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Bobby King WMS Licensing Interview and Commentary

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 43m·analyzed·May 11, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

Farsight loses WMS license; TPA sales end June 30th; pivoting to Stern day-and-date strategy.

Summary

Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan interview Bobby King, VP of Farsight Studios, about the loss of Williams/Bally pinball licensing. Farsight will cease selling WMS tables on June 30th but can continue maintaining existing purchases. The company is pivoting to focus on Stern and Gottlieb tables, with day-and-date releases planned for new Stern titles. Farsight is developing new cross-platform games and maintaining its digital pinball platform despite the licensing loss.

Key Claims

  • Scientific Games (current WMS IP holder) decided to go in a different direction with the license; negotiations were very brief and Farsight was 'blindsided'

    high confidence · Bobby King stated directly that Scientific Games made the decision and negotiations were brief

  • All Williams/Bally tables will be delisted from purchase on June 30th, 2024, and no sales can occur after that date

    high confidence · Bobby King confirmed explicitly multiple times; contractual no-sale-discount clause prevents discounting in final 6 months

  • Customers who have already purchased WMS tables will retain ownership and access indefinitely via Farsight login

    high confidence · Bobby King: 'once you buy a table, you own it...you own the table forever on that platform'

  • A Pinball Arcade Switch version was released, then immediately pulled after WMS objected; a new WMS-free version is scheduled for release tomorrow

    high confidence · Bobby King detailed the emergency call with WMS and explained the Switch removal/re-release plan

  • Farsight can maintain and bug-fix existing WMS tables but cannot add new features or extensive art updates post-June 30th

    high confidence · Bobby King clarified the distinction between maintaining exact cabinet simulation vs. adding new features

  • Farsight has internal plans to develop technology for simulating new Stern video screen tables (Spike 3)

    medium confidence · Bobby King: 'We have an internal plan on how we're going to develop our own technology to simulate that'

  • Farsight plans to release approximately 5-6 tables per year going forward (down from ~10-12 during monthly seasons)

    high confidence · Bobby King stated 'about half of what we were doing before' and confirmed '5 or 6'

  • Roger Sharp was the original contact at Williams who helped guide TPA's quality; he no longer works at the company

    high confidence · Bobby King identified Sharp as mentor and explained his departure contributed to license loss dynamics

Notable Quotes

  • “The company that controls the WMS IP scientific games now they decided to go in a different direction. And unfortunately, our negotiations with them were very brief. And you know we were kind of blindsided.”

    Bobby King @ early in interview — Direct explanation of license loss from Farsight VP; establishes unexpected/unfavorable negotiation outcome

  • “June 30th, that's the cutoff. If you have tables that you would need to fill the gaps in, if you have a platform that you have yet to purchase on, you've got to do it. Otherwise, you're not going to.”

    Chris Freebus @ intro — Establishes hard deadline for community awareness; urgent call-to-action for affected consumers

  • “It almost vindictive to just be like, oh, and by the way, you can't sell any of the things that you've worked on the past six years.”

    Chris Freebus @ mid-interview — Community sentiment: licensing holder's decision to delist all historical tables perceived as hostile/punitive

  • “We have two new games, cross-platform games, that we're working on in the studio that haven't been officially announced yet, so I can't mention them.”

    Bobby King @ mid-interview — Unannounced projects signal Farsight's pivot strategy post-WMS loss

  • “Ghostbusters took longer than any table in development that we've ever done by like a water of magnitude.”

    Bobby King @ late-interview — Technical complexity of integrating Stern Spike code-base into TPA reveals unforeseen challenges

  • “our goal with them is to release tables day and date with the actual terrestrial table.”

    Bobby King @ early-mid interview — Strategic shift: TPA now positioned as real-time companion to physical Stern releases, not archive service

  • “I wouldn't worry about that [servers going down]. And just to clarify, people are going to be able to pick up these tables until June 30th. It's not going away sooner.”

    Bobby King @ late-interview — Reassurance on server stability and purchase window certainty

Entities

Farsight StudioscompanyBobby KingpersonChris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonScientific GamescompanyWilliams/BallycompanyThe Pinball Arcade (TPA)productStern PinballcompanyGottliebcompanyPinball Arcade Switchproduct

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Farsight is transitioning from monthly WMS table releases (~10-12/year) to ~5-6 tables/year post-WMS loss, focusing on Stern day-and-date and Gottlieb/Data East expansion.

    high · Bobby King: 'our goal with them [Stern] is to release tables day and date with the actual terrestrial table' and 'about half of what we were doing before' = 5-6/year

  • ?

    event_signal: Blockade Podcast hosts were under NDA regarding WMS license loss since early April; could not discuss publicly until official announcement despite knowing details.

    high · Chris Freebus: 'we've known about this since basically the beginning of April' and 'we have binding agreements...that make us shut up so you'll have to forgive us but we've literally been biting our tongues'

  • ?

    community_signal: Farsight reassuring customers on long-term server stability and continued maintenance/bug-fixes for existing WMS purchases, positioning platform as stable despite licensing loss.

    high · Bobby King: 'I wouldn't worry about that [servers going down]' and confirmed 'we can maintain the tables...there's no contractual reason why we can't'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Pinball Arcade Switch version was released, then immediately pulled after WMS objected to use of Switch IP without explicit contract language. New WMS-free version being released.

    high · Bobby King: 'We had to have a very emergency call with them...We agreed that we don't have the rights explicitly in the contract that say switch...we felt like it was in the best interest of us to pull the Switch down'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Scientific Games (WMS IP holder) declined to renew Farsight's pinball simulation license; negotiations were brief and unexpected. Company is pursuing 'different direction' but has not disclosed plans.

Topics

Williams/Bally License LossprimaryTPA Licensing and Contract TermsprimaryDigital Pinball Platform StrategyprimaryStern Partnership and Day-and-Date ReleasesprimarySwitch Release Conflict and ResolutionprimaryCustomer Purchase Protection and Server StabilitysecondaryGottlieb and Data East Expansion PlanssecondaryPinball Tournaments / Skills Real-Money Appsecondary

Sentiment

negative(-0.68)— WMS license loss is presented as unexpected and unfavorable. Community and hosts perceive Scientific Games' decision as 'vindictive' and a 'dick move.' However, Farsight staff morale is characterized as positive and forward-looking due to Stern pivot and new unannounced projects. Bobby King maintains professional, reassuring tone on customer protection and future direction. Mixed sentiment overall: negative on licensing loss, positive on company stability and transition plan.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.312

0:00
this is a blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me halfway across the world as always jared morgan hey hey everyone hey listen to me in my nice crisp audio again. Yes, Jared has abandoned the Apple ecosphere and has come to the dark side with the majority of society and is rocking a new Surface Pro.
0:47
Surface Book, they call them. It's not the one with the floppy keyboard. It's the one that's actually like a laptop with a nice keyboard and also the NVIDIA 1060 GPU and the base of it. So, so have a guess what I've been doing. Yeah. Discovering the, the wonders of dynamic lighting, no doubt in all the things. So, so here's the funny part. While Jared is rocking a new computer, Mike desktop computer took a crap this past weekend and my motherboard went. I am doing this via my laptop, but, uh, because I hate the aspects of laptops, I've plugged my keyboard in. I've plugged my, uh, touch pad in. I've plugged everything into the laptop. So basically I'm just using it as a monitor. Yeah. As God intended.
1:46
And, uh, so, but, so, but I am, I am currently shopping for, uh, building a new PC and I too probably will be rocking a new, 1060 graphics card when the time comes. It seems like a good fit. Like this thing is for a laptop. It's powerful as anything. The company I'm working for are good folks. They got me the big screen version of it. I think it's massive.
2:16
And you know, just in short, even with the massive space this thing has, it's about the same price as a Mac.

  • Ghostbusters (first Stern Pinball Arcade table to come to TPA) took longer to develop than any prior TPA table due to code-base integration complexity

    high confidence · Bobby King: 'Ghostbusters took longer than any table in development that we've ever done by like a water of magnitude'

  • Farsight is pursuing additional licenses including Gottlieb EMs, Data East, and possibly Capcom pinball emulation

    medium confidence · Bobby King identified these as 'major considerations' but noted ROM and licensing barriers for Capcom

  • “We have until June 30th. That's like the last day possibly that we can sell. However, updates depending on the store may have to go out like a day or two earlier.”

    Bobby King @ late-interview — Clarifies minor ambiguity: updates may precede delisting by 1-2 days across platforms

  • “there's no reason why we can't [maintain the tables]...these are products that People have already bought and we'll continue to basically improve upon what they've already bought.”

    Bobby King @ mid-interview — Clarifies post-license maintenance scope; existing customer protection

  • “without people to compete against, that app doesn't work. Especially on the money front.”

    Chris Freebus @ late-interview — Identifies critical success factor for Pinball Tournaments (Skills) real-money launch

    • Roger Sharpperson
    Normanperson
    Stern Pinball Arcadeproduct
    Pinball Tournaments (via Skills)product
    Skillscompany
    Museum of Pinball (Banning)organization
    Capcomcompany
    Data Eastcompany
    Ghostbustersgame
    Arcudacompany

    high · Bobby King: 'The company that controls the WMS IP scientific games now they decided to go in a different direction. And unfortunately, our negotiations with them were very brief. And you know, we were kind of blindsided.'

