Welcome to the Collective Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, June 22nd, episode 248. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. Tony! What's going on? Well, I'll start with one thing that's going on. So Robert G. wrote in to us and suggested, and I'll try and pronounce it properly, that for Patreon content that we talk about our favorite horror movies. So that is what we will plan to do. We haven't recorded that segment yet. We're going to actually do that after we get done recording the main episode, but they'll be released at about the same time. So just FYI, and thank you, everyone. If you want to support Patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers for as little as a dollar a month, you will get everyone in any tier gets access to that extra audio. But we've been planning to do one ever since we did the discussion about sci-fi movies. Right. To just have a topic. It didn't have to be a movie topic, but horror is the one that came in. That works. So what's been going on with you? June is busy. I'm incredibly busy. Just so much stuff going on. I'm attending a tabletop convention this upcoming week. CantCon. I'm going to CantCon. They've increased it. It's four days now. It's Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So I'm planning on attending at least three of those days probably. I mean, I actually have taken off work. I'm signed up to do some D&D Adventurers League on Thursday. I'm signed up all day Friday playing the original 1977 Traveler, the traveler where your character can die during character creation. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. I guess your travel is pretty short if that happens. Right. You have to start over. So I'll be doing that on Friday because literally the first session is four hours of character creation and then four hours of gameplay. And so that is my entire Friday is set up playing traveler. I have nothing specific except for Saturday because I'll probably just go up and see what has open seats and stuff. Okay. When was the last time you went? Years. It's been at least five, six years. It was before COVID. Right. No, I went, I think, twice. And we're in the before COVID times. Yeah. I think it might have been 17 or 18. Okay. All right. Cool. Well, that sounds fun. So, yeah, that'll be good. Otherwise, I'm just so upset. Yeah, it's award season. So since I chair an award subcommittee for a work-related committee, I'm traveling all over the state this month doing inspections of places for award season. Nice. Well, it's kind of conference season for me, so I actually have a conference, in-state conference here this week that I'll be going to. So I'll head to – I think I leave Monday and get back Wednesday evening. So that'll be something for me to work on. Yeah. Or hopefully learn some stuff at. But otherwise, not a lot. Worked on the – been working with my dad on his black hole project. Tony did test it again. Yeah. It broke again. Broke it. I broke it. Yeah, he locked a ball in the lower play field, and it just – all the sound – it still let us put credits on the game. So it wasn't like a full lockup where the – everything – like where you can tell where it's like everything's frozen. But it didn't put in a new ball. It didn't – Yeah, the sound stopped. The sound completely stopped. Yeah, so it was basically a – we'll call it a medium core lockup. Plus the window – have a new window on it. That's going to be adjusted anyway. But right now there's such a lip that it's like it's Airball City right now. I mean, it's like galactic tank force levels of Airball City. It's interesting. That window to see the lower play field has been interesting because there's quite a bit of wood damage on it from the past. And there are T-nuts that don't fit right. And there's so – anyway, we put in a new window just yesterday but weren't able to get it completely level with the T-nut system that it has. So going to get some more. It uses some like spongy washers to give it some bounce. So going to shift to full-on Carl Weathers stripping to give it more bounce. And I had Carl Weathers stripping, but not the right size. Right. More Carl Weathers stripping must be ordered. But anyway, Tony is our guinea pig. Stern should probably hire you because there's been a lot of criticism that they don't properly playtest their games. And then they go out in the wild. And then you have things like X-Men doesn't plunge right and stuff. Right. But if there is an issue, Tony will suss it out pretty quickly. Yeah. I think it was as a ball two, you figured this one out. No, that was ball three. Was it ball three? That was ball three. I guess ball two was pretty short. Yes, because ball two, I just drained immediately. That is black hole. Yeah. That's kind of how it goes. Speaking of pinball, though, let's go ahead and move over into the pinball section. We have one really big topic. We have another new game. Tony? I am in shock. Especially June. Who would have thunk it? Yeah. Nobody thunked it, but here we are. So Pinball Brothers has revealed Predator Pinball. And I have a link in the show notes to a Pinball News article. It has a lot of nice photos. So if you want to go and read and explore all of the imagery, that is where you would obviously need to go or go to one of the other news sites because we can't. That picture tells a thousand words, but we can't paint a picture with words. We could kind of like, no, it doesn't work. No, it doesn't work very well. So anyway, there's only one model. it's $10,995 so okay it's an $11,000 game however there is a trophy package and in our internal images like one of the first images I have for you Tony you'll see like all this green trim that's the trophy package so the trophy package adds another $1,495 so $1,500 so trophy package version is going to be $12,500 versus the $11,000 base game The trophy package adds in green side rails, hinges, legs, the lock bar, so that all gets that green color. Shaker motor gets included. Anti-reflective glass gets included. It ends up having 60 interactive RGB LEDs at the back of the backbox in that trophy edition. So those are sort of the main things that change up there. In terms of design, the Playfield is a collaboration done by Peter Peter Dahlman, Daniel Janson, and Andrea Pedretti. The art, and by that I mean the Playfield art, cabinet art, backbox art, that's Arich Lawson. The video assets were done by Kelly Mazeroski, and software is done by Brian Brian Dominy. The game is a wide body. It's not a standard width. It's a wide body game. Three Flipper layout configuration. You'll probably notice when you start looking at the art package that none of the actors are in the art. It's very predator oriented, very jungle oriented. It's probably a better description of that. According to Pinball Brothers, they have said and there's been some footage. It's been weird. There there's some footage. I've not gone and seen it. There was some footage that came out that. Well, let me put it this way. Let me let me backtrack a little bit. Let me rewind. so pinball brothers says they have the full movies video and audio assets however they are not allowed to use close-ups of arnold schwarzenegger so they don't have the full no they have them they're not allowed to