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Post WMS Chat with Mike from FarSight

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·56m 11s·held·May 30, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

FarSight discusses Arcuda cabinet, Stern free-to-play VR app, and licensing strategy post-WMS.

Summary

Mike Lindsey from FarSight Studios discusses the Arcuda cabinet prototype, TPA's Stern Pinball app transition to free-to-play VR-first model, and future licensing plans after losing WMS. Key topics include Arcuda's 76-table lineup (excluding Stern and Season 7 tables), camera views, backglass animations, and potential future opportunities with Gottlieb, Capcom, and boutique manufacturers like Spooky and Jersey Jack. Hosts also raise technical issues with TPA including lack of Steam Cloud saves and Fireball auto-launch bugs.

Key Claims

  • FarSight has had an Arcuda prototype cabinet for almost a year

    high confidence · Mike Lindsey stated 'I think we've had it for almost a year' regarding the Arcuda cabinet prototype

  • Arcuda cabinet is shipping with 76 tables, excluding all Stern titles and Season 7 tables

    high confidence · Chris confirmed 'they've announced the 76 tables that this is coming out with' and 'all the Stern tables' are missing, plus Season 7

  • Stern Pinball app will be free-to-play and designed for VR/Oculus first before other platforms

    high confidence · Mike stated 'It's designed for VR first. Because we're working with Oculus to get all of this designed' and 'it's going to release to Oculus first, and then it'll go to platforms after that'

  • FarSight plans approximately five Stern pinball releases per year

    medium confidence · Chris mentioned 'Bobby had said is probably about five releases a year' and 'we're all guessing that the first three are going to be in whatever order, but AC/DC, Mustang, and Star Trek'

  • New Stern releases will come day-and-date to both Stern app and TPA simultaneously

    high confidence · Mike stated 'I'm thinking that it'll probably release to both games at the same time' regarding new Stern titles

  • Arcuda cabinet uses i5 CPU and GTX 960 GPU with one-to-one input response like Steam version

    high confidence · Mike confirmed 'It's one to one. It's just like running the Steam version. It's an i5 GTX 960 GPU'

  • Arcuda cabinet does not include 3D camera in the retail version; buyers must source Kinect themselves

    high confidence · Mike stated 'they're not selling it with that. You're going to have to track one down yourself' regarding the depth-sensing camera

  • FarSight is considering emulating Capcom pinball tables despite only 8 existing titles

    medium confidence · Chris mentioned 'Bobby had also mentioned doing Capcom' and Mike responded 'I think it would be' worth doing even if only 5 of 8 are possible

Notable Quotes

  • “It does feel more like a real pinball table. Yeah. But yeah, it's still our game. Feels like our game.”

    Mike Lindsey @ ~12:30 — Confirms Arcuda cabinet delivers authentic physical pinball experience despite being digital

  • “It's designed for VR first. Because we're working with Oculus to get all of this designed and everything and have a big say in what's happening.”

    Mike Lindsey @ ~25:00 — Clarifies FarSight's strategic partnership with Oculus for the new Stern app, indicating VR is primary platform

  • “I'm thinking that it'll probably release to both games at the same time. At the same time. Okay. And I don't know. I think that's probably what our plan would be.”

    Mike Lindsey @ ~32:00 — Confirms day-and-date Stern game releases across both Stern app and TPA

  • “Because we have Stern and because pinball still is a pretty good income for us, it'll continue to be for a long time. And if we keep putting new things into it, I think it'll keep going.”

    Mike Lindsey @ ~62:00 — Addresses customer concerns about FarSight's continued support post-WMS loss, emphasizing Stern as revenue driver

  • “They don't have the cabinets yet. That's the problem. They're just trying to get the final manufacturing stuff done.”

    Mike Lindsey @ ~18:00 — Indicates Arcuda is still in manufacturing phase and not yet shipping to customers

  • “We've been trying to preserve the history of pinball. You know, there's a lot of history that we haven't been able to. Maybe this is our this is our chance.”

    Mike Lindsey @ ~53:00 — Frames potential boutique manufacturer emulation as preservation opportunity for pinball heritage

  • “I think we're going to be doing a little bit of both probably more Premiere um just because historically um people like having a little bit more information you know with the DMD stuff like that”

    Mike Lindsey @ ~40:00 — Outlines prioritization strategy for Gottlieb titles: DMD Premiere first, Solid State second, EM last

Entities

Mike LindseypersonChris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonBobbypersonFarSight StudioscompanyArcudacompanyStern PinballcompanyPinball ArcadeproductSpooky Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Arcuda cabinet still in manufacturing phase; no retail units shipped yet despite prototype with FarSight for ~1 year

    high · Mike: 'They don't have the cabinets yet. That's the problem. They're just trying to get the final manufacturing stuff done.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: FarSight shifting Stern Pinball app to free-to-play VR-first model (Oculus partnership), then expanding to mobile/PC platforms

    high · Mike: 'It's designed for VR first. Because we're working with Oculus... it's going to release to Oculus first, and then it'll go to platforms after that. But it is very much a mobile-style game with all of everything.'

  • $

    market_signal: Arcuda launching with 76 tables but missing all Stern and Season 7 titles due to licensing restrictions; single one-time package with potential future add-ons unclear

    high · Mike: 'the package that people are buying is a one-off and anything that goes in the future will be kind of like an add-on but it's not uh the way it's designed right now it's not meant to have any more DLC or add-ons'

  • ?

    business_signal: FarSight pivoting from WMS exclusivity to multi-license strategy: Stern (primary), Gottlieb, Capcom, and potential boutique manufacturer titles

    high · Discussion of Gottlieb prioritization, Capcom viability, and interest in Spooky/JJP licensing after losing WMS

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: Scientific Games (Gottlieb holder) may restrict de-licensing of titles; Planetary reportedly lost licenses though details unclear

    medium · Mike: 'I'm not sure exactly how serious they are with us right now. Maybe there's something in there where they could stop us from doing that.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.169