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball Tournaments app user base surged from ~6 concurrent players to 80-112 in last 2 days; engagement critical to real-money launch success.

    medium · Chris Freebus: 'one day there was 80 people and the next day there was over 112' after weeks of 6-person leaderboards

  • $

    market_signal: Delisting of all Williams/Bally TPA tables on June 30th; no discounting permitted in final 6-month window; previous contractual understanding apparently did not ensure renewal.

    high · Bobby King confirmed June 30th delisting deadline multiple times; noted WMS 'want to make it so that we cannot just go out there and sell them all really cheap'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Norman (Farsight buyer) retired voluntarily; was not pushed out. Bobby King resumed primary buyer duties. No layoffs planned at Farsight.

    high · Bobby King: 'I was the buyer before Norman was. I delegated it to him' and 'there's no layoff planned uh there's nothing um it's not a dire situation'

  • ?

    announcement: Farsight developing two new unannounced cross-platform games in-house as part of strategic pivot away from WMS licensing dependency.

    medium · Bobby King: 'we have two new games, cross-platform games, that we're working on in the studio that haven't been officially announced yet, so I can't mention them'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Ghostbusters (first Stern code-base table for TPA) experienced unexpectedly long development cycle—'longer than any table in development...by like a water of magnitude'—due to emulation/code integration complexity.

    high · Bobby King: 'Ghostbusters took longer than any table in development that we've ever done by like a water of magnitude...there's so many things that had to be added to our engine'

  • ?

    business_signal: Farsight's Stern Pinball Arcade transitioning to freemium model (free-to-play with token/gold bar currency) while mainline Pinball Arcade remains premium ($5-10 DLC per table).

    medium · Bobby King described dual-app strategy: 'Stern Pinball Arcade being more free to play' with 'tokens and...achievements' vs 'Pinball Arcade...more of the premium DLC kind of model'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Farsight is developing internal technology to simulate Stern's new video screen (Spike 3) tables for day-and-date digital releases, representing significant technical pivot.

    medium · Bobby King: 'We do [have a plan]. We have an internal plan on how we're going to develop our own technology to simulate that.'

