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Episode 24 - 2016 Year-End Review

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 29m·held·Dec 19, 2016
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers 2016 pinball year-end review with designer tournament finals and collection updates.

Summary

This is a 2016 year-end review podcast episode from Eclectic Gamers covering pinball, video games, and tabletop gaming. The hosts discuss a modern pinball designer tournament (Pat Lawlor vs. Steve Ritchie final), their personal pinball machine collections and venue experiences throughout 2016, and reflections on major releases like Ghostbusters and games that cycled through their tournament locations.

Key Claims

  • Less than 5% of competitive IFPA players are listed as female

    high confidence · Host Dennis citing SkillShot Pincast episode 41 which analyzed IFPA database analytics

  • Steve Ritchie received 100% of the vote against George Gomez in the designer tournament semifinal

    high confidence · Host Tony reporting tournament results from their own bracket voting

  • Pat Lawlor received 94.1% of the vote against Dennis Nordman in the designer tournament semifinal

    high confidence · Host Tony reporting tournament results from their own bracket voting

  • Attack from Mars replaced Medieval Madness at one of their tournament locations in 2016

    high confidence · Host Dennis describing venue machine rotations at their tournament locations

  • Ghostbusters has been a major commercial success for Stern, possibly their best since AC/DC

    medium confidence · Host Tony speculating on sales performance based on market reception and visibility

  • Stern experienced clear coat issues with Ghostbusters (LE) machines in 2016

    high confidence · Host Dennis noting quality control issues reported across the industry

  • Game of Thrones had significant playfield depth and complexity compared to Attack from Mars

    medium confidence · Host Dennis noting he had requested strategy podcast on Game of Thrones but was told it was 'awfully complicated'

Notable Quotes

  • “Pat Lawlor has misses, and Steve Ritchie doesn't really have major misses. I can't think of a single game of his that I despise.”

    Dennis @ ~31:00 — Direct comparison of the two finalist designers' work quality and consistency in the tournament context

  • “I still enjoy it. Where after this amount of time playing like Game of Thrones, I didn't really enjoy Game of Thrones anymore.”

    Tony @ ~47:00 — Comparative assessment of game longevity and replayability between Ghostbusters and Game of Thrones

  • “I missed Walking Dead the most... It actually was the longest enduring pin at mine all. I mean, as of when I started to play, it was there.”

    Dennis @ ~42:00 — Indicator of venue operator confidence in game performance and player engagement

  • “Pat, he's been out of the game until dialed in for a big stretch. So anyone who's been buying or getting into pinball recently... they're not going to know Pat Lawlor.”

    Tony @ ~25:00 — Analysis of Pat Lawler's market presence gap and its potential impact on tournament voting

Entities

Steve RitchiepersonPat LawlorpersonGeorge GomezpersonDennis NordmanpersonTonypersonDennispersonStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Modern era pinball designer tournament semifinals resulted in extreme vote margins (100% and 94.1%), surprising hosts who expected 75-80% ranges. Final matchup is Pat Lawler vs Steve Ritchie.

    high · Pat received 94.1% vs Dennis Nordman; Steve received 100% vs George Gomez. Vote counts described as 'over 10 but under 50.'

  • ?

    community_signal: IFPA competitive pinball community shows significant gender disparity with less than 5% female players, though exact racial/ethnic demographics not tracked.

    high · SkillShot Pincast episode 41 analyzed IFPA database; female player percentage higher than youth player percentage

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Ghostbusters demonstrates superior long-term replay value compared to Game of Thrones; hosts maintain enthusiasm for Ghostbusters after extended play but lost interest in Game of Thrones.

    high · Host Tony: 'I still enjoy it. Where after this amount of time playing like Game of Thrones, I didn't really enjoy Game of Thrones anymore.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Stern Ghostbusters LE machines experienced clear coat quality issues in 2016; software updates also introduced bugs causing venue operators to delay updates.

    high · Host Dennis notes 'clear coat issue that they really experienced with a lot of the Ghostbusters games' and software bugs that caused venue hesitation on updates

  • $

    market_signal: Ghostbusters positioned as potentially Stern's biggest commercial success since AC/DC, though exact sales figures not disclosed.

    medium · Host Tony: 'I would guess this is why... it might be their best machine out there in terms of sales' and 'probably their biggest hit... since acdc'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.268

