guy just basically got a whole bunch of old video cassettes from a TV studio. and what he's done with it is he's gone through and he's edited out all the shows and just taken the commercials and he'll just put out like a hour-long thing on YouTube that it's just like commercials from like 1982 on blah blah blah blah blah and you see like local station stuff and it's just hilarious to see the differences in commercials from back then and the kind of stuff you see nowadays, which is a little different than what he was originally talking about. But it's just anything like that that shows how things have changed is hilarious.
    42:09
    Yes. I've looked it up, so I will say the name of the documentary is from 2014. It's called Atari Game Over. So if you have not seen that one, I would say definitely go and check it out. It's only a little over an hour long. It's not a full feature-length style thing. But if you're into that sort of weird stuff from the 80s, they do dive into a lot of the stuff that went on in the video game crash and Atari and a bit even about the E.T.'s development. I mean, it was a really short development. The guy had, I don't remember, two weeks, a month, something like that to make the game. It was just – there's a lot of stuff that was – they were going faster than they could possibly do it. So thank you, though, for the email. Tony, we got other real news. Yeah, we've got some video game stuff going on. Square Enix has finally been made public. Some of the discussions that were had with investors back in May, and it did come out finally. What we've thought all along is that the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Final Fantasy XVI profits did not meet expectations. They were very far below what was expected. Were their expectations realistic?
    43:26
    From the looks of it, I would believe so, based upon past performance. I'm surprised that the 7 won, because I had heard very positive things to the first of the Final Fantasy 7 remake. The first one sold insanely well and did very, very good. The second one was not even close, not even half. I wonder why everyone lost interest. I don't know. I think it's probably, in my opinion, it took too long. It took too long to come out. Yeah, that's a fair point. It was too long, and they've made so many changes and adjusted it. It was just too much.
    43:57
    But that's the same time, remember, back in May and June when they announced their new multi-platform strategy and when they did a series of layoffs in their European and American divisions. Yes. So this just confirms that the multi-platform strategy that they launched back then is due to just sales being low. They can't maintain the single platform strategy that they have done. I'm surprised that they stuck with the single platform strategy as long as they did because it seems like they've been missing a lot of expectations for quite a while. They have. I mean, they've had such limited multi-platform. They've done a lot of Sony exclusivity. Yeah, a lot. And it's hurt them overall. But their multi-platform strategy has been launched, and it seems to be doing fairly well. they've just launched Tales of Mana Legend of Mana and all of the Final Fantasy Pixel remasters have just come out on Xbox and PC I've been really tempted I saw it in my little dashboard ad and I was like oh my gosh I've played a lot of them especially the early ones I never won I've played Final Fantasy 4 which was originally billed as 2 in the US twice once on the Nintendo and once on the PS1 and I never finished it in either instance i i go along and then some other game would distract me right now i'm like maybe this time i could finally make myself do it maybe you can finally finish i never won final fantasy one i was like to the last area i never but my my team was bad yeah well i mean and that's one of those things a lot of people haven't and they are honestly really good games so i saw like the bulk package if i got them all as the bundle it was like 60 bucks which seemed to like a lot for old style graphics but i don't know i don't buy very many games i'm right you know i got some money i think i can yeah i'll just not buy a pinball machine just think about it's a lot of that's a fairly decent number of games because the pixel remasters there's what four of six of them six all the way up till final fantasy seven yeah so and there's some i mean i i know i've won five and six because i also got those on the ps1 that was right five's actually really fun if you like to do the different character job thing. Yeah, 5 was always good. 6 was always good. 6 is beloved. Some people, like in the war of what's the best Final Fantasy ever made, it's often a split between the people who love Final Fantasy 7 and the 3D and the story of that and others who are like, I say Final Fantasy 6 is the best. Its story is better than 7, but it doesn't have the same graphics.
    46:31
    They're both fun. I leaned more 7 personally, but 6 is a good game. See, I really like Seven's Materia magic system. Yes, yes. And that's a big thing because the magic systems in the Final Fantasy, especially as they went along, they could almost make or break where the game would rank in the pantheon. It's like the draw system. Eight's draw system.
    46:54
    Well, not just the eight's draw system. Eight's draw system where you could then tie the spells to your stats and you get special things. so you'd want to draw a lot of it but you'd never want to use it because it's so directly tied to your stats so you end up just grinding your draws I remember on that game leading up to beating it spending an insanely huge amount of time in a small area because oh I can draw this specific spell here so I'd spend hours and hours and hours just drawing to maximum because it gives me so many good bonuses if I have the maximum number of that spell but then I'll never cast Because it's tied to my stats and bonuses. Yeah, the draw system. My danders are now. Grr.