    • 2:24
    So, you know, Go figure with the things you can do with this. I've already used like the pen, like the tablet pen, the Surface Pen, which is pretty amazing as an input device. So, yeah, I'm very happy. I'm quite surprised, actually. I think I'll be writing a Medium post about my experiences transitioning from fruit to Windows.
    2:49
    Well, folks, we know this is not why you are tuning in right now to hear us banter about computer. We have stuff to talk about. We've been waiting to talk about this. Oh, jeez.
    3:02
    It's been killing us. Yeah, if you've been hiding under a proverbial rock this week, the announcement came down that Farsight has lost the license to Williams and Bally Pinball, and it's not just a matter of losing the license to continue to make tables. It's a complete loss of license. As of June 30th, you will not be able to purchase any of the Baldy and Williams tables that were previously available.
    3:31
    So we're getting that out front and center for everybody to know. June 30th, that's the cutoff. If you have tables that you would need to fill the gaps in, if you have a platform that you have yet to purchase on, you've got to do it. Otherwise, you're not going to. We have a nice, long interview. interview with Bobby King that we'll be starting in just a few moments. And he answers quite a few questions and then stick around for after the video or the video. I say video because it looks like a video when I record it, but then all we do is give you audio because the video is really kind of boring since Bobby didn't want to be on camera. So it's just his shirt. I was wondering why that was, but I was, I can see his very nice Paisley pattern shirt, but I don't know quite what's going on. After, after the, after listening to the interview, we will have our own comments about what's going on and everything. But I did want to just say we have known about this since basically the beginning of April. I had joked with Jared that we were busy with all sorts of stuff right around then, and I was thinking, oh, you know what? I'm going to do an April Fool's episode, and I'm going to come on, and I'm just going to tell everybody that, oh, sorry, folks, TPA went away. It's completely gone. There's never going to be another table released. And literally a couple of days later, this news hits us, and Jared goes, dude, you were prophetic.
    5:00
    Yeah, it was somewhat bizarre, the timing. And I was just like, oh, I'm so glad I did not make that podcast. That would not have come across well at all. but we've kept our mouths shut because there was behind the scenes workings that may have affected this, may have not again we'll go into that a little bit later and we do have binding agreements with various gaming studios and stuff that make us shut up so you'll have to forgive us but we've literally been biting our tongues we've so been wanting to talk about this but we just under NDA we are not able to yeah so uh why don't we well before we kick off the interview i'm gonna do one plug also just to get it out there for those of you that are interested in cabinet mode uh you're going to want to pay attention to what arcuda is doing uh because they are selling the cabinet mode of 76 of the tables and that sale also will be over by june 30th again we'll talk about all this after the video is up and running. So that being said, sit back, take a good listen, take notes if you want to post it on the fan forum so that I don't have to. A lot of information coming your way via Bobby. So take it away to our previously recorded session. Okay, joining me right now, all the way up in Big Bear at the Farsight Studios, is Bobby King, the vice president of Farsight. Hey, Chris. So it's kind of funny. I was thinking about it's been quite a while since we've talked to you. We've spoken to Norman and Mike previously now, most recently. But it was one of the things where I realized the first interview we ever did with you. That was our first podcast. Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. And so we're only about, you know, one hundred and thirty plus podcasts in now.
    7:06
    So, yeah, we've been a while. Yeah, it's going to be back on. Yeah. Not the greatest news. No. We can do this, Tom. Yeah, obviously what we have Bobby on to talk about, Farsight posted on Twitter and Facebook and on the fan forum the news that you no longer are going to continue with the Williams license. Correct. Williams Valley license in pinball. basically the general question that everybody is kind of going is oh what happened was this your guys's choice or what was the decision that went into this yeah so it really wasn't our decision at all the company that controls the WMS IP scientific games now they decided to go in a different direction. And unfortunately, our negotiations with them were very brief.
    8:03
    And, you know, we were kind of blindsided. Yeah, it's very surprising to us that they didn't want to continue with us. They wanted to go another direction. But, you know, ultimately, it was their decision. When they say another direction, do we have any idea what that means? We don't. In fact, we've been trying to figure that out. They won't tell us. We have some speculation, that I'm not going to guess what it is. Yeah. We'll spend an entire podcast speculating, but I don't expect you to.
    8:32
    Yeah. I'd assume that the decision or the announcement will probably come out around after we stop selling tables. Okay. Of what they're going to be doing. Which we'll make that clear now and throughout the podcast. Folks, if you have until June 30th to purchase the all Williamson Valley tables that are currently in Pinball Arcade, After that, you will not be able to purchase them at all. So June 30th. Right. And once you buy a table, you know, and we'll get to the questions later, I'm sure. Yeah, once you buy a table, you own it. You know, it's not like once the license goes away, you don't own the table anymore. Like you own the table forever on that platform. So, yeah, the opportunity right there is going to be ending on June 30th. And I encourage everyone to get these tables because I'm very doubtful that you're going to have another chance. Yeah.
    9:26
    You guys have had a relationship with Williams going back, what, 2009? Does that sound about right? Yeah, about 10 years. Might even be a little longer, actually.
    9:37
    Yeah, Roger Sharp was our first contact over there. And he's no longer with the company that is formerly known as WMS. Okay. And, you know, he, you know, was one of the, I don't know, one of our mentors and one of our guiding lights on getting our simulation to be as good as it is, honestly.
    10:03
    And, you know, now that he's not there and I think very few people at the company really care that much about pinball, I'm not sure, you know, exactly who's making the final decisions. yeah i mean it it's one of those things where i think all of us knew it you know there was going to be at some point a time when uh you know the tables would stop more or less um you know as we wind down through you know start getting into titles that aren't as popular and stuff but i think we also all assumed that okay fine the tables would stop but we'd be able to continue to you know to purchase all the old stuff and this move by williams it guy it just seems like a dick move. Yeah. I mean, almost vindictive to just be like, oh, and by the way, you can't sell any of the things that you've worked on the past six years. Right. Six years plus. I mean, a lot of time and money and effort has gone into making these tables and we've loved doing it. I don't know. I don't know what what the decision was there. I know that my first reaction, I mean, apart from the initial shock of it, but my initial gut reaction was, oh, God, I hope the guys, you know, the staff up at Farsight is OK. That, you know, there's not going to be this isn't the end of Farsight. This isn't the end of all these people that worked so hard and diligently on these.
    11:24
    I know that you've reassured us that it's not. But what's the what's the general mood up there? Yeah. The general mood is we were very disappointed, obviously, that this happened.
    11:38
    And as a company, we were already looking forward, knowing that we weren't going to be doing monthly releases after Season 7. So a lot of the teams and a lot of the guys have transitioned onto new IP that we're developing. and we have two new games, cross-platform games, that we're working on in the studio that haven't been officially announced yet, so I can't mention them.
    12:03
    But, I mean, that's been the plan, and the plan has always been to focus on the Stern tables. We have a really good relationship with Stern, and our goal with them is to release tables day and date with the actual terrestrial table.
    12:18
    So it will give us more opportunity, more resource to focus on that. so yeah we're not there's no layoff planned uh there's nothing um it's not a dire situation there's a lot of energy here in the studio um focused on what we're working on currently well because i know that some people they took uh the news of of norman retiring they were like putting that in air quotes and i was like you know i've actually spoken to norman and he's retired his idea to retire oh it wasn't him being shoved out or anything i love to have norman still on the staff um but no he felt it was time in his life to retire and you know spend more time playing gigs you know he's a musician and spend more time at home and just enjoying life well as he said it's it's bowling in the morning and video games in the evening uh now correct me if i'm wrong but your contract with gottlieb and stern was different from your contract with Williams? Because it seemed like Williams you were having to renew it every, what, 20 games I think? But with Gottlieb, you didn't have a restriction on how many games you could do, correct? Correct. The agreements are different.
    13:31
    There's always been renegotiations and contract extensions that have been needed for all three, Gottlieb, Sterling, and Williams.
    13:43
    And so So it hasn't really been that different, except that WMS has been, I don't know, our negotiations with them always seem to have had a point which we're not sure they're going to renew it. Right.
    13:57
    I mean, we all noticed that between seasons two and three and then between seasons five and six. Basically, we always noticed it because all of a sudden there'd be a whole bunch of Gottlieb tables thrown at us. Right. And there is, I guess, one of the big differences is that the WMS agreement has specifically laid out what the tables are going to be. With Gottlieb and Stern, it's more of, you know, we're looking to add as many tables as we can that we think will do well with our customers.
    14:27
    I want to circle back to you said that your ultimate goal is to be able to, with Stern, release day and date with their actual tables. because everybody is, us included, have wondered, how are you going to handle the new video screen aspect that Stern has now with all their tables? Do you guys actually have a plan for that? We do. We have an internal plan on how we're going to develop our own technology to simulate that. Okay. Okay, that's good to know. I don't think anybody has figured out if that was a possibility. So, yeah, that's great. Yeah, we have a technical plan in place, and we're working on the licenses to get a few of those tables to be tables that we can add to Stern Pimble Arcade and Pimble Arcade.
    15:13
    Great. Let's go now because, again, folks, June 30th, that's when you have until. Some people have been going, okay, June 30th, great. I'm going to wait for these to go on sale. Is that a possibility? Yeah, it's not. But unfortunately, in these last six months that we're allowed to sell the WMS tables, we are not allowed to put them on sale at all. They've made that very clear. When you guys put them on sale prior for various theme sales and stuff, was that always Williams? You had to get permission for them first? We did. And the permission was kind of like general, I guess, and agreed upon that what we were doing was best for sales in general. but at this point they want to make it so that we cannot just go out there and sell them all really cheap. I mean, there's all sorts of, you know, kind of underhanded business things that a company could do in our situation so that they're preventing that by not even allowing us to put in even a penny on sale. Wow.
    16:20
    This also brings up to me, you guys had it fully functioning, ready to go. I think it even was released for a couple of hours on the switch. Right. and then that had to get pulled was Williams not aware that a Switch version was being made or I mean why would they do that yeah that was a disagreement on our agreement with them we felt like we had the rights to release on Switch once we did and we wanted to get out there as fast as we could during these final six months once we got it out there and they learned about it. We had to have a very emergency call with them and then discuss the agreement. We agreed that we don't have the rights explicitly in the contract that say switch.
    17:16
    What they could do to us would be pretty nasty. They could immediately put in order for us to stop they could take it off the store like our game in general on all platforms they could contact Apple Sony, what have you we felt like it was in the best interest of us to pull the Switch down and work on a new Switch version which will be going out it's actually scheduled to go out tomorrow and it's going to be the Pinball Arcade without the WMS tables so you get a first look of what the TPA is going to look like it will be on switch okay um let's talk about what you will be able to do with these tables after uh this contract is has expired um in terms of updates bug fixes for the tables stuff like that yeah we can do we can maintain the tables um that's our ability there's um there's no reason why we um there's no contractual reason why we can't uh these are products that People have already bought and we'll continue to basically improve upon what they've already bought. You know, we we can't add anything else to it that wasn't in the product as far as what we call a feature. But we can certainly make it as bug free and as as good a product as we can. So in other words, I know you guys had been working on updating tables with new art, new tuning, things like that. That basically has to stop. But if a game encounters a bug over the course of new tables, or no, you can do stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. Tuning and art and stuff to make the product. When a user buys the product, you're buying a simulation of that cabinet, right? We can make it as exact to that cabinet as we can.