use they're not allowed yeah i mean that could be a way to say so or you could say they have almost all the full video assets and they have all the audio assets the issue about arnold schwarzenegger and the pinball news article explores this in more depth but it's not actually related to the pinball machine they were not told sorry pinball machine people you're not allowed to have close-ups of arnold schwarzenegger there is legal dispute going on involving the ownership of the movie arnold schwarzenegger's rights and and some stuff there that basically there's a licensing dispute that for the time being is preventing close-ups of arnold schwarzenegger in with predator stuff in general so and that this is just a side uh this is one of the many collateral damage side effect impacts that have happened so it wasn't specific to their deal they've noted that if that licensing dispute gets resolved they may then be able to put in the close-ups of arnold schwarzenegger the reason why i'm stressing all this is i know some people were confused uh because apparently they saw video footage where there were like arnold's like i guess it depends how you define a close-up but people were interpreting as this seems like a pretty big close-up of our own schwarzenegger i have read again in the pinball news article that that footage was was not a licensor approved so someone like had a had a beta code or something right there was some testing where they had certain placeholders in from the movie and so some people though apparently saw that i was on a on a patreon discussion over with the pinball show some of the listeners we do uh for some of the tiers we do uh we call it a happy hour every month and some of the people were talking about seeing this and seeing close-ups from schwarzenegger it sounds like that is not true like what you saw was not what the public's actually going to get right for the time being at least so anyway um i guess i just want to go over your thoughts so predator in general what do you think of it as a as a thing obviously we we've been at this i know it's not even been a decade tony but we've been at this long enough that we remember when skit b was around and Kevin with Skit Bee was trying to do a Predator game and didn't actually have licensing approved and that was one of the earliest Crash and Burns I witnessed where a bunch of people lost a bunch of money on vaporware but as a license trying to set aside possibly the tainted taste of the Skit Bee years from your mouth what do you just think in general of the idea of making the first Predator movie into a pinball machine. I think it's a solid choice. There's a lot of iconic stuff in it and scenes, and it's just, in general, I would call it one of those classic, fun, 80s action movies that I think really lends itself to this type of service. Yeah, I agree. Overall, I think Predator is a good choice. It's one of those themes where it would have made sense back when the movie came out for it to have gotten a pinball machine, and for whatever reason, it never did. And so here we are. I have images in our internal notes for you to be able to see elements of the play field and stuff. So, I mean, you've got a pretty prominent chopper. That's been what's been getting most of the attention from people I've heard from. That's in the back left. In the back center, you've got the Predator himself, a figurine that looks pretty good. you've got like one of the the communist jungle huts off on the middle left uh lift there with a with a jeep there's a there's a pretty famous scene in the movie where arnold schwarzenegger sends a jeep in to to initially distract the enemy um you got like a compass over on the uh middle right middle right is where the third flipper is it's kind of a what i'd call a steve ritchie flipper like it feels like it's going to try and access a warp ramp and you can see a few of the shots that's clearly designed to access over on the left-hand side um because it's a wide body what you do with the lower section is often uh often an issue that needs to be addressed and you can see on the far left they have the minigun the famous minigun scene that jesse ventura has so that's featured um along with uh you know some other elements like they've really embraced the jungle aesthetic here uh there's a big map section though that shows uh where a lot of the inserts i assume tracking progression are kind of in the middle of the play field which uh maps don't feature prominently like uh in the movie so again i think they just thought it made thematic sense but in and of itself it's it is what is um what do you think of the well i guess let me just ask about the art in general and of course you can always go back and look at what the like the back glass and the sides of the of the cabinet and stuff um i mean what's your take overall my i'll go ahead and start this time and say i think that the cabinet and back glass i think the back glass looks decent like i this approach featuring the predator i think i think makes a lot of sense i think that looks okay um the sides of the cabinet uh you know it has the famous font of the predator logo um it's a little more basic i don't love it but i think it thematically it's fine front of the by the coin door front of the game i don't like at all i i think it looks very barren from the shots i'm seeing where it doesn't feel like enough space was fully used i do like the if it bleeds we can kill it line printed at the bottom right um but overall i think it's a it's a competent package i think yeah i i don't think you're wrong i think it's competent i i do i do think that the green of the upgrade kit goes really nice with the package overall yeah the yeah the metal trim does look pretty good it's uh i like that they went with this really deep forest green right uh i i like i i like that like the start button has the triangle or the the little triangle pyramid thing around it and on the upgrade package they did the same thing but as as metal cutouts around the flipper buttons i kind of like that uh i think overall like when you look at the play field it's it's it's competent it's it's fine yeah it doesn't jump out at me other than other than hoping that they have really good flickering, flashing lighting set up for the minigun so that that goes and looks real good. Yeah. For a movie pin, lots of plants. Now I'm on the play field. Lots of plants and the skulls. Again, it's okay. I mean, to me, when you look at it, you see lack of asset allowance, not being able to show Carl Carl Weathers, Billy, Dutch. Just like the Predator off on the right with his face, I do like in the middle of the play field. I think the skull usage was smart. The map takes up so much space. It does. I get it. Yeah. I get it. But it eats like the entirety of the. It's just I don't think of maps at all when I see Predator. So this is just a design choice that they did. And I get it. And I see how they've integrated it in. And I mentioned this, I believe, on the last pinball show. But I want to mention it here. I'm not actually particularly keen on that middle left section of doing the enemy camp. it's a fun scene in the movie but the movie to me Predator and I did the analogy of from dusk till dawn It like there a movie and then there