    47:39
    My tiger growls at this draw system. No one will get that reference. If you do get that reference. Email us. Yes. Select a gamers podcast at gmail.com. The tiger growling. What is that from? And we'll give you a hint. It's a book. That's your hint. Okay. Oh, my gosh. Anyway.
    48:00
    Oh. In what should be a surprise to nobody, except for how long it took, Nintendo has finally pulled the trigger on a lawsuit on PalWorld. Sorry, PalWorld. Now, what I find interesting is that in the course of leading up to this, from the looks of it, Nintendo has filed some amendments to its already existing patents to make it more clear exactly what was covered in those patents, which makes it even more clear that they are specifically targeted at things Power World has done.
    48:44
    I don't know if that's going to hold up or not. I don't know. I don't know how that will work. But they have done. They filed several amendments. that basically make it more clear about certain things, and Power World fell into them. And I don't think anybody's surprised by this other than how long it took.
    49:06
    I'm not surprised, no. Yeah, I mean, it just makes sense because Power World, like, didn't even – and Power World's argument is, well, them suing us is – it's bad for indie gaming. It's like, man, you straight – your characters are so closely – it's bad. I mean – It's not homage. Nintendo may be beloved for a lot of their IPs, but Nintendo, for those of you that are listening and aren't hardcore into gaming, Nintendo is notoriously litigious. Oh, yes. In fact, to borrow from Harry Potter, they're cold, almost cruel about it. Oh, yeah. Very much so. And so the only thing that shocked me was that they didn't do it immediately when Power World was at the height of its power. Right. Because I've not... Everything I've heard... I don't know anyone who's still playing Pal World. I don't either. Their numbers are still existent. They're not near as high as they were. I think it's just been an issue of, you know, there's not enough to do. People got through everything that was there. It's like an MMO syndrome. If you don have enough endgame people get to endgame and then they walk away Right So anyway not a particular surprising out out of Nintendo but I do agree with you looking at uh, what pal world was doing and seeing all of this stuff. I was like, this is writing so close to the line in so many ways. It's like the only real difference is they gave the pals different names and then allowed them to carry, uh, weapons on the AR platform. Yes. So that's the big thing is yes. everybody loves an instantly recognizable Pokemon wielding a minigun, but yes, here's the problem is it's an instantly recognizable Pokemon. Yes. Just because you change the name and give it a minigun doesn't mean it doesn't became not Pokemon. Right. It's very much a, they were asking for it. Yes. They were riding the line and just hoping for some reason Nintendo wouldn't pull the trigger. Yeah. And when Nintendo didn't right away, I thought, did they, Did they dance the loopholes just perfectly? Right. But like you said, Nintendo is notoriously litigious. I mean, they are. Like Nintendo cracks down on people streaming their stuff. Right. Like there's reasons why Evo doesn't have Nintendo fighting games in it right now. And over periods of time when they didn't have them, even though the games were deeply popular, Nintendo was like, I don't want we don't want old smash stream. I mean, that's the right answer. but i mean it's just the right answer for humanity right but but their reasons for it is because they want to sell like the latest product and they and so they're just like we're not going to allow tournaments to like oh you can play in a tournament you can't broadcast it right but this is a televised tournament but too bad can we make a deal no why nintendo nintendo how about nintendo No. Nintendo. But anyway. So, yeah, no shock there. Sorry, Power World. We'll see how that goes when that goes to court, Power World. Good for you.
    52:08
    Continuing with the Nintendo theme, Nintendo's Miyamoto, during an interview with the New York Times, was talking about the importance of originality and that Nintendo is going a different direction than most of the industry. They're intentionally skewing away from the AI trend. They don't want the AI generation and the AI support and extra AI stuff. They're steering specifically away from it for game creation. They are using AI for certain things. In particular, they're using an AI to scrape online for violations of copyright because Nintendo.