    19:19
    Okay. No reason not. We couldn't make a change to art to make it more perfect. Okay. A tuning fix to make things so that the game is exactly like the terrestrial version.
    19:33
    Okay. Because that was another thing that everybody was like, oh, there goes any chance of Monster Bash looking better than it already, you know, what it is. No, we can do that. Okay. um the other main question that people have been having is regarding their purchases because there's a myriad of ways that you know purchasing has been being able to be you know take place whether it's in-game through something like the steam store or the playstation store um people want to know what is going to happen with their games after this after june 30th um yeah it it really doesn't matter how you have the table enabled and owned um you know if you're a kickstarter backer or if you bought it through the store um like a psn store if you bought it through an in-app purchase um all of those entitlements are going to be maintained what about uh because i know that like if you uh like i have some seasons that don't show up on my Steam account because I didn't buy them through the Steam store, but I can't necessarily play them offline. They're kind of tied to the Farsight login. Right. Is that still continue to be the case that it has to be tied into the Farsight login, or is there something else that's going to be implemented that allows it to not? No, it'll still stay the same. If your entitlement is based on your Farsight login, then you'll also have to use your Farsight login in the future. Okay. Which leads into the question of, I mean, obviously you guys have many plans for the future, but the general worry is, ah, what happens if the servers go down? What happens if this greatly affects Farsight, you know, and what happens to my games? So you're saying, though, that the server farm will be up and running and that that'll be not a worry? Yeah, I wouldn't worry about that.
    21:34
    And I just want to – you had answered some of these questions prior, and we'd posted some of them to the site. But I wanted to clarify on one thing. It might have just been a way it was typed. But absolutely, until June 30th, people are going to be able to pick up these tables. It's not – they're not going to be going away sooner or – Yeah, that's – we have until June 30th. That's like the last day possibly that we can sell. However, updates, depending on the store, may have to go out like a day or two earlier. I'm not sure. I'm just leaving it open to the possibility. So we will certainly make it very public and announce if on PS4 they're being taken off on June 27th.
    22:28
    We'll certainly make sure that everyone knows that. Okay. And then you kind of already answered it in terms of the Kickstarters, but things like the people that have Adam's Family Gold, which obviously was never available via a purchase, that's going to be able to, again, so long as you can do the Farsight login, they'll still have access to that. Yes. Okay.
    22:52
    Let's talk a little bit about future hardware. Obviously, iPhones and Android devices constantly update.
    23:04
    But you're saying that with your ability to do bug fixes, you'll also be able to adapt for future tech also. Right. I mean, we feel a commitment to our users, especially on the platforms like iOS and Android, where the hardware is always improving. we will always support the new hardware that's coming out there and yeah it probably I mean our app is going to continue to exist and we're going to release new tables and stuff so it's not I don't know a stretch to say that that makes business sense but it's also something that we feel strongly about like you know we enjoy our game ourselves we buy the newest devices we want a player game.
    23:53
    And we also feel a commitment towards our users that once they've bought the table for mobile or for PC, that we'll be taking care of them.
    24:04
    Am I correct in that PS3 and the Vita, basically, you guys stopped developing for that, correct? Yes, we did. Okay. And I'm assuming that also meant stopped updating for that because you guys came out with a final update patch and that was that correct um yeah we stopped adding tables uh we will be fixing any major bugs that happen and we're also doing this update to take the wms tables you know off their store yeah okay because i know somebody had asked me that and i was like i thought that they stopped but i don't know um so let's talk about uh the future then for pinball arcade uh you mentioned that you're going to be uh still adding morgali tables obviously and stern tables uh specifically though i know that you've mentioned uh in the question update that there'll be some tables from the Stern Pinball app coming over, much like Ghostbusters, I assume.
    25:13
    Yes. We are planning on releasing the Stern tables into Pinball Arcade. And the sales for one, in Pinball Arcade for Ghostbusters were a lot higher than they were in Stern Pinball Arcade.
    25:33
    So, we're just kind of merging all the tables together. There's no plans to discontinue you know, supporting Stern Pinball Arcade and Pinball Arcade, we can kind of envision them being two kind of separate models. The Stern Pinball Arcade being more free to play Moving forward with you know an update in the future that we currently going to be releasing first on Rift Oculus Rift version We have a model Okay You have tokens and you be earning achievements and getting you can basically earn your enough gold bars, you know, to buy a table. Okay. So that'll be the Stern Pinball Arcade model. While in Pinball Arcade, it'll be more of the premium DLC kind of model. Okay. You know, $10 or $5 to buy a table. Is there any difference between computer requirements between certain pinball arcade and just regular pinball arcade?
    26:36
    Were the tables coded differently for the SPA app? Yes. For the SPA app, the new tables are quite different than what we were doing for pinball arcade. and that we have the code base from Stern for these tables. Right, rather than emulation, it's street code. We are compiling them, and then our emulation works very differently into our pinball engine. Okay. And honestly, we thought it was going to be a lot easier than doing the emulation, and it hasn't turned out that way at all. So there's so many things that had to be added to our engine. And there's so many little tiny things here and there with every table that has made them be like unique bugs that we've had to find and fix.
    27:31
    So Ghostbusters, I'm pretty sure Ghostbusters took longer than any table in development that we've ever done by like a water of magnitude. Wow. Because I know that that's some people's question is, well, if these tables are coming over to the Pinball Arcade, then why even have two different apps? But that was my understanding. I was like, yeah, but I think they're coded different.
    27:53
    No, well, they won't be coded different. They will be the same in Pinball Arcade versus TurnPinball Arcade. But like I said, the two different pricing models and monetization models are the reason for having two different versions moving forward. Okay. Okay. How many tables per year are you guys kind of now in your heads? I mean, obviously, you're not doing the monthly releases, but what is your kind of goal target for how many to release per year? Yeah, about half of what we were doing before. Okay, so five. So, yeah, well, a season and a year is a little, so, yeah, I would say five or six. Okay. What can you tell us about, I mean, what we expect? Can we expect more EMs now with Gottlieb machines? Can we expect more Data East licenses? What are we looking forward to with these other tables beyond Stern? Yeah, those are two of our major considerations for tables to add in addition to the newest Stern tables. Really, our focus is to get licenses for these new Stern tables. and some of the new tables that CERN's doing are already in the plans and other tables are contracts and licenses we're negotiating. Sure.
    29:09
    You made mention that there's a possibility of other pinball companies that you guys would be able to do also. I'm assuming that's things like Capcom and was it Gameplan? I'm not sure what other companies were. yeah Capcom's always been something we've wanted to do and while for a long time you've mentioned Capcom yeah they have to be emulated and there's a lot of stories about you don't want to go down that path and some of those concerns had to do with the hardware that was needed to run the emulation so now that we're getting the more powerful devices and more powerful computers we're not so worried about that But it's getting a ROM that is going to work well and getting the rights to do it.
    29:59
    Are you guys still purchasing tables? And I ask that just because Norman's not there. I know he was the main buyer. Or are you just going to be using Banning at the Museum of Pinball, using their resources for future tables? Yeah. I mean, I was the buyer before Norman was. I delegated it to him. Oh, okay. So we will be buying tables, especially the new Stern ones, because we always want to have one of the tables in-house. Right. Going down to banning was something that we did to avoid having to buy, you know, like an EM. Yeah. That, one, they're really rare, and two, they're really hard to maintain.
    30:40
    Our expertise of maintaining an EM has never been our forte here. so it's always seemed to make a lot of sense just to go down there and do our capture and reference gathering down there. Right. With some of these other projects that you've kind of touched on, I wanted to touch on one that frankly it's addicting but it's also one of those things where I'm like I hope there's going to be more from it and that is you have the Pinball Tournaments app through Skills. I was curious to know How did that even come about? Were you approached by Skills or some other company, or was that something you developed in-house and then sought a way to put it out?
    31:25
    Yeah, a few years ago we were approached by a company called Cash Play. Okay. And they really wanted us to do a pinball game.
    31:34
    Not necessarily an original table, but something, a known table that was in Pinball Arcade. Sure. But we wanted to start with something else. Um, and so we tried that. We tried that in our Brunswick bowling app, um, on iOS. It didn't really do well. Cash play went out of business. So it just kind of laid there for a while, but it's a cool concept. I like playing for real money. Um, and so yeah, skills did approach us and we, we spoke to them about, um, different deals we could do and they um have worked with us and determining like what the best style table was um how long to play how much um how much skill versus randomness you know really needs to be in there so that the average user feels like they have a chance yeah um so that's why it's out there um we have not released it for real cash money play yet um we're just trying to fine-tune the gameplay a little bit and the skills guys have a new release that's coming out and it's going to be better for iPhone 10. So once that support is in there, then we're going to be releasing it for real cash. Now the table that's in that game is obviously a reskin of a Bally table. Is that going to be affected at all by this license puller because you guys completely reskinned it and remapped pretty much everything on it. Yeah, there's a lot different. It's not just the skin, but we've changed the rules enough so that we feel like we are released from the IP, I guess. Right. Are there plans for additional tables? That's my hope. Yeah, there are, but it has to do with how well this first one does right it's it's interesting because for yeah i've been playing with it for god i don't know two months plus the beta that was before it um i know we're currently in another beta uh testing some new functionality but uh for a while it was really hard to get a match just couldn't find anybody couldn't find anybody and in the last two days i went from having a leaderboard that had at most six people on it to one day there was 80 people and the next day there was over 112. Did you suddenly promote this differently or is it just catching? Maybe it's catching a little bit. Maybe skills is promoting it. You know, we have our plans to start doing some user acquisition there, but we haven't really started.
    34:23
    Okay. And so, yeah, I'm actually surprised to hear this. I didn't know that people were playing it more in the last couple of days. Yeah, because that was my biggest disappointment would be that there'd be days where I would, people with our podcast are familiar. We've talked about it um but i would go ahead and uh put in a couple of games and not have any challengers and then i'd wait my 24 hours and i still wouldn't have anybody that ever challenged me um and that was kind of the biggest frustration for me it was like i want to compete against somebody and if there's nobody there i start losing interest so yeah these last few days it was like oh this is great as soon as i select a game i'm immediately paired up with somebody So I hope it does take off because truly the competition aspect of it makes it something that I just check daily. Right, and you're right. I mean, without people to compete against, that app doesn't work. Especially on the money front.
    35:17
    Right. And I like how even now I've earned a whopping $3, but I never deposited it. I earned it via earning trophies or making, you know, doing certain accomplishments within the game for the amount of play. So I liked that that's in there because that will allow me to sample the money without actually having to put forth any first.
    35:43
    Yep. That's something that skills does in their games that I think works really well. So obviously if you're still buying tables, you're you have no plans of selling your collection. Please tell me now.