the movie Right. You know, with from dusk till dawn, it's some, a Hayek dancing with a snake on is what everyone talks about when they talk about from dusk till dawn, not the bank robbery stuff. Likewise with predator. While it is a fun scene to see this elite military team in action, It's about them getting picked off one by one and hunted by a predator, not them fighting communists in the Amazon jungle. So to me, adding in the part where they're fighting not the predator but other people, I wouldn't have done. I would have just – maybe I'd have modes related to that, but I would not have had like sculpted plastics of the hut and stuff. To me, that could have been a section where you could have had the predator up in the tree where he's cleaning his trophies. Or you could have had the giant log scene at the end where Dutch is fighting him and there's all the fire. There's plenty of other – I think maybe they just thought they needed visual variety, and so they went something other than just plants. But you have the chopper, which is barely in the movie. It's got a really famous line going on. You have a couple chopper scenes actually in the movie. Minigun was smart. I think that was a really good one to include. I just – that hut and that jeep, maybe I just – it's the hut that kind of irks me. Maybe keep the jeep but ditch the hut. I get what they were doing. They were having a section of the game be the camp. I just – to me, the camp is like the least predator. It's the least predator part of Predator. It's the introduction to the characters. That's what it is. It is an introduction to the characters. And it's a fun action scene. But if I wanted to just see action scenes like that, you don't watch Predator. You watch Commando. Everyone knows that. Why didn't Commando ever get a pinball machine? Remember when I said I would let you go last? Yeah, you said that. I lied. Correct. I love that scene because you can see the wire really clearly too. Yeah. Yeah. But layout-wise, it looks a bit Steve Ritchie-lite. I think it looks like it shoots okay. Yeah, I mean, we'll see. Possibly flowy. I don't know why we're doing little loops and stuff with the wire forms. I suppose to provide more visual interest to it. Otherwise, it looks like a pretty straightforward layout. Yeah, that one little loop-de-loop circle, not loop-de-loop, but that little roundabout in the back right. Yeah, that's what I was thinking of. It looks like it just would slow the flow down, but while you wait for the ball to... And maybe they felt like they needed to. Maybe it's Octoberfest had elements like that where I was like, are you deliberately slowing the ball down, trying to give us some more time to think about the shot or give people a break. And some designers do like to do that. So that could very well be it. I do like the Predator. You mentioned it on the apron, the Predator's countdown wristband being there. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I like that. I think that was a good touch. Overall, the sculpts and toy usage here looks pretty good. It doesn't feel – they clearly, to me, went and said, we don't want this to feel like a bunch of flat plastics. Like the minigun sculpt, the predator sculpt in the back, even the hut that I don't care for thematically, sculpt. Sculpt of the jeep, sculpt of the chopper, which the blades spin on the chopper. I was going to say, but do the minigun barrels spin? You know, I didn't check to see the minigun. But yes, the minigun's fun. The little skull sculpt, like over on one of the far left ramps, the one near the predator, It looks like it's got, I think he's probably holding it in his hand. It's like they've got. Yeah, they've got some good stuff. The toys are nice. Again, really good use there of the theme. But, yeah. I do wonder with that skull sculpt, it looks like it's sticking out over the play field. Yeah, yeah. I wonder if you're going to catch it. So angle-wise, I'm going to assume that the ball doesn't go any higher than the rail that you see for the ramp. I would assume so. It's just – It's an interesting angle with the camera. It does make it look like it's in the way. So are you going to buy it? No, I'm not buying anything. Oh, okay. I mean I don't have any room. But if you had room, would you buy it? I'd have to play it first. See, that's the right answer. Without playing the game, it's not the top of my list. If I was going to just walk out right now and go buy games, it would be the same ones it's always been, Godzilla and Attack from Mars. Okay. Yeah, I'm curious about this. It looks like Queen was not great, speaking of Pinball Brothers games. ABBA we didn't play. We probably should have, but we heard it wasn't great, and it didn't look great. This looks like it will play okay, so I'm curious about it. And even without the close-ups of Arnold Schwarzenegger, it sounds like as long as the clip integration is well done, you'll probably feel like you're playing the movie even if the play field itself doesn't look super duper much like the – like the toys look like the movie and then the play field art looks like a map with the jungle around it. It's the map. It's the map. Right. I mean the map I'm sure makes thematic – again, it's not like there wasn't a map. I think the map, there was a map in the movie. Nobody cares. Thank you. Nobody cares. It's like the map in Harry Potter. That's got more prominence. Yes. I don't know about doing a CE edition where we put on the side rails, like, I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good. That is a huge Harry Potter thing. Is it? It is. So, you see, they know, and I don't because I don't know Harry Potter. But I want to transition to that. Okay. And congratulations to Pinball Brothers for getting a new game out. I will go ahead and say that. I want to transition to Harry Potter, Tony, because you may not have heard about AI Gate. Mr. Potter. I did. I actually saw it pop up in a thing, and I read a little bit. Okay. So, all right. So, apparently, Harry Potter couldn't resist but get up to no good and enter its own scandal in the pinball world by having someone do an analysis that I believe started over on Tilt Forums. You don't hear that one mentioned very much anymore. No, you don't. And he's over on Pennside, which I've looked at a little bit of. Of course, the threat is massive, and it's mostly people debating about the ethics of AI. But apparently, significant AI usage is apparent in the review and analysis. And most people are not denying, like when they go into it, that AI assets were significantly used, I believe, in the lower two models, like the arcade edition and the middle edition, for the sides of the cabinet. but whereas Mina Lima or whoever the name of this firm is, don't think there's been anything found in their art for the CE. Their giant custom job that makes it look more akin to the books. However, because the play field is the same in all three models, there's AI art in the play field. And we're talking most of them are small, small areas, but when you zoom in, it's like the – Harry has six fingers. There are finger issues. There is a dragon whose nostril got turned into an eyeball. That's probably the most prominent one because it's not the smallest dragon in the world. There are