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. This is episode 24. It's Sunday, December 18th. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we're going to talk to you about the end of the year in pinball, video games, and tabletop. It's the year-end review and a year-in review. I guess it depends how you look at it. But regardless, we're just going to hit upon our items that we thought were interesting out of 2016 within the three topical categories that we cover and give our thoughts about them. Because there's been quite a bit of activity going on across all three of these categories, of course, like you'd expect. and we've touched upon them throughout the year as we've done and are wrapping up, almost wrapped up our first full year of podcasting, actually. So we got a lot to talk about there. But first, we have the open, which means the intros. So, Tony, anything been going on that you want to tell us about? Yeah, actually, it's been, I know I've spoken in the past. I've mentioned in the past, I should say, that I am a more blue-collar worker, but I've never really talked about what I do. And what I do is I work at a wastewater treatment plant. And the reason that's important right now is because for the last two weeks, I've been going and giving presentations to third graders about the water cycle. We have somebody from the water plant there and me from the wastewater plant. And we talk about our halves of the water cycle and how water goes. and I've learned that one of the funnest things in the world is seeing the shock on the kids' faces when they realize that everything they flush down their toilet gets cleaned and gets put back in the river and it goes to the point where it gets pulled up and turned and comes out their tap again. That's right. It goes in their tummies. And the funniest thing is, of all of the reactions, I mean, you'll see these kids get a little shocked and get these looks on their faces and they're like, wait, what, what, what? One of the teachers almost lost it the other day. I mean, she like had questions and like a lot of questions and was visibly disturbed when she realized that we just take, once we're done with cleaning all the water and everything, we just dump it back into the river and then the water gets taken out of the river by water treatment plants. yeah it's uh well you know it's an industry that a lot of people don't have any familiarity with so i'm not too surprised i remember seeing a uh years ago a special on a on a closed system which would you know kind of like and we've seen this in sci-fi before you have the suits that you can you know you'll be able to urinate in and it's transformed back into well dune as a as a case in point a suit designed to capture all moisture was the whole concept behind what they had to use on Arrakis. So anyway, it was always a concept I was familiar with. And I remember there was a city that was doing an entire closed loop system where I think they weren't even going to, they didn't take in any outside water or as little as possible. And they would just recycle and recycle the water again. And, you know, that was one of the questions was, well, so you mean we're drinking the wastewater? And they're like, well, it's clean wastewater, but I mean, yeah. What do you think? All the water has been wastewater at some point. So, but yeah, I guess it really would come as a shock to a lot of people who don't think about it. Kind of like people like to eat meat, but don't exactly like to think where the meat came from sort of thing. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Cause I, I can see that. I know I've, I've read about, and I've seen stuff on several cities now that do that where their, their water plant and their wastewater plants are right next door to each other. And the effluent from the wastewater plant just goes straight into the water plant. And then they only pull out water when they need to pull out more water, uh, because they just rely on that. So, I mean, it's definitely something that's becoming slightly more common. It's not a system we use, but it's just a little bit of evil joy I get when you see the looks on their faces. The priceless little innocent faces corrupted by your cleaning habits. Yep, it definitely is. And the other funny thing is over the course of these two, I've got a whole bunch more of these that I'm going to do, But one of the only person who's ever flat out mentioned and talked about and asked questions about poop was a mom.
Ghostbusters
game
Attack from Marsgame
Game of Thronesgame
Walking Deadgame
Medieval Madnessgame
Firepowergame
IFPAorganization
[name withheld pending review]organization
[name withheld pending review]organization
403 Clubvenue
Pizza Westvenue
Dialed In!game
Supermangame
Jurassic Parkgame
  • ?

    venue_signal: Attack from Mars replaced Medieval Madness at tournament venue in 2016; Walking Dead rotated out of 403 Club after extended run despite strong player engagement.

    high · Host Dennis describes Attack from Mars swap and Walking Dead's longevity suggesting operator confidence metrics differ from rotation patterns

  • ?

    collector_signal: Host Tony experienced significant personal collection turnover in 2016 (most active since 2012), selling Xenon, Three Coins, and Scoreboard while acquiring Jurassic Park, Firepower, and Superman.

    high · Host Tony describes 2016 as 'my most active year' with first major sales and describes selling challenges with wood rail games like Scoreboard that 'sat and sat and sat'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Steve Ritchie and Pat Lawler represent distinct design philosophies; hosts characterize Ritchie as more consistent with fewer misses while Lawler has higher variance in critical reception.

    high · Host Dennis: 'Steve Ritchie doesn't really have major misses... Whereas there've been a couple Pat Lawler games that have just not... that I've actually not liked'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Pat Lawler absent from Stern designer credits for extended period until Dialed In; hosts note this gap affects voting patterns as newer players lack familiarity with his work.

    medium · Host Tony: 'Pat, he's been out of the game until dialed in for a big stretch... anyone who's been buying or getting into pinball recently... they're not going to know Pat Lawler'

  • ?

    product_launch: Dialed In (Pat Lawler design) has only 5 example copies in circulation at shows as of December 2016; not yet available for widespread public play.

    high · Host Tony: 'Dialed In is not out yet, so most people haven't been able to play the five example copies they've been circulating for shows and such'

  • ?

    content_signal: Specialist pinball podcasts (SkillShot Pincast, Little Kings) providing analytics and strategy content targeting specific game depth levels; hosts use these as reference material.

    high · Hosts plug SkillShot Pincast episode 41 and Little Kings episode 11 as valuable resources; Dennis notes he couldn't visualize Game of Thrones well enough to warrant strategy podcast

  • ?

    operational_signal: Pinball venue operators adopting different software update strategies; 403 Club updates proactively while Pizza West holds updates until bugs resolved to avoid service disruptions.

    high · Host Dennis: '403 Club was always updating, and the one at Pizza West was holding off until there were non-buggy updates'