    35:56
    Yeah. We've had offers for people to buy certain tables. It's employees who want to buy tables. But Jay, the owner of Farsight, he's pretty adamant. He wants to keep the collection together as long as we can. It's quite the insane collection that you have right now, too.
    36:20
    There's so many tables in there that people would just be desperate for. yeah not not just is it like an insane collection but it's quite a nice perk you know to have all these tables available to us like we only have probably like 20 of them in our conference room that are playable but they're awesome tables that we can play whenever and i got a doctor who table just sit in the corner of my office like i don't want to lose these tables right um so via the foreman and everything there's been a wide range of emotions obviously people uh quick to put blame on you guys or on Williams.
    36:56
    People that are just like, that's it. I'm out of digital pinball. Some have been wondering what this means for Farsight's mission statement regarding preserving the history of pinball.
    37:09
    Yeah, we're still doing that. To the best of our ability. To the best of your ability, obviously. What would you like to communicate to all the fans out there just in general about this all?
    37:22
    Yeah, I guess, you know, we appreciate you guys. Without the customers, we wouldn't have been able to keep going as long as we did, releasing tables every month.
    37:34
    As long as we were making more money than we were, you know, costing us to develop them, we kept putting up more tables, and the bigger our collection got, I think the better for, you know, our collection, the pinball arcade game itself, but better for pinball and introducing some of these tables that as we got into the seasons more, we got more obscure tables that I think some people found fun that they would have never heard of or they would never have tried.
    38:04
    So I just want to thank the fans, and we will continue to support, like we said, the tables that are in the game and the new hardware that's coming out every year. for the mobile devices and what have you.
    38:21
    Well, I just want to say thank you once more for, you've always had very open communication with us here at the Blockade podcast.
    38:29
    You're definitely a friend of the show, and we are happy to hear that there is a future for sure planned for you guys, that obviously you were, like you said, you were already branching out with other games to do, as you saw certain aspects of Pinball Arcade winding down anyway.
    38:49
    So it's good to hear that the future of the studio is still very much alive. And, Guy, I guess it's all just a matter of us waiting to find out if there's a future for Williams Pinball in a digital format beyond this. We are too. And thanks, Chris. We enjoy your podcast here, and I appreciate being on. yeah despite us sometimes being uh critical we always try to be at least fair it's fair so all right uh once again this has been uh bobby king the vice president of farsight and uh we'll we'll talk to you soon when you have uh more to announce regarding whatever other things you're developing you're always welcome on our show absolutely yeah there'll probably be some news um within the next few weeks uh that we'd like to come back on and talk about alrighty so there you have it folks June 30th or maybe a day or two before keep your eyes on Twitter and Facebook and obviously I'll be trying to if I catch any of those announcements I'll pass them along my own Twitter account too so thanks again Bobby alright thanks Chris alright and there you have it folks hopefully a lot of your questions have been answered There's a lot of information in there, right? Like a teeny tiny bit.
    40:18
    Some juicy, potentially juicy stuff in there that I got out of the interview, which I've been furiously taking notes on. So let's have our take on it first. And then I think we might also have an outside perspective as well. We certainly look like we do. and it's a voice that you've not heard for a while, folks. So, yeah. So, Jared, what was your takeaway here? So I think that – let me start from the top because I – the stuff leading up to around where the point where he was talking about Stan Pimble Arcade and how that actually works in reality in the fact that I really found it surprising that the game was harder to produce with native code and not emulated code. That was a very big surprise to me. Do you think that has anything to do with the way the engine is set up is for emulation? And so all of a sudden it's kind of a round peg, square hole situation? Yeah, I think so. But I think the other thing too is that when they're running native code, That native code, it's supposed to be running on their specific hardware and their main boards in the games, their spike system, or not really spike system, but their SAM system. So I think even though they've got access to the direct code, whatever that is, it's still something that requires some framework in place that will allow them to execute it. So I think it's probably the framework that's the interesting thing.
    42:07
    Yeah, and that's what makes me wonder is, so when they did that code, though, for the Stern Pinball app, is that then what they transported over to TPA, or did they then do a separate regular emulation for TPA? I couldn't quite get what he was saying with that. yeah i'm unclear on that point as well it's it would really be interesting to follow up with more technical details and maybe bobby's not the person to speak to about that might be someone who's managing right um but it it sounded to me like they when i remember in the beta for android they were saying that yes they did have some challenges compressing everything enough that would fit into the framework that the Pinball Arcade has. But what's interesting, I think if they're going down the path of, as we heard in the interview, the whole idea behind Stern Pinball Arcade is going to be Stern Arcade free to play with gold bars, quote unquote. So if that's going to be the case, they're going to have to keep within the framework of Stern, people like Hade for that particular version of the app, but they might flip it. They might actually just go with their regular emulation framework that they use in TPA and port that back over into the core app because what's the point? What's the advantage, the business advantage from running two different emulation frameworks just for the pure reason of running native code if the native code doesn't actually solve any problems for them? So I reckon they're going to just start going back to emulation. I kind of what I got out of that for what is going to be happening with the Stern Pinball Arcade app, that that's going to be kind of a mobile thing. It's going to be a mobile game.
    44:06
    And I know there's going to be a ton of questions from people asking, well, I already bought the season's worth of Stern Pinball. Folks, I don't know what to tell you, man. as soon as Stern Pinball Arcade app came out I always kept it at a distance because I was just like this is Farsight doing what they do which is they dump something out at you without it being necessarily fully hatched and for once I was going to let it fully hatch and now I feel like yay me because now I have to work out what I need to do about it if it's all just going to be coming to TPA anyway then great I continue with TPA and I can ignore the Stern Pinball app other than it being like he said a free play mode where you're going to be able to actually earn enough points to purchase the table if you will to me that sounds like a mobile app and I think that they should focus it on being a mobile app although So the Stern Pinball Arcade on the Switch is the best version of it. It is. It sucks on Steam. It's not much better on iOS. Or Android. Or Android, but it looks brilliant on the Switch. So, guy, I really don't know what to make of that. And meanwhile, the Switch version of TPA, which just got released, is completely gutted of all the William stuff. So, yeah. I just hope that what they're doing on Steam is essentially like the test bed for the other platforms because, yeah, I think the way they're doing it on Steam is a much better approach to the way to present that particular offering. And if it's going to evolve into more of a, like you say, a mobile-style game and TPA will still remain the core app where all pinball is delivered through, it just becomes a different advertising medium for Stern and for FarSight if they keep it on those mobile platforms. I actually think that they're onto something there with that decision.
    46:31
    Initially, when they did port the Ghostbusters, I was going, oh, this feels like they're going to dilute it because we didn't have any information about the actual strategy with it. It felt disconnected. But I think now that Bobby's told us this new direction, I'm actually okay with the idea, to be perfectly honest. Well, and you know what makes it okay is, again, if you want to just outright purchase it, you're going to be able to have that option in TPA. If you want to play the game of mobile, then you'll have that option too. So, yeah, I'm kind of okay with that, and I would just kind of side with embrace that, you know? Yeah.
    47:16
    Don't muck around with it. Just go full tilt and do it. The thing is that I think that decision in itself is going to satisfy a lot of the fans of Pimble. Because they really didn't like the fact that they had to have two apps on their phone to actually receive the Stern table. So, you know, that's actually going to be a big customer win for them to actually do that. Now the takeaway since we're talking about Stern the thing that I was quite surprised by is that they have a plan to be able to do things like Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars, Batman 66 Iron Maiden with that just being released yeah they're going to do these LCD screens and that was the biggest bone of contention that I think we both shared with Stern people like hey because we knew that adding the video the actual high definition We're talking HD here as well. We're not just talking regular SD or anything like that. So putting that on top of the already difficult-to-manage framework that they had to deal with, there was a lot of concern, certainly with me from a technical aspect, that this wasn't going to be possible. But great news that they've actually got a strategy for that moving forward. That's excellent. Yeah.
    48:33
    Bobby told me that they don't have it working yet. But they've got a strategy. And more to the point is that Stern is fully involved with this, trying to make it so they can do day and date.
    48:47
    And that's really the unicorns and rainbows solution we were thinking of when we first heard of this opportunity, Ryan. Like having that marketing ability to go, look, here's the game digitally and here's the game that you can go and play as well. Like that's just like, that's a huge tie in. well and you hear think about this too uh again with the mobile version of stern pimble arcade they can do day and date with that right and then they're not going to have to worry about dipping into sales if they don't put it on sale for tpa right away you know what i mean so you're getting those people doing the limited uh playthroughs or whatever getting a taste for it uh building up an appetite for it and then maybe later i'm just spitballing here um and then maybe later getting on tpa i don't know that doing day and date with tpa and spa at the same time would make necessarily the most sense yeah it's yeah you could have a point there um i think in some ways using that mobile avenue because everyone will have access to their mobile even if they go to the arcade with an iron maiden in there an iron maiden is in the stern pimple arcade app how good would it be to be waiting in line to play and also knocking off a few balls on the game while you're waiting to play like it's always thinking about stern and always thinking about pinball even when you're waiting for pinball um like that that's a pretty good thing i can i can see uh when you actually go for for papa tournaments there might be a sanction right on on uh yeah No playing instead of people like, okay, well, you're ready for the game because that's constituted. Because, you know, normally in tournaments you can't play a game because it's considered practice. Well, I've got essentially 99 of the tables that are available in the big tournaments now, plus the stern ones on my phone. So is that practice? Great area.
    50:54
    What else did you take out of the interview there? Good question. So I was – a little tidbit of information that didn't pass me by was the fact that Bobby was actually doing the buying of the tables before Norman ever was. So he was going out there and sourcing all the tables first, and then he handed the role off to Norman to continue to do the mantle, which was interesting.
    51:17
    But I think their approach to continue their relationship with the Banning Pinball Museum is a good approach. but at the same time they still want to buy the games right? Yeah and he said that they're going to certainly with Stearns and I imagine if it's a more modern Gottlieb so if they're doing any more Gottlieb premieres I imagine probably if they even do a sold state that they would still purchase it's just going to be those EMs that they won't just because they're so terrible for maintenance They are a nightmare to maintain So really all they really get the EM4 is just for the playfield scans and the playfield shields I learned an interesting term doing my restoration for Star Race in that you know how we always refer to the artwork, the plastic artwork on the games as plastics? Yeah. Well, the official name for them in the Gottlieb manual are playfield shields.
    52:20