situations where hair doesn't flow properly and then starts to clump. And, like, some of the analysis has been this particular AI tool likes to do this with hair. Here are some examples. And it's just, like, it's been interesting to see. So most of it is fairly subtle. Like, from a distance, you probably wouldn't pick up on it, on most of them. But it is clearly pleasant. And the most of the debate has been sort of twofold. One, much like we talk about in video games with voice acting and all the rest of it, the use of AI to replace human labor and the pros, the cons, the idea of artists using AI to help them as yet another tool, just like filtering in Photoshop. There have been a few people that have tried to defend this, saying that they think it's filtering and not AI. It's AI. They're wrong. I mean, there's probably filtering, too, so maybe they're getting the things conflated. But I'm not aware of – I'm not an art expert. But, again, the person has been able to demonstrate in their review which AI tool does some of these particular effects. But what's noteworthy – here's where I will say the other – so you have the debate about AI in general. But then you have the criticism of people who, whether they agree it's okay to use AI or don't like AI, who are like, why wasn't it cleaned up? You have lines that are no longer straight. You have AI lines. I've done AI to do watch dials, and you see this where it starts to kind of fall apart at certain points where the structure all of a sudden – because it's like a collage in a way. Things like circles and stuff start to – if you get them big enough or detailed enough, you start to see flaws. where in theory, though, you could use that as a base and then go in and edit it. There's lots of stuff here where no one went in and cleaned up the artifacts. It's just like, oh, it got done. Dump it. Dump it onto the play field and let's go forward. So a lot of people have been like, why wasn't this cleaned up? Why didn't one did J.J.P. not know or did J.J.P. not care because of what price they got to pay the artist to get away with this? Right. That's where a lot of it is. So what are your thoughts? That's the background. I think it's to be expected in this day and age. I think it's just going to get worse. It would not surprise me to eventually get to the point where big sections of a lot of games are AI generated, especially playfields and the like. So it's an interesting situation because it is going to make such major changes to more than just this particular hobby. It's stuff we're going to be seeing everywhere in the next. Let's go with the not-too-distant future. So I think that they should have cleaned it up. I think that's the thing. If they were going to use it to do prep or whatever, they still should have gone in and cleaned it up. That seems like what the professional way to do it would be, but maybe they relied on it so much they didn't actually have somebody to clean it up, and that would have required them to hire somebody to come in and do the cleanup work. Yeah, I'm pretty similar. I'm not inherently against the idea of you having an artist, and they use AI as part of a tool in the toolkit. I mean, why not use tools in the toolkit? Like where I work, AI has become – it's used more now. We have rules on it. So, for example, using AI to help you write memos, But you need to go back and humanly edit them. And AI will perhaps, we would assume, get better at this over time. Another thing, though, where we use a lot of AI to great effect is for auto-translation. We're using a lot of verbal AI tools, and it's way less expensive than paying translators. And eventually this may very well put a lot of translators out of work. Yeah. Well, and I've even had – last time I went to a doctor thing, they asked if they could utilize AI just for transcription of the visit. Yep. Yeah. So there's so yes, it's it's it's coming in a variety of ways. You can't stop progress. And but to me, you can have the things married. The idea that the AI can do art and you still have an artist and how the artist chooses to use or not use the AI that might affect their price point or whatnot. the the level of mistakes that are have been allowed through i i do agree a lot of the ones being pointed out are very minor for a 15 000 10 000 to 15 000 product this looks overly sloppy and the they should have either expected more of the artist or paid more to get like not there's using AI to help and then there's using AI to do the job. And if AI was good enough that it wasn't a problem, we'd have a different debate. But right now what was shown is sloppy. It looks bad on the Cadillac of pinball. JJP prides itself as being the best at putting together a visual display. And I think at this stage people will say, at least in this game, it's not true. There's a lot of errors in here. And at least a giant ugly, nedry hand on Daddy East Jurassic Park pinball. At least it was someone who tried. Not a flaw in the algorithm that always screws up hands. Right. With weird missing fingers. Some of this stuff is very detailed, like intricate lattice work and stuff. And some of the hair stuff I could see where maybe they thought it was too hard to clean up. I don't know. Some of this other stuff looked like the dragon having an eyeball for the nostril. Come on. like when you put the dragon head in the place it is in the art why was that not caught it seems like a rush job right it looks pretty bad so um do you think this uh affects jjp sales apparently see i i there may be some people who are on the fence uh then this will make them jump on the side of not buying it versus buying it but broadly speaking this will i don't think you're you're going to see a lot of people pull out of their order over the over this art package especially since so many people bought the ce and the the back uh glass and the cabinet of the ce is fine this is my understanding like it's it's hand done but that's been a bit of that too where people are like is it really you know this gets billed as hand-drawn a lot of people have also pointed out Eric Meunier in the in the feature it talked about how important art is to him and it's like people are like well but not important enough to actually like review it huh right sort of thing you know It's pinball. They can't help themselves, but get a little dig in. So anyway, it is what it is. But I wanted to talk a little bit about that. Speaking of Harry Potter, Butts. Remember, Butts joined our Patreon. Yes. Butts is one of our more talkative Patreon members because he posted over on Patreon just to write in when we had the discussion about Harry Potter and how I don't know anything about it. And you asked me if I'd ever done the house thing. I was like, no. And you were like, why not? It's fun. And so Butts said, Dennis is clearly a raven. Oh, yeah. No, totally. A hundred percent. Maybe I'm a Slytherin. You're not. You don't know. No. That's my snake sound. You're not. No. I don't think snakes sound like that. That's my Gryffindor sound. That's what a Gryffindor sounds like. That's what a Gryffindor sounds like. Maybe. I mean, I don't really know what a Gryffindor is, but regardless. All right. So thank you, Butts, for contributing to the discussion. We also have... Isn't Gryffindor a