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Episode 177 - You Only Reveal Twice & StadiDONE

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 53m·analyzed·Oct 2, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Stern Bond reveal criticized for poor execution; distributor confusion over Pro allocation policy; Keith Elwin LE details leaked.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers podcast episode discussing Stern Pinball's James Bond reveal and release strategy issues, including delayed gameplay footage, production timeline problems (November machine run vs. September reveal), distributor policy confusion regarding first-run Pro allocation, and Keith Elwin separate 500-unit LE design. Also covers the hosts' new Patreon launch and community engagement plans.

Key Claims

  • James Bond Pro model priced at $6,999 (vs. $6,899 for Godzilla/Rush), Premium at $9,700 (vs. $9,000), LE at $13,000 (vs. $10,500 for Godzilla)

    high confidence · Dennis stating official MSRP figures during pinball discussion

  • James Bond machine run doesn't begin until November despite September release announcement

    high confidence · Dennis citing Zach Minney (distributor) information from Pinball Show episode; noted as unusual for Stern

  • First-run Pro models traditionally allocated only to operators, with homeowner Pros not available until next run (reported as April)

    medium confidence · Dennis discussing distributor policy confusion; George Gomez allegedly disputed this understanding on Naps Arcade

  • Code for James Bond is not far advanced; licensor may not have approved all video clips in current code

    medium confidence · Dennis citing unattributed reports explaining delay in official gameplay reveal

  • Keith Elwin-designed Bond variant is 500-unit run, single-level playfield with four spinners, drops, inline drop section

    high confidence · Dennis reading transcript from Stern Insider Connected podcast interview with George Gomez and Mike Vinicore

  • No official gameplay video released for Bond despite months of delays since initial scheduled reveal

    high confidence · Dennis stating Stern has not provided gameplay livestream or video, only potato-quality event footage from Pinball News

  • Eclectic Gamers' merchandise store has generated approximately $60 net profit across six years of operation

    high confidence · Dennis disclosing withdrawal from merch store to Tony

Notable Quotes

  • “It's their worst release in my history of being in pinball to witness from them.”

    Dennis @ ~17:00 — Strong criticism of Stern's Bond reveal execution, breaking pattern of industry-leading release strategies

  • “It doesn't make any sense at all... This release is terrible. It looks like no one knows what they're doing.”

    Tony @ ~18:30 — Reinforces frustration with disconnect between reveal timing and production schedule

  • “If Stern thinks it's an obligation for any of us to come back and ask them, hey, did you change your policy? That's just downright goofy.”

    Dennis @ ~21:00 — Criticizes Stern's communication failure on distributor policy, suggesting company responsibility for clarity

  • “We still haven't seen how it should, like layout wise... but it's so weird to not yet really know.”

    Tony @ ~15:30 — Expresses frustration about lack of substantive gameplay demonstration before retail release

  • “Give it to me all. Give us all the rumors. We don't want to wait for your rumors. We don't want you to drip feed us.”

    Patreon supporters (voting result) @ ~08:00 — 100% Patreon vote requesting full Rumor Corner content; shows subscriber engagement preference

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyJames BondgameGeorge GomezpersonKeith ElwinpersonZach MinneypersonDennispersonTonypersonNaps ArcadecompanyJersey Jack Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Production timeline misalignment: Bond reveal in September but first machine run not starting until November, with first-run Pros allocated only to operators

    medium · Dennis citing Zach Minney (distributor) information; described as non-standard for Stern's historical practices

  • ?

    community_signal: Eclectic Gamers launched Patreon platform with three support tiers ($1, $5, $10); Patreons voted unanimously for full Rumor Corner content; planning bonus features including 'After Dark' unfiltered content and 'Baby's First' satire series

    high · Dennis discussing Patreon setup, pricing model, Patreon voting result (100% for all rumors), and bonus content planning

  • ?

    community_signal: Distributor policy confusion regarding first-run Pro allocation; George Gomez disputed policy understanding on social media, but no official Stern clarification issued

    medium · Dennis citing Gomez comment on Naps Arcade and feedback from second distributor indicating no policy change notification from Stern

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Keith Elwin designed separate Bond 500-unit limited variant; single-level playfield with four spinners, drops, inline drop section, representing all Bond films

    high · Dennis reading transcript from Stern Insider Connected podcast interview; call-for-price tier with unknown distributor allocation

  • ?

    licensing_signal: 60th anniversary Bond licensing window may have driven timing of pinball reveal despite production unreadiness

    low · Tony speculating about narrow anniversary window for Bond merchandise releases (Triumph Motorcycles, others) suggesting licensor timing constraints

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.340

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, October 2nd. We're into October already. We are. We've made it. We're almost there. It's pumpkin spice time. This is episode 177. Yes. pumpkin spice. My favorite thing to not smell. My favorite spice girl, pumpkin spice. I like them curvy.
0:41
Clever. Too clever for this show. Well, I'm Dennis. I'm Tony. And we're back after a couple weeks like we try and do. Yeah. And we've got, you know, we've got an interesting blend of news. Yeah, there's some weird stuff. Not an overly heavy episode, I think in part, at least for the pinball portion, because we kind of talked about Bond last time. I know. It was real weird. It's weird. It was weird. And it's still weird because I still haven't seen good gameplay. No. I say good because I've seen something. Right. But it's just weird that when we finally got all the Bond stuff, it's like, hey, look, it's pretty much exactly what we knew it would be. So it's not like there's a whole lot of new comments to make other than a few certain things. So what's been going on? We'll start with that. I was on vacation. A real, like, Monday through Friday vacation. I've not taken one of those in eight years. Eight before the city? Yeah. I've taken, like, Monday through Friday off and just done a full week-long vacation. I was off for a full week when I had COVID. But that's different. That's sick leave. So it was good. It was fun. Me and the family, we went to Omaha to go to the Omaha Zoo. The famed zoo. The famed Omaha Zoo. We had a good time. They have done a lot of work into their, like, little downtown market area. We walked around there, and it was pretty cool. Other than one of the places, we went into this place that had tons and tons of old toys, like old, old, old toys.
2:19
So, like, old-timey kid toys. Right, right. And just stuff. It was like a. Like, get the ball in the cup. Yeah, it was like an antique shop. It wasn't that old. But, I mean, they had, like, stuff from the 90s and the 80s and some 70s. Okay, so like Simon Says. Yeah. But they were, like, I don't know what it was. They were burning, like, an incense or something. A spice incense? It wasn't that. But as soon as I walked into that store, I got a headache and I got sick to my stomach. I'm just thinking about it. And the second I walked outside, I was fine. So the kids walked around and they picked all sorts of stuff they wanted, and then they realized it was all massively expensive because that place was so horribly overpriced. I mean, I saw a new in box, still in the plastic wrap, unopened, unassembled Rebel model of a Star Fury from Babylon 5, $90. Oh, wow. Wow. My daughter, one of my daughters picked up a little Hello Kitty thing. She wanted $45.
Mike Vinicore
person
Nate Shiversperson
Godzillagame
Rushgame
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
Pinball Newsorganization
Stranger Thingsgame
  • ?

    licensing_signal: James Bond licensing may be constraining code development; licensor approval pending for video clips in current code

    medium · Dennis citing unattributed reports about licensing approval delays explaining gameplay reveal postponement

  • $

    market_signal: Godzilla demand backlog (particularly Premium models) may be contributing to delayed Bond production timeline

    medium · Tony speculating that Godzilla's continued strong demand may justify November Bond machine run scheduling

  • $

    market_signal: Bond MSRP increases over recent games: Pro +$100, Premium +$700 over Rush; LE +$2,500 over Godzilla, +$1,900 over Rush

    high · Dennis providing detailed MSRP comparisons across three models

  • ?

    announcement: James Bond pinball officially revealed by Stern with four models (Pro/Premium/LE at $6,999/$9,700/$13,000 plus Keith Elwin 500-unit variant)

    high · Dennis stating official pricing and model information from Stern

  • ?

    product_strategy: James Bond gameplay video/livestream significantly delayed despite September 2024 reveal; code reportedly not far advanced with licensing approval pending

    high · Dennis noting Stern's historical rapid turnaround on livestreams (within a week) but still waiting; reports of incomplete code and pending licensor clip approval