    • 4:35
    She won. Well, she's lived it. Even the kids didn't bring up poop. Now, that does surprise me, actually. I would have thought surely at least one kid. That's what I expected. I thought he was a class clown and would have done that. But, oh, well, maybe eventually you'll get one. I have faith in humanity still and that you'll get it. Hopefully. I have so many jokes set aside. Good, good.
    5:01
    So outside of teaching our nation's youth, anything else? Not really. I've been working and trying to stay warm and getting ready for Christmas and reading books and just the normal stuff. Well, that's awesome. I am not going to give an update on my work. A lot of things are in flux right now, some of them in a good way. But we won't be diving into that, though. Interestingly, in relation to your occupation, when I first started where I currently work, where I think I've mentioned before that I do like operational and finance things at this point. But I actually started in a fellowship role doing public and environmental health. And so I worked with a lot of people over with the State Department of Health and Environment. And on the environmental side, my area of focus, as much of one as I ever had, was on water. because we're here in Kansas and water is a big concern, especially out in the western part of the state because they're running out of it. Maybe if they didn't just strip every drop out of the aquifer and never give it a chance to get better. Well, we run into an interesting issue here because we're not a riparian organized, we're a first-right-use style state like the western states, which in a way is interesting that all the western states have gone with a model that probably isn't for their best interest at this point. But yes, but anyway, we'll save that for the Eclectic Water podcast, which I'm sure we'll be starting up at any day now because we could probably talk for a few hours about water because I find it, of all the environmental issues I've ever worked, it is, I think, the most interesting one. Oh, yeah, I could sit down and I have sat down and talked for hours and hours and hours on wastewater. I mean, they have to tell when me and dad are sitting down talking because dad did wastewater before he retired, too. so I mean when we start talking shop they just have to interrupt and say okay it's time to go home you guys can stop talking now yeah well you know what that's just the way it is interesting topics and a fascinating field though I have a couple of interesting things that I've heard that are broad topics of a sort they're both related to pinball and they're both two separate podcasts but I did want to go ahead and plug their episodes and I'll have links in the show notes for both of these because I thought they were pretty interesting. So I wanted to get them out there. One is the SkillShot Pincast. Their 41st episode, they went and they did something else I like, which is analytics. And so they pulled a lot of figures from the International Flipper Pinball Association, the IFPA, which does all the scoring for most of the competitive tournaments go through it. If you want points, Whopper points, that's IFPA. That's who does that. Anyway, they got their database of players, the analytics out of the database. So they went and that whole episode is diving into that and looking at all sorts of things about country, gender, whatever is actually tracked by IFPA. So, for example, less than 5% of the player base at IFPA is female, or at least listed as female. So, I mean, they go into far more than that. But if you're curious about what the makeup of competitive pinball worldwide looks like, that's definitely an episode that you should check out. So, as I know, that's episode 21. Any surprises in it, or is it the old white guy thing that we should expect?
    8:16
    Well, racial numbers and ethnicities, I do not believe, are tracked by IFPA. At least I don't recall ever giving them mine. Yeah, I don't recall giving them mine either. The answer would be kind of, sort of. We don't know that they're all white, but it's probably very heavily. I mean, nothing would dissuade you from that assumption. The percentage of female players was actually higher than the percentage of youth players, though I know during the podcast, I believe they were unsure what the cutoff for what IFPA considered youth was while they were recording it, because they were thinking it might be 16. So anyone 16 or older might have been considered adult for that purpose. Obviously, people grow out of that eventually and are moved from youth to another classification, to non-youth. But no, nothing really surprising. I'd say maybe you'd be more surprised by the countries that have the most players and such, because it's, you know, especially when you start getting into Europe, some European countries have a really high presence of competitive players and some don't. And it's not like they're all that far away from each other. So it's kind of weird where pinball caught on versus where pinball didn't. But overall, you know, I think it's interesting. And obviously, if anyone has been driven by wanting to encourage people to do competitive pinball, which is something I've tried to do with what limited means I can. But I myself have never had any success on convincing women to play. We know another women who are already playing. When I go to a pinball tournament, I see women playing, but it's less than half. So anyway, I found it interesting.
    9:58
    Separate, completely separate, but still on the topic of pinball, little kings pinball podcast their 11th episode uh they went and they covered basic intermediate and advanced strategies on a game that i know is one of your actually i think it is your favorite game and is very high on my list attack from mars so they did a really good breakdown on it so if you have any familiarity with the game from pinball arcade or you've ever played it in real life i didn't have any problem visualizing the play field while they while i was driving and listening to this so that's episode 11 of that they are on their facebook page i've started fishing for more pins to do i know because i posted game of thrones and i got the it may be a while because apparently it's it's awfully complicated compared to attack from mars which i know which is why i don't ever know what to do on it but but anyway uh so yeah if you want to know some strategies on attack from mars for competitive purposes go ahead and check that episode out and like i noted i've got links on those. Only a couple other things that I was going to mention. I did start a couple of new video games, both survival-themed. One's called The Sullust Project, and one's called This War of Mine, The Little Ones, and I'm not far enough in either to say more than that.
    11:10