    Playfield shields. so so i and it's actually in the godly manuals certainly in the star race era they were not called play fields they were called play boards so so there you go so i think the play field is a um it is a term that has evolved over time so if you go back in a time machine folks don't give yourself away that's right play fields i think i like the the term play field shields i think i might continue using that just to sound a little bit different um but yes uh i'll leave any talk for star race until another episode because we've got plenty to talk about yeah um i also found it interesting that you know what he was saying about how they were already transitioning out of uh pinball arcade uh in terms of starting up new games you know once they once they stop with the monthly release uh that they were you know they got two new ips that they're going to be focusing on plus a pinball or a 2d game so in terms of people's fears you know i know in in our realm all we think of farsight as is pinball and so if they're gutted of the pinball what's that going to do to them but you got to remember they were around for i think 15 years before starting TPA. Yeah. And, you know, so they're definitely over 20 years around as a studio. That's a long time for a game studio. Yes. They're extremely frugal. So I don't believe that there's any risk for them to suddenly up and disappear. And that's why Bobby was making the point that, hey, you know, So long as you've purchased the tables, they're keeping the servers on. And he told me later the servers are rather inexpensive to keep up and going for the leaderboards. So long as that's going on, you're not going to have an issue with losing any of your games that you have, no matter what way you purchased it, whether you purchased it in-app or separately.
    54:35
    And that also goes for the CDN server, so where you actually download the games from. Those are in the same boat. They'll all be probably, I'd speculate here, but they'll be using Amazon Web Services to provision them. So it'll all just be based on usage. And you're right, it would be very cheap to maintain those.
    54:54
    So, I mean, there's, I know it's not this ironclad, oh, good, my stuff is safe for a long time. But as some, you know, resourceful people that we know have said, oh, I'm just going to be burning an image of the game right before that final date.
    55:11
    And if you're on Steam, just hit me up and I'll give you a copy. Exactly. I guess that's the thing. On Steam, you can actually do essentially backups of the entire... Do a snapshot of the game and there's a low risk that you could do it. Now, if you're on iOS or PS4 or Xbone, well, then you don't have that safety net, which does count. You can go and copy all the tables out of the actual app directory and download all the table files that way and install them in Drive, but you still have to have entitlements to them to actually unlock, I think. So that still is a thing. You can download the files, but it's got to be essentially unlocked through the app to play.
    55:58
    I also found it interesting, and I don't know how much I believe him. but my understanding was that with this they would be able to maintain uh tables you know in case a bug appeared you know our initial gut reaction or a lot of people's gut reactions was oh crap so now we're stuck with the way monster bash looks um because we know that they've had plans on on you redoing that one. But for Bobby to say that, no, they can still go back and do stuff, my only thing is they've always kind of leaned with the, hey, if there is any financial gain to it, then it makes it worth our time. But if there isn't, then what's the point? And there's really no point in doing that now. There isn't, but the thing they have as an advantage now is time. so while they well it's probably not unlimited time because they're still actually doing two new ips they're actually working out but at the same time they're not under that incredible pressure to do that monthly dlc which i think really was it was when they say it wasn't beneficial enough for them i think that was using the whole the triangle of software development which is like time, cost, resources.
    57:24
    And really, if you look at the time, if you have like a hard constraint on time and you have a hard constraint on resources, then it comes down to a cost argument. So that's probably what they were talking about there.
    57:38
    But I think a lot of those constraints have been at least adjusted or the goalposts have been moved. So, I mean, I'm pretty sure the ethos of the studio is still the same. In fact, they want to actually have the tables looking the best they can and playing the best they can. It's just that they didn't have the time to do that. I mean, certainly if they want to do us a favor for customer service purposes and keeping up any kind of loyalty to the app, that would go a long way if they did something like that. I think for this next, well, I say season eight in quotes, because I think it's only being sold table by table, but I don't think they're going to offer the season pass or anything anymore. There's no advantage to doing it. But like you said, five tables a year.
    58:30
    Well, right off the bat, if they've already done Mustang, they've already done ACDC, they've already done Star Trek, and then we have uh what do we got? Woe Nelly and Big Buck Hunter to look forward to. Right? Yeah. Yep. Boom. There's five sterns. That'll take up season eight just like that. Uh, three of which all the work has pretty much already been done for. Yes. So that'll give them a lot of leeway and time to get these other things up and running.
    59:03
    kind of, yeah, they have, they have things settled down a bit. and just give them a little bit of breathing space right because that's i think after anything like this when you when you change what you need to deliver even this is everything not just game development but just you know in business in general if you've been death marching down the path like they have been for the last seven or eight seven or eight seasons now right um yeah seven seasons you like you you just need to stop and and kind of reset yourself right yeah because it's hard work. Like, it's a tiring schedule.
    59:41
    So, yeah, give them a bit of breathing room. Let them look into these other IPs and give them the attention they deserve so they can actually produce something of quality and something that's worthy of being released because we do know, unfortunately, that the track record or some of these other titles that were developed during TPA, we could see the issues with quality with them. Yeah. And I have a feeling that, you know, in hindsight now, the only reason why that was the case was because they were so slammed with TPA, but they had to keep on trying to innovate because we learned, didn't we, in the interview that Brunswick Pro Bowling was actually a test bed for dollar games. Right. So even though that release was arguably not that stellar, it was an experiment for Farsight that they were running to see what the adoption was like for actually engaging a monetization platform and actually doing that dollar game avenue. And they obviously learned lessons in it that they could then apply to the Pinball Tournaments app, which by all accounts will get a little bit more love now that the WMS contract has ceased. Yeah. and you know maybe some of these things that we've had questions about um during the tpas time they may actually be resurrected in a way that um they they will be much better and more polished and they'll actually be worthy of release and you know i saw the other day actually that um the uh pinball cadet received yet another update with like what seemed like it was a two-line chain summary in the change log, but it was like, oh yeah, just an engine update.
    61:32
    You know, so... Engine update and bug fixes. So, oh yeah, just an engine update. Nothing big. So, you know, these sort of things probably wouldn't have happened if they were on the regular TPA cadence. So, you know, it's good. I think it's a big shock right we're trying to find silver linings here because as you may have noticed we are gigantic tpa apologists oh yeah we are well everyone knows it's one of those things that i always go back to uh i love the game for what it was when i first got it and i've always tried to hold on to that and never let myself get bogged down by the potential that the game could have been and i think that that winds up being a lot of people's disappointment is that they saw what could have become this game and it just plain never went there and now with the loss of of literally two-thirds of all the tables that they've made uh people are going well there it goes completely we're never going to see the the vision realized but it wasn't a vision that necessarily farsight ever uh promoted but tell you what we're going to do though we're going to bring in another voice uh for this part of the conversation and it's a voice folks that you have not heard in our podcast for a very long time uh one of the to be precise it's episode 18 or yeah so coming in right now is Sean Don Carlos Sean was one of our original podcasters and one of our little merry band and you also might remember Sean did the very detailed Lost in the Zone segment on how to play actual pinball machines so hey Sean greetings earthlings there it is um it's good to be back welcome back Welcome back.
    63:43
    So I think you kind of fell into the camp of one of these people that was always wanting the potential of TPA. And eventually you just kind of got so sick of it not getting there that you went off and did other games.
    64:01
    I don't know that I was sick of it. It's just it was something that I felt I had devoted a considerable part of my free time to. And it just was, you know, it wasn't that I was upset with TPA or I mean, I still played it. It's just I didn't feel that I needed to be as involved with it as I was. Yeah. I went on for about three years and came back right before this happened. And it's like, wow, I have really lousy timing, apparently.
    64:35
    But I do have all seven seasons. So it's not like I've totally been without pinball. Yeah. So when you first heard the news, I don't know. I did you go through a range of emotions? I know. I know that me and Jared did. Yeah. I, you know, of course, the initial shock because, you know, this wasn't expected. Right. But. Yes and no. I know a couple of seasons, like actually, I think right around the time I left, there was some concern that there was rumors going about the license wouldn't be renewed. and at that time that turned out to be false. Yeah, that was between season two and three.
    65:16
    I think it happened again while I was gone. Between season five and six, yep. Yes. But it was kind of almost baked into how they did it because I've always maintained that season one, which has all the medieval badness, Monster Bash, all the top flight. Yeah, the gold standards.
    65:36
    I mean, I know why they did it that way because if you didn't know, you know, if you were uncertain that you were going to have seven seasons, which I don't think, you know, at the beginning that we expected necessarily to go for that long,
    65:49
    you would try to do your A-list tables first because you might not get a second chance. Right. But as time goes on, and not that the later seasons are bad tables. I mean, I played most of them in real life, but they're just not, they don't have the star power that medieval badness is going to bring to a season. or like Twilight Zone or even Adam's Family which I think was the first table in season 4 they kind of petered out and so I think if I had to guess I would say that and I have no link to their sales figures or anything but I would guess that season 1 probably sells out, sells the rest of them and you know maybe the revenue wasn't coming in like it used to be and maybe somebody decided it was time for a change yeah my initial reaction i mean other than being just like oh my gosh you're kidding me it was then what the hell did farsight do well that was my initial i mean to be fair that but you know that that's been a typical reaction over the years there have been some moments that I'm like why why are we even having this discussion right you know my my first thought was too was then also back up the Brinks truck man what do you don't be cheap on this and this before we knew anything about that Williams was uh not necessarily being friendly right right no I think my actual my first reaction was literally okay who Who at Williams did you guys piss off? Yeah, exactly right.
    67:36
    Well, that even got me thinking when I was on that line of thinking. It was, well, did you violate the contract somehow? Was Williams not happy that you did the reskin of Doctor Who? Did they not like the idea of this pinball tournament app being a reskin of Fireball? and there's going to be money involved. Were they not happy with the idea that they'd partnered with Arcuda, and we're going to talk about them in just a minute or two,
    68:11
    but Arcuda's machine is specifically set up that it can be a coin-op put into an arcade, and does that violate Williams' contract?
    68:22
    It could. Well, I know that there was a time when Farsight was looking into that, and it specifically went against the contract, and so that's why they didn't pursue it any farther. Well, and the other thing you have to remember is, I think the company's name is Scientific Games? That's the name who owns it now, yes. Oh, is that right? For a long, long time, and they probably still do, Bally made slot machines. Yes. And so they would be acutely aware of coin-operated devices and wanting to get their... And that was my thought. I was like, wait a second, because one of the machines that Arcuda makes is a bar top machine.
    69:04
    And I just kind of went, that could be viewed. I mean, yeah, you would see those in Las Vegas possibly, and that could be a violation of that. So that was my initial gut reaction was that maybe. It could be. I'm not an attorney. And, you know, who knows what terrors lurk in the brains of attorneys. but yeah true yeah it i my other thought was again i've been gone so i haven't been you know i don't have the exact timeline down but i also wonder if that stern pinball arcade app had something to do with it somebody mentioned that that maybe bally or williams got jealous um but i don't i mean it'd be a stretch it'd be a stretch yeah because stretch i think ultimately now hearing that it was Williams just plain didn't want to come to the table to begin with, it's just like oh, they're just being dicks. Yeah, I mean, I'm still talking like initial reaction.