    • 3:24
    She's like, never mind. Like, hello litter. Yeah, it was rough. But, no, we had a really good time. The zoo was excellent. If you've not been to that zoo, it's an excellent view. I never have been. Of every zoo I've been to, it's my favorite. We've been like three times now. But otherwise, just normal. I mean, worked around the house and got some stuff done and worked on getting the garage cleaned out. Yeah, for your Zoom Zoom. For my Zoom Zoom, yeah. Because there's more room in there now and things are more organized.
    4:04
    Maybe at some point we'll actually have the garage as more of a usable space and less of junk storage. Right. Well, it's hard to move past junk storage. I know. It is. So what have you been up to? Oh, I have been still playing. They've got a new season of Fall Guys, so I've been playing my Fall Guys. I started Hades back up again just yesterday, in fact, and was playing it this morning, trying to finally finish the end game on that. I actually went to play Alien Isolation, and I didn't remember what I was doing. And an alien came out, and I tried to hit it with a sun rod, and that worked about as well as you would think it would. So I was like, okay, let's go back to Hades because I think I hadn't played that since December. So I thought I probably could still kind of remember because I don't think I've played Alien since 2018. So anyway, so yes, it has gotten better doing Hades. And then I hosted, and you were on, another This or That for wristwatches that I do over on my YouTube. I'll have a link in the show notes for people that want to see it. We had a few other pinball personalities on. I also had a watch personality on this time. So we had a good blend, though, of folks. It was a lot of fun. So, yeah, those are, you know, they're not the most viewed things. They're pretty good for me in terms of live stream viewer count. But it's just a fun thing to do. Yeah, they're just a lot of fun. The only catch is I usually need to take a few weeks in between each one because it takes a while to build out the comparisons because I have to pre-prep all of it. Right. And it's just sort of like I need a few hours, actually. Just doing five takes a few hours usually because I have to research and find the proper pricing and pull the right specs and find all the links and preload those into a notepad and all the usual work stuff.
    5:46
    And so speaking of work stuff, we have finally worked up something that you and I have talked about for a while. We've joked about. I'll say you broached it many, many months ago. Maybe it was more than a year ago even. I don't remember at this point. Time has no meaning. when it comes to the Eclectic Gamers podcast. And that is Patreon. We finally have a Patreon established. I was speaking with Tony earlier this week. There have been all these discussions on Pinball about support for shows and all of that. And we have always historically just relied on, hey, we have some merch. We have a couple of shirt designs. If you want to buy those or a coffee mug, more power to you. And they don't do squat. They don't do squat. We have pulled. I just gave Tony our second withdrawal from our merch store. We have, profit-wise, I'm more than willing to share, we have made, so this is net.
    6:43
    This is total profit amount that the shirt company doesn't keep, about $60 across our six years of existence. So it's like, you know what? There are some other shows that are using Patreons.
    6:55
    I wasn't really familiar with it. Like, I'd never paid into a Patreon before. Yeah, I know, right? So went in, was communicating with Tony, and we're like, let's set it up. We looked at some of the options. And so the way we've currently got it configured is nothing – like the show is the show. The show is still freely available. That's how everyone's listening to it right now. We went ahead and established three tiers. We made a high support tier at $10 because I thought we'll go – since we're making tiers, let's go ahead and try that one out. But I didn't really expect anyone to want to do it. because we were mostly talking about having a $5 tier and a $1 tier. Right. Because while you have not subscribed to Patreons, you were familiar with a number of YouTubers that do offer just like a really low dollar tier as an option for people that would like to show some support but are not comfortable paying $5 a month. Right. And that's the stuff I've looked into. So it's funny because when you go into Patreon, they're like, minimum amount you should set is $3. I'm like, we're setting $1. What are you going to do about it? You're going to do nothing except let us do it. Obviously, you can't go too low or else you lose everything in fees. Right. But it was like, okay, so that's – 50 cents. That's right, 50 cents. You know, we maybe could execute – the way it works is like you have to pay on the $3 and less. It's 10 cents a transaction no matter what. So you definitely can't go to 10. And then there's a percentage. And the percentage, I think for $3 and less, is 5% to the credit card company, basically. And then there's Patreon's take, which is 5%. Anyway, that's all sausage-making behind-the-scenes stuff. So we set all that up. I put some announcements out online, but obviously this is the first part that we're talking about it. I do have a link in our show links. So we have our episode links, and then beneath that are the show links, which are in every description I upload. Right. This is now in the show links. It's the top one. So people, if you want to support the show, you have an option to do it.
    8:58
    And one of the things that's come up is the idea of exclusivity. So one of our – I believe one of our Patreons, but I don't know the name versus the online handles. But on Pennside, someone, Pismo Arcade is his handle. He posted and said, you should do something special for the – now, his idea was a bonus episode. Now, currently, I don't have anything promised to the tiers, but we easily have the option to push things out just to them even if we don't promise it. So, for example, the Patreons got to vote on how we're going to do Rumor Corner today. If we're going to do one rumor or two rumors. And surprise, 100% wanted all the rumors. Give it to me all. Give us all the rumors. We don't want to wait for your rumors. We don't want you to drip feed us. I thought at least one would. At one point someone did vote and they changed their vote. Because at one point I saw it wasn't 100%. And then I looked this morning and it was 100% again. So I was like, okay, that's what we'll do.
    10:01
    But so the thing is, you know, I don't. So I thought maybe we'd talk about that briefly here in the intro, because it is relevant to our content, so it feeds. But I'm like, I don't know what we do on a – like, the easy answer on the bonus episode would be Eclectic Movie Podcast, because not to be rude to any of our listeners, but we've forgotten more about movies than most of them will ever know.
    10:28
    Movies were a very big thing and still are. We've done a, yeah. Well, and just the fact that, like, leading up to the podcast and immediately after we record the podcast, we talk about TV and movies pretty exclusively. Yes. The thing is, it's totally irrelevant to our subject. Right. So I'm not sure that's a good incentive. Right. I mean, I don't know. It's an idea. Yeah, I know we've joked about doing, you know, the Eclectic Pop Culture Podcast and the Eclectic Whatever Podcast and all those other jokes we've made over the years. The only thing is we have no creativity on our naming, so it's always Eclectic Stuff. Right, it's the Eclectic Stuff in your other podcasts.
    11:09
    Now, the long-hanging fruit would be for me to just move Rumor Corner out of the free podcast entirely. Right. It is a relatively new segment. It doesn't historically belong. and throwing that behind the paywall and saying that's going to be its own standalone audio. But I'm not sure I want to do that yet. So that was an idea. Another thing I discussed with you yesterday was there have been some instances, Tony's the best example of this, where he has shot some Instagram video and thrown it up on the Instagram that he's, like, recorded just, like, first thoughts about a reveal or a release or something happening. instead of doing it like that putting the video link up only to the Patreon could be something right I thought about you know one of the ideas I had last night but I wasn't sure if it was a good idea so I didn't do it was if people would like maybe a day or two before the show airs for an audio or video thing to drop just sort of being like a cliff notes here's what's coming up in the latest episode like I could have mentioned you know we're going to talk about 007 we're going to talk about pinball adventures. We're going to be talking about Stadia and just kind of giving them a teaser. Right.
    12:20
    And I also had some thoughts last night. Was doing Patreon only related Q&As. Or even doing an occasional like you talk about like people talk about bonus episodes.
    12:34
    My thought as I was continuing to think about what would we do a bonus episode about. And I think the best way something like that would be to do like an eclectic gamers after dark. So it would be the, we work very hard to maintain our filter during our normal podcast. Yes. And, and, and the sheer amount of stuff that gets cut or bleeps of a few bleeps that slip through are far less than the reality of our normal conversations.
    13:02
    You're being very, the normal conversations. Actually, I know I must, even though I spill over more on my other podcast, I do the pinball show. So a lot of people are actually surprised. Like, they don't think that I use profanity. Which is hilarious because I think you swear more than I do. I might.
    13:22
    But so it's like, no. It's like, good. That's the illusion that we create. Though we're transparent that that is an illusion we create because we wanted the podcast to be playable in the car and you not have to worry about it. Exactly. So we try to minimize the double and triple entendres. We try to minimize the language and cover up and do stuff like that.
    13:45
    But, yeah, I could see doing like an after dark thing where it's just like, oh, filters off, full up normal, even if it's not about pinball or video games, if it's something else, stuff like that. Yeah. Another thing I considered was I could, I mean, you can share audio, video, images. is I thought maybe I could launch the Babies First series on Patreon. Oh. So for years, I actually, behind the scenes, and I share them just not broadly publicly. I make, like, Babies First. And Babies First is a series of cute, adorable baby duck going through all sorts of firsts. The reason I don't release them publicly is they're borderline cruel. so like they make fun of pinball companies in particular and i don't it's like i don't need people getting upset at a joke so like uh baby's first live catch baby's first pinball art package baby's first pinball reveal might be based off of something real recent i'm just saying i have some babies first and i've been doing babies first for years so i have a little pile of babies first and i sometimes will share them on private discords or in messengers and stuff, but I generally don't. I don't think I've ever shared one public. Maybe I shared Baby's First Live Catch, which was my oldest, on the Facebook at one point, but maybe something like that. Because I make them and I just save them in a folder. It's like cathartic. I'm like, why is this reveal like this? This is a Baby's First.
    15:24
    Baby's First left out, Lane. Baby's First multivolve. There's a lot of Baby's First. There's still many more that could, maybe it's for a short package.
    15:35
    There's been a number. So I've had some, so people can write in or, I guess more appropriately, I'll probably put a post on the Patreon and ask Patreons, I won't wait a little bit because a lot of people who only listen to the show didn't know we had a Patreon until now. Anyway, patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers, but we'll have the link in the description so you can just click on it. And before we move on though, I do want to go ahead and I figured this is something I've seen on YouTube with people. We should probably thank all of the new subscribers who have joined the Patreon because we very much appreciate it. So by tier, so our high support individuals, thank you to Amanda, Andrew, Cynthia, Matthew, and Zach. Our intermediate support members, thank you to Jedi McMuffin, Joel, Hoddy, Hudson, Rodney, and Tony. And our basic support tier, thank you to Kevin, Michael, Nick, and another Tony. None of which are me. None of which are Tony. But they are. They're Tony. Well, I mean, they're not this Tony. They're not this Tony. They're that Tony. They're Tony. They're the T in the tot. They're blessed by having the best name. They're blessed. We understand. It's okay. We love you all. There's a reason it was Tony, Tony, Tony. I mean, they just picked the best name for the group. That's how it is. It's just the best name. It always will be, I suppose. So let's bounce to pinball, Tony. This Tony. And the other Tonys who are probably listening. Thank you, other Tonys. So, let's start with the big dog, Stern Pinball. James Bond. It's finally really revealed. Mostly. They mostly revealed it at night. Mostly. So, there are four models. Kinda. I mean, there are, but they're not in the way that anyone who hasn't been following this would be thinking. So we've discussed already, because of the leaked images of the art packages and stuff, the George Gomez design. That's the cornerstone. That's the three of the four models. Pro model, art package themed off of Dr. No. It's $6,999. So let me just, I'll just round. So it's $7,000 for the Pro. That's a $100 increase over what they'd been charging for Godzilla and Rush. The premium, which is the You Only Live Twice art package, is $9,700. That is a $700 increase from what the premiums were for Rush and Godzilla, so just for comparison purposes. And the LE, which is themed around the Thunderball movie and limited to 1,000 units, is $13,000. That is a $2,500 increase from Godzilla. That's a $1,900 increase from Rush. And Rush is the most recent Cornerstone. Right. But Godzilla is the more popular game, so I name it.