    And finally, the Superband pinball project that I've been working on. Mostly, I've been waiting for parts to come. I did get the pop bumpers fixed. Half the pop bumpers were broken. They were broken for different reasons. One had the rod and ring, which is kind of at the end of the chain. You have to take everything apart to get to. The rods had snapped off the ring, so that was great. That just had to be replaced. And then the other one, the yokes, not just the fiber yoke, but there's also a stainless steel yoke that the coil at the bottom is thumping up to make the bumper push the ball away. It had somehow been snapped in half, both pieces. I don't know how the steel one snapped, but I didn't ask. So anyway, that had to be replaced, but they are all working now. So it's mostly the board work that still needs to be dealt with. But we did have a listener ask for photos on Facebook. So I did post some of the Superman photos I took on our EGP Facebook page, which is facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. So that's it for my intro, and you've covered your intro. So I guess we're ready to get going. But before we can get going in the year-end review, we do need to do the 2016 modern era pinball designer tournament round stuff because that's still going but we're almost done almost done so let's see we're ready for the final matchup but i guess listeners probably want to know what happened in round three before we actually announced that but sadly i i'm afraid our predictions were very accurate so nothing about round three is going to be surprising to anyone.
    12:45
    Well, I'll be a little, I'll say I'm a tiny bit surprised by the numbers. Yeah, and we can go in and we can spend a few minutes talking about that. Let me get those out there real quick for folks. So as I was noting, Pat Lawler, he was up against Dennis Nordman. And Pat won, which I would say we both weren't surprised by. Nope. He got 94.1% of the vote. I'll go ahead and name the other one out real quick. That was Steve Ritchie was up against George Gomez, and Steve Ritchie won, which, again, we both predicted would happen. But Steve got 100% of the vote. So, okay, so you noted that you were a little surprised by the number. Were you just surprised that in both cases it was this extreme? I honestly was expecting it to be each win to be about 75-25, but I definitely wasn't expecting a shutout.
    13:38
    That was shocking to me. when I pulled the results, I was a bit surprised. And I, you know, it's so hard for me because when I went and did the votes on both of these, it wasn't like I had to mull it over. It was Pat and Steve were clearly going to be my picks. So, yeah, I was kind of like you. I was thinking maybe more 80-20-ish in the results just because I figured there's got to be some pinball fans who would come and vote who maybe just don't like how they do their designs. They don't like Pat Lawler or they don't like Flo, so they don't like Steve Ritchie. They want to do a trap-and-shoot style play. I don't know. I just assumed there'd be something.
    14:24
    It's like in an election when you do judicial retention votes. No one knows who the judges are, but you always assume like 30% of people are going to vote don't retain just because they want to send the message that they're watching or they're just contrarian. it's like that or so i thought but apparently in the world of pinball voting it is not like that so uh and it's not like we only had four votes or anything these were it was uh i'd have to go and look at the what the final vote count was it was uh it was under 50 but i know it was over 10 so anyway the final matchup is going to be pat lawler versus steve richie and got any predictions You know, I think Steve Ritchie's going to take it, but man, Pat Lawler has a really hardcore following behind him.
    15:13
    Yeah, I mean, their styles are very distinct. And while I wouldn't say they are opposites in the ways of being designers, and they're both seen as very successful designers, I would say that they're different enough that you're a fan of one or you're a fan of the other. I imagine there are some people who are like, oh, they're both really good. I like both of them. But, I mean, for me, just like a couple episodes ago where we did the top fives that we had, both you and I were – Steve was our number one pick. So, again, in my case, it's not a mull over sort of scenario. For me, Pat Lawler has misses, and Steve Ritchie doesn't really have major misses. I can't think of a single game of his that I, I despise. Whereas there've been a couple Pat Lawler games that have just not, that I've actually not liked. And then there are more that I'm kind of indifferent on. Whereas Steve's got some where I'm not super excited about, but I still think that they're decent, decent games. So for me, it's, it's easier, but Pat, you know, that one thing I think Steve's going to win like, like you, I think he's going to win. And I don't, I'm not going to say it's because most people think he's a better designer that it's more to me that Pat, he's been out of the game until dialed in for a big stretch. So anyone who's been buying or getting into pinball recently, and if they're playing a lot of modern Stern games in particular, or even Stern and Jersey Jack, they're not going to know Pat Lawler. Because Pat, what was Pat's last game with Stern? I don't know. Rollercoaster Tycoon is the one that comes to mind. I'm not sure that's the actual last one he did with them, though. But it's been a long stretch. And Dialed In is not out yet, so most people haven't been able to play the five example copies they've been circulating for shows and such. So anyway, yeah, we'll see. I definitely don't think it's going to be 94.1% for one or the other, though. This one better be closer.
    17:11
    You would think it'd be closer. You got a number in mind? What do you think Steve's going to get, like percentage-wise? I think if it went as far as 60-40, I'd be in shock that it was that wide of a spread. But I think it'll be probably between 50 and 55.
    17:30
    Okay, 50 and 55. I'm going to say whoever wins it, I think they're going to be between 60 and 65. I think it's going to be more lopsided than I defaultly go to.
    17:41
    And that it'll be Steve. Perhaps for the reasons I've cited. I mean, we won't know the reasons because I've already created the vote sheet and I didn't put in. Tell me your reason. I probably should have, but I didn't. We want people just to go vote. So anyway, that will be the last of that tournament. So in the next episode, we'll have the results, which will be in 2017. This is our last episode of the year. We're slated, I believe, to record on the 1st, actually, if we follow pattern. And I have been working on the next one, which I mentioned last time, the wide body concept. I actually, after going through, I'll dive in later, but we got it under 64. We got the count well under 64, it turned out. And I'll be able to explain that at that time, but I don't really want to invest in it quite yet because we're not ready to go. So let's go ahead and start doing the year-end review, I think. And we'll go ahead and do it in our topical order that we normally would. So that would mean we'll stick with pinball for now. And I didn't know if you had any way in mind that you thought about tackling this. I just thought maybe we should hit on some of the highlights or things that stood out that happened in Pinball in 2016 and give updated thoughts on those because it seemed maybe the most straightforward way.
    18:55