    53:00
    But when it comes to actual game production, they're skewing away from from from use of AI. Yeah, I mean, AI, it can be a useful tool. I haven't used it very much. I did an experiment to try and see about using it to write a script for my watch YouTube channel. And I was like, I just I didn't do the episode. I was like, I look to see, like, what would it look like if I gave it certain parameters? It did an OK job, but I'd have to go and verify all of the data that it was throwing in because I didn't know whether or not it was true. Right. Unless I went and checked the the websites itself. But there's also a risk, of course, for for such things being used for evil. So that's very much so. I think the biggest issue is actually tended to be in the realm of A.I. art and those sort of concerns that that people people have run with. You know, we saw that with what was that show where Samuel L. Jackson just sits down the entire time that Marvel. Oh, the Secret War. Did you see that? Yeah, I saw I saw a few episodes and I gave up. Yeah, I call that like everything else on Disney anymore. I call that the the Samuel L. Jackson. We're not going to pay him enough money. So he's just going to actually sit the entire time instead of instead of actually acting. So that's a really as an aside, that is a really, really, really rough show. But but what can you do is sort of the thing. Yeah. Well, and speaking of AI being used for evil, EA's CEO, Andrew Wilson, during an investor call, stated that AI is at the very core of EA's business and that they have over 100 active AI projects assisting with game development between art asset development. And they even have a new scene writer where you can use either textually entered scene description or verbally entered scene description. And then the AI will take all the game's assets and generate the scene for you. See, that's the dark underbelly of the AI. I was trying to find – because you hadn't seen this. So on the last – I think it was the last episode of the Pinball Show, Zach and I were having a conversation, and I mentioned Halloween. or he brought up Halloween asked if I was going to dress up for anything for Halloween I was like no I'm not going to go to work dressed up for Halloween like oh my gosh you could go to work showing up looking like Rogue and someone used the power of AI to make me into Rogue the animated Rogue and put it on over on the pinball networks I'm letting Tony see it now because when I first saw it I thought maybe it was just Rogue and then I realized that's not Rogue's face that's my face and I was like that is see that's the evil underbelly The dark underbelly. You have lovely hair. Yes. Kingdom Hearts 4 is in development.
    55:51
    I've never really talked about the Kingdom Hearts games here because I've never been a huge Kingdom Hearts person. I played part of the first one. Yeah, it's one of those things that it has, I'm going to say, a rabid fan base. Yes, I agree. I think rabid is like the lightest of words that can be used for the fan base. It's like Swifties for video games. It is. It's very much so. And what I find is interesting is the lore behind the Kingdom Hearts game is very complicated. There's a lot of stuff going on. But with Kingdom Hearts 4, they are planning to bring the story to a conclusion. Wow. Because the series director, Tetsuya Nomura, wants to retire. And he's decided he doesn't want to leave the game out there unfinished when he retires. So he wants to bring the game to a conclusion. So to do this, they're going to do a reset of the story, and they've brought in all new writers. So Kingdom Hearts 4 is going to reset large segments of the story so that they can complete it.
    57:02
    Okay. We'll see how this goes over. My thought will be not well. But because when I first started reading about it, I was like, oh, that's cool. The fans will be really, really happy with this. And then I got to the we're resetting the story part. I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, honey. Oh, honey. Bless their hearts. Yeah. It's like you have generated a fandom that I don't know how well they're going to accept you resetting the story in the middle of the story. It's not a reboot. It's not a restart of the series, but it's like just a hard reset and adjustment to the story so that you can – I don't know how well that's going to go over. Maybe they can write it into the story. something happens that covers it i i don't know parallel universe yeah i'll have to parallel it oh great because you know people aren't burned out on multiverse stuff already easy way to do whatever you want yeah great but this one will be an interesting one to follow to see how that reset goes with the fandom um steam has updated their subscriber agreement i don't know if you've noticed if you've fired up steam lately uh to have your new agreement pop up i i know this line a little while ago uh the interesting thing about the agreement is it's done the exact opposite of what most of these updates uh do they actually remove the forced arbitration it's now to actually force you if you want to get involved you have to go to court uh and it sounds like the thoughts from people in the industry because they've not said why they did this in particular but the thoughts of people more in the know just in the industry as a whole is that apparently uh these forced arbitration things a lot of uh like some lawyers found like a loophole basically uh that if you go into forced arbitration representing larger groups, it actually ends up working well for the customer as opposed to the company you're going against, which is the exact opposite of why they did the arbitration. Right. Arbitration normally works in the advantage of the entity that's making the contract. Correct. But when you come in with 6,000 people doing the exact same thing, uh, that it works the opposite and it's very expensive and harmful to the company. So that's the thought about why they've actually made the change, because they apparently took a hit a few years ago from a system like that, and several other major companies have as well. But that's just speculation, because they've not come out and said why they made this change.
    59:57
    So we'll see. I don't know how much that actually will affect anything in the long run. I just thought it was an interesting thing. It is. I remember when everybody started shifting to their terms of service requiring you to go to arbitration, saying you wouldn't sue. Oh, it's mandatory arbitration.