    18:26
    Now, separate from that, the fourth game, which we don't know as much about, is one that Keith Elwin has designed. And I'll touch on that in a moment. Now, in terms of the – we've already talked a lot about, I think, the stuff in Bond. I don't know if it's worth really diving into. There's a lot of – The thing is, and why I had to say it's mostly revealed, is we still have not seen a gameplay release. There's been no gameplay video. There's been no gameplay live stream. They've continued to delay on that. Now, they being an official reveal, Pinball News had a video out, or shared a video at the very least, which was filmed during an event, potato cam, full on. Full on potato cam. I mean, it's like, there are all these iPhones and Samsung Z Flip phones and Pixel phones, and they all have great cameras. How are these all turning into potatoes?
    19:29
    People are not going out there with a camera that has the capability of doing 320p video and that's it. But anyway, maybe it was because it wasn't supposed to be filmed and the person was filming it. Like the video, it was very – it was difficult because from what I saw of it, it was pretty much just the back third of the game and the screen seemed to be like the emphasis. I was getting the LCD and then the part of the – I couldn't get a good sense of it. So gameplay-wise, I can't entirely remember what all we talked about with it on episode 176. As I look back at our notes, I think we really just sort of focused on the photos of the layout were known. So we've already talked about, like, the rocket, which vibrates in the upper left on all the versions. And the Premium LE has the jetpack magnet, Rush Q911 style. That'll let you pick up a ball and drop it on a tank. And then there's the Vuk with the Aston Martin with the cool roof. I mean, it's got some pretty cool necks. Yeah, it's real interesting. Yeah. But we still haven't seen how it should, like layout wise to me, it looks like it could be a lot of fun. But it's so weird to not yet really know. Right. And it's strange to me, like borderline insane to me to think that they've released this, but they've still not done anything showing gameplay. Because they've had all that time That they pushed back from the initial planned release Yet somehow we still don't have gameplay And that's crazy to me Because there's stuff that from the little Video clips and the little stuff looks cool The DV5 ejector Ball lock thing is cool as Hit I think it looks Great but I would like To see actual Real gameplay and Stern has always been very Good about that kind of turnaround. And it just feels like they've just completely fallen on their face with this release compared to, I mean, they have been the gold standard for years on how you do a release. Everybody else has hoped to have a release go as well as a normal stern release. But this time, it's just like the exception. It is just trash. It is there. I do agree with you. It's there. It's their worst release in my history of being in pinball to witness from them. Yeah. I will say that I don't agree that I don't hold them to the same gold standard on releases. They're normally pretty smooth. I don't feel they do everything the best. My biggest, like, I think the strategy of the lead up is really good that they do. like doing the teaser that lets you know the theme. And then a few days later, they drop a nice sort of basic, like, here's what the pro and premium sort of does. Like, I like that. I think it makes sense where they often will do the reveal through a news outlet like IGN and let them drop. And then at the same time, the second video comes out, they've got the high-res images, and you've got the information to the distributors, so you know the pricing and all of that. where I disagree on some of the reveal strategies is I still think when it comes to like letting you understand gameplay, they're not doing that great. Like there usually is nothing that shows you any substantive gameplay until they do the live stream. And live streams are live and they struggle because they're live. And so that's where when it comes to like reveal of information dump, they weren't always this way. But at this point, I actually feel Jersey Jack does a better job. just because it's like all at once. Part of that is, you know, it gets hard to know because sometimes you see more leaks out of Stern, but Stern also has more games that come out, so there's that. But with Jersey Jack, there's usually the, you know, they have the teaser trailer thing that tells you the theme because we always know with Jersey Jack. Right. But up until this point. But you also get another video that shows you some good deep gameplay usually. And it's controlled. So, and that's what Stern, like, the trailer showing you the premium and LE features are zoomed in, and you can't really get a sense of gameplay. So Jersey Jack's usually got that, and then they often have, like, an interview feature, which doesn't necessarily need to come out at the same time as the game, but I think as a strategy, it does make sense for people to really dive in and hear, like, what are the thoughts of the creators. Again, we're normally with Stern stuck waiting until the live stream. Right. But normally a live stream doesn't make us wait. We are still waiting. Normally the live stream is really rapidly after. Within a week.
    24:15
    And here it is. The reports I've been hearing and been reading about is this code is not very far along. And that's possibly where some of this stuff is. And I don't just mean like the rules aren't very well advanced. It's sounding like, allegedly, the licensor hasn't approved like all the clips and stuff that they've been using in the current code. and that's why they're so hesitant to, like, they're waiting to make sure everything is authorized.
    24:44
    It's just, to me, it's weird that they went ahead with the reveal without having that done. I mean, if you can't, yeah, no, I agree with you. If you cannot release even, like, a beta code that has, you know, stand-ins or something, at least, why would you push the release forward at all? If your code is in that shape, if it's not ready to go, why would you push the release? And that's not the only thing that's weird to me. So here's another interesting, I think that listeners will find interesting. So on the last episode of the Pinball Show, when we were going over all the information, because Zach Minney, my co-host there, is a distributor, he talked about what he knew and what he assumed based off of what Stern was telling them all. And one of the big things is the game run isn't until November.
    25:36
    Why are they releasing the information now? I don't know. And then under the normal protocols that have been existing for, I feel like, ever since Stranger Things, but I'm not positive on that, it has been those first run of pros that they build as the first thing go to the operators. And then you have to wait until the next run for homeowner pros. The next run, I believe, was reported to be April. That's so... It doesn't make any sense at all. One of the best things Stern has ever done historically has been, here's all the release information. The dealers get the games next week.
    26:17
    And again, they have been for a while running like the... Okay, I get the logic of let's get pros to operators first so that people can play the game and then they'll want to buy it. and then they'll, you know, go and play some more. Yeah.
    26:31
    Now then, this got shared, I believe on Nap Arcade, actually, and someone with, I think it was Gomez, the designer of the game, I think left a comment, like, he wasn't sure that that was true, about that this first run of pros will only be allowed to operators. Like, my understanding, it's been all of the games for quite a while now. and I then heard from another person not with Flippin' Out but another distributor who because they're like we've been totally under the understanding that we can only sell pros to operators on the first run they didn't tell us this because the way it started to play out was kind of like a I got the vibe or the read that Stern was kind of maybe a little annoyed that Zach had assumed but they didn't indicate that the policy had changed. At least I've heard it from two sources now. There was no change in policy that was instructed to the distributors. And I'll go ahead and opine a little bit. Sorry, I can be a little salty. I'll go ahead and opine that. If Stern thinks it's an obligation for any of us to come back and ask them, hey, did you change your policy?
    27:45
    That's just downright goofy. It's your job to share information and maybe don't play it all out in social media. and maybe do a better job sharing your information out because I don't think we're the ones that look stupid. No. We go off of what we've heard before. If you lay out a policy and somebody continues to follow the policy, you don't turn around and go, why are you doing this? The policy in and of itself makes sense to me. No, I think the policy makes complete sense. But of course the embarrassment that I feel like where a designer or anyone with a company would get concerned And I think it fair to get concerned because I saw your facial reaction I think people could hear it in your voice was if you finding out oh yeah no The first run of prose goes to the operators, and the second run of prose is half a year later.
    28:35
    Well, and the fact that the release and everything was in September, and it was scheduled for early September. but machines runs aren't starting until November is not a normal for Stern. Right, it's not. Now, I know, and part of it that may very well be in play is there is still a tremendous Godzilla demand backlog on the premiums in particular.
    29:08
    But again, if that's your priority, and why wouldn't it be? It is your best game. Why do the – again, it's like why do the – it's like I would assume we had to do the release because of the license agreements and da-da-da, except the release is such a bungle that it's an embarrassment. It's a terrible – this release is terrible. It looks like no one knows what they're doing, and every – the leak on top of leak is bad. Not like – so – and I'll go into that in a moment, but you – that's something you want to say. I do wonder if, with the 60th anniversary thing, if there's not a window for stuff. Because, as I spoke about, for those who saw the tot, the watch tot, there's a bunch of 60th anniversary Bond stuff being released in a very small window. Because, like, Triumph Motorcycles is announcing their 60th anniversary Bond stuff Tuesday. and there's some other stuff. Like there's a fairly small like one- or two-month window where a bunch of 60th anniversary Bond stuff is dumping. So I wonder if there was a window that they had to work with it. Maybe. But I'm not. I mean, I don't know. It's just a thought that popped into my head just because. Oh, yeah. No, that's a good point. And if people don't want to see that, I already said I'll have that watch link. It's near the end. If you jump to the end, we actually have a match-up where I didn't just match up watches to watches. I matched up a watch against a pinball machine, and that's where that one happens. So it's near the end of the video if you're curious just about that discussion.
    30:44
    Yeah, no, it's a good point because – but some of it, again, it's – so let's talk about the fourth model. Okay. The Keith Elwin model because we still haven't officially seen it. It's been acknowledged to exist by Stern. Okay. We know a few things because there was an interview with George Gomez and I believe Mike Vinicore with Nate Shivers on the Stern Insider Connected podcast. I did not listen to that podcast, but I read the transcript because they have like a text – a voice-to-text thing, which misspells. Keith Ellin became Keith Olsen at one stage. I'm like, who is Olsen? What does he do? Oh, it's Ellin.
    31:22
    Software's come a long way, but it's not 100%. so let me just real quick officially what we know is that the game is a 500 unit run it's a single level game it's going to have four spinners I don't know if all the spinners are the traditional spinner or if the odd job hat is counting as one of the spinning discs because both get called spinners anyway four spinners drops including an inline drop section and it's going to represent all the Bond movies, not just Connery, all of them. Everything about this sounds cool. And so it's going to be single level.
    32:04
    And, okay, so it sounds interesting. Call for price. The distros were given that sort of information. They don't, last I heard, none of the distributors know how many they're going to be allocated or anything official in terms of art. It just, all they've said is, like, when I last went to the Stern website is there was, like, a placeholder's shadow showing a picture of a pinball machine. and just saying that it exists. So they're acknowledging, you know, again, I think they probably felt they needed to do that to not blindside. And let's say you only have money for one and you're a huge Bond fan. Do you go get Gomez's L.E. or do you get the Elwynn game? You see, not everyone can afford both. Right. But here's the thing.
    32:45
    Then the 007 store had the images leaked, and it didn't make it look good at all. No. Now, my understanding is this game was supposed to have, in the interview, they note score reels. I believe they noted mechanical score reels. The placeholder image that the 007 store had showed digital score reels, which that was the thing that I noticed first and that deeply annoyed me. I like score reels. and the thought of a modern game with mechanical score reels is one of those little touchstone things that I like the concept of. So I was less than happy when I saw that image showing digital score reels.
    33:31