    Yeah, I was thinking about just hitting the highlights for us and what we thought, especially, you know, like what we've had, how our thoughts have changed since the original point in time. Well, one of the things I thought, given that is, and I remember there was a thread. I assume there'll be a new one once 2017 actually hits. But Pinside had a neat thread after 2016 started saying what was, in this case, it was on the collector side. And it was wanting to know, just listing out what pins came in and what pins came out for you in 2015. And I'll hit on that on my own personal collection. But I thought that, you know, we play primarily in two locations for competitive and we started in 2015. And so 2016 was our first full year of doing that. So I guess of the pins you've been able to see around, not necessarily just having to be at at the three main locations that you and I play at, that you can throw in our trip to Texas and such, which happened early in 2016. But just sort of pins that have come that you've been able to play and you wish that you like that are on location or that went. And you were like, I really wish that pin was still around or pins that have come in that you're like, oh, this pin was just not any good. Obviously, this doesn't constrain us to just talking about the pins that were built and released in 2016, which is good because there's just not that many to talk about. But, you know, for example, Attack from Mars came to one of our tournament locations here this year. And it can stay there forever. And I really like it. I hate playing it competitively against people because everyone who's good and everyone who's not good knows that game. So the problem is really good. I don't have much shot in theory because they just, everyone loves that game so much they play it all the time. It's real easy to play virtually because it's available everywhere. Virtual pin is available on Pinball Arcade. Oh, gosh. But it's so fun that that one actually swapped out for the Medieval Madness that we had on location. The Medieval Madness went to a different location, which we can still play at. They just don't hold tournaments there. And I like Attack from Mars more, so I'm glad that that pin came in on location for us, and I'm glad that it's still there. Yeah, I am too. Like we've said, it's my favorite game, and it can stay on location forever, and I would be a happy man. What game from any of our locations that you play at left that you wish still was around? Doctor Dude. System 11. That's right. I like Doctor Dude. I hadn't played Dr. Dude before this year, and between it and Party Zone, I love them both. I would really, really like to see one of those games stay in the lineups all the time.
    22:04
    Well, the good news is that that location, that's a place called the 403 Club, tends to have at least a couple System 11 or around that era. I know Party Zone is beyond System 11 but that style one of the collectors who puts his games on location favors that type of game So Dr Dude yeah that was one of my favorite System 11s that they had I didn't like it at first, but when I got to know it better, I started to appreciate it a lot more. I personally don't care for Party Zone. Oh, see, I like Party Zone. It's not like it's a super deep or hard game, but it grew on me like Dr. Dude grew on me. It quickly became one of my favorite games to play up there. But, yeah, I'm still just awful with it. Dr. Dude's my second favorite System 11 I've seen go through 403. My favorite was Pinbot. But that one actually left quite a while ago, so I'm not going to bring it up. It was this year that it left, though. Very early, it was. But it's not the one I miss the most. I miss Walking Dead the most.
    23:10
    Yeah, I can see that. And so, again, much like Attack from Mars, Walking Dead was not a game I liked to draw in competition. But for a location play, I liked having it. I really liked playing it quite a bit. We had an LE version out there. It actually was the longest enduring pin to mine all. I mean, as of when I started to play, it was there. And it was the last of that lineup. They have a tin bank. They have a tin machine bank, and it was the last one to get cycled out. So I assume a lot of people like to play it because they kept it in there for, I mean, some things will only last not even two months and they'll cycle it out. I assume because it's not performing well. But that's the one I miss the most from the location side. And again, that one was also 403.
    23:57
    I'd say the one I miss the most that was at the Pizza West location, which is where we do the other monthly tournaments, would probably be Firepower. Trizone's okay. I enjoy playing Trizone. I just don't like it as much, but I went and got a Firepower, so I don't really care anymore. But it made me want to go get it. You missed Firepower so much you bought Firepower. I really liked Firepower a lot. I do. Firepower is a good game. I didn't play it a whole lot virtually, so when I got to play it on location, I started to appreciate it more.
    24:31
    But, I mean, even in Pinball Arcade, I liked it. It's an easy game to get frustrated with. So I guess in terms of just running through my – this was a very active year, I guess I would say, for my personal collection of pins in and out. When I consider that I first ever got pinball machines in 2012, and that had been up until 2016 my most active year. And now I easily eclipsed it because I finally got rid of some, whereas up until 2016 I never did. so I got rid of my Xenon my three coins and my scoreboard so those were the three games that left and then I got I can't say necessarily I replaced them with I guess in in a way I did replace them with Jurassic Park Firepower and Superman and so that was one of the interesting things for me was well I didn't expect to get the Superman so that was the That was a surprise. The Firepower was one I'd been searching for for quite a while, all through 2015. I just didn't find one at a good price. And Jurassic Park, I'd kept my eyes open for a really long time because everyone loves the dinosaurs. So anyway, so yeah, that was pretty exciting for me just in terms of that much turnover. I'll tell you, though, every single one of those sales other than three coins was like, oh, gosh, this is grueling. I'm always like pouncing on certain games. And when you have games that aren't as popular, they can really sit. Like scoreboard being a wood rail, it just sat and sat and sat.
    26:04
    And there are people who – Did three coins sit for a while too, as I recall? Sort of. I listed it – on retrospect, it sat the least. The issue was I would get contacted by people, but they would – they'd look at it and then they – Again, it was a two-inch flipper thing, and that would kind of push people away, I think. I priced it pretty well. Ultimately, I ended up shipping it because all the local interest that I would get would pitter out, or they'd want me to go lower than I was comfortable with on the sale price on it. But I think I only had it around for four or five weeks before I had the sale locked in. I thought it was longer than that. I'd have to go back and check. But Xenon was. Xenon took quite a while. I started it way too high because I didn't know what it was worth. And then I just needed to find someone who actually didn't care that Xenon didn't play well because it's not a very good game in my view. It looks great. It looks great, though. It does look good. Visually, it was the best in my collection, and I don't have anything that visually matches. I suppose one could argue Superman might look better than Xenon, but it depends. Xenon's got that really cool mirror back glass. um okay another year-end thing i think we could go ahead and talk about it probably be ghostbusters obviously that was the big pin that came out in 2016 uh there are a couple on location here you tried it all the way back at texas yeah what are your thoughts after i i still have not played a premium or an le it's only been pro experience i've not played a premium or an le yet uh i will say that after this amount of time of playing Ghostbusters, I still enjoy it. Where after this amount of time playing like Game of Thrones, I didn't really enjoy Game of Thrones anymore.