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Frevis, aka Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always, halfway across the world, Jared Morgan. Hello there. How's it going? Oh, it's going smashing. I am on my new computer that came in pieces in the mail this week and got assembled, and I'm now having the fun time of starting fresh. Yes, and installing all the things. All the things, yeah. It's kind of liberating. I guess it's what people go through that move, because I don't move hardly. It's been 20 years, I think, or something like that. Anyway, but it's like where you box up things and you go, okay, I'll put this on this backup drive and then I won't have to worry about it. And then you just never worry about it and you never go back to it. And you're like, wow, I didn't need all that junk anyway. That's right. It's like the equivalent of, you know, a renter who can live out of like one or two suitcases with all this stuff. Right. you know, there's something to be said about that. It's like, as far as PC goes, keeping your PC super lean is pretty good. You know, it's like right now my desktop, I have one icon and that's the trash can. I don't have anything else on the desktop, which is like, you know, usually I have about three rows of stuff or three columns of stuff.
1:46
The thing I've been really struggling with with Windows since I switched over is like, how do you get rid of the icons on the desktop? Because if you do, it uninstalls the app. have you noticed that? yeah if you go right click on an icon that gets put on the desktop yeah it actually tries to delete the app I'm going that's never happened before I thought usually they only put shortcuts on the desktop but maybe I'm wrong yeah well these are the shortcuts but if you for some reason if you delete the shortcut it deletes the program or something like that I've never had that problem I did when I uh because I used the same hard drives that I had. And so I, when it first booted up and everything, it had everything just the way I had left it. Right. Yeah. But, uh, you may recall a few months back, I was complaining about my CPU usage when I was trying to get Ghostbusters to run. Yeah. And it was not successful in the least. And so we, uh, my, my friend who basically, he held my hand as I built the computer, cause I've never actually built the PC myself. So he was giving me all the finer points about cable management and where to plug in and all that. So you've done all the cable routing nicely and everything. Yeah.

  • Scientific Games (Gottlieb IP holder) may be restricting FarSight's ability to de-license games

    medium confidence · Mike said 'Bobby's the one that's been having the conversations with Scientific Games' and 'I'm not sure exactly how serious they are with us right now'

  • Planetary (boutique manufacturer) reportedly lost some licenses, though details are unclear

    low confidence · Chris mentioned 'I think I heard that Planetary actually lost some licenses there too' but acknowledged 'that's what I was talking with some of my friends about' (hearsay)

    • Jersey Jack Pinball
    company
    Scientific Gamescompany
    Oculuscompany
    BlahCade Podcastorganization
    Pinball Planetcompany
    Monster Bashgame
    Fireballgame
    Xenongame
    Cirqus Voltairegame
    Capcom Pinballproduct
    Charlie Emeryperson
    Rob Zombieperson
    Alice Cooperperson
  • ?

    product_concern: Pinball Tournaments app introduced unintended auto-launch feature affecting Fireball in TPA when ball released from lock into shooter lane

    high · Chris: 'when you have your balls locked and you hit the one target that releases both of them at the same time putting one into the shooter lane into the plunge lane the second you hit the right flipper it automatically launches the ball'

  • ?

    product_concern: TPA lacks Steam Cloud save functionality; player progression lost on PC reinstall/multi-device play unlike other Steam games

    high · Chris: 'all of my data from TPA is gone... it's the only game that I've re-downloaded that didn't automatically go, Oh yeah, here's all your saves'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: WMS license loss shook customer confidence in FarSight's TPA support; community seeking reassurance about Stern title longevity

    high · Chris: 'this kind of news, it shakes the confidence of a lot of the customer fan base, mainly on our forum'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Arcuda prototype running i5 CPU + GTX 960 GPU with 1:1 input latency parity to PC version; Kinect depth camera not included in retail SKU

    high · Mike: 'It's one to one... It's an i5 GTX 960 GPU' and 'they're not selling it with that. You're going to have to track one down yourself'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Arcuda cabinet features four camera views including flat (tablet-style) and three depth-based perspectives developed with Arcuda input

    medium · Chris: 'four different camera views... one of the camera views basically looks like the exact same thing that is on the tablet... the other three camera views all look like they had kind of a varying degrees of depth'

  • ?

    product_strategy: FarSight prioritizing Gottlieb emulation by display type: DMD Premiere first, Solid State second, EM third; Capcom possible despite only 5 of 8 licenses available

    high · Mike: 'I think we're going to be doing a little bit of both probably more Premiere... anything with DMD would probably be first, and then Solid State second, and then EM's third'

  • ?

    industry_signal: FarSight exploring digital licensing partnerships with Spooky Pinball (Charlie Emery open) and Jersey Jack to preserve pinball history beyond WMS era

    medium · Mike: 'We've been trying to preserve the history of pinball... Maybe this is our this is our chance' and interest in Spooky/JJP despite heavy licensing on boutique titles