    But again, it's a leaked image. Is that actually what it is? Is that actually what we're going to see? I don't know. I will say that I am deeply disappointed if that is the route that they have gone. If this is a call for price, super special, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. For a store about a spy, they're terrible at information protection. They're really hot garbage. It's been interesting. And again, the leak stuff just amuses me. But it's so funny because, again, we saw like that video I mentioned that I believe I'd seen the link to from Pinball News. My understanding is gone. So Stern's trying to have takedowns to suppress, which in itself is funny. It's always funny, too, because the forums have already had this stuff downloaded, and they're resharing it, and they're not getting it, at least to my knowledge. They're not successful. I got in Pennside to pull links to this stuff. The stuff's out there.
    34:31
    It has its own name. They literally call it the Streisand effect. Once it's out there, it is out there. You can do whatever you want. You can make whatever changes you want. That screen capture of Beyonce making the weird face at the Super Bowl is going to be out there forever, no matter how many cease and desist you send about that picture.
    34:49
    Yeah, it's – so, I mean, it was – we can see the play field. So, again, I think it was just showing the – I would normally say I'm going to trust the interview and think that they mean for it to have mechanical score reels. But it just – it's such an unfortunate thing with the image leaking out. But getting back to what you were talking about with Triumph and the 60th anniversary window, the Elwynn game is about celebrating the 60th anniversary. It's not celebrating Dr. No or Thunderball.
    35:23
    So why isn't this one being shown yet? Everyone else is fitting into the window right now, right? So, I mean, maybe they're going to release it the same day as Triumph's motorcycle was going to be released. We don't know. I've not heard anything. Again, I'm like, why are we not showing it with – why were the Gomez ones done when they're done – shown when they're shown? Why wasn't the – why didn't they – I don't believe – and I can be wrong, of course, because I'm not there. I don't believe that the reveal structure was such that there was some obligation to show the Gomez games before the L1 game was ready. So why are we not showing them all together? Yeah. Why couldn't you wait until the L1 game was ready to show them all at the same time? That game is supposed to, I believe, be revealed this year, which would fit with everything else that's been happening related to Bond. Right. But, again, it's like – and they're not planning to – they're not sending any out until November. I don't get it. None of it makes sense. And, of course, it's Stern, so they're not sharing anything meaningful with anyone to explain what – I always get amused. And that's not unusual for a company, but I just, it's like, you look bad no matter what. It wouldn't hurt to kind of just sort of say, oh, yeah, no, this is what, you know, the Queen's death kind of, we know that got blamed for some of this, but at this point, I mean, that may have been true on the complications with the initial reveal, giving an initial reveal date and then pushing the date. But then they had to push the date again. October 5th is the official 60th date. Okay. So maybe here a couple days after this episode. Which would make sense why Triumph's doing their thing on the 4th. Right. Okay. Well, then maybe it's soon. But I don't know. I would have hoped if you were giving out mock-up images to put live on shops and stores before... It's not that far before. You would hope that the image would actually have real score reels and I hope that they are indeed real. That photo isn't 100%. I mean, I don't know. I ain't buying it. It's going to be too expensive.
    37:37
    Anyway, so that's what's been happening with James Bond. Because they are, I mean, yeah, there is a ton of just, I pulled something up real quick here on my tablet looking just to see what all it is for the 60 years of James Bond. Crispies are holding a charity auction for it.
    38:03
    Yeah, because James Bond Day is October 5th. There is, at Royal Albert Hall, there is going to be a James Bond concert leading up into it.
    38:15
    And yeah, there's just tons of stuff. Heck, there's like tons and tons of stuff going on. Hmm. Tons of stuff at these auctions are huge. but it looks like the 4th is basically being the big day for everything, because that's when the concert is. The 5th is James Bond Day.
    38:37
    A few other stern items. One also tied to James Bond is I have heard that the, and you've heard this actually as well, we both heard it, was that the pro models as of 007 James Bond are unified on pricing. So the MSRP, which is the Manufactured Suggested Reserve Price, is now identical to the minimum advertised price or the MAP. It's also identical to the, I guess, unilateral minimum price that a company is in reality allowed. So historically, there have been three different numbers. There's the MSRP, which is the recommended price that the distributors can sell the game for. Then they have a price that they're allowed to advertise, which has been lower than that MSRP. And then they actually had another price, which was the true floor, which was you can go down to this amount and not break contract and sell the game. Right. On the pros, those are all identical now. So in theory, unless a distributor has a special arrangement, which I don't know of any do, or they break contract, you can't get a pro for under MSRP anymore. I believe the same is true with LEs, but I don't know that for sure. Premiums, though, there's still wiggle room is my understanding. So they're kind of pushing for the premium. To be fair, normally the premium is the right, you're going to want, most people are going to want to go anyway. I mean, yeah, that's where I hear, Zach with Flippin' Out has often noted, at least when games are first revealed, he gets more orders on almost every game for the premium versus the pro. Now, sometimes that balances out over time. Godzilla didn't. He actually had a Godzilla Pro in stock up until recently. Godzilla Pro is a fun game. We played one yesterday. Yes, we did.
    40:27
    But it ain't a premium. No, the premium is just so superior of a game to the pro. And another final little bit of Stern news I wanted to share with listeners is that I have heard that we've got, actually I saw it on NAP Arcade, and I have a link in the show notes to it so people can see some photos if they want to reminisce, but the last run of Guardians of the Galaxy is online at Stern Pinball. It's been out for a while. It has been. And that's one of those games that started out kind of eh, and with code upgrades, became actually quite a lot of fun. So that's also one of the ones where, if I'm remembering correctly, I'm pretty sure I am. That's one of the ones where you'd prefer the Pro.
    41:13
    And I believe it's Pros that they're building. Yeah. Because the, I don't know, I think maybe I tried a Premium once. That's the one where I had the Groot Arms. The Arms and Obscure A lot of the things. The Office Gated the View, yeah. Yeah, no, that's one of the ones, that's like Game of Thrones, where I feel like the Pro is the superior version. Right, and the Pro still had the group mouth to open and load the balls in, and the drop target orb shot to lock and do some multiballs. So it had the most important mechs were in the Pro. Well, that was like when we played the Godzilla Pro. The biggest thing to me was the lack of the Mechagodzilla. It hurt so bad. Even more than the collapsing building or the collapsing bridge, the lack of the Mechagodzilla, I think, was very noticeable. Made you sad. Made me sad. So let's move to a company we have not talked about in quite a while, but we have before, Pinball Adventures.
    42:07
    So this is another thing I saw over on NAP Arcade. So another link in the show notes to NAP Arcade. Pinball Adventures has shared some photos of their prototype of their second game, which is called Elements. So if you want to go and look at some of the images, I'd known for quite a while they had announced that they had several games planned, all original themes, as I recall. Right. And the one they've been working on for quite a while is Punny Factory. Correct. And so they are continuing to work on Punny Factory, and it sounds like they've located or are in the process of locating to a new space. So there are some images of the Punny Factory cabinets and stuff as they've come along. Now, Pinball Adventures has never released a game before, but they are using Team Pinball, which built that Mafia game, which was a really, really overpriced EM-style game. Right. It didn't sell well, but they did build them. Yes. So they've got people that know how to build. So I don't really have any from the images. I don't really have any thoughts on elements other than my de facto license. If you want to sell a lot of games, especially if you're a startup company, you need a license if you really want to move units. Otherwise, it's so hard to get people excited. I mean, the other option would be what no one seems able to do, and that is get your game out there and actually make it like a value proposition. So, you know, people, but it's interesting because like with Spinal Tap, people would have forgiven a lot if that game wasn't $9,500 and what it is. Right. Because it is Spinal Tap and there were a few people that would have bought if it was $3,000 less. And if your gameplay is just amazing, I mean, look at TNA. We played the TNA Whitewood before any of the spooky stuff and we all love that game. And that is an option, but obviously they need to be sure they get the game out in front of people. That's right. You've got to prove it. You have to get the word of mouth going. You've got to get people going, oh, my gosh, this game is something special. Right, right. Other than that, I mean, if you can't do that and you got the game out at like $5,000 U.S. at this point, maybe some people will be like, I'll take a chance because it's cheaper than a pro. Right. But no one ever seems to do it. No, it's always like, oh, here's this little experimental blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, $8,500, $9,000. But, you know, we don't have – I haven't heard anything about, like, struggles with them or anything other than it's – obviously, it's taken quite a while to get out Penny Factory, but I haven't heard them take money or anything. Yeah, I haven't heard anything that gives me any bad feelings or good feelings. It's just – it's one of those things where it's like, oh, yeah, they exist. Yeah, they exist on paper. Yeah. Speaking about a company that not only exists on paper, but also exists in reality, because they've actually sold games to the public, Spooky Pinball. Don't have a lot here. Don't have a lot. Just, I had read online that Total Nuclear Annihilation, of course, they're doing their 2.0 run here, are planning to very, very soon. And they are putting in, or Scott Denise, the designer and programmer, is putting in a jukebox mode. And the jukebox is going to not just play his TNA music, but also other Scott Denise music, I guess, will be in the game. And you can just put it on and play EDM stuff, I guess.
    45:23
    Okay. I mean, I really enjoy it. I don't even know if I have the latest code on my TNA because I always forget. Like, if I remember, when you go to Spooky's website to get TNA's code, you are redirected to Scott's website. I get it because technically TNA is a contract build for Spooky, but it feels weird because it's also Spooky's best game, so everyone just kind of thinks of it as a spooky game. It's really just a spooky build, which when you play some of their other stuff, you understand that. I mean, I'm not a huge EDM person, but I think the soundtrack on TNA Bangs and to,
    46:04
    especially if you have a game room and it's in there, being able to just have it kick up into something. I can see where that's a cool idea. I would rather, Scott, go in and add a setting, personally, where I could put back in the original beep. I'd also like to go back in and put back in the original tilt warning. I don't care that it's the exact same Klaxon sound that was used in The Walking Dead. It's the best tilt warning sound ever. Put it in both. Why not both? All right, let's move to – gosh, we're covering a lot of smaller manufacturers today. Let's move to Home Pin. Now, this one's going to be a bit of a surprise to you because this has to do with some information that was sent to me directly, not to EGP. Ooh. So I received an email from someone. They asked to not be named, so I will not. Tony does not know who it is. And they shared with me some images of Home Pin's China Zombies. Do you remember the China Zombie game?
    47:00
    I remember it being talked about at one point, but it's, like, just vaguely. Yes. Okay, so a little bit of a history lesson, as best as I can remember. So apologies, and right into EclipseGamersPodcast.gmail.com if I'm recounting the story poorly. But after Thunderbirds came out, there was a lot of talk from Mike, who owns HomePen, about how he was going to make a – I think it was called China Zombies. The name was always a little – like, was it China Zombie, Chinese Zombie, Chinese Zombies? I think it's China Zombies was the name. But he had announced that his plan was to make a game oriented around the Chinese zombie mythology, which you might be, because you played Overwatch, you might remember there was an outfit that they gave May years ago for Halloween. That's the zombie outfit associated with the Chinese zombies. Right. And so I think the plan was Mike was trying to think of a theme that could get the mainland Chinese audience interested in pinball. And then the game just didn't happen. And I think with his move to Taiwan, decisions were made that this wasn't a theme that was, I think he even announced that this wasn't a theme they were going to move forward with anymore because it didn't fit the new strategy of the company or whatnot. So the reason why this came in is there's a high degree of similarity between the China Zombies layout and the Spinal Tap layout. And while I got this email after our last episode, but a while ago, I have since seen in the Spinal Tap thread on Pinside that a lot of people have been talking about how they think these two layouts are really, really similar. because while the China zombies layout was never shared from the surface, an under-cabinet shot was, and people are going and, like, looking where the coils are and where the inserts are and stuff. So this person who emailed it to me, they asked for the images not to be shared, and I took it literally. That's why you haven't seen them. Okay. This is the first time I'm hearing, okay. Yes. So because I figured, well, they wanted us both to see them, they would have emailed them to the Eclectic Gamers email, not to one of my other emails I do for some of my solo stuff. So just as an FYI, I have seen them. I have seen – so I have seen additional imagery, and I'm confirming that this layout looks a whole lot like Spinal Tap. and while I was asked not to share the images, I'm going to verbally describe kind of where there's some nuances or differences because I think some people may find it interesting. But the reason why I think this came in was we had had this discussion about Spinal Tap recently and I had shared the report that Joe Balser, famed pinball designer, was brought in by HomePen but then I heard he was only there for a hot minute and then was gone. And then we had heard a report that he was told, you're going to use some other layout, which is weird. Like, why bring in a pinball designer and then say, well, I've already got a layout. I just need you to tweak it. Why not?