    27:56
    And I think that's a big telling thing to me that Game of Thrones, I was like, eh, but Ghostbusters, I'm always up to throw some drops more quarters into Ghostbusters. yeah i really like ghostbusters quite a bit i will often pick it in tournament play because it's so brutal i i have a chance against good players on it i don't know exactly the best strategy like because you've got all those skill shot choices and i've seen different approaches and i've tried different ones and sometimes i think oh this is going to work better for me but i have to factor in my capability of how long am i going to keep the ball in play sort of thing and i i don't have that figured out but i'm less lost on ghostbusters than i ever was on game of thrones i don't again with game of thrones in the choose your house okay well which i don't know i know i don't choose the one that wants gold because there's no point but other than that i don't know what the best choice is so uh yeah i've been it looks great i I think it's been pretty fun.
    29:03
    Our location ones have been, up until I think very recently, have been resisting putting on the newer versions of the software because I guess there have been a number of bugs that have cropped up in the various releases, and so people have been hesitant to do the updates.
    29:18
    I think the one at 403 was always updating, and the one at Pizza West was holding off until there were non-buggy updates, I think is where it ended up being. So anyway, yeah, I think it was a big success. I would guess this is why I know Stern's had a number of issues going on in 2016. And we've touched on those here on this show briefly, at least in regards to like the clear coat issue that they really experienced with a lot of the Ghostbusters games when they started doing the LEs, at least. but overall i you know everything that i've seen and my experience with the game is that it's it's a big hit it's probably their biggest hit i i don't know what since acdc it might be their best machine out there in terms of sales they don't they don't tell us what their sales figures are at but it feels like it would deserve to be seen as one of their best games not my favorite of theirs that have come out, but it is up there. I would be of what's currently on the line if not for Walking Dead, Ghostbusters would be what would interest me most to actually own. Yeah, see, and I'm flipped. I think it's the other way. I think I'd rather have a Ghostbusters than a Walking Dead, but it's a pretty close run. Or an ACDC.
    30:38
    I really liked ACDC, but it's not on the line anymore. Yeah. Yeah, no, ACDC. That's a game I miss, actually, from the lineup at the local places is ACDC.
    30:51
    Yeah, I wonder if they'll rotate that back here. Yeah, I kind of got why they, I mean, I understood when they had Game of Thrones out because they're both Richie's design. But Game of Thrones, and this did surprise me, it left one of the locations. It left the one tournament location we had it at. It's still, I believe, on location at Nub's Pub, but I was very surprised to see it already go. Is it? I thought, isn't that where they put Congo? Oh, maybe it is. You're probably right. Okay, so it's gone from both locations. I just remember with 403 because it was often, it was a game I was afraid to get on tournaments because I never knew what to do. and but i was still really surprised that it left because it was one of the newer it i mean it just it didn't last like walking dead lasted it came in well after and then it left well before and it didn't leave that long ago it it left just the in the fall yeah but still it didn't even endure a year that's true i i don't know i i just assumed that people weren't dropping coin in it I don't know. But I have to admit, while I needed the practice, I often wouldn't play that one because I just didn't like that upper play field. But anyway, that was a prior 2016 game, so we don't need to spend more time on it. Yeah. Also, I will say that the biggest pinball disappointment for me has been Hobbit. I don't think Hobbit lived up to what I hoped Hobbit would be. I had a lot of high hopes for it and it did not hit the levels I thought it would be at and unlike you I don't throw a game out just because it's a wide body I like wide bodies but for some reason Hobbit just doesn't flow with me well that would be because it's a wide body I would have and I'm sure I did repeatedly tell you that Hobbit was not going to be a good game because it is way too fat to ever give you flow.
    32:58
    You know, that's a game where I don't mind getting it in tournament, except that I know that there's a high potential that I'm going to be standing around for a long time because those ball times are really, really long.
    33:12
    I can't say I had high expectations. You're still salty over the launch party. Well, look, that was mildly embarrassing for myself. but even outside of then outside of that instance most of the times where i've been put on hobbit i can't say i've won the always won the games i think i've won some and i've lost some but i'm like i'm not a good i'm not a good player that game is way forgiving though for outside of having a and a pert settings at the location a short ball save it i mean with those double in lanes i mean It's pretty merciful. It's not a drain monster. It's just not. I guess those middle shots that you need to make, if you brick them, that puts you at risk for them down the middle drain, just like going for the barn wood in Walking Dead or going for the vengeance in Star Trek. I mean, middle shots are dangerous shots, and you just sort of accept that. But I can't say that it was a big disappointment for me, but I will say that it definitely isn't a game that I have any interest in possessing. And I don't think it's as interesting as Wizard of Oz was, but I also didn't like Wizard of Oz very much. But at least Wizard of Oz was hard, and I can blame the fact that I didn't ever get anywhere on it as to why I didn't like it. Whereas with Hobbit, sometimes I don't get anywhere, even though I've played for five minutes with one ball. And it's like, okay, well, some of this is just me being naive again. But some of it is just the balls just floating around everywhere, and there's nothing to hit. At least Wizard of Oz has a wide body. They actually packed it. But no, I just can't recommend Hobbit. I get some people love it. I don't get why.
    34:59
    But no, it was about what I thought it would be. what about some of the now these are games that we haven't had a chance to play yet but we've seen a lot of information on them and they're kind of what i call the expo pins so batman 66 dialed in and and alien pinball those are sort of the big three that were announced at expo that people are the most excited about they're all by established manufacturers so we can reasonably expect that these will come out eventually and batman i've heard is possibly shipping now in january at some point i think but anyway uh any thoughts on anything i haven't followed a whole lot of news on them since we talked on expo alien i have no new news on at all batman i i've heard that release date info and then i know dialed in has been taken to more than just expo at this point with and they've got the five games that people are getting to play. Yeah, no, I've not paid much. I mean, I paid attention to that lead up, but I haven't paid much attention to any of them since then. And I'm going to say I'm probably about in the same boat I was then where I'm interested in dialed in and, and well, I'm interested in all of them, but I think dialed in is probably the one I have the highest interest in and the others will be a, let's, we'll just see what happens. I mean I'm assuming we'll probably see one of them one of the three I wouldn't be surprised to see at a local venue at some point and I know I'm hoping to see one at Texas if I get to make it this year or next year technically I'm hoping we'll be able some one of them will be at Texas to try out though I'm sure that'll be like the Ghostbuster lines at Texas last year where it's like oh I got here first thing in the morning I'll go ahead and just jump in this line and burn the first 30 minutes of the morning waiting to get through this line to get one playthrough. Yeah, I'm not looking forward to the lines. Though, you know, if they brought five, I mean, if they brought all five, that would deal with a lot of that issue. Well, that's true. It would because there was only two Ghostbusters at Texas last year.