    • 3:02
    And so he whips up the task manager, and with the computer doing absolutely nothing, CPU is still running at like 33%. And he's like, what the heck is going on? And that's when he goes, all right, you've got somebody is, you know, you had a piece of malware put on there that somebody is using. and they're mining Bitcoins off your computer.
    3:27
    So he was just like, you need to just start fresh. Just wipe the whole thing. So I was like, ah, okay, I didn't want to do that. But so, yeah, I wiped the whole thing, and now it's all sparkly and running fast and barely have any CPU usage going on. And I immediately threw in a couple of things that I haven't been able to play. First one being Pinball Wicked. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. And that thing got put on to... It automatically said, you can run this on Epic. I was like, sweet! Okay. Let's do that. Yeah, I cranked that bad boy up to absolute high, and that thing looks phenomenal. It is a gorgeous-looking game. My video card's screaming like a mother, just like... with the faint one. but the... It's a very simple solution to that. You just put headphones on. You don't hear that. You don't hear it.
    4:26
    And then I threw in Rites of the Tomb Raider and was able to... I'm not able to max everything out on that necessarily.
    4:39
    I haven't really tried but most of the settings I was able to flick on. I mean, it's looked better than I've ever played the game at.
    4:47
    And then last but not least, of course, I loaded up TPA to play Ghostbusters and lo and behold, it actually ran. So I was able to finally experience Ghostbusters on the PC. There you go. Yeah, it's not bad, is it? No, not too shabby.
    5:06
    You know. That's been my week. Well, my week has just been pretty busy. The new job is really good. People are enjoying it. everyone is pretty cool there but they're putting me to work pretty quick so it's been busy busy busy for me and yeah just lots of work and a little bit of pinball in the afternoon or evenings like I've just been trying to join all the tournaments and stuff but we can go into that later but yeah It's been good to actually be able to play things on Steam and sort of have a go in that ecosystem and learning a lot. Cool. Just playing it. But, yeah, that's me. Good times. Well, we've had some interesting feedback from last week's podcast of our speculation. And we're going to get into that in a little bit. But first, because we don't like to waste everybody's time, we have another guest this week, folks. And once again, it's somebody from Farsight. This would be Mike Lindsey from Farsight.
    6:25
    Hey, what's up, guys? Hey, hey, hey. Hey. So you apparently haven't been in the country for a little bit, huh? Yeah, I've been gone for a while. And as soon as I got back, Bobby went on his vacation. So there's been like no... Oh, wow. So, yeah, it's going to be like a month of no talking to Bobby pretty much. only by email and stuff. Oh, man. I listen to you guys' podcasts to try and prepare for this one. Uh-oh.
    6:52
    Oh, dear. Fortunately, we didn't want to hit you with a whole bunch of things that basically Bobby was already able to touch upon. But what we did want to hit upon, because there's been a lot of questions, basically with everybody wanting to buy Arcuda, the Steam key, or the Arcuda key, I should say, to get that running. But there's also been a lot of questions just revolving around those that are interested in even buying the cabinet, since Arcuda hasn't been able to offer up much information yet, and neither Jared nor I have gotten our hands on the machine, but you guys have had one of the prototypes up there, haven't you? Yes, we have. Now, is this the big steel beast?
    7:38
    I believe so. It's the shape of a real pinball table. It's almost exactly the same size. How long have you guys had this one?
    7:46
    I think we've had it for almost a year. I don't know exactly. Is this by chance the one that has all the solenoid connectors and the 3D camera and stuff like that? Well, yeah, we did have to rig it up with a 3D camera, but I haven't had a chance to try that. So basically what everybody's been kind of curious about is just what does it feel like to play this version of the game on the table? Obviously much different from playing it in portrait mode on a tablet.
    8:27
    Yeah, yeah. But it feels responsive just like the PC version. Yeah. You know, it just, you know, it feels more like a real pinball table because you're standing there and you get to feel it. And yeah. How do the visuals feel for you? I mean, does you kind of get fooled into, you know, like it's a real machine or is it just very obvious since you've got the real ones right next to you?
    8:53
    It does feel more like a real pinball table. Yeah. But yeah, it's still our game. Feels like our game. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about, because I know there's four different camera views that are included with this. And the best way that I could tell off of the video, and maybe you can confirm this, one of the camera views basically looks like the exact same thing that is on the tablet in terms of this, that straight over the top, very kind of flat looking. But then the other three camera views all look like they had kind of a varying degrees of depth for almost like how the table is sunk into the play field with walls and stuff like that. What can you tell us about the different camera looks?
    9:36
    Not much, actually. I honestly have not really gotten to play it much, which is unfortunate for this interview.
    9:44
    If you don't got this kind of information, Mike, we're going to hit you with speculation stuff. I'll answer whatever I can, and whatever I can't, I'll try to come up with something.
    9:55
    But yeah, I know they were trying to go for more realistic views and stuff like that. And they worked with Arcuda to come up with those, you know, because obviously in our mobile versions and stuff like that, we did that without any of their input. And with their input, we have something a little bit different. So it's going to be nice. Do you find any kind of lag with the monitor or is it, you know, one to one almost with? It's one to one. It's just it's just like running the Steam version. It's an i5 GTX 960 GPU. Okay. So it runs.
    10:30
    Okay. The other question is with, and I just want to get confirmation on this, with the Backglass, you guys had to do all new animations and basically scans for that, right? Yeah. Yeah, so with our original game, you know, we didn't really show the back glass much. Right, because why bother?
    10:54
    So, you know, we're obviously trying to rush every month to get everything out. So anything like that where it's like, well, we're not really going to, it's not going to be infused. So, you know, don't add any of the animations or special lights in there. So we had to do a lot of tables. Do you happen to know, because this was one of the things we were wondering about, with something like Xenon that has the infinity lights, do you have the running lights going around on the back glass? Was there any kind of attempt to make it look like Infinity Glass, or is it just kind of the flat running lights? I believe we attempted to make it look like Infinity Glass. Okay. But I don't think there's anything animated with it. It just looks like it would look if you were standing right in front of it. Right. Okay.
    11:35
    The other question that we had regarding Arcuda, and obviously they've announced the 76 tables that this is coming out with.
    11:47
    And then of the tables that are missing, basically it's all the Stern tables. So obviously Stern said, you know what? We're not too cool with having a full-size cabinet that plays our games that you can still buy.
    11:59