    50:17
    And it would be understandable in my mind for a designer to go, you know what? I do my own layouts. I'm not going to start with someone else's homework and just finish it. So anyway, here's where it gets kind of interesting. If you go back to looking at the thread or the flyer of Spinal Tap people, you can get a view of it. But I didn't throw it into our internal notes, Tony. I'm sorry. I didn't think about it. The last one? But Spinal Tap has two kind of left-hand side ramps. There's an outer left ramp and then there's more of an inner left ramp. Okay? On China Zombies, there is no inner left ramp. Instead, the entrance of the inner left ramp is where there's a coffin toy. And a China zombie pops out of that and, like, shakes. And then to the right, where on Spinal Tap is the pod, the mech that they call the pod, there's a different mech. When it's not deployed, to me it kind of looked like a tombstone in terms of, like, the shape. It's kind of that cave entrance sort of shape. And then what happens is that folds down, and it's like maybe a mini diorama is the best way to explain it. It looked to me like there was a scared girl on it along with a dog, and they're like looking over at the zombie popping out of the other mech, the coffin mech. So that's the main difference mechanically that I saw. The far left ramp looked the same in terms of how it feeds. The pops look the same. The center drop bank looks the same. I only had really up-close stuff of the back of the play field. So I can't tell you as well about the other similarities and differences, but I did have a distance shot of the China Zombies game. And overall, it pretty much looks like the same layout of his final tap, other than the differences I've just highlighted. Interesting. That's one of those things that's kind of weird, because it almost feels like that would be a better looking or more interesting because it's something different than Spinal Tap. Yeah, it's funny, but we did just come off of talking about the importance of license. Yeah, I know. And I get Mike's strategy. Like that maybe with China in China. It could. Could have gotten some attention. In the United States, no. No.
    52:47
    But he doesn't care about the U.S. market. I mean, why else choose Thunderbirds? Well, yeah, no, that's been quite obvious. Well, and also just as we've generally seen, manufacturing and then shipping something as massive as a pinball machine elsewhere and then shipping in the U.S. does not do good things to your bottom line when it comes to your sale cost. Yep. So, anyway, I did confirm the person who wanted to give me some context was okay with this discussion, But I can't put the images on. Not even to our Patreon can I put them out. Because that was the ask, and I'm trying to honor that. Yeah, no, definitely. It's interesting. It's not surprising. I've spoken in the past on multiple times on how I think there's several groups and places that it would not be a bad idea to reuse play fields.
    53:42
    And Spooky has done it. And even before Spooky did it, I talked about that. I remember talking about that in I cannot even remember what episode it was, but where it wouldn't be a bad idea for some of these companies, especially the companies that are only putting out a game every couple of years to do some follow-ups using a similar play field. It's an age-old pinball tactic that could work real well as long as they have the correct fun to play play field when they did it. So I'm always – I'm not inherently against that type of thing. I mean, I think it would be kind of cool if HomePen wanted to push out some of this information. But on the other hand, since they're not making China zombies, I could see where it's like – it would just be – in fact, it might be kind of – the worst case might be what you basically did, which was like, it actually sounds more interesting. Yeah. And then people would be like, why couldn't we have China zombies? Right. And again, it's the whole license versus non-license. The thing is, for me, ultimately, I think it was the right move. Right. For me, Spinal Tap does nothing for me. Right. It's not a touchstone for me. It's not a historical touchstone for me. So I don't care. I mean, how much cheaper would China Zombies have been? Because all you save is the licensing fee. Right. Everything else is probably, unless China Zombies mechs were even more complicated, and then we're spending more BOM for that versus the, you know. Right. And already. This is an interesting. Spinal Tap is way too expensive. Yes, and that's the thing. China's zombies' success outside of China would have come down to the pricing, and I just don't think Mike can get it low enough. I think Mike is in a pretty interesting pickle, would be my thought, because the whole value in my mind – again, that's a common plea without knowing all the ins and outs of manufacturing. The strength of picking where he's building was about the inexpensive labor supply. If he's not able to use that to keep the games price competitive against the U.S. games, then what good was it? Right. He might as well have set up in America where the audience is and built. It's the same sort of challenge that I think Haggis has, and I think we've talked about that before. It's like it's tough. you've chosen a very expensive labor market. And while there might be more per capita demand in Australia than anywhere else for pinball, I don't know if that's true or not, but it sometimes feels like it. It feels like all the Australians love pinball. The market for all the game sales is in the U.S. And so unless you want to only be a regional player, you're really behind the eight ball if you're not based in the Americas to do the build, in my view. and you could make up for that like the additional shipping and all that if you can save so much on the less expensive labor pool which doesn't exist in Australia but does exist in China but Spinal Tap does not make me feel like you were able to properly exploit that No No that game is not Just the looking at it it is not You look at it, and you're like, this should not be $9,500. Correct. Ever. No. And that's, you know, it's unfortunate for them, but, you know, it is what it is, as we said. You know what we also say, Tony? We say it's time for Rumor Corner. Rumors. Nothing more than rumors. I know there's an actual song. I just like to sing first. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
    57:11
    Rubber Corner. Rachel's got the news before Napa Caves.
    57:25
    Is that right, Tony? Yeah. As I noted, the Patreon people, our supporters, We thank you so much. They have spoken. I had a pull up for them because I have received a bevy of rumors lately. I had, I think, what's my, what was my count up to? I think I had five. Yeah, I had five come in before we started recording at various times. A couple of these were time sensitive. And by time sensitive, I mean I have two rumors that pertain to this year. So I asked, is it okay for me to drip-feed this and do one this episode? Because I'm worried about running out of rumors. Rumors are rumors. They're made up. I could invent a rumor if I needed to. But it's like I'd rather go with the Tiki rumors. Real rumors. The rumors that might be real. Well, because we have the NAP arcades of the world comparing me to really bad baseball players. And that hit like a 142 or something. I don't know. But my point is I'm trying to get the batting average up where I can. but I also don't want to work very hard for it. So, you know, it's like that. So anyway, but they're like, no, no. The risk, of course, with the drip key was what happens is if one of these rumors turned out to be true and we found out between this episode and the next episode, that's no longer a rumor I can use because that would be a reality. It would be like, rumor corner, telling you stuff you already know. Rumor corner, look at my great big brain. So I'm like, that doesn't work. We got this rumor a month ago. We just finally decided to share it the day after they announced it. Well, the point is, Patreon people are like, drop all of the 2022 rumors now. Like, okay. So here we go. Drop them like this. Here they are. This is what you guys want. This is what you guys are going to get. So the first one, Chicago Gaming Company. We've talked about them before. Obviously, they're in the process of continuing to push out Cactus Canyon remakes. I've heard they finally have the toppers built. Oh, that is. Stuff for them to build. So the LEs are now going out. It's a little tidbit. That's not the rumor, though. we've been hearing for quite a while that the next game is an original license we we have discussed that the most common rumor report theory is that it is pulp fiction we've talked about that before i have received a rumor again this is alleged this is not confirmed i'm not saying this is true but this is the rumor that came in not for me this came in is that it is pulp fiction it is done And they are actually building it right now, as in it's on the line in some capacity. Interesting.
    59:59
    Adding to that, this is still the same rumor. It's so ready to go that there is a chance it will show up at Expo later this month. See, here's what bothers me about this rumor. Cactus Canyon was ready to go and show up at Expo. And it did. And that was a massive cluster. And it did. It did show up. But it was kind of a cluster. It's just, it's weird to me to think that it would be on the line considering the problems they've had with, except for if the Cactus Canyons are done, they're just waiting for the toppers, which that's where the missing parts have been is on the toppers. The machines can be done so the line can be open because they don't need the line to do the toppers. The toppers are, so. CGC may have more than one line. That's also a possibility.
    60:46
    So. I never thought about that. I mean, they just. I mean, because. release. Yeah, they do arcade stuff. They also, I think my understanding, and again, people can correct me if I'm wrong, but they are Churchill cabinets, so they do cabinet builds, too, for other companies. And so, they've got the ability to manufacture and scale and shift stuff around. So, again, rumor might not be true. Add on to that rumor, though, I've continued to, I've heard this before, we've shared this before, but I've heard yet again that this game is single-level no ramps. Well, that makes complete and utter sense for a Tarantino movie. Yes, yes. In fact, I would be amazed that he I'm still like, gosh, you know, because you're thinking of like the clips or whatever that would be in the movie and I'm going to be like, you know, he's going to be like he wanted it to be a wood rail or something. Yeah, yeah, no, no, totally. It shouldn't have flippers. I'm having to argue with it. We really need flippers. Yeah. It's like, No. No. We want gobble holes. I want it to run on a battery. It needs to have gobble holes, and it needs to have feet all over the place. Yep, yep, yep. I'm imagining that the leg levelers should be, I've heard this in rumors, but each one will be one of the women's feet. Yep, and you have to twist the toes or something to make it change. The final wizard mode is just Uma Thurman's feet on the skeleton. I'm going to call you a big toe and I'll be off.
    62:19
    All right. I mean, that would not be Pulp Fiction, but. No, no, that's true. That's not how I was like, oh, wait, no, that isn't Pulp Fiction.
    62:31
    Her big toe will move a little bit. We'll work at it. No one knows the difference. All right, so that's rumor one. Here's the. Oh, man. That's right. Here's the other rumor.
    62:41
    Here's the jackpin ball. Rumor is, again, alleged. Again, not from me. Can't reveal my rumor sources.
    62:50
    Second game. Might drop it this year. It's all coming down to parts availability. The game is ready to be built. They don't have all the parts.
    63:01
    But that they want to. They actually, for reals already, accept they don't have every part they need to build it. But they might before the end of December.
    63:12
    That would be impressive. I mean, because that's something they've not pulled off. Nope, never. I don't think they've ever gotten a game out within 12 months of a final one. Oh, you know what would be hilarious? It just reuses the Toy Story play field. It's Toy Story 1.
    63:31
    There was a, you wouldn't know about this, but there was a live stream where Jersey Jack was present. and they were talking about game development and Toy Story stuff and all that. And one of the employees who was present apparently had indicated that, no, the information that had been shared by another person with JJP was not completely 100% accurate.
    63:59