last name? Aren't all of them named after people? Who has the last name Slytherin? I mean, yeah. It feels like a Mel Brooks comedy I pretty sure every house was named after a person Latrine is that French We changed it. It used to be. All right. We had an email. Brian J. emailed in. He said, let me get to that part. This is about Stern's code. Okay, so we're going to shift. We've been too mean to JJP. We've got to shift over to Stern. Brian wrote and said, How do you feel about the current state of Stern's code at release and the time it takes to get to 1.0 after the game releases? I listen to a bunch of the pinball podcasts, and there seems to be a lot of anger for games coming out with less than 1.0 code. Personally, it doesn't bother me that Stern releases with very early code and is essentially beta testing it on us. For me, this mostly leads to better final code when it does reach 1.0. A bigger issue would be when Stern puts out a game that physically is not ready, and then they have to figure out a fix to something that should have never made it out the door. Code is an easier fix than a layout, or a mechanical issue would be. Brian. Well, thank you, Brian. All right, Tony. What's your take on code? I think some of what Stern considers like .8 code is more like .4, but... So you don't like the numbering convention? Well, I just think maybe some of it is a lot rougher than their opinion of it is. Okay. Because there's been some of their releases where the code has felt less like beta testing and more like alpha testing. Like, hey, I knocked this together last night. Let's go ahead and just throw it on the machine and send it out. But I do agree code updates and code fixing is a lot easier than trying to deal with a layout or mechanical issue. There's no way around that. I feel like Stern's big thing here is actually, I would almost call it monetary. It's more of a they have their coders targeted on bringing up towards 1.0 and beyond on the more popular games. So if they drop something that's at 0.6, 0.7, 0.8 code when the game drops out and the sales suck, they have the code team concentrate on something else. And instead of having them working on something that's just not selling as well. That's why you sometimes see games that will have a code update, you know, a month or two after release and other games that are in way worse shape might not get a code update for a year or more. I've seen that more so with other companies than Stern, JJP, and finishing up Pirates of the Caribbean is kind of sticking in my mind, though. That's probably why I'm thinking that. Very valid. But, yes, I would say, of course, in regards to what you said and Brian, that, yes, the fixing of the physical is a bigger issue when that comes up. It comes up less often, thankfully, but we have seen some case in points where there have been concerns. X-Men on the plunge was one that came up. The one that always sticks with me is Stranger Things and the Demogorgon that couldn't eat the ball. And a lot of that is Stern just does not playtest these on location. And I actually am pretty skeptical that they put a tremendous amount of playtesting. They must to some degree, but with all the various Whitewoods and versions that they do in-house, it's just like there's stuff that gets to production that sometimes seems a little like, how in the world did you not catch this? But that's really not his main focus of his email. um broadly speaking the uh about the state of stern's code it really varies by game so i am not i understand people who are frustrated that games come out without 1.0 code however maybe this is because i've i've just played so many video games have been in the video game world for so long the same debate has come up there the bottom line is with the ease of updating now this is our new reality people are not going to put things out to 1.0 they're going to want to put things out when they think that they can sell them and they're going to go ahead and and patch and make improvements and those improvements are overall it is a good thing it's good that they can now easily modify because there have been plenty of stuff in the past that was broken and like in pinball you used to have to swap a rom out that's why got leap games were so bad they would only swap a ROM out if it was dire, like the game would fry transistors if they didn't make an update. And that's why their rules never got fixed. But of course, when you looked at someone like Bally Williams, they spent a lot more effort trying to really polish up the rules. But if you compare their rules to today's rules, even from a simplistic game standpoint, there was a lot of imbalancing that exists. Like, all those 90s Williams games are so multiball heavy for scoring for a reason. That was just the way they got written and had people watch how they were played and you see all these games are getting played one way, it would have been nice to be able to easily patch them. If a game is very early in code, I definitely do think that they have released games that are too early in code and it's an embarrassment. I would say one of the case in points would have been James Bond. There was a lot of stuff that happened with James Bond, but when James Bond came out, I think it was pretty embarrassing. I think Guardians of the Galaxy came out pretty embarrassing when it was Groot all day and then they patched it and became Orb of Multiball all day. And then finally it got to a really good spot. So they got it there. But games don't always recover from how their code was. When Walking Dead came out, its code was not good. Lyman fixed up and I think restructured it and made it one of the best rule sets of the DMD era. However, that's not how it started. And Walking Dead's scores on places like Pinside reflect how it was initially seen. but even today like x-men x-men's code has no excuse especially given how well the game sold for it to be in the state that it is in where people are like i have vast swaths of where i feel like i'm doing nothing it's so extreme you might you might not have seen this because it was a social media post that jack danger has even made a post on facebook noting that that code is getting a dramatic i think rework i don't think they're adding to i think they're rebuilding it and that kind of happened like with batman 66 lyman sort of had to start over on the code because it came out with basically nothing the thing was that is that that like x-men has been limping like there i know a lot of people that have ditched their x-men because like the code is terrible it's not gotten anywhere and that game was really popular so while we may expect a game like john wick to suffer more on code because the game didn't sell that great right when you see a game that did sell great and they're just on the struggle bus to get the code into a place where people just feel it's competent that's that they still struggle with that is is interesting but it's very game by game so um overall i am i am fine with with games not coming out at 1.0 code um you know they got to keep the line busy the manufacturing drives a lot of it most of the time i feel the games are in a reasonable state that it makes sense that they went ahead and came out that way now one thing that is a i guess