    And then all of the Season 7 tables aren't included. Of course, the Williams ballet tables that are in that batch, but also the Gottlieb that are in that batch. In the future here, as we go forward, will those tables be able to be added into this with Arcuda, or is this kind of a one-time deal going on with them? I think it's possible.
    12:28
    Yeah, we're going to continue to work with them and do what we can, obviously. but essentially the package that people are buying is a one-off and anything that goes in the future will be kind of like an add-on but it's not uh the way it's designed right now it's not meant to have any more dlc or add-ons come into it yeah it's going to be the way it is right now and then yeah it is possible that we'll add to the future but i can't confirm if we will or not right okay because that's kind of what people are basically wondering yeah right um oh and i know the one last thing, and I don't know if this with the version of software you guys are running it, but when starting the game, is it kind of essentially like on the PC how you're choosing between DX9 and DX11, and that they would be then choosing the cabinet mode, or is it just automatically running the cabinet mode straight off the box?
    13:18
    I'm actually not sure. I'm not sure, but I'm assuming that it's going to be DX11, you know, obviously. Well, yeah, obviously, lighting-wise and stuff, yeah. And then I'm not sure if there's an option for DX9. I don't think people want DX9 I think what they're actually wanting is the ability for those tables that didn't get the full cabinet treatment if they could use the nox mod that they've been using for this point to kind of well here's the tables that work perfectly fine and they want to be able to swap over and if it is that little selection screen when you push play on Steam that pops up I'm not sure about that okay jared you got our good questions Yeah guys ask me anything you want
    14:08
    What did I have for questions? I think you've actually covered most of the ones that I thought of. I guess the other one is that when you're actually playing something like this as a real pinball machine, what's the weight of it like? Because, you know, when you're trying to nudge a machine, because of all this digital nudging and all that sort of stuff that you have access to on it. Is it actually a tank or does it actually – it's heavy? It feels pretty much the same weight as other tables as far as I know. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't have all the wiring and stuff in there, but it does have a pretty substantial computer, and it's pretty thick plywood that they've built it with. Right. Does it have the dual buttons on the side for the flippers, or is it just a single set of buttons? I believe it has dual buttons. I was just wondering for those few tables that use the dual. It has joysticks on the top, and it has buttons here to play. So you've got the control panel, the up-down bar for the control panel, yeah? Yeah. I don't know if what we have is special for us, though, as a dev version just has absolutely everything on it. Right. That's exactly what they're going to be selling. Yeah, well, I don't think they know exactly what they're going to be selling quite yet.
    15:25
    We were using one of our PlayStation cameras, I believe, or an Xbox camera to use. Yeah, it should be a Kinect. Well, actually, what they said is they're not selling it with that. You're going to have to track one down yourself. Right, okay. Yeah. Which, you know, in Australia, it doesn't seem to be a problem, because there's those for sale for about $40 here in Australia. Buy them all up, Jared. Throw them on eBay. I totally should. I just put Akuta branding on everything. It's actually just for... I wonder what... It's listing. Like physical copies of Season 1 on consoles. I wonder if the price is going for that. Oh, yeah, because there actually was a hard disk of that. It wasn't there. Yeah, because if you get the disk, then you got Season 1. Yeah. And you put it out for PS4 also, correct? Yeah, PS4. It wasn't just PS3.
    16:14
    Yeah, PS4. And there's also Season 2, but that's in Europe only. Oh! Oh, right. everybody's clacking on the keyboards right now going, Oh, find it in Europe. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm hoping Mike that, uh, sometime in June before this end date that I'll be able to get up there and get my own hands on the, uh, on the machine. Um, it's just a matter of, uh, scheduling, but, um, yeah, definitely come up. Yeah. Cause I definitely want to put it through its paces and be able to give a firsthand account of what it, what it feels like. That would definitely be good. We'd appreciate you to come up and do that. Yeah. And maybe I need to go down to Newcastle where Alcuda is actually based. Yeah, I know. They're around you, right? Like, I don't know how far, like, you know. It's a long way.
    17:06
    You're on the same continent, right? Like, you can get there. Yeah, it's technically in the same continent, so that's one thing. It's not like I have to fly over to Big Bear to actually try it out, but it's, you know, it's one of those sort of journeys that will be 18 hours on the road sort of thing. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, you'd fly into it. That's halfway across the states.
    17:24
    Three months. Yeah, you'd have to, like, fly down to Newcastle on the plane and then drive out to the place. But, you know, it might be something I could do. I'll have to look into it. Yeah, well, it'd be fun to make a weekend out of it. I kept on trying to convince Arcuda to ship us a version of the cabinet, you know, for, like, two weeks that we could have it. And then we could, you know, send it around to various people that we know just to run it through its paces before they send it on its merry way to, to wherever else it needs to go, but they didn't seem to bite on that. I think they might still want to do this. They don't have the cabinets yet. That's the problem.
    18:01
    They're just trying to get the final manufacturing stuff done. I know, and this news is just terrible. Oh, geez. Yeah, it kind of puts a monkey wrench in all the fun of that. Yeah, I know. And the timing was also crazy because I had left, and then the day after I left, that was when the announcement was. Oh, you're kidding me. Oh, no.
    18:21
    I was also your emails blowing up. Yeah. So I was over in Japan, like completely opposite, you know, schedule and everything. And also just on vacation trying to sort of stay away from work, you know? Oh man. But, uh, yeah. And then getting back and then Bobby not being here is like, Oh, all right. All right.
    18:42
    Yeah. That's odd, man. Yeah. A little bit, I guess, but you know, let's, uh, let's talk about a few things then with, uh, Farsight going forward.
    18:53
    We obviously you guys can't talk about the new IPs that you're developing that aren't pinball related. So let's talk about the pinball related stuff. Basically, what Bobby had said is probably about five releases a year, and we're all guessing that the first three are going to be in whatever order, but ACDC, Mustang, and Star Trek. Yeah. I don't know if you guys saw the Switch version, but those released as a pack 2 in Pinball Arcade. Right. And he said that basically that the Stern Pinball app is going to become a free-to-play deal. So I'm assuming that's more targeting the mobile market.
    19:40
    Yeah. I mean, it's designed for VR first. Because we're working with Oculus to get all of this designed and everything and have a big say in what's happening. Okay.
    19:54
    So once that's done, it's going to release to Oculus first, and then it'll go to platforms after that. But it is very much a mobile-style game with all of everything. You can grind and grind and earn what you want to get. See, what you need to work on with Arcuda is making a narrow little just stand with controllers so that when you're playing with the Oculus that you feel like you're standing at the table, pushing real buttons.
    20:22