    37:11
    I'm pretty much in the same boat as you in regards to the Expo pins. I think Dialed In is the most interesting. It's definitely jammed pack. They went standard body, so you know my chief JJP complaint has been alleviated for this one.
    37:24
    And Batman 66, while I think its art package is exceptional, it's just I've played a lot of Batman the Dark Knight. And I get that half the play field is different, but half of it's not different. So for me, it's not as exciting because I feel like I've played most of that game already. Yeah, for me, the only thing about Batman would be the art package. The gameplay itself isn't, for me, it's all about the art package on that one. I think that's what that game has going for it because Dark Knight, you know, it's an okay game. It's not a great game. It's not a favorite game. It's not a hated game. It's a game I'll play if I draw it in tournament, and if I don't draw it in tournament, I might drop some quarters in it every now and then. But for the most part, it's not on my radar as good or bad. It's just there.
    38:14
    Yeah, I'm fairly. it's not a game I would ever go out and try and acquire but I don't lament ever getting assigned it and if I have enough time I do typically put at least one play on it as warm up or something I think it's fine middling would be a word I would use that sounds a little more derogatory I guess than I really mean it to be but you know it's average it's a 5 out of 10 sort of effort I don't hate it But it's not with my limited space. It would never be something that I would ever go after. But, you know, one man's trash is another man's treasure. So the dialed in, I think I do think we'll probably see dialed in. I'm almost certain we'll see dialed in on location. I would imagine we'll probably end up seeing Batman 66, honestly, as well. I don't think we're going to see Alien, though. So, again, if we make Texas, that's probably going to be my only opportunity. because I just don't think anyone's going to put a highway pin out on location again after the attempt at full throttle was made. And I know that was – last I saw it was up for sale. I don't know if it sold, but I just have to assume that those that are doing the location pins – and I spoke to one of the operators, and he indicated he's not doing any highway pins because of concerns for the support from the company. There's a question of endurance, whether or not the company will last. so given all that and it's so unfortunate because of the themes and obviously dialed in is a is a fresh ip so it's kind of a not applicable statement on them but it's the theme i love the alien franchise so that theme should be the one that i i worship i mean that is like that is not quite lord of the rings high for me but alien i own the quadrilogy you know it's i really like aliens one my favorite horrors of all time and so i should really be excited to play this pin uh and i'd like to try it but i'm not excited from everything i've seen on it so it's sort of like a i still want a chance to play it i i would be hard pressed to imagine ever wanting to own it though just from everything i've seen but but i i mean i don't know i'm i'm hopeful i'm hopeful that it actually is a better player than i've heard such mixed things as the is thing i'm not hearing it's bad But I'm not hearing it's good either.
    40:42
    Everything I've heard basically puts it into that meh category. I mean, with the theme, if you like the theme and it's not too meh for you, it could be something I could see going into a collection, and I'm sure there's plenty of people who are going to love it because every game's got people who love it no matter how horrible the game is.
    41:04
    But it's not, I don't know. So I was interested in the initial announcements and this and that, but as more and more came along and the stuff came out of Expo, all my interest in it dried up. So it's pretty much just a back burner. If I get a chance to play it, I'll play it, but it's not something that I'm really searching out at this point in time. Yeah, it's sort of a, and this is one that I guess technically, I mean not an Expo pin, but a 2016 pin, Rob Zombie. the issues that I've seen a lot of Rob Zombie's, I tried to play it at Texas and at that point it was having some mechanical issues so we noted that on our Texas review episode where I got some, I got like a game on it but the flippers weren't even always working so I couldn't give it a fair assessment but great art package and a lot of them are up for sale used already and it just seems to be that the gameplay isn't resonating with a lot of people so it's one that It looked awesome, but it just doesn't play to the taste of a large portion of the people who committed to buying it, who maybe had a certain expectation based off America's Most Haunted. Again, I don't want to go in because I don't have enough experience, and I don't want to really go in on whether that's a good game or a bad game, but it's definitely a game that a number of people aren't keeping in the collection very long because they're still making those, and it's a limited count, and they're still in production. So I'm concerned that Alien is sort of in that boat. yeah I can see that I will agree that Rob Zombie had probably my favorite art of any of the games released this year I mean I liked all the Ghostbusters art but that Rob Zombie art was just awesome yeah Rob Zombie for me definitely had the best cabinet art on the side art in particular yes definitely and then I would say Ghostbusters probably had my favorite back glass translate art and then because i'm being i'm being super fair now and then i'd say probably the best play field art i would give to hobbit i think it really looks good i wish it played good but it looks good at least the whole the whole hobbit package looks great it's unfortunate that the gameplay doesn't match its aesthetic but the only other pinball thing that i 2016 that really stands out because we spent such a considerable time on them when it was announced and then when we started to dive into what was going on with them is the new startup, American Pinball, and their Houdini slash Magic Girl completion stuff.
    43:39