you could call it a pet peeve like everyone's got their own approach on this of course one of the things i do not like all right i shouldn't say like i don't agree with is those people who say they like that the code isn't 1.0 because it's like getting a new game every time they update the code like you can rationalize like i my mind doesn't work that way you can rationalize like oh it's a new adventure every time we get a patch it's so exciting and i'm I'm like, this is not like a live service game where, you know, like fighting games, that makes sense, where they've got to constantly balance it. Right. Or you see this in hero shooters like Marvel Rivals and Overwatch and Valorant where it's like we're going to, you know, you want the metas to change and not always get stale. So in order for people to keep playing the game, so they, you know, they rework things a little bit. This is just like getting our adventure to 1.0. It's not an adventure to me. That's just a part of the tedium that you end up having to put up with, and it's not something to celebrate. But some people actually like it. Right. I don't understand it, but I am not that way. So I am not like, yes, please give me the code at 0.8 because I want to go on this epic adventure with you to get to 1.0. I don't alpha and beta test as a rule for a reason. I am not interested in that journey. That's a programmer's journey, not mine. So anyway, but thank you, Brian, for the query. then the last piece I have for the pinball section is from Richard who wrote in and so Richard says hello I continue to love the podcast and thought I would ask another question for the pinball segment just in case the news slows down I've played machines before that I thought had a decent layout and shot well but the theme was unappealing if you could retheme the following machines what would you change them to? he then lists us nine games as follows one Iron Maiden 2. Elton John 3. Hot Wheels 4. Dialed In 5. Houdini 6. Barry O's Barbecue Challenge 7. Oktoberfest 8. Legends of Valhalla 9. Galactic Tank Force But he does actually, he's got his own idea, so he shares the following. I do the following. Iron Maiden to Stargate or The Mummy Elton John to The Muppet Show Rolf on Piano, Pigs in Space Rocket, Tiny Miss Piggy Dancer. That's actually very clever. Hot Wheels to F-Zero. Dialed In to Mars Attacks. Houdini to Alice in Chains. Man in the Box Plays When the Ball Goes in the Trunk. Barry's Barbecue Challenge to Bob's Burgers. Oktoberfest to Simpsons Oktoberfest featuring Moe's Tavern and Duffman. Sorry, I couldn't help it. Duffman, why are you still here? legends of valhalla to assassin's creed valhalla galactic tank force to the last starfighter richard okay he's his theme world i like i like whatever world his brain lives in with themes because i know a bunch of these right i have not played assassin's creed valhalla though but um okay so um all right let's just go through them i guess in order and okay iron maiden i like his concept of the mummy i think it worked i think it would work really well actually still staying close to some of the end of the stuff to it and yeah i think that would actually be a really good choice to me the toy on the toys on iron maiden are so generic you can basically turn it to anything so so while i i think the mummy kind of feels right because we know like the premium i think have the desert art package and so it kind of has that vibe i i am good with that one as well i don't have anything off the top of my head that i'd suggest otherwise so i won't I won't name one. Elton John. I like Elton John. I wouldn't change it. Yeah, I am. Well, he's not my favorite musician in general. So if I were to take it, I'd probably change the whole thing to Daft Punk. And the piano will now just become a DJ toy with the guys in the robot helmets. But I think I just want to hear the Discovery album in a pinball machine. So that's probably why I'm doing it. Hot Wheels. So he said F-Zero, which I'm not a huge F-Zero fan, apparently. Yeah, no. See, it's interesting. I think it might be... Aim it more at the kids and go with Paw Patrol. Oh, okay. I was going to go with his theme, but go bigger and say Mario Kart. Mario Kart would actually be it, yeah. And then throw in some blue shell sound effects. Yeah, they both stay car related. It all stays car-related, but it's just Hot Wheels keeps the kids targeting if it goes Paw Patrol, and it keeps everybody's targeting and sells a lot more if it goes with Mario Kart. Anyway, it's going to be better than Hot Wheels. So dialed in. He said Mars Attacks. I have not seen Mars Attacks in a while. We come in peace. I do like it. Dialed in. Because dialed in currently, it has the theater space. It's got the spider, which, of course, we could change those toys into other things. The big thing is it's got such a heavy phone basis into it. I mean, we've got the little phone LCD stuff. So I could almost see going for something like, oh, geez, what was the name of that movie? I'm trying to remember it, where the guy was in the phone booth, and if he left the phone booth, the people would get shot. Oh, the one with Colin Farrell? Yeah. I think it was called Phone Booth. Okay, there you go. Okay. Actually, I'm going to do one which only ever got prototyped, Crawl. You just want Crawl. I do. I do. I don't blame you. Slay us. Slay us. The phone could be – I mean, there's the seer. There's also – yeah, so there's a part with the seer, and that could kind of be like a manifestation of trying to – The weird screen or – but the spider could be the widow of the web. There's this stuff. I'd probably change the phone outright into something else. But the theater could just be the – one of the – I don't know. We'll get rid of the theater and make it a fire mare. Got to have a fire mare ball lock. Fire mares can travel, what, 20,000 leagues in a day. Yeah. Fire mares. Fire mares. Okay. So Houdini, he suggested Alice in Chains. he was just basically wanting to use the trunk for something different right no um i've got one where i'll use the trunk too the prestige oh and it keeps the magic theme yeah that that that is that is good that is good i was thinking of keeping the trunk and doing wheel of time uh but it'd be the book because the tv series got canceled before it got that far i just saw a headline you know one of those one of those headlines at the bottom of one of the news sites and it was just like uh still upset about wheel of time getting canceled here so i just scrolled past because i'm like no one's upset no one's being canceled so this is nonsense ai probably wrote it no nobody's nobody cares nobody cares all right um he so his number six was Barry O's barbecue challenge to Bob's Burgers. Bob's Burgers deserves better than Barry O's. And that's the thing. Now, I want to say, look, Richard, so much of this has really impressed me. But that you think that Barry O's layout is good. Have you only seen the photos of it? It's not the worst layout, but it's really not worth retheming, I'm afraid. There's not a lot going for it that I think is strong. Whereas, like, Galactic Tank Force, which you mentioned, there's something there to that layout but okay so Barry so let's assume that we don't want to do that to Bob's Burgers what