    Yeah, I don't know if anybody's talked about that yet. I mean, that's kind of their wheelhouse in terms of, you know, they started out making arcade parts. Yeah, there's a lot of people out there that want to make that and have it be officially supported and stuff, but I don't know exactly why we haven't yet. So what Bobby had mentioned was the dream, the hope, is that at some point you'll be able to go day and date with Stern releases. And what we were kind of wondering is, would that be something that would be on the Stern app with the free-to-play thing? Would that be coming out on that first, basically, and then eventually find its way onto TPA? Or are you actually thinking day and date on TPA?
    21:07
    I'm thinking that it'll probably release to both games at the same time. At the same time. Okay. And I don't know. I think that's probably what our plan would be. because we're doing well with Pinball Arcade. And CERN is going to have a new thing, so there's no reason why we'd stagger it or anything like that. Okay. Just for whatever platforms can release right away, too. The first platform is probably going to be... Well, I don't know what's going to happen with Oculus. Since Oculus has such a big part in it, it might release Oculus first and then Steam and mobile after that. Kind of like what ACDC did. Or everything all at once. I don't know. yeah i i think that might be plausible there um because if yeah i mean oculus would want to have you know the first bite of the cherry yeah um but yeah it sounds like it wouldn't be a long delay for it to actually roll out to the other platforms theoretically too particular about it like okay out there so beyond the stern titles that leaves you with the gottlieb titles um do you guys have a preference for what you'd be looking at with those you know or would you be leaning more em heavy are you still dipping into the godly premiere uh i think we're going to be doing a little bit of both probably more premiere um just because historically um people like having a little bit more information you know with the dmd stuff like that so anything with dmd would probably be first, and then Solid State second, and then EM's third. Okay. But there are a lot of good EMs out there, and I know a lot of the core fans really enjoy them. Well, we always said that when it comes to EMs, that's when Gottlieb shined. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So I think we'll be able to come up with some pretty good EMs, though, when we do. Yeah. The thing that's interesting with all the Gottlieb premieres is that they're really heavily licensed. so I think there's a lot of speculation out there about all those ones that are licensed you had all those knock off ones what was it the LA Heat or whatever that looked like Miami Vice and that god awful Genesis with the worst back glass art ever yeah you also have things like Stargate and you know Shack Attack and all those ones with licensed people in it. Yeah, that'd be pretty difficult, but we have kind of dipped into de-licensing ourselves a little bit now. Yeah, the classic festering. It seems like people mind that, right? I remember people going like, well, this is not World Cup soccer. It's still the same game, still got good rules. Especially if you just let it sit long enough on the fly-by menu, eventually the World Cup soccer logo actually slips in.
    24:07
    Hey, is Doctor Who Masters of Time getting yanked? No. So that's because you guys were able to alter it enough, correct? Yeah. So is it possible that you could go in and re-skin and re-DMD some of these tables that you've already done that more or less would wind up being the same thing as a Williams table, but just de-licensed? Well, I'm inclined to think so, but I don't know. I mean, it's a lot of effort for it to become a generic title. Yeah, because Bobby's the one that's been having the conversations with Scientific. Scientific, yeah. Yeah, and I'm not sure exactly how serious they are with us right now. Maybe there's something in there where they could stop us from doing that. It kind of sounds like they're serious. I'm just putting that out there. A little bit.
    25:06
    I don't know. Something about their attitude makes them seem mildly serious. Yeah, I think I heard that Planetary actually lost some licenses there too. Oh, did they? Wow. I don't know specifically what, but that's what I was talking with some of my friends about, which was kind of interesting. Hmm. That's really interesting because we thought that with the planetary deal that they actually had negotiated with all the moldings and original tooling and stuff. And they bought all that gear that they actually had perpetual license to do what they wanted. Well, I don't think that they, you know, I think it was only a few things that they lost. And that's kind of just word on the street. So there.
    25:52
    It's also a big mystery. We really have. We're all just wondering. We don't know. I don't really know what's going on. Massive case of smoke and mirrors. Yeah.
    26:04
    Beyond the Gottlieb tables, Bobby had also mentioned doing Capcom. Now, there only were eight Capcom tables to begin with.
    26:14
    Is it worth it for you guys to be able to emulate if you're only able to do like of those eight, five of them?
    26:22
    I think it would be. Okay. Yeah. And I know we've we've done a lot of work to or, you know, already done a lot of work to to get there. So, you know, this is a bet. This is more of a kick in the butt to maybe maybe do it. Yeah, maybe. I guess you probably have, you know, notwithstanding all the other sort of properties that you're working on at the moment, you would have more scope to actually focus on, I guess, the R&D aspects of looking at other platforms, pinball platforms. and trying to get them implemented, which opens up an interesting proposition in that while you may have lost WMS,
    27:04
    you might be able to look at working with some boutique pinball manufacturers. Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well, is it would be really awesome to do some Jersey Jack or, you know. Oh, geez, imagine getting that. Yeah, that would be crazy, you know, but I don't know. I don't know where, you know, we're not anywhere with that. No. Talk about licensing.
    27:26
    That's always a problem. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they're heavily licensed, aren't they? But the one thing that's interesting about Spooky is that on one of their very early episodes, I think Charlie, I do remember Charlie Emery saying that, yeah, you know, he would be open to actually looking down digital pinball routes for it. So I think he's already open to the idea from what I gathered, at least at that stage. So, you know, interesting. And some of their stuff is not too crazily licensed you know so No they been very specific about it So you know and sure they do have licensed properties in it like you know Alice Cooper and Rob Zombie
    28:12
    But, you know, they seem to be. Maybe we could afford Rob Zombie. I don't know. He seems pretty reasonable. Like, in all the podcasts I've listened to, like, he's a businessman, but he's pretty reasonable about it. He's very open to that sort of thing. So who knows, you know, what the future could hold. It could actually open up a whole world of different boutique manufacturers that really people don't get to see at all because they just go straight into private collections. Yeah. And that would be good because we've been trying to preserve the history of pinball. You know, there's a lot of history that we haven't been able to. Maybe this is our this is our chance. And I don't know where, you know, this is this to me is just like a new opportunity to do different stuff with pinball and continue because it's a great product. and it's been around for so long. I got here five years ago, and it's been going strong that whole time, and it was going strong way before me. Yeah. I'd like to keep going, too.
    29:07