    Disney basically said, you're going to do Toy Story 4. Not, oh, yeah, we would like you to do Toy Story 4. And then they were all like, absolutely, that's a great idea. Now, the plan was originally to use the older films, but the game Toy Story was supposed to come out years ago. Right. And because it got delayed so much and then Toy Story 4 came out and they were so late on using the license, Disney was like, all right, the conditions have changed. It wasn't Toy Story, as I recall, originally supposed to drop like shortly after Wonka? I guess and that was my thought but it's weird because obviously Toy Story is a Lawler game and so was Wonka I don't know if maybe in the hierarchy if that was even different like what if it was supposed to be before Wonka I had always thought yeah instead of GNR I remember us talking that's part of it is I remember us on this show talking about when GNR came out we were like why wouldn't you do Toy Story the movie wasn't that long ago It would make the most sense to do Toy Story, but it was DNR, and then we had to wait two years for Toy Story 4 from that. And now I'm like, I don't know. Anyway, I may not know about that. I just need to know if you're rumor-tained. I am. Okay. There's so much rumor-taining. Well, there were two rumors, so I thought my odds of rumor-taining you were really, really good. So why don't you video game-tain us? What's going on? There's been some interesting stuff. There's been some big news. Okay.
    65:38
    First up on the no, say it isn't so, nobody ever saw this coming. Google announced that they're closing Stadia down. What? I know. Say what? I'm completely surprised. It came as a complete surprise to, actually, to be fair, It came as a complete surprise to a few people. Didn't they, like, a month ago say that they weren't planning to end it, though? It was a little bit longer than that, but it was early summer. They talked about they still had a plan, and they were pushing forward, and they had all these plans and everything.
    66:16
    But instead they've decided, in true Google fashion, to shut down something. Now, what is surprising is they are going to be refunding hardware purchases, and they're going to be refunding game purchases through the Stadia store. Okay. Which is very positive. That's pretty positive.
    66:38
    The Stadia developers found out about the Stadia shutdown the same time everybody else did. Probably to prevent a leak would be my guess. Right. But there are a lot, and I've seen a lot of reactions. I was going through like an insane amount of stuff on Twitter, which I hate. But there was a lot of smaller development companies and small indie development groups that had Stadia exclusive games slated for release next week and in November. The first they heard of that, Stadia was going away, and the store was closed, and none of the stuff that they've been working on for the last several years was actually going to be sold and that they're just basically out multiple years of work was the announcement.
    67:34
    Ouch. So there are, like I said, there's a fairly large amount of them that I've seen talking about it because it's just, it's like one of them was like somebody, they retweeted the link and they're like, my game is supposed to release in November. Yeah, because this is obviously unlike a traditional model where if Nintendo quits making the Switch, games can still come out for it. It doesn't take anything away. Yeah, and in this case, because it's a completely online service, when it's shut down, it is gone. Everything is gone.
    68:13
    Which is also why immediately after the announcement, a lot of Cyberpunk 2077 players on Stadia started reaching out to CD Projekt Red to try and get them to set up a way to cloud save. Because these are people who have hundreds of hours in the game that's about to go away. So they're wanting to find some way to pull their save out of Stadia and make it so it can be put into another version of the game. I'd like to explore with you a little bit, if you wouldn't mind. Why do you think it failed? Because I have seen a little bit of discussion online, of course, and the narrative that I will summarize, perhaps fairly, perhaps not fairly, from the Google fanboys is the haters just decided to destroy this from the get-go, and it's all their fault.
    69:11
    I don't think that's true. A, Google has a massive reputation for taking very popular things, which Stadia was not, and just shutting it down. Yes.
    69:24
    We've been affected by that on some of our stuff early in the podcasting days that they shut down. Yeah, back in the old days, we actually started about the first six months of our podcast, for those that most don't go back that far, were on Google Drive. And Google Drive had a sharing capability that actually could be used with a feed service to do your RSS. And then we received an announcement that they were reforming Google Drive. Obviously, Google Drive itself still exists, but they restructured how it worked. And that option, the way the shares would function, would no longer be compatible. So we moved to SoundCloud. We still actually – I use the same old feed, FeedBurner, which Google also bought and took over, and Google also doesn't support anymore. Right. They actually back earlier this year, like in June or July, shut down all of the email capabilities of it. They put it on a more stable footing. Basically, and I'm hoping that Stasis will have an alternative RSS if they don't. But basically, they're like, we're not going to maintain this. We put it on stable architecture so people can still make and have RSS feeds. But like email lists and detailed analytics, that's all gone. This is just, we're going to go ahead and keep this because a lot of things use FeedBurner. But they just bought it and then didn't do anything with it, and then it sucked for a long time. In fact, you go into FeedBurner today, it's still like there are iTunes tags you can go and choose. They're not right. iTunes changed the tagging.
    70:54
    So the options and the drop-downs are not the same as what iTunes uses anymore. I used to use my RSS feed was a Google feed even prior to that, that Google shut down. And then purchase feed. And then the one thing that – remember, what was the stupid Facebook wannabe they had? Google Plus?
    71:16
    Yeah. Back when we started the podcast, I used to put out the episodes on that too because Google decided that they were going to make a Facebook killer years after Facebook was already established, just like they decided to make a console killer years after all the major console manufacturers were well established. So here's my theory. And I got to – I mean it gets weird because Google's got – it's like Apple. It's got a huge – like there's this core, hardcore fan base that worships everything they do. And it gets kind of gross because it's hard to have a sane conversation. It's like console. It's just – yeah. No. Fan voice. Yes, yes. And so I remember because one of the first articles I saw on Reddit, the first commenter I saw about the Stadia shutdown was a guy going, you know, when it announced, I came on here and I raised some concerns about how they were launching the product and how the structure was. And I got downvoted into oblivion.
    72:17
    And so, yeah, there's going to be some schrodinger for those of us who sat here saying there's a lot that this isn't working right. And just saying that the media turned is completely fanboy, unfair, nonsense. Like, do you remember the ad campaign for Stadia? I do. It was stupid. It was really stupid. It was pretty bad. And it didn't go all that long, either. No. Well, and things that Stadia has this huge issue that a lot of places might not be as big of a thing, but being an always online, so everything is downloaded. If you have download caps or you're someplace that gets throttled once you cross a certain threshold of data usage, which even for high-speed fiber internet, companies still throttle people when they cross a certain threshold. That's going to instantly hurt you. Yeah. A little ahead of its time problem. Yeah. And the fact that you don't own anything. To be fair, they are paying people back. They're giving the money back, which is far more than I would have expected. But, I mean, that was always the thing is you never owned any of this. This isn't like you bought a PlayStation and then Sony goes out of business. You still have a PlayStation and you still have whatever games you have physically or installed already. so you still have stuff like that there's still some possibilities that I think things like that all were a very big injury to Stadia's existence the fact that they did not have any like exclusives I guess they have some but they never had a killer app they never had a big one that would really draw people They needed a God of War or Halo or Mario Galaxy, and they didn't have any of that. Right. And I did see an article that they had been approached by Kojima. Yes, I heard about this. For an exclusive follow-on to UPS Simulator.
    74:40
    Yes. This one would be called FedEx. Yeah. But they turned it down. They didn't want it. Interesting. did they see that? Kojima is like gold so maybe they already knew the writing was on the wall that's not a developer you want to be like my game was about to go out tomorrow because then Jeff is going to go on the pinball awards and he's going to rake them over the coals because he's got to defend Kojima no matter what yeah sometimes it feels like that's all that game awards show is go after all of Kojima's enemies I swear Oh, yeah. No, I don't know. I don't understand. Yeah, Kojima is like completely untouchable gold and some of his stuff's not. Some of his stuff is great. It's a little weird. Some of it's a little fried. But, no, I think that's the big thing is I think this is a concept that was probably ahead of its time to begin with. I think that they're still keeping a lot. They're keeping the back end, and they're offering stuff that they built for the back end out as part of their Google services to people.
    75:50
    So Google, I think, isn't super hurt by this. They're keeping where most of the money went. They're keeping the data and the stuff they designed. Yeah. Well, I mean, they didn't have to refund on the hardware. No. So that they are doing that, I think, speaks to that they are in the position to do it. Right. So I just think it's something that we could see more of in the future, and it was just not there yet. It's not been the first time that the first person to market with something doesn't take off. It's the second or third person doing the same thing that becomes the big hit. But streaming is stuff that we're seeing other companies experiment with. Right. Not to the full-throated example that Google did, but, yeah, it's an interesting thing. I think fundamentally when it comes down, I'm going to Google plus it. I'm going to say this is an example where Google went into a saturated market space too late in the game to have a good shot. And it's not like how it was in the 90s where different companies were kind of fighting for – obviously, the 80s was real bad with these consoles everywhere. And then you had some stuff get established, and then you had a shakeup in the 2000s. And since then, it's Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, and there's not room for a fourth. Well, and the thing is Stadia didn't bring enough different or enough special to the stage to create their own environment. I think that's where your app thing comes into play. I think what they would have needed to have done is the tech alone is not enough. There are too many people with bad internet that already are invested in other architecture. This was for people that had deep enough wallets to buy every system that they want, had the internet to actually take advantage of it for whatever incremental benefits, like being able to play in any room that they want, with very little load time, you know, sort of, like, you had to, it was very niche, in a way. It wouldn't have to be niche if you didn't have any other way to play games. But almost everyone does, who's a gamer. What I think they would have needed to do is not just develop their tech, which was very cool, but to have come in with development, first-party development studios and be like, we got 15 launch games only for us. Because you've got to establish yourself. It's not like how Sony and Microsoft for this latest generation had all their exclusives delayed. It's like they're established. We're going to buy their hardware anyway. We made fun of them for not having any cool exclusives, you know, waiting two years for Halo Infinite and waiting. And then getting what you got. Yeah, and then give me what you got, and then whatever's going on with Sony stuff, because I don't follow it as closely. But it's like Google was just, anyway, this is just what Google does. Yeah, it's Google doing Google's things. Yeah. So we'll see.
    78:40
    I do think it is interesting, specifically with the Cyberpunk players reaching out, because Cyberpunk has had a major renaissance.
    78:54
    We played it. You and I both played it at launch. Yep. It was super buggy. One of my worst gaming experiences in the modern era. It was super buggy. It was super terrible. They expected to sell 30 million in the first year. They sold 13 million, and it was just trash. And it still made them a ton of money. Right, right, right. But it wasn't what they expected. The reviews were trash. Everything was trash. they're actually in the middle of a big renaissance right now because with the latest patches having coming out, the bugs finally being fixed,
    79:30
    Netflix just dropped their Edgerunner cyberpunk animated anime thing, and the reviews on that show are amazing. It's supposed to be great. Oh, so I guess we'll see two seasons of it. Yeah. Hashtag Netflix burn. Three at most. Yeah. biggest problem with Netflix is most of the shows I've enjoyed on Netflix last maybe three seasons then they're gone and most of the time they don't finish the story so but the game has finally crossed the 20 million copies sold and they have been hitting a million concurrent players online every day for the last week-ish or so since everything's taken off. So they're having an actual renaissance for cyberpunk.