would you do alright for me it's a tribute to Barry Osler make it spaceship he had space shuttle he had space station just call it spaceship and theme it space wise so that it at least plays up to something that people really liked that he worked on that be what i do okay that works uh i don know trying to trying to you want to make it fun then do it lego style spaceship you want to keep it food themed like health inspection because it's not fun i think you found something that would actually sell less than barrios did congratulations tony all right uh octoberfest he turned that into a simpsons version of octoberfest octoberfest it's got that really long roller coaster-esque uh ramp shot it's got the barrel lock uh I, you know what? I would re-theme it into a straight-up Weird Al polka theme from all of his polka versions. So it's like that. Okay. But unlike the actual Weird Al game, it's only the polka-based songs. I see. Very limited. A much smaller license, too, which American Pinball would appreciate. This is tough for me because I never cared for Oktoberfest layout, and I'm really struggling to think of anything that I'd want to do to do with it. But I do want to give an answer. So, I mean, my first instinct was just to use the barrel and stick a dwarf in it and call it Hobbit. But the Hobbit movies don't deserve pinball machines. And, of course, I already got one that they didn't deserve anyway. So that so I'm kind of rolling out from there. There is. Do you know the story or have seen the movie The Other? No. OK, there's a it's a it's a book and the movies from the 70s, I believe. and there's a this is so inappropriate this is a terrible idea it'd have to be a spooky game there is a person who is stored in a wine barrel like drowned in a wine barrel and they're found it's a very small part of it but that's what we turn the barrel into and then the rest of it is just a bunch of tragic deaths that happen around this farm so maybe there'll be the the pile of hay which has a pitchfork in it that a kid who has his glasses off jumps into and I don't think I need to go any further I do it is a good story the movie is very dated but the book was it was a book I had to read in high school and I was like wow this one is actually really interesting it's very dark but I enjoyed it alright so alright then he had Legends of Valhalla to Assassin's Creed Valhalla here's the If you're going to go with the Norse theming, I think God of War is better. Okay. Yours will definitely sell better, but I would say we're going to go with the Norse theming. You know what? Screw it. Get Antonio Banderas to do the call-outs to 13th Warrior. There's a deep cut. That's a deep cut. That redeems me from the other. People are very approving. And then Galactic Tengen Force to the Last Starfighter. I can't improve that. No, that's great. Yes. That would be awesome. All right. So, all right. Thank you, Richard. I hope you enjoyed our answers. Tony, we're ready to move to the video games. To the video games. What's been going on? Well. I know one of the things that was going on, because we did it right after we finished recording last time. The Xbox Game Showcase started like an hour, not even an hour after we stopped recording last time. So we sat here and watched the whole thing. Yes. So that was interesting. The big thing in my mind is congratulations Xbox is finally getting Final Fantasy games That moratorium has finally ended And it didn't quit Because Final Fantasy 16 was available When the showcase happened And the 7 remake will be out this winter So congratulations to Xbox They get Final Fantasy I don't know if it's actually going to help them any now Probably not But what about a handheld unit? Would that help them? Maybe maybe i don't know i don't know it it's weird to me because it's a third party apparently that company already has handheld it does it's asus they already have a series of handhelds out there uh and this is just an xbox branded version of that one with did they do you know okay i was gonna say did they at least they moved did they move the controller sticks to be more yeah i think yeah it's got xbox style yeah i don't i don't know i mean i I don't, when I travel for like conferences and stuff like this week, I don't pack my Xbox to spend any time. But would you if you had a travel one? If I had a travel one, I would probably throw it in the suitcase. But since I don't, I don't. Right. But I don't know if I'd use it enough otherwise to justify the purchase. Correct. And seeing that's my thing. That's like, I mean, I have a Switch and I don't even know where it's at. It's like, I just play a phone game if I'm traveling. And normally if I'm traveling, I'm doing stuff. Yes. Honestly, every time I think, oh, well, I could do this and that, I'm like – I'm usually – it's like do conference stuff. Go do work emails after the conference stuff ends until it's a little bit later, and then people want to go out to eat or drink or whatever. And so I'm out on – I'm not saying I'm popular. I'm just saying this is what everyone does. Right. They go out and socialize. And so then you get back, and it's like I don't feel like doing anything else. Or there's more work I still have to get caught up on. Right. So sorry. Normally what I end up doing is just throwing up a movie or reading or something. Yes, that's what I typically do. Okay, so yeah, the new ACES handheld. Right. They did a huge look afterwards, and then they opened up pretty early with trailers for Outer Worlds 2. I want this game so much. I do too, but I loved Outer Worlds. Outer Worlds is great, and Outer Worlds 2 looks amazing. I like how they're really just leaning into, well, you know, we do sequels, and this is a sequel. Yeah. Yes, this is going to be more of everything you like. Is anyone, Tony, going to take the perk kleptomaniac? They have like these penalty perks where you get an advantage and then there's bad things that your character, bad things that come along with it. And there's one, I know no one cares, but I'm going to mention it, where it's like a, yeah, no, you get some sort of enhancement. But when your character looks at items like in shops or wherever, just occasionally they'll just grab them. It's like you get in so much trouble if you steal in front of people in these games. I'm like, I can't imagine anyone's going to play through like that and be like, yeah, whatever. I'm sure somebody will. Yeah, I know. But I'm sure somebody will. Just like just like I mean, and it might even be fun if you build your character right. It's just like doing a fallout run, doing a doing a scrambles run of fallout where you've got a one intelligence. So is your is your first playthrough of Outer Worlds 2 going to be stealth build? I hate to say it. Normally, I do a stealth sniper build. You tend to favor the stealth distance-killing mode. That is how I tend to. That said, my most enjoyable Fallout New Vegas run was when I was basically making the Scrambles run. It was a one-intelligence melee guy. Yeah, that was a change-up for me with the first Borderlands game. I played the melee guy, which I don't normally do melee builds. I was like, yeah, it was fun. I just wanted to punch everything. Just punch. Yeah, just punch. I'm going to punch. I'm going to