    Obviously, this kind of news, it shakes the confidence of a lot of the customer fan base, mainly on our forum. What are the kinds of things that you guys are looking to do to kind of shore that up, make sure that people feel like the same thing is not going to happen to Stern, or that you're going to still support the game fully and stand behind it? Because obviously, once you guys stopped doing the monthly releases, it kind of became a bit of crickets. Yeah.
    29:38
    Yeah, well, we were going hard for a while. But because we have CERN and because pinball still is a pretty good income for us, it'll continue to be for a long time. And if we keep putting new things into it, I think it'll keep going. so it'll be good for us to continue and then I think a little bit we can go back and fix like Bobby said we can fix some of the stuff that has been lingering for a while that right there I think would be huge absolutely simply giving Monster Bash a facelift would do wonders I should do it last time too yeah well I think that we can look at it if Bobby said it's okay then I think it's okay we can do it Yeah. I've got two particular things for you to actually pitch and look into. One of them is fairly fresh and one of them I've been complaining about for some time. And because I just upgraded my computer and went through this, let me tell you about how silly it is that all of my data from TPA is gone. you guys really got to work on making it do a Steam Cloud save so that it's not stored locally I'm not too broken up about it right now because thankfully I didn't collect all of the Safecracker tokens but it is one of those things where it's the only game that I've re-downloaded that didn't automatically go, Oh yeah, here's all your saves. Here's everything that you already played. You know, I'm sure it's a new computer, but big whoopee. Uh, and the main thing is, is that like, if I switched over to my laptop and I played TPA on that, well, again, I'd start fresh on there. And then the next time I'd log into my PC, that would all of a sudden start fresh again. So it's that, that's why it's like, you guys really got to get the cloud. It seems like something fairly simple that we could do. Yeah. Um, I know I've harped on it many times and it's always been that response, but I, so, I just felt like face-to-face saying it once more. Work on that.
    31:52
    The other thing, and this is, I don't know how much knowledge you have of the Pinball Tournaments app,
    32:01
    which is basically the reskin of Fireball. Yes. But something that's introduced in that has now affected Fireball. and what that is now and this is only the newer version of the pinball tournament app just got put live this past week but basically when you have your balls locked and you hit the one target that releases both of them at the same time putting one into the shooter lane into the plunge lane the second you hit the right flipper it automatically launches the ball. Like it's got an auto-launch.
    32:46
    I'm fine with it for your app because there's been enough changes on that it can be. But then you go and play Fireball in TPA and it does the same thing. We all know for a fact it doesn't have auto-launch.
    33:00
    So just putting that out there, that's one of those fixes that you might want to get in on. Yeah, I wonder for it.
    33:08
    Robbery, You listening? You're right. He might be. I don't know. Anyway, those are my two personal things and, of course, Monster Basket.
    33:21
    Yeah, that sounds like high on your list. It is. Well, you know, it's the most glaringly obvious one. You know, little ones are things like with getting the judges working properly on Circuit Voltaire. I mean, it's minor, but it's one that you notice all the same. As a new customer coming into Steam as well, I've noticed that a difference between, say, how Xen does it to how TPA does it, how they can actually tweak settings right within the interface, and how you have to actually open the configuration utility to actually tweak the MSAA and anti-lasing and all those sort of things outside of the app. It'd be really good somehow to actually incorporate the DX11 layer inside the people arcade app so you can actually live adjust those settings. And the fact that Xen's managed to do it somehow would suggest that it's possible. Well, most games do it in-game. Oh, right. See, I'm so new to Steam, I don't see this. Yeah.
    34:24
    So you're getting it sort of integrated as part of the product would be super good from a user experience perspective. Yeah. Yeah, because when I was playing around with Pinball Wicked,
    34:35
    just testing out to what extent can I crank things up, the second you did the slider in the background, all of a sudden you'd see the textures change, see the resolution change, see the effects change. I mean, it was instantaneous as you did it. And so it kind of helps you go, do I like it? Do I not like it? Do quick A-B tests on it. Whereas with TPA, you do it, then you start the program, you go, did something change? I don't know. Then you exit the program, then you make a switch, then you go back, and by the time you go back, your vision hasn't you don't have that immediate memory of it. Right. I'm just guessing, but I'm thinking that might be a limitation of our engine. Yeah. You know, because it's proprietary and we've been using that engine, you know, in the Pimble Arcade for a really long time now. Yeah. Where others are using like Unreal or something like that. Right. It's already like built into Unreal to be able to do something like that. Oh, I see. You know, I'm just guessing that that's the reason. But, you know, when we have our own engine, you can add something like that. You know, it's not impossible. to do it, but it might be a little bit more... Tricky. Yeah, take a little bit longer to do it.
    35:42
    But I'm writing it down. You're a good man. I'm going to walk around and be like, hey guys, want to do this?
    35:51
    They said, otherwise they're going to bitch and moan. One thing that I... Sorry, the one thing I just remembered then, again as a news player coming into steam the when you open up either tpa or stern people arcade it comes up with a warning saying there's no control or support in the game and it will be really good to actually have a default control layout for um for tpa established up front because i don't i actually don't quite know how to create my own in steam as a new player and there's no the strange thing is there's no community-contributed layouts for TPA, which is really strange because there'd be a lot of people using controllers. Well, you know what I've noticed, and this is because I don't use a 360 controller, I use a PS4 controller. If you plug a 360 controller in, TPA works just fine.
    36:47
    You plug a PS4 controller in, now on certain games, actually most games in Steam, Steam actually recognizes the PS4 controller and you can still continue to play the game. TPA doesn't recognize it at all, so I have to use an external app called DS for Windows for my controller to be recognized. An Xbox controller, right?
    37:12
    I'm using an Xbox controller. I went out and bought one specifically. It's not bad as a controller, but it works flawlessly on Xen. It's got full UI integration on Xen, but just TPA, it doesn't, and Stern's actually even worse.
    37:30