    80:31
    We'll see how that plays out in the end. Honestly, since I gave up on it with the bugginess and the issues and everything else, I've never gone back to it. I might go back and start over at some point. I mean, there's no way I could. I won it, so I have no interest in it. To me, it's done. Yeah, I didn't finish it. It got to the point where it's just like, nah, I'm good.
    80:57
    So I never finished it. So we'll see. I might go back at some point, but I keep saying that about a million games. So one of these games, it will be real.
    81:06
    Skull and Bones. I've heard of it. I feel like I heard of it a long time ago. Skull and Bones is the pirate game. Yeah, I was like, isn't it a ship game? Yes, it's a ship pirate game that they've been talking about since 2017. It was supposed to come out in November. They've pushed it until March of next year. This came into development in 2013 and was officially announced in 2017. And now it's supposedly going to come out in 2023.
    81:35
    Ten years of development. Maybe just convert it to DLC for Sea of Thieves or something. Right. I know. It's one of those things. It's one of those, I swear, it's people played the one Assassin's Creed and they're like, oh, my God. Everybody likes that. We haven't played that one. Everyone likes the pirate section, so let's just make a pirate game. And, I mean, in this day and age, I know tech has slowed down compared to what it was in, say, the 90s. But still, how can you take a game that started programming in 2013 and have it be relevant in 2023 unless you've completely rebuilt that game like nine times? And maybe they did. They might have. Maybe that's the issue. We need a Waha phone for it.
    82:26
    We'll see. We'll see how that goes out. immediately after our last episode dropped, Rockstar got hacked. What? It was like the next day. What? Rose Goobs?
    82:40
    Why did they have to? They always hack the day after we release. Come on, people. You've said it for years. You've got to think about us. You've said it for years. You've got to think about us. Don't do all the big stuff like when we've got to wait two weeks. Yeah. I mean, I almost forgot to put it in the notes. Yeah. Because it happened so long ago. I would have never remembered. Because that was... I mean, that was all the rage for a hot minute. It's so ugly.
    83:01
    I know. And he's a... People are really upset about what CGI looks like. People were super upset about what it looked like, and it's like, this is like pre-alpha stuff. This is like placeholder anime. It's like they see, like, somebody released the storyboards for the next Star Wars movie, and they're like, this CGI sucks. It's storyboards.
    83:27
    Anyway, it was so... People were so upset about how bad the game looked. It's like, isn't this game not expected to be out for like years yet? Yeah, no. They've only just now been willing to confirm that they are working on it. It's like they probably haven't even hired... They've got like three artists that have been assigned to, hey, make stick figures so we can make sure this kind of works. There you go. There's the bleep we talked about because we occasionally... Yeah. But what's interesting about it is reportedly an arrest has already been made. Oh, okay.
    84:06
    Reportedly a 17-year-old has been arrested for the hack and the leak. And there's also unconfirmed information that they were responsible for the big Uber hack the week before.
    84:21
    Oh, the baby's first kiddie script program. I'm a hacker mommy I'm a hacker I saw that movie with Angelina Jolie and now I'm a brilliant hacker I'm going to use Cookie Monster Attack from the Apple IIe so that was one of those things I remember making with what the leak was I remember making a comment to you and somebody in one of our chats it screamed an internal comment release because it was 90 minutes of in video which seemed crazy to me but apparently it was an outside source I mean that is See he didn have the throttling problem He probably had Stadia. Yeah, he could have Stadia. It worked for him. He didn't get throttled after so long. Didn't have to pay extra.
    85:18
    Oh, I did forget to mention Steam Deck. Steam's little handheld Twitch-looking thing. They released a spot talking about their top games of September 22 by hours played on Steam Deck. Vampire Survivors. I don't know that one. It is an early access game that has been getting huge, huge positive reviews.
    85:49
    Elden Ring. Game of the Year to a lot of people. Yep. Stardew Valley. Very popular. Of the decade to most people.
    85:58
    Cyberpunk 2077. Renaissance. In the middle of its renaissance. Hades. Best roguelite ever made. Oh, you don't agree. I'll top three it. Okay. I'll top three it. Okay. It could be number one. It just was Binding of Isaac for me, and I don't like a lot of roguelites. I don't have Binding of Isaac in my top three. But it's famous. It is. It cries. Cry for FTL.
    86:31
    I'm not surprised. No Man's Sky. Renaissance of the decade. Yeah, honestly, that's a game that's had an amazing bounce back.
    86:41
    And the least surprising game on this entire bloody list, Skyrim. Yeah, yeah. Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered.
    86:50
    Okay. That's good. It's great. I played that game to completion on PlayStation because I got the Spider-Man Edition special PlayStation thing when I got it. When I was like, hey, I want to get a console, and I got a PlayStation. And it was a great game. I really enjoyed it. Cult of the Lamb? I don't know. That, I think, got a lot of positive buzz from the Devolver video, like E3-style video they did. I had heard, though, that a lot of people got it, said it's there at the time. This was over a month ago. There's not a lot to do in it. So once you kind of, like, you can do everything in it really fast. But maybe they put out more updates. Right. It's the Devolver game, so.
    87:32
    It looked neat. Yeah. But I never downloaded it to my Steam. And Disney Dreamlight Valley. I don't know what that is. It's like their MMO where some of their characters are, like, hero type, like fantasy hero archetype things. if it's the one I'm thinking of. So it's interesting, just an interesting list of stuff. The fact that No Man's Sky in there, I mean, it has been, they've done amazing things. There's a number of older things on that list. So Stardew, Cyberpunk, Hades, No Man's, Skyrim, I don't care what generation it is, all of those are games that have been out, like, over a year. Right. And, I mean, I can understand the ability to take Hades with me and play on my lunch break or whatever. I can see why. Sure, Stardew's got the same thing. Stardew's the same thing. I can see why that would be popular.
    88:30
    So, I just thought it was a real interesting list. It is. And then we'll finish up with happy news. Sure, why not?
    88:40
    Sorry, streamer bros. Should have done YouTube. No, Twitch actually put out a blog post talking about their revenue share. Because there's been a huge push, including a large number of signatories on a, what do you call it? Petition? Petition. To increase their share to a 70-30 split, which is what YouTube does. Right. Because Twitch does a 50-50 for most of us plebs. Right. Twitch does 50-50 except for certain people who got special things. Well, they put out a big blog post. We will be including the link to the blog post in the thing. I did put it in the notes.
    89:25
    Because it's large, and I'm only going to touch on the highlights. They acknowledged that over the years, some larger streamers have received personalized deals with larger splits in different terms. And they decided last year to stop offering that. Wow, that's big. So they are now making adjustments to bring all this, everybody more into line. So one of the adjustments they're making, and they've already released this information to the people who are affected prior to this being released,
    90:01
    the streamers who already have a 70-30 split, which are what a lot of these big name, high number streamers have, will retain their 70-30 split. for the first $100,000 earned. And then it would reduce to a 50-50 split after that.
    90:22
    Now, they say that they will, they have made changes to their advertising split. So that people, streamers get more money from the advertising than they do. So they should, so they will, or than they used to. So, if they run more ads, they'll make more money because they want more ads run. Okay. And their other argument is, well, and people who receive prime subs are paid at a higher amount because they're paid as if a prime sub was a normal sub.
    91:03
    So, Twitch on the back end eats the difference between what a prime sub actually costs and what they receive. So that is one of the ways they say, well, it's 50-50, but you actually get more. If you run more ads, you get more. You run more this, you get more. All your other stuff gets you more. These changes will go into effect June 1st for the people affected when their current contracts terminate after June 1st. they will go into this for the people who already have that higher setup.
    91:45
    Now, Twitch did say that in rare cases, they will continue to negotiate custom agreements on a case-by-case basis, but they are reducing those cases to the bare minimums. I can tell you right now there's probably three that I can think of. I can think of one for sure off the top of my head that I can guarantee is going to be negotiated with specially just because of how big it is. And that's going to be critical role. Because the last thing they want to do is lose the streamer that brings in three plus million a year by itself.
    92:24
    And that's just on critical roles cut. because when Twitch had that big leak, they made $9 million in three years. So the last thing they want to do is lose them. We know just from the way things are that Twitch has already had to make special deals with them because Critical Role is allowed to live stream on Twitch and YouTube simultaneously with the only caveat is the only place that has live chat is on Twitch. Now, I had heard, and I don't know if it's ever been implemented, is more recently there's at least been talk about Twitch modifying the agreements so that affiliates and partners could dual stream on both. Right. I don't know if that went forward or not. I don't know. I've not heard of that spin. I know it was a big no-no for a long time. It was when I signed our EGP agreement for affiliate status. It flat out said, once you accept this, you cannot live stream. In fact, I think we were obligated, technically, to not even move the VOD over to YouTube for a set period of time, like a week or something. And that's, like Critical Role, they do that. They move the VOD to YouTube in a week.
    93:42
    But they now are allowed to live stream on both at the exact same time. But, again, that's basically the bull in the china shop getting to make its decisions. Right. Yeah, I understand.
    93:56
    But they say the reason for the 50-50, the original reason they went with the 50-50 split originally is because, was the signal to everyone that we're all in this together. But some animals are more equal than others, Tony. Just because the streamers do all of the work and create all of the content and do all of that doesn't mean that what Twitch does on the backside isn't important, according to Twitch. Which is valid. It is true.
    94:28
    They say the reason they will not go to a 7030 is because of the high cost of delivering HD, low latency, always available live video to almost every corner of the world.
    94:39
    And here's the part that got me. They say, using the published rates from Amazon Web Services Interactive Video Service live video costs for 100 concurrent users, or for a 100 concurrent user streamer who streams 200 hours a month are more than $1,000 per month.
    94:58
    Well, I will say that's probably true because that's the published rates from Amazon Web Services. But isn't Twitch owned by Amazon? I'm pretty sure they'd get a better deal on the back end. Yeah, I would assume. There's probably something for that bulk need that comes at scale. That'd be like saying, how much does it cost to build a pinball machine and you go to Pinball Life and tally up the parts? Like, yeah, but that's not buying in bulk. Right. So I'm sure their rates are actually much lower than that.
    95:29
    But that is their reasoning why they're not making the larger change, why they're not matching YouTube. and it will be interesting to see what kind of changes we get. I'll be honest, having done YouTube gaming stuff, watched people on YouTube gaming, watching live streams on YouTube versus Twitch, in some ways I will agree with a lot of thoughts that Twitch is better in a lot of ways. But I don't know if it's, you know, that much better. Yeah. I think this is going to give a lot of creators pause. It will depend on the creator. I mean, so here's the thing. So the two big advantages that I think of when I think of Twitch versus YouTube, having live streamed on both now, is Twitch, it seems the discoverability of the live stream is a lot better than the discoverability of your live stream on YouTube. And second, it is a lot easier to establish a monetized channel on Twitch than it is on YouTube. Yeah. So for a lot of smaller streamers, they don't really have any choice because if they were to go to YouTube, they would not be monetized at all. Right. And so I think that aspect is, I mean, just again, just comparison-wise, because it's been a while, but I think Twitch's affiliate thing is you have to do a certain number of streams with three concurrent viewers average, and you need to have like 50 followers. EGP, we got that in a month. Right. When we started – because we pushed it because we were going to livestream a tournament. Right. And we were pushing to get to the – and it wasn't even for the monetization. We pushed because we wanted to have a higher priority for the better bandwidth so people could choose a different – there's a term for it where you could pick like, oh, I want to see it in 480p or whatever. Right. You didn't get that as a free – you had no control over that. So with YouTube, you needed – currently, YouTube is making some changes. I don't know the details of them all yet. But currently, YouTube requires you to have, I think, 4,500 hours of content viewed within a year. It has to be within a 12-month cycle. You have to have 1,000 subscribers, and those are the two main hurdles. And then you can request to go into partnership status. So it took me on my watch channel, I believe, 13 to 14 months to do it. On average, because YouTube shares that, on average, it takes 22 months for a YouTube channel to reach monetization criteria.