    60:14
    So Remedy, the developer of Alan Wake, excellent game. Control, excellent game. They've entered into an agreement with Tencent on a convertible loan for over $16 million, almost $17 million. And it's a convertible loan because under certain circumstances, at three years after the loan's date, initiation date, the loan can be converted into shares. Okay. And it's just a touch under 6% of Remedy's available shares. It's like literally 5.98% of Remedy's available shares, which is interesting because Tencent already has 14% of Remedy's shares. I wonder – this is interesting. I wonder if it's a – kind of a, well, if there wasn't confidence that they could pay it back with the interest that the shares – like I don't know who does the conversion. Like is it – if you're not paid a certain amount by a certain point, what the rule is. I'm not familiar with convertible loans. I'm not either. Like convertible CDs and stuff. I've bought those before, and then usually after a set period of time, they can go ahead and end the term early and pay out the full – give you all your balance back plus whatever interest you earn. So you don't lose out on anything, but I had that happen this year. I had a fairly large CD as part of my portfolio, and it was supposed to expire in December. It was a one-year CD. But not too surprisingly, with the interest rates now coming down from the Fed, they wanted to end the CD early, and they had kept it convertible so they would not be stuck paying the high interest rate I had locked in for the entire 12 months. So I actually got about seven months out of it. Right, which isn't a surprise. So I'm wondering if this is kind of in that same vein, but it's a – if they can't pay it back, like we give you stock, or is it – I don't know whose choice it is. Or is Tencent – it's like, you know what? Rather than the money, we want the stock instead, like if the company is doing – I just don't know. I'm not sure. What I find interesting is the amount of the loan is almost exactly the amount Remedy had to pay to get the controlling rights for Control 2 back.
    62:29
    I really liked Control. I would like a sequel. And it's coming. Okay. But Remedy had to buy the rights to make the sequel from their previous publisher that they'd worked with on Control. So they had to buy the rights back, and the cost of that is almost exactly what this loan is. I mean, the cost of getting the rights back is a little bit higher than what the loan is, but not a lot. Okay. So, but it's an interesting thing because while Remedy has put out games that are very well received, they've not exactly been like… They're not setting the world on fire. Yeah, they're not bank breakers. They're not blowing up the money. They're not.
    63:09
    Ultima 3 or whatever. Yeah. Alan Wake is an amazing game. It's a cult classic. But right, but that doesn't mean that, yeah, it's not like a AAA Super. It ain't Call of Duty. Right.
    63:19
    So the last thing I was going to talk about a little bit was last year, right at the end of the year, we talked a little bit about the day before. That was the game that had been billed as an open world game that had been pushed for years and years and had huge amounts of buzz, and it was on everybody's wish list. And then when it came out, it was a full-on bait and switch, where what they'd shown in the trailers, what they talked about for those years and years, what the actual game was, was not the same at all. And it crashed and burned so hard that the company went out of business four days after release. I did not remember that.
    63:58
    It wasn't a huge thing. It was just one of those interesting things I recall us talking about a little bit. Well, that company has been resurrected. the company is fantastic because it makes sense not to just not to include one letter in there. They could put a four in there. They basically what they did fantastic they're back and they're using Kickstarter to try and fund their first game from return.
    64:32
    It's a fall guys. cloud oh my gosh they're only trying to raise fifteen thousand dollars so for a kickstarter for a game raising fifteen thousand dollars should be pretty easy yeah that should be within reach they've only got about two thousand so far well but you haven't given your money over yet and i'm not going to give my money over there there i have after the whole robotech thing i have criteria on my money.
    65:02
    And one of them is it's not going to a failed company. Attempting to come back by creating a cruddy clone of a game that already exists. That's probably a fair, that's probably a reasonable criteria.
    65:15
    So, we'll see how that one goes, how that return to fame goes for them. But that's what I've got in video games today. Well, we actually ended up, thanks to video games, we ended up having a full episode. for those that want to talk to us about our full episode you can email us I'm going to read you all of that but I'm not going to edit this out you're going to get to enjoy the horridness of this because I just like to leave things in eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com is what you could actually email you could also message us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast we do prefer email, it's a lot easier for us especially if we're going to include it in the show it's easier for me to cut and paste it into our internal notes again, if you want to support the show patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers is the plus I'm running out I've run out of my coke zero and now my dry mouth is causing me to slur it's like the reverse look at that picture of you as rogue again and let's see how dry your mouth stays anyway for as low as a dollar a month you can support us financially via the patreon option we're available on twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we will be back in a couple of weeks. We're getting close to Pinball Expo. There may be more pinball news that comes out from that show. I am very hopeful that there will be more news coming out from that show. But we will not be going out there for that show. No, we will not be in attendance of said show. So, sorry. We can only attend so much a year. So, and TPF is our chosen attendance. Yes, we have chosen wisely. So, until next episode, my name is Dennis. I am Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See ya.