    The Stern one's horrible. The Stern one's legitimately horrible. I actually don't know how to interact with Stern with the controller. It's really not mapped well. You pretty much have to be using a mouse at the same time. That's why I've discovered Stern 1. I think it definitely needs more work. Definitely. And Jared, I don't know if you noticed in the TPA app, when you pause a table, and you push the options or help or whatever, there is a thing that says controller. You click on controller and you can do all assigned buttons. Oh, okay. I'll have to have a look at that. You could have used a default. Yeah, because the default goes to the triggers instead of the shoulder buttons, and I hate the triggers on pinball because that's not... Yeah, I prefer the shoulders, yeah. You know. And how do you make it so one button does both? Because, you know, it says like flipper one and flipper two. What does that even mean? I think you can do that, yeah. Well, flipper two is if you have like MagnaSave activate, Right. Or there's some tables that actually had two flippers, you know, controls so that it would be like upper flippers going and lower flippers. Yeah, that would be the case with Starship Troopers. Yeah, that's it. Oh, yeah, right. Right. That extra flipper that you have to manually. Yeah, that little pink one. Yeah, right. Little pinky. Yeah. So that, you know, that's the one that you assign to the trigger and then you assign your main ones to the to the shoulder buttons and you're happy. OK, good. I'll have a look at tweaking that. But, yep, those are definitely the areas for improvement.
    38:57
    Get that interface going. Cool. Well, that's what I'm for. I'm here for the feedback. Well, I'll tell you what, Mike. We're going to shift into a little bit of the feedback that we got regarding our speculation podcast last week. But you're welcome to stick in and laugh at some of the or marvel at some of the speculation that's been going on since. Yeah, I'll stick around. Okay.
    39:22
    So the general response, folks, of what we speculated was that people go, interesting, but here's my idea. And the one that kind of made me, kind of stood out to me, and it was kind of tongue-in-cheek, but I liked it all the same, was that one person decided that Stern is behind all of this. That it's a giant conspiracy theory. that Stern has gone ahead and purchased the rights from Scientific, and then they're going to license it back to Farsight.
    40:08
    But that would allow them to also manufacture all the Williams games themselves as real physical machines.
    40:15
    Sounds awesome. Yeah, bring that on. We get new versions of all our favorite tables. Right. Or they can make sequels to them, you know, any number of things. And, you know, when you already got Steve Ritchie as one of your designers, well, hey, Steve, here's all your tables. Go for it. I just think about the pro premium at L.E.T. as they can do to things like Monster Bash. You know, you'd have, on the pro thing, you wouldn't actually have Drac swinging out. You'd just have, like, a stand-up target that you'd have to hit for that. You wouldn't have the old mate Frankenstein swinging down. He'd just be a big gate. He'd just be a door. He'd just be a virtual lock, too. So, you know, it would be a great experience to have all those Williams tables proized by Stern. Yeah.
    41:15
    I like that one. The other one, somebody broke down on the forum. His name goes by Wes Reviews. But he says these are the percentages of likelihood of what's happening, that Scientific Games is just going to be squatting on the titles, mothballing it, no digital pinball whatsoever, 40% chance of that happening.
    41:37
    Then he says Scientific finding someone to do the digital pinball, I assume under the Scientific Games banner. So scientific games Pimbalacade Yeah, essentially hiring their own company to do it but yeah, keeping under scientific games they gave that about a 30% chance of being Then there's what we kind of surmised if indeed the license was sold to somebody that it was Zen would get it they picked 20 A lot of people don like our Zen idea just from the standpoint of saying that well Zen why would they What would they have to profit from doing tables that were already done? And they're kind of known for doing their own thing. So why would they even bother getting into that market? So that's kind of why people have poo-pooed our Zen idea.
    42:28
    He gave the Stern conspiracy a 90% chance of happening. And then that left 1% going to some smaller company obtaining the license, which I've got to say, after playing Pinball Wicked, dang, they could do a really nice job if push came to shove. Right.
    42:48
    So anyway, I love the speculation, and it's fun hearing what other people's ideas are. Yeah, and totally keep it coming, because it's great to actually hear what people are reading from the whole situation. it's what it is really it's pure speculation at this point you read enough threads you start making your own thread connections and going well wait a second if this happened and then you get your fanboy hopes going and going well but what if that happened scientific games I think they've been heavily in slot machines and gambling stuff so like I'm wondering if maybe it has something to do at that. Well, we mentioned that if you go to their website, the first thing that I saw pop up picture-wise was a slot machine that was just splattered with Monster Bash imagery.
    43:42
    So, it was kind of like, oh, well, clearly, maybe that's why they want the licenses back, because they don't want any kind of confusion. I don't know. Again, you're talking about a real-world item. There is no digital slot machines going on. Well, there kind of are now. In Vegas, they've been replacing slot machines with video games.
    44:03
    Oh, right. Like your deal or no deal. Yeah, well, that's kind of still a slot machine, but there's lounges now where it's purely video games that you're wagering while you're playing a video game, and it's also skill-based.
    44:22
    That's very interesting. That's another theory that could be happening. There's a shift between slot machines in video games where slot machines are becoming less popular and video games are becoming more popular.
    44:36
    That was just what I was thinking. Interesting. Yeah. But them just locking down the licenses so they can use that stuff for whatever it is they're going to do sounds pretty... sounds kind of right. It's funny because when I think about the arcades that we grew up with became then what today is the redemption model of gaming, which is earn your tickets so that you can go buy a stuffed animal for 20 times the price that you normally could have.
    45:13
    But it is funny how so many of those redemption games you find in Vegas as actual gambling machines. It's like, boy, training the kids early.
    45:24
    That's right. It's the gateway drug. Like amusement arcades are the pit of evil, right? Den of iniquity.
    45:35
    Yeah, man. It's crazy how people get addicted to that stuff. Yeah. Mike, what's your go-to machine that you guys have at the office?
    45:45
    For playing pinball arcade? Yeah. No, I mean like of the physical machines we actually have. The physical? Pretty much Attack from Mars. All right. Yeah, and Cactus Canyon. I love that one. Have you guys gotten the Cactus Canyon Continued app yet? No.
    46:02
    So is that just a ROM? Yeah. Well, it runs off of a PC. You actually have a PC connected to it. Yeah, it's a ROM. But I'm telling you, you guys, I mean, it's such a rare machine as is. Yeah. But you've got to do yourself a favor and track that thing down because it changes that game completely. And when I say completely, it becomes a full-bodied, fully-coded game that you just go like, oh, this is awesome. Yeah, I can't wait. If you love it already, you'll just like, you'll flip. Yeah, and to me, it already feels complete, even though, you know, obviously it's not like, you know, they cut it short and everything. Yeah. But it still feels so complete to me. I just love it. I like everything about it. I love it. Yeah. No, there's legitimate modes. The DMD animations are phenomenal. my favorite version that happens is there's this, I think they call it Cowboys versus Indians, or not, uh, aliens versus Cowboys. Cause also, uh, um,
    46:56
    UFO flies over and it starts playing this techno rave music. It's, it's fantastic. It's really just, it's amazing. Um, yeah, I love it.
    47:09