    98:22
    So it's a lot more work where you don't get anything while you wait. You get nothing. Whereas with Twitch, in a month, you can start getting your little 50-50 split of the bits and the stuff. I don't know when – I don't remember ever getting ad money as an affiliate. Maybe that's only for partners. I don't know. Yeah. But it's – the shares with YouTube are so much better. As you noted, with the 70-30 plus, with YouTube, it always felt like there was more monetization options. So whereas YouTube struggles with live discovery, VOD discovery is excellent. Yes, it is. Most of my YouTube income, I believe, at this point is ad revenue on prior recorded videos. I get not huge amounts, but I get a decent amount of passive income. I get about as much passive income in a month on YouTube for my wristwatches that we would earn when I was streaming weekly on Twitch for a year. Yeah. That's the difference. You know, it's, you know, I think this is going to push more people into seriously looking at YouTube, especially if they've been transferring VODs over, as a lot of people do, because who looks up VODs on Twitch? It's like, check your numbers sometime, streamers, and look at your VOD numbers. They're going to be, they're going to not be great. They're really, really. Push them to YouTube. You'll get discovered. Right. So I think a lot of people who have dual channels because they used YouTube as their VOD storage, Some of them, if they're close to the partnership, might make the switch. And then, as I noted, YouTube actually sent me an email less than a month ago about upcoming changes. Because one of the things YouTube's trying to compete with is YouTube ain't even really looking all that much at Twitch. They're looking at TikTok.
    100:06
    And they've announced that starting next year are advanced monetization strategies for shorts, which are the under a minute long videos. Because currently you can upload. I do a few. I do real shots on them. Right. But the only money for it is they have a program where they pick some people based off of views or whatever and just allocate the money. They're going to integrate it into the ad format moving forward. Starting next year, there's going to be a way for ads to play in front of every few shorts. And that will get cost shared based off of views or some strategy, same with the YouTube premium subscribers. And because of that change, they want to make YouTube more attractive to short creators. For short creators, it's very difficult to, like, get the 4,500-hour views because your videos are so short you have to spam. So even though you have a lot of viewers, you just have to spam. So they're going to be making some adjustments to different ways to qualify for partnership. Yeah. And I will – I mean, I'm not a TikTok user. I use Instagram a lot. But I've been using YouTube – I've been watching a lot of YouTube shorts lately. especially because a lot more of my people that I subscribe to, like you, do small shorts and little toss-in things here and there. Because it's like instead of staying for a couple hours and putting together a video, I'm like, I can throw a short together in like two minutes. Right. So it's like it lets people know I'm still creating is why I do it because I haven't gotten – I don't get any money currently out of those. But actually of my last 28 days on YouTube, four of my top five videos are shorts. Yeah. I mean, and that makes sense. And that's one of those things that I know we used to be a lot more prolific on Twitch than we are now.
    101:52
    Yeah, I mean, I did stream a couple months ago Godzilla on Twitch. Right. Which, again, and I had a number of viewers find me because they can search pinball, and it's all the live stuff's up front, and there's not a lot of live stuff for pinball, so it's easy to get found by people interested in pinball. And with YouTube, again, like if I search watches or go into the category, the live stuff might be at the top. It might not be. A subscriber can be alerted when I go live on YouTube, but they have to already follow me. Whereas with Twitch, yeah, that's the case too. But there are also a lot of people that will follow the game. Right. You follow the – I've got that. There's several people that I've found on Twitch that follow the game. They care about watching someone play that game. So you follow the game. And so that discoverability of your life, that's Twitch's almost only saving grace is that. I mean, and there's a couple groups that I don't care what they're streaming. I just watch them in particular because of who they are when I'm on Twitch anymore. And that's about where I've dropped my Twitch watching down to because I used to watch a lot of Twitch. Now I watch very little. Yeah, I mostly – a lot of times when like TPN streamers go on – with TPN, we didn't monetize any of the channels, so we cross-blast. We broadcast on Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube simultaneous. So – and I bounce between all three formats. A lot of times if I'm going to be active in the chat, I'll go ahead and do Twitch because most of the chatters are in Twitch. And we use a restream bot to share the chat across all the programming. that it's cleaner to see who it is than the one that has most of the people. But I do oftentimes see the stream first on YouTube now because I follow the channel. And it becomes, yeah, because when you follow a channel, it pops up. And then because we're streaming it across all of them, YouTube records it and immediately makes it available as a VOD. Those VODs get way more clicks than the Twitch ones do. So it's really interesting. Plus, at this point, when you talk monetization, YouTube has done so many other things where, again, I haven't explored all the Twitch stuff recently. So Twitch's big things are subs and bits. Well, YouTube has subs. You've seen my promoing for my Watches with Dennis Club. I get to set my pricing. It isn't just, oh, yeah, it's $5 tier one. No, my tier is 99 cents because I got to pick. I could have 10 tiers if I want. Well, maybe not 10. I got five. Right. And make different rates. You can integrate Teespring or there's another swag store. Fully integrate them in so it actually puts up your shirts and drink cups and stickers and all of that just below the description of your videos. When you go into them, you can do that. So you can integrate the merch directly into YouTube. You can – the bits. They have their version of bits except instead of being like, oh, yeah, I gave 200 bits. It'll be like, this person gave $4 Canadian. This person gave two euros. I do like that. So you know how much they gave. It's not obfuscated with nonsense. Yeah. And you get your whatever cut, your 70% or whatever the split is. So they've got that on top of everything else. Plus, of course, the big thing, the ads. And the ads during the live stream where you do ad breaks. All those VOD people clicking and watching ads. And the people who skip ads by subscribing to YouTube Premium, you get a share of the YouTube Premium. Yeah, and that's the – It's just a better model. The whole model – and that's the nice thing is like if I log into Twitch, I don't know – it doesn't show me the VOD that I missed that one of my people did. You have to go to their channel and find it. Right, where if I log into YouTube and I go to my subscriptions, which is what I immediately log into to look at the people I've subscribed to and put up, and they did a VOD that ended streaming 12 hours ago, the VOD video is there ready to watch.
    106:00
    And like you said, that's how I watch a lot of the VODs. There's only three, I'm going to call it three people that I've got notifications on for when they go live on something to watch it live live. And that's your watch channel, that's the BPL, and that there's a news, a breaking news group that I like that when they go live, I watch it because they, like, it's one of those. They aggregate live on the air video from all the places and all the stuff. So when they're, like, at the hurricane, they're like, okay, here's this video, they do it live and they have talk. talk and it's not the normal. So I've got that. Those are about the only ones that I actually watch live live. Everything else I watch, I tend to watch in VOD form.
    106:53
    And it's just so much easier to find them. So yeah, the big thing in Twitch, in their blog, one of the big things that they said is like, why would people choose Twitch? Their number one thing, it's the community. it's the memes they literally said it is the chat memes and the community for Twitch yes is why people choose Twitch over other platforms okay I mean I understand they've got their whole running emotes that started as a joke on like one large streamer and is now the standard emote for that for everywhere.
    107:39
    But, yeah. No, it's... Twitch chat can be bad. Especially when you get to a really big stream. There's a reason, like when I watch Critical Role live, I watch on YouTube. Because I can't stand chat.
    107:57
    On any of the larger streamers that I watch, I tend to have... I tend to literally close the chat box because I don't care. Right. Now, with the smaller streamers, it's different. It's not nearly as bad. Well, because that conversation can happen. Because the conversation can happen. I mean, that's the difference between, you know, watching one of the TPN pinball streamers or a small video game streamer or the WBPL and watching Seagull, Tim the Tap Man, or one of those people. it's the difference between going here's maybe 70 people which means you have interesting conversations and things are, and interaction and things are followable and having 5,000 people and it's just a continuous stream of emotes and terrible jokes by 12 year olds and people trying to yell racist stuff or being whatever and getting blocked and censored and all that. It's just a completely different atmosphere between the two groups.
    109:10
    So, yeah, it's weird. It'll be interesting to see how this whole thing goes out because we know, like, Facebook Gaming's basically shut their stuff down.
    109:23
    Yeah. Which makes, I mean. And Mixer went away. YouTube's really the only major competition at this point. I think that could possibly, if they further enhance the ability for people who want a live experience to find the stuff. I think that is the biggest thing that I think is Twitch's biggest thing is the ability to just follow a game. Yes. I want to go. I don't want to go and look up and follow. Hey, I'm following this guy, whatever. I want to just go. I just want to see everybody who is live streaming Battletech.
    110:02
    And then I can pick through that list. Right. But I don't want to use the search function where you have Battletech, because that gets you a billion things. Right, right. I want to see who is live in this specific game. It's too many steps on YouTube. Right. It means you're going to make it a little bit more user-friendly, and I think they could break Twitch. yeah and then Google would have a way and then they'd shut down YouTube we're done we did what we wanted to I mean people talk all the time online about having I know there was a big debate when YouTube started doing a lot of their they went into that weird thing for a while where they were censoring stuff to the point where they were like demonetizing people playing games because they were violent that they backed off of from everything I've heard of and seen. But they were going into like people who were talking about the news would get demonetized because they were talking about something that was violent, but it was something that happened.
    111:13
    So they had that weird balance thing where it was there and then it seems to have gotten a little better. They've got these issues. People always talk about, well, we need something else. We need something else, something else that does what YouTube does, but without those kind of things. But none of those platforms that existed before YouTube or have come up since YouTube are really still around. There's what, like LiveLeak?
    111:40
    And who wants to? I mean, yeah, it's an interesting situation. But we'll see where this goes. We'll see I know the initial reactions to Twitch's thing Have been Less than positive From everything I've read Most people aren't affected by it And the thing is most of the people who are Affected by it I haven't heard a word Out of For the obvious reasons that They're setting their plans in motion And they're all at this point High enough level And have enough managers and stuff that they can put together an actual plan. Most of the people that are making the money that are deeply affected by this isn't some dude sitting in his den playing video games. Right. It's like a corporation unto itself. Correct. So, but. That's what I've got for video games. Okay. Well, then, that's what we have for this show. Pretty meaty show, it turned out. It was. It was a good discussion. Some interesting stuff. Yeah. And if people want to discuss with us, you can always e-mail us at EclecticGamersPodcast.gmail.com or go to Facebook.com slash EclecticGamersPodcast and use the Messenger tool. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as Eclectic underscore Gamers. And we'll be back in a couple weeks. Maybe we'll finally have seen some gameplay of James Bond. I don't know. We can hope. Like good gameplay. I did see the – Right. Like good quality gameplay. Yeah. And maybe better than a live stream gameplay. Maybe. Maybe some good curated designed and built gameplay would be nice. but until then I am Dennis I'm Tony goodbye everybody see ya