punch you in the face. So anyway, I enjoyed the showcases because they went so in-depth on Outer Worlds, too. And the other one they went super in-depth with was Grounded 2. Yes, which you had some familiarity with Grounded. Yeah, I've not played it. I've had a lot of fun. I remembered the name, and that was about it. Yeah, it's Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, the video game. Yes. Yeah. With Kyle. No, Outer Worlds is going to be $80 standard edition, $100 premium edition. but it'll be out at the end of October. Other big things were grounded too. They're doing, they're calling it Persona 4 Revival so it's just like the Persona 3. They're just updating the Persona games for modern systems. One that surprised me, the trailer is what surprised me because it wasn't until the end of the trailer that we found out what it was. The whole time through the trailer we were sitting here like, this looks really cool. It was freaking Call of Duty Black Ops 7. Yes. The trailer was so strange. It was like Matrix-y. Yeah. And I was just like, this is a really interesting sort of story. And Call of Duty used to – I haven't played a Call of Duty in a long time. Right. They used to have some interesting single-player stories. I've never got into their multiplayer, so I was always more of a Battlefield person. But that actually got me interested in maybe where it's going with it. I guess, is it going to be like a near future or a far future? I don't know yet. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see. But the trailer definitely was very interesting. It was probably the most interesting Call of Duty trailer I've seen in forever. So, Beast of Reincarnation, it's just to me, it's made by Game Freak. It's like Game Freak is making something other than a Pokemon game. Yeah, but still with beasts. It's still with Beast, but it's like a post-apocalyptic sort of, which puts it almost like Machines and Mutants run wild. More Digimon than Pokemon. Right. It's just weird. It was just weird to see Game Freak pop up when they're showing a trailer for something because it's like, man, Game Freak does Pokemon. Athalion looked interesting. It's like a space survival game, but I'm assuming going to be halfway decently hard on the sci-fi since they're working with the European Space Agency as part of it. So they're going to be somewhat hard, I would assume. Probably the one that interested me the most was Clockwork Revolution. That looked really interesting. It reminded me of the Dishonored group in terms of the art style. Yeah. It's a steampunk RPG shooter thing, yeah, with time travel and stuff. Yeah, and I've played a few other time manipulation games, and they generally have actually liked them. On paper, I always think I won't, but when I've given them a shot, I have enjoyed them. It's because you just keep changing time until you enjoy it. That's right. They were once again one of the multiple of people that have announced over the course of the last few months that yes, Hollow Knight Silksong is coming this year. And it was followed up by the Hollow Knight Silksong developers coming out saying it will be out before the holiday season and it is not an exclusive. Because the Silksong is one of the things they showed on the handheld. Yes. The ally. Yes. The Xbox ally. I still never beat the final boss in Hollow Knight. I should try again. You should try again. It's been like four years since I tried. Try again. And they're going back to the vault, and they're pulling out Gears of War. Yes. Yeah. It was so iconic. I enjoyed that game. Yeah. That game did real good for a while. Yep. All of those games, and then they started dropping. Yeah, they had the one Judgment or whatever that I don't think did very well, and then they tried to change the cast, and you know how it is. It's like Marvel trying to change the cast. People don't get attached. They don't want a new Captain America. They want old Captain America. They don't want a new Iron Man. They want the old Iron Man. Right. They're very particular. People are particular. Last time we talked about the Embracer Group and their changes, or there might have been a time before. Lars Wingfors, the CEO of the Embracer Group, after having laid off all those people and driving through all of these changes, is stepping down as the CEO and becoming the executive chair of the board, which I don't know how much different that is. Well, I would assume it would probably mean he's not going to run the day-to-day, but the general direction of Embracer Group will be heavily influenced by his board status. But normally the CEO is the one most responsible for the decision-making. And the deputy CEO is taking the CEO slot. Okay. So the big thing is after almost a full year, SAG-AFTRA, the video game strike, is over. Yes. They announced and are signing a tentative agreement, and SAG-AFTRA has put out that voice actors can go back to work. Do we know what's in the agreement? They released copies of it. I did not go through it in depth. Okay. But they were happy enough with the AI stuff that they're going to accept it. The AI was the big issue. Yes, that's been the hanging up point. Now the question is how many of their people have lost their jobs forever anyway because of the strike? Because I know a lot of the stuff that was being made not in the U.S. started changing voice actors a few months ago because they're like, we just can't wait any longer. We'll have to see. and there was that whole big thing about borderlands and possibly being 90 or 100 dollars yeah and border yeah and and randy needs his money randy needs his money and and randy said well no we just because it could doesn't mean i don't set their prices i don't know well the price is gonna be 70 bucks and and and randy was all like this is great 70 bucks is great there's gonna be a lot of dlc some of it'll be free this is great it'll be great value love value love value Please ignore how Borderlands 3 Was just not that great of a game Just ignore Please ignore the And the movie Don't ever remember the movie Where everyone was miscast Even the claptrap was miscast There was no movie I still need to see it because it's so terrible I want to know if it's worse than the Minecraft movie I bet it is I bet it is too Because at least in Minecraft first they mine then they craft First we mine Minecraft Minecraft titular line I'm so sick of all of these Star Wars well I think we made it to the end we made it through so if you want to reach out to us you can email us a click to gamerspodcast.gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash a click to gamerspodcast as a reminder you can subscribe or I should say well you can subscribe with our RSS feed but you can always support the show over with patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers which if you want to hear our discussion about horror movies it will be after this or I guess you could watch it or listen to it before depending on what order you do things in but anyway that will be where that one is listed it's not going to be on the main RSS feed you can also reach us on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers and until two weeks from now, my name is Dennis. I am Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See ya.