    But, uh, yeah, I highly recommend that. Do you guys have any of your tables? Uh, I know that you've, Whenever you guys made them, you had to put them into what were the production run versions. But did you have any that were heavily modded that you had to kind of like go, oh, we can't include that, we can't include that? Yeah, I think with Scared Stiff, we bought a table that was pretty modded. And then it actually made it into the game when it first released. Right, that was the little boogie monsters down at the bottom were animated on your machine. There was also LED lights inside the skulls in the back. Oh, yes. Stuff like that. and that we didn't, I think we got everything else, but we didn't realize those were mods. They went into the game, and then later we had to pull them out. And I know that your Twilight Zone, you had the initially, this might have been before your time, but initially it had the outline block or rubber put in, and that wasn't caught even by one of the sharps that looked at it, and there was somebody else pointing out and going, yeah, that's not production run. it's like actually a prototype machine yeah but nothing of your most of the other stuff have some of your machines come in fully LED yeah like high speed 2 was fully LED when it came in Dracula does that affect how you design the lighting it does because we take you know especially for the DX9 version is those are actual pictures of the lights that are flashing on and off Oh, okay. We do have to try to make them not look as much like LEDs. Right. But they still do kind of look like LEDs. Like on fishtails, you can kind of see it.
    48:55
    Everything's really quite pronounced and quite super bright. Yeah. I think I seem to remember that on mobile, after Black Knight got a remake, all the lighting changed on that as well, and it looked like one that had actually been LED'd. Yeah, that was Rob trying to do that. Rob was specifically trying to get it a little brighter and make it look a little more... Because it was a little bit dark. So yeah, that's actually probably okay. Yeah, so when Rob hit it, he made it much better. Yeah. And I think we... Since the beginning, we've gotten more freedom with what we can do. Yeah. But now, obviously... Now you don't. Yeah.
    49:35
    We got a little bit of leeway and now it's gone. Yeah. Just go nuts on the Gottlieb machines. gotta do something on that what is what why don't you give me a I don't know if you can do this off the top of your head but what is a stern title and a Gottlieb title that you really hope that you guys can get put in at some point a stern title I think Metallica thank you yeah that'd be awesome Gottlieb I'm trying to think.
    50:14
    I'm not as familiar with Gottlieb, so it's hard to come off the top of my head with it. But yeah, I don't know.
    50:21
    Definitely Metallica, though. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, that'd be so good. And Walking Dead would be awesome.
    50:31
    Yeah, just pretty much. Walking Dead is one of those, and I honestly believe you guys could do this with a lot of the Stern, the modern Sterns, the way they've come out, but Walking Dead for sure. They had so many mods that were Stern authorized to, you add on to the table itself that I always thought that just kind of like how you have the, the ball packs, you would have the mod packs. So it's, you know, adding the heads, the, the zombie heads to the top of your cabinet, adding the, the guard tower, adding the blood splatter on the glass. I can't confirm if we're going to do that or not but we've definitely talked about it and I think it's definitely very possible that we'll do it I always just thought that was an opportunity we have more time to do that kind of thing right has there felt like a since you've stopped doing the monthly release has it felt like just kind of being able to breathe again it has felt a little bit nicer it's been it's been kind of ridiculous like you guys were like on crunch time 24 7 it's yeah it was always crunch time and then you know as we get closer and closer people start running around faster and faster and then a lot you know and then i would make the newsletter and you know get all that stuff ready and it just felt like oh i gotta hurry up it's friday stations all the time yeah and then it would be like right after release it'd be like all right we're cool and then it would slowly build up to that again and then all right we're cool and then it's just a monthly thing, you know. But it's nice. It's actually nice to have a little bit of a breather now, like not grinding out tables at all times. Right. Yeah.
    52:14
    Well, I think that about sums up everything that we can possibly grill it and throw it your way and fill our own podcast with. So we didn't mean to hold you the entire time, but there you go. You survived an entire podcast. Oh, yeah. Well, I'll come on again if you guys come up with more stuff to ask me. Sure. Yeah, I enjoy it. This is cool. Just hanging out with you guys. So take that as a clue, folks. If you've got questions for Mike that you would like us to ask him and have a reason to bring Mike back on, fire those questions off to our email. That is blahblahblockade at gmail.com. Or why don't you go ahead and you can send a message to us via Twitter.
    52:56
    The show's account is at Blockade. Or you could hit me up. I am at ShutYourTrap. Jared is at Jared Morgs.
    53:04
    And yeah, those are the ways you can get in contact with us. As usual, we also encourage you to go check out our website, which is OctadePinball.com slash episodes. There you will find all of these episodes, if you can discover them amidst the myriad of movie reviews that I keep on posting.
    53:25
    Yeah, that's right. For which I think, yeah, I threw my Deadpool review up. I'll be seeing Solo this weekend, so you can expect that to happen soon, too. I can't wait to see that. I don't know when I'm going to be able to get in there, but I'm going to try and get it before it gets out of theaters. Do you guys have a good movie theater up there in Big Bear, or do you have to go down the hill? It's decent. It's kind of small, but it's not bad. We do go down the hill, though, when it's something big. Right.
    53:52
    There's one down the mountain where it has recliners. and those nice bars. Oh, yes. Yeah, that one's really fun. And they also have a childcare area. Oh, no way. Yeah. That's awesome.
    54:07
    Kid, go play with some other little kids for two hours. Thanks, bye. Go play with your friends, man.
    54:13
    That's a great idea. This is the biggest problem, right? It's so hard to get babysitting. Yeah. And having a daycare at the cinema, what a genius idea. I don't know why people haven't done it down here in Australia. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. You should get a Harkins. That's what it is. It's a Harkins. All right.
    54:35
    All right. Well, Mike, it's been really good to talk to you. And like I said, I'll probably be seeing you guys fairly soon, sometime in June, so I can check out the cabinet. Yeah, and just before I go, just wanted to mention that the Switch version of Pinball Arcade is out worldwide now. Oh, okay. And it has the certain tables in there. It's pack one and pack two. We have an EM pack, Gottlieb EM pack. We have Gottlieb pack one, two, and three. So it's totally structured differently. But that is pretty much how Pimble Arcade is going to be structured after we pull all of the WMS tables out at the end of next month. Okay. But, yeah, if you've got a switch, pick that up.
    55:18
    I have a switch. All righty. Well, folks, again, thanks for listening, and we will have more of this kind of stuff next week.
    55:32
    All right. Bye-bye. See you. Thanks for having me. Bye. WizardAmusement.com, the site to visit for custom pinball shooter odds. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization.
    55:53
    don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blackade is delivered to we can't improve unless you tell us how now stop listening and play some pinball