    70:06
    Wild speculation in the absence of actual hard news. Yes. Because I think that was like my day one reaction. I think day two was when we found out the little bit, the added piece of information. But it wasn't us not wanting to pay. that we kind of went, oh, and then it was just like, why are they being so vindictive? Why are they having them yank everything? I mean, that's just going to gut the studio for this product. Yeah. And for potential sales.
    70:40
    Yeah, I don't, even if, I mean, if it was a serious contract violation, that's one thing. But, I mean, it's going to cost Williams a little bit. you know because if there's tables aren't going to be getting sold right and to me it's like it's this is free money for you yeah it's ancient i mean comparatively ancient properties that you're not yeah yeah he is not being used anywhere else no but i've also heard that scientific is not like this is a drop in the bucket for them like pinball is so not even you know what they think about that uh and it's kind of what i equate to movie studios today where they're all owned by multinational conglomerates and what the movies studios make is but a pittance compared to what the multinational company itself makes and so that's why all of a sudden bean counters start being the ones responsible for decisions rather than uh people with passion yeah if you walk down any Las Vegas casino and look at the slot machines, it's a study in licensing and not merchandising, but marketing. Yeah. I mean, everything's there. You know, you've got Game of Thrones slot machines, they've got Walking Dead slot. I mean, any property you care to name that's been anything in the last five years, there's a slot machine somewhere. I'm looking at, now that I know the name of the company, I'm looking at the Scientific Games website and it's just a sea of licensed properties.
    72:16
    Like they've got 007 licenses for crying out loud. Like these are not minor licenses that we're talking about here. So I can see why they hold the intellectual property to WMS.
    72:29
    Like it's probably like an overhead for them actually. They're actually not really interested in dealing with anymore. Yeah, but I mean what are you going to do, let it just wither on the vine? That doesn't make sense either. you would normally try and sell your, you know, if, if, if you know there's a market out there and clearly, you know, with, with Farside dealing with not scientific necessarily, but dealing with Williams for this amount of time for 10 years, clearly there's a market. So you would, you wouldn't just hide that in a corner and you try and get rid of it somewhere. Particularly now. I mean, pinball is still in a growth period. We know historically that pinball is cyclical. So it will go for 10 years and then die off. But I think that was mostly in part to the fact that pinball didn't evolve with the times. And we're seeing that change in the way pinball manufacturers are evolving with technology now. So I'm not sure that we're going to see such a drop off in pinball like we have seen in past seasons, which is going to be interesting to see. So you're right. I think abandoning if scientific were to abandon negotiations altogether for this IP, that doesn't make sense at all. And I'm just wondering what might be going on there. Yeah. So with that, folks, we're going to tease this next week. We're going to put on our famous speculation hats. The painted black. Oh, yes. Oh, no. Don't worry. It won't take long to dust off because speculation is what we. This is what we do. We're going to put on our speculation hats, and we're going to assume, because otherwise there's no conversation without this assumption that we need conversation. We're going to assume that digital pinball with Williams is not dead, and we're going to try and figure out what possibly could potentially happen with this license. But that'll be next week, so we're teasing that. So make sure you listen to that. And let's shift over to, and Sean, you can again see if this is something that would even interest you, but Arcuda cabinets, their video pinball cabinets. So they had the agreement with Farsight to be the officially licensed cabinet of Farsight and therefore would have the exclusive rights to pinball arcade titles. And with that, Arcuda has been working with Farsight to make cabinet mode. And this was going to be exclusive to them. And it wasn't just some simple camera angle change that Arcuda was having Farsight do. They wound up making four different particular shifts in the camera angles. They did updated graphics, updated lighting. they also wound up putting in functionality so that you can have the separate DMD you can have the back glass be the actual back glass that also integrated into the functionality would be so that you can have actual solenoids firing, you can have shaker motors going, you can have tilt be functional. So there was all these things that were going into it. And then on top of that, which was the thing that we've been having to bite our tongues about and now finally we get to talk about, was the no glasses 3D.
    76:07
    So what they did was they put a Kinect camera to do head tracking. So as you shift, the whole table shifts ever so slightly. So you could actually move your head around and the perspective on the table would change with you. It looks just amazing. It looks incredible. This tech is amazing. Literally, when I saw them show the video on YouTube, I went, why are they showing a real attack from Mars? And then I went, wait a second. That's not a real attack from Mars. That's TPA. I have to go find this, but I'm impressed because I remember the early seasons of TPA, some devices, you know, stuttered and barely ran with a flat camera. If they can get it to do, you know, basically parallax 3D in time with your head movement, you know, we've come a long way. Yeah. That's literally the...
    77:13
    And that was what Arcuda was working on with them. And unfortunately, Farsight was only able to update 76 of the tables. So they didn't quite get through the complete list. Obviously, I don't know what tables didn't get done, but I know that the big ones did.
    77:32
    I was going to say, I'd hope they'd start with the major ones. Medieval Madness, Monster Bash, Animal Family, Twilight Zone, those for sure have been done. I'm sure if anybody contacted Arcuda, then they would give you the complete list before purchasing. So here the deal though because they not going to be able to sell this license before or after June 30th they asked farsight to release the license so that they could release it to anybody with a cabinet and the difference will be that you won't get the arcuda functionality which is arcuda has a touch screen uh so that won't be there you won't have the the 3d parallax camera and i don't know if the solenoid and Tilt are worked into exclusively with the Arcuda or not. I have a feeling they are, Chris.
    78:29
    If you want the full immersive Arcuda game experience, you need to go and invest in the cabinet when they become available.
    78:38
    So basically, buying the software first and then buying the cabinet once it's released. Yeah. This would allay to... It's weird, but it's the only way they can do it, because if they don't get the sales of the cabinet mode done by June 30th, then that's the market gone for them. Yeah. I mean, they're basically trying to recoup their costs at the moment with all this. So that's why they're releasing it early. I imagine there's a severe sense of panic and urgency at that establishment right now. Yeah. So here's the deal with this. If you already own, like you said, Sean, if you already own all of the tables on Steam, you only have to pay $199 for the key, and then you'll get all the cabinet mode stuff. Oh. Yeah. If you don't own any of the tables, and you want to get all this, now here's the key of this one, you'll be buying the offline version of all the tables. So that means it will not be tied to the servers.
    79:46
    That's going to run you $499. If you want the Arcuda cabinet version, that's going to run you $499. So it's a chunk change, no doubt. But I also kind of think that for a lot of people that, you know, if you're already planning on dumping $9,000 into a video arcade cabinet, this is just but a small investment. Yeah, this is way money at that point. Exactly.
    80:12
    Yeah, and think about that. Like if you were to go out and let's use real money here, Let's take that $500 and let's go and try and buy a single machine for that. What are you going to end up with? You're going to end up, if you're lucky, with a project pin that's, as I painfully know, will cost you a lot of money to get working.
    80:37
    So, I don't know, $500, while it's a huge amount of money to lay out, it's got its pluses, particularly with the technology that we'll actually be seeing on that platform. So, well, you got to think of because this is also all the tables are promoed. Yeah. So if you were buying all seven seasons at 40 bucks to pop, you know, right there is 280 bucks.
    81:02
    You know, slap on, you know, slap on the other 200 that is for the Arcuda license. And there you go. So they're not trying to gouge you or anything. It's just literally if you didn't have it already. That's the cost to get in, basically. Yeah.
    81:19
    And because they can't discount anything because of the terms of the license, they've got to just charge full like a bull, really. Yep. Yeah.
    81:29
    So, oh, that does bring me back to Williams being jerks. so the fact that Farsight had to get clearance from them to put things on sale initially you know for any time the steam sales went through they had to get permission from Williams they didn't have to get permission from Stern they didn't have to get permission from Godley they had to get permission from Williams yeah and now the fact that Williams is like, nope, no sales for you. Again, it's just Ryan's life. It's like a wound, really, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah, and the thing is, I'm sure the contracts were in such a way that if Farsight did put the tables on sale, the difference was coming out of Farsight, not out of Williams' cut. Probably. Especially with the way they're acting now. I can't believe they were taking any less for their pockets. Right. But I, yeah, it's just the whole thing reeks of bad blood. Yes, totally. And who knows, it might have been because I had and I've I've heard various rumors about this. But with the negotiations between season five and six, there was a plan. I believe that Farsight wanted to just plain outright purchase the entire library and be done with these negotiations every 20 tables.
    83:01
    And I don't know what happened that that fell through, but that might have been even when I was guessing what went wrong. That might have been Williams just kind of going, you know what? We don't want to come back two years from now. and we don't want to sell our entire catalog so we're just not going to deal with you anymore period but we're not going to tell you that until the last minute yeah who knows right yeah I don't know it's just the timing of it seems a little off the abruptness of it seems very off yeah I guess it just reeks of you know something was not kosher there something was not copacetic no way yeah I and we'll probably never know what that was probably not our business to know but and maybe I don't want to know to be honest well there's that isn't there like yeah good point don't go looking for trouble yeah I'm going to be interested to see how because this is like I said this is truly damaging to Farsight's reputation in terms of our players.
    84:20
    People feel burned. This is the straw of the barrel with the camel's back, basically, and I don't know how much trust people are going to be putting going forward with purchasing tables. Oh, I imagine there's pitchforks and rioting in the streets. Yeah, well, if you come to the forum... I've been there. yep so and i've had a look at facebook and then promptly turned away very quickly it's not a good place to be at the moment i have a long history we're not going back yeah that's right no i know i was sitting there with my popcorn popping in my mouth going through facebook going oh this is interesting uh drama junkie yeah uh but then i got to a point where i was like damn it i know the answer to that i can't say anything so um yeah you know that's what i just put the keyboard down keyboard down yeah um yeah i i just really hope that uh farsight does do something to to heal the wounds and i think going through some of those older tables for the people that own them uh that would be a a nice all of a branch, if you will, to try and correct the situation to basically show that, hey, we're not all about the money. We do care about you guys and want you to have the best experience possible. Well, it's funny you mention that, Nell, just very quickly. So I've been gone from the game, and I had it and I played it occasionally, but I wasn't really paying attention to it. Then I started playing it again more regularly. And I've been gone for so long that I did a drop catch in TPA the other day, and I'm like, what is this? It was never able to do this before.
    86:11
    I literally, like, dropped the controller, because I'm like, what? I've never seen this before. When did that get at it? It's probably been a couple years now, I'm guessing. Season four. I think that was introduced with Adam's Family, actually. No, because I played Adam's Family during its beta, and it was never able to do that. I think drop catching, I think was beginning of Season 6 when they did Physics 3.0.
    86:37
    I'm pretty sure. Wait, wait, wait. I know exactly what it was. It was with Xenon. Oh, yeah. When was Xenon?
    86:44
    I don't know. That might have been Season 6. Yeah, you're right. Season 6. Yeah, so it was Season 6.
    86:49
    And then they retroactively started going through all the tables and putting it back in. Because it wasn't just a drop-in that they could do. It was a retune. Oh, yeah. I'm sure that was a retuning. Yeah.
    87:02
    And the thing with the retuning, we found out along the way it's unique to each table. Like they don't just copy and paste tuning. Like it's subtly different on each table, which is strange. No, I mean, geometry is different, but material even is different. Yeah. That's right.
    87:18
    So yeah, very interesting. Yeah. So anyway, that's, that's what we have for you folks. Um, we, we do feel your pain. and we also are always trying to find the silver lining. Oh, you know what? We're going to go to this just because he jumped in right now, right at the end, as he tends to do with our podcasts. He always misses them. Hey there, John, also known as the forum as PinballWiz45B. Hello.
    87:51
    Welcome to the show. You made it. You missed the whole thing, just so you know. I've listened to the Till End bit actually Xenon actually was season four I believe okay that's when the physics 3.0 was added it was Xenon with all the drop catching it was Xenon and they added DirectX 11 before that I remember that clearly you didn't tell me you added an error and omissions feature to the podcast the old one you know We're a bit light on facts here at the Blocade Pinball Podcast. You specialize in speculation, and that's it. Yeah, that's right. So it's a trademark feature of our show. Okay. Probably. The future, not so much. Yeah.
    88:46
    I don't know what you wanted to jump in and say there, John, other than I'll tell you this. we're saving any speculation for the future of digital pinball for next week. So this has just basically been our reaction to the interview with Bobby and our initial reaction to hearing the news about TVA losing the Williams license. That's a shame about what happened, really. I mean, I was glad to have Fonzer on that and then at the last minute. Yeah, totally. It's one of my favorites, and it would be a shame not to have it in there in the first place. so I don't think they really did go out on a bang with that table I'm sad I never got my roller games you played a roller games? yeah they have one at CP Pinball now good stuff if you say so it doesn't agree with me no I'm having a hard time getting into that one for some reason. Some of the shots are a little weird.
    89:55
    Here's the key to that game. You must play it with somebody else. It is one of the most fun games to steal somebody's multi-roll from. Oh, yeah.
    90:07
    Share the box. Exactly. And because some of the shots are particularly wicked and tight, where you're going for it, and you're going for it, and you're going for it, and the other person can clearly see that you're going for it as they're playing, if you don't get it that's all they're going for yeah and and it's it's just a lot of fun and nerve-wracking on that way yeah the single player experience you know it is what it is but now when you do multiplayer it's it's amps up the fun incredibly so that's why they have on that replay fx yeah they uh they probably do yeah they uh i don't know how long it's going to be here because the owner is going to put it in his private collection. But we have a Houdini on site, actually. Oh, wow.
    90:54
    It's, uh, talk about tight shots. Some of those ramps, it looks like, I don't even think a pinball would fit through there. Pinball pieces get really tight. Yeah, it's pretty, you've got to be pretty accurate with your shot making or you're not getting anywhere on that table. And, of course, Houdini is an arrogant bastard and taunts you the entire time.
    91:15
    Lovely. But anyway. I know that a whole bunch of people from my pinball league, which we had our meeting last weekend, they showed up late because there was a launch. Well, I shouldn't say a launch party, but there's been a launch world tour, if you will, of Iron Maiden. And so they got their hands on that. I was like, oh, man, that'd be fun to. Yeah, I haven't seen that one yet. We've actually got Iron Maidens, the first two Iron Maidens in the country down the Gold Coast, as per usual because the time zone uh family entertainment center down there air freights them in um oh god yeah it's just not how many penguins are penguin pigeons you need for that there's a there's a fair few little flappy birds having to fly that one in for sure so it's understandable when jared has to pay two dollars a game instead of the usual one dollar a game the problem is that it's just far enough away from me that it's really hard to get to So I just wait for Netherworld to get it because they will eventually.
    92:18
    And, hey, folks, since we're going really long on this podcast, I'm just going to throw this in. I finally solved my issue of the deadlights on my A-Ball Deluxe. Oh, Connector Joy? Connector Joy, yeah. Oh, yes. Let's just say doing connectors, there's a load of fun. No, it's not.
    92:39
    I did a lot to my Twilight Zone, and it is not fun at all, sir. My fingers hurt so bad from holding and crimping and stripping wire and then trying to shove them into the connector, which, like, if you're doing with a thick wire, no worries. But with the 18 – excuse me, not the 18-gauge, just the 20-gauge wire, it just bends on you as you're trying to shove the pin into the housing. That's the worst. I've just finally figured out which tool I have to use to help me along and make that not so much of an issue anymore. You found that at the end, right? No, no, no. Okay. Yeah, let's go off on a story time, kids.
    93:25
    It's just like old times. Yeah, I know. When I first started doing these Molex connectors, there was no instruction as to which way to put the pin in. You wouldn't read the instructions anyway. There wasn't instructions to look at, so I just had to figure it out. And there's clearly an open slot that basically you want the pin to kind of push up against it, I was assuming, coming out. So I went and I started doing the first batch. I'm putting them in, putting them in, putting them in. And then all of a sudden I was like, wait a second. I think I was supposed to have a skipped pin. Oh, no. I look at the photo that I took of the thing. sure enough, I didn't leave a gap and I'd already finished the entire 28 pin connector. So I had to extract every single one of them. Fortunately, they came out relatively easy. So I was like, okay, fine. I skipped the pin. I put it in. Okay, fine. So then I went and did four more of these connectors, basically the entire loom.
    94:29
    Boom. Plugged it in. Turned on the machine. Light was still dead, but I was like, hey, at least the machine still turned on. I didn't muck up anything. Yeah, exactly. So then the last ones that I'm doing are of the big, the 18-gauge cable. And it's got a slightly different connector. And when I go and put it into the Molex thing, and I went to go put it in the same direction that I was doing all the other ones, and it didn't lock. And I rotated it 180 degrees and put it in, and it locked in place. And I went, oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, so the next day I went to go do the other loom and I was back to the 20 gauge cable and I, I took the first one and I put it in the, this, the new direction. And sure enough, it gave me the little audible click. And I went, Oh, son of a bitch. I had to go back and unplug every single thing and a rotate at 180 degrees and put it back in. Oh, I was, I was just waiting for you to tell this. story about getting the red wire with the orange stripe confused with the orange wire with the red stripe no see i did here's the here's how i did it i only removed one cable at a time oh sure so i wasn't going to go that route and i made sure that i took photos of the thing before i started taking you know removing wires yeah yeah so when i did the second loom i i was doing the the second half of the lamp board uh connectors and i took off the little protective sheath and i was kind of pulling and also there was one little wire just dangling and i'm like hmm i wonder if that's what my problem's been all along and there was a couple of other wires that were rather crispy and the pins looked a little burnt and then on the actual the headers uh there was this kind of like green corrosion slightly gooey you know and so i wiped all that down and put the you know then went ahead and did all the connectors put them back on turn the machine on and boom full lights so yeah i'm gonna i'll go back and i'll hit that with um with uh some cleaner what the the best thing to use in those contacts is just go down to your i don't know what you got there like Harbor Freight or whatever and get a, not a graphite pencil, a fiberglass pencil. Yeah, they don't have them here, Jared. I've looked. Oh, we can order them on the internet, hey.
    97:01
    And they're really good. I'll buy one for you here and send it over to La Habra. Because I can get them just from there, like literally up the road from me. I'll send you one over as a gift from the Aussie lands. From Aussie land with the insane amount of shipping that even a pencil would Yeah, like the 50,000 pesos that we have to pay to get the thing over to you.
    97:23
    So anyway, that was good news for me. I need to just do the rest of the connectors, which is the second half of the MPU and the second half of the solenoid. Hopefully that will fix. I haven't, during the past months, me testing out the machine, I haven't had the issue of after doing all the drop targets, all of a sudden the stand-up target just started firing on its own. I haven't had that happen since, but it always happened during warm weather. And so winter, it hasn't been doing that. So I'm hoping that just by now redoing all the connectors, I won't even have to worry about that anymore either.
    98:02
    The chances are high. The chances are high, and then 8-Ball will be happy once again. and then the only thing left I'll have to do is to buy new lights or new lamps because I've got a few that are burnt out. But that's all easy peasy. So anyway, that's the short, sordid tale of me and the lights, but I'm happy now.
    98:24
    Since we're talking about real pinball. And the podcast going on long anyway. You knew this would happen as soon as I showed up. It was a pinball podcast. so anyhow i'm i'm at the point now where i've decided that i've done enough paint work on the star race play field and i am going to probably clear coat it at some point the moment of truth oh yes i'm i'm quite fearful because i think there are patches on the play field that still have some um either adhesive or something on there because when i've been doing the spraying, certain parts of the playfield have been bubbling a little bit. And it's because of probably sticky stuff on the playfield. But when I tried to get it off last time, I removed paint. So I think I'm just going to spray it and pray. Spray and pray. Well, but here's the thing though. If the paint was bubbling, the clear coat's going to bubble. And if you get a bubble in the clear coat, that's a really bad time. you need to make sure that that thing is clean. That's possible. You have to just be really careful, eh? And just try and just get the adhesive off and not get the paint off. Yeah, because you're going to be in a world of hurt if you spray clear and then that issue pops up. Because then it's going to go cloudy on you. Yuck. And that's even worse than a dodgy paint job. Yeah, which I think the last layer of paint that I put on, if you follow me on Instagram, was sort of a light green color. and it was not a good match for the playfield, but I'm just going to let it ride and lock it in. You're more than welcome. Get back to being able to play the thing. Forget it. I love these beautiful, these beautiful brand new parts from Pinball Resource. They are so shiny compared to the ones that were on there. I even managed to find a unique playfield shield set for the game. Oh, nice. A brand new, beautiful clear set of plastics. So this thing is going to be so shiny when it's done. I can't wait to actually flip it.
    100:28
    So there's our cue, folks. You need to follow Jared on Instagram as well as on Twitter. On Twitter, he is at JaredMorgz. What are you on Instagram? Same handle. There you go. I am on Twitter at ShutYourTrap.
    100:43
    Don't follow me on Instagram. Nothing to see here. I was just going through. All that you see on Instagram is pictures of movie set stuff or pinball stuff or me drinking Slurpees. So it's not really exciting.
    101:00
    Unless you like all those three things. Yeah, then call it. It can be exciting. Exactly. Why don't you go ahead and drop us an email to the show if you have comments, questions, concerns. That would be blahblahblockade at gmail.com. make sure you visit our website, which happens to be blockade pinball.com slash episodes. And there you will be able to look at all the timing notes for the episodes that are posted as well as all the wonderful movie reviews that I, uh, keep on flooding the site with. Yes. I know.
    101:35
    Actual episodes at the moment. Yeah. There is a ton more. I know it's, it's kind of ridiculous. Thanks. Movie pass. Um, if, if I've, either of you two have Twitter handles you'd like to promote, feel free.
    101:48
    No. I've still managed to avoid the Twitters and all the other stuff. All right. So, folks, I hope you've enjoyed this ginormous, supersized episode.
    102:04
    And now you can go onto the forums and answer questions with a little more knowledge and probably a little more piss and vinegar, too. next week like i said we will be talking about what we think is going to be happening with williams and uh the future of digital pinball uh or at least i should say what we hope is going to be happening because i don't want this to be the end of uh williams there's too many good tables out there they haven't been done so we're going to pretend that this is not the end and we're going to put on the speculation hats accordingly and go from there. So tune in next week. And thanks again to Sean and Carlos. It's been way too long hearing your voice.
    102:47
    Thanks for having me. Glad to be back. And thanks for John, you know, popping in right at the last minute.
    102:55
    Well, it's not the last minute anymore. He's been on for a good 20 to 30. Well, this is free now. That's true.
    103:01
    Just as usual, and Sean knows this all too well, we don't let people talk. alright folks bye bye yeah thanks again for listening bye bye take care shut the door wizardamusement.com the site to visit for custom pinball shooter rolls 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 favourite podcast hosting service that BlackAid is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.