    Any thoughts about American Pinball? We actually haven't talked about them for a number of episodes now. Are they dead yet? Is it over? I haven't paid any attention to them at all because after their showing at Expo, I had just assumed it was a DOA thing. I thought they were done. They're still around? Well, I don't know for sure. I guess the answer is yes, question mark, but most likely yes without question mark. I went to their Facebook page. I don't think they've posted anything since Expo on their social media, so they've gone quiet there. I had read that their website was down, but that may have just been a domain issue because the website did come back up eventually.
    44:24
    And that was very, very recent. And someone did on Pinside reported that they called the number that was on their sales business cards, and they got the recording just to leave a message, but indicating that it was for American Pinball and all that. So I think technically they are still around I am standing by my prediction earlier this year that they will formally go out of business in 2017 that they going to shut it down Yeah, I would agree with that. That seems the most likely outcome to me. Yeah, I think cut your losses and get yourselves free. I mean, it would be my recommendation even. All right. That's all I had for pinball, unless you had anything else that you wanted to review for the year on the topic. I did not. Okay. Well, let's go into video games and kick us off with something. Video games, hot and heavy this year, as it always is. Huge industry. Video games. Better than Hollywood, even. Oh, they are. And it's been a huge year for video games. I think I can go and say with 100% confidence, my favorite game of the year is Overwatch. Agreed. It's still the game I put the most time into. and after all I mean we joke about this being the eclectic Overwatch podcast because we talk about Overwatch a whole lot and with the new Christmas special in I've been putting in some serious play time trying to get that Winston skin and no luck yet but actually I don't think I've gotten any of the Christmas skins yet now that I think about it well you gotta get at least one I got Roadhog's Reindeer one where his belly button glows red. Ooh, I think Winston or Chorbyorn has the best one. It's Thorbyorn. It's Thorbyorn out of this round,
    46:16
    where Mercy was the hands-down winner for the last round. But I would say that's my favorite game overall. I've played a lot of other games. I still love the narrative in Firewatch. I have not gone back and replayed it at all since I played it, but I still remember it and the narrative and how that game played. It's still with me, and it's been since the spring.
    46:46
    So I put that game as probably has my favorite narrative. And I would have to say I forget because it came out so early in the year, but XCOM 2 was this year. And XCOM 2 was just amazing. And just like the first XCOM was. And they're both lots of fun. And I've been playing, I actually started a replay on XCOM 2 a couple weeks ago. I guess a week ago I started a replay using a whole bunch of mods to make my guys like stupid.
    47:24
    No. but it's still a really fun game. But it all comes down. I think I've put more time into Overwatch than I've put into probably any two other games that came out this year combined.
    47:45
    Maybe the new Master of Orion. I'm up in the mid-40-hour range on that, but, I mean, I don't even know if I'm up to mid 40 I think I might be up to 40 on it but otherwise I mean I don't even know what I'm sitting at on Overwatch other than the fact that my Junkrat time is 25 plus hours at this point so I know I've probably played Junkrat okay wow Master of Orion I'm up to 51 hours on Master of Orion so I've put in more time to that game than I thought I had That is not an insignificant amount.
    48:26
    Yeah, I put a little bit more time into that game than I thought, considering I've only had it for not even a month now.
    48:34
    But still, overall, I think Overwatch has been my bread and butter game this year. I think the longest I've gone without playing Overwatch games has been, And I don't know, there was like a week or two weeks in there where I didn't play anything. But normally I'd play at least two or three games a night.
    49:00
    Yeah, no, I completely echo your statements regarding Overwatch. I actually, and I put this on our Facebook feed because the Xbox-oriented site True Achievements is doing their Game of the Year voting. And anyone with an account can go and vote, and accounts are free. If you have a gamer tag, you can go. It's got great stat tracking. So I do recommend the site for people who are into knowing about rarity on achievements and things like that. But anyway, and I, of course, had to think about this before we even started planning this particular episode and its specifics because I was doing those votes. And Overwatch was my number one vote for Game of the Year for 2016. And my number two was Battlefield 1. And so, of course, those two were the kind of in competition of who was going to win out. it wasn't particularly close competition i do spend a lot of time between the two it's not atypical for me to play battlefield one evening and then the next evening play overwatch though this last week i did not play battlefield at all because christmas presents and overwatch it was time to get my dress up i gotta dress my dolls up in their pretty outfits so it was time to try and get those those goodies those goodie baskets and play the new mode and all of that and so and Battlefield's not doing a Christmas-themed unlock pack thing, so it was sort of an easy decision there. But Overwatch just – well, sort of aside from that, Overwatch, it's a lot more approachable in the sense that, well, one, it's – quite frankly, it's easier to play. That is not what I mean, though. The issue with Battlefield is on the main modes like Rush, Conquest, whatever, you need at least 30 minutes to do one round. at least. And Overwatch is just a faster game. And so because of that, it's easier for me to be able to go, oh, okay, I wanted to watch some TV later, and I need to do it by 8pm because I need to finish my movie in time so that I can go to sleep to go to work, and I've got, you know, I'm working off a schedule here. Bye, George. And then I look, and it's like, oh, but with Overwatch, you know what? It's not even going to be 15 minutes. In fact, if the game goes really well or really bad it could be less than three minutes so yes it could so uh in regards to that it's just really quick it's uh so if i'm in a bad group or having a bad game you know i can just quit out and research a new uh new quick time after the quick match after the whatever session is over and so because i don't quit out during i wait but it's just i really like those aspects of it and it's got addictive gameplay the classes are all very distinct the characters are very distinct within the classes so it's got a lot going for it uh battlefield uh definitely a a good war simulator i think it's probably mechanically and functionally a better game than battlefield 4 so i give a full tip of the hat to dice for i think making a better product than they had prior made it didn't launch with a bunch of the bugs that battlefield 4 was notorious for uh though a lot of those battlefield floor bugs were more on the PC side. There were problems across everything that they had done at that point.
    52:11
    It's very, very long. There's a lot less customization in the look and stuff because they're keeping it pretty World War I oriented. In fact, they did just have an update, which I have not... I've got the update, but I haven't played it yet. They put in a mode. I think they call it World War I mode, where one of your concerns has been addressed. They have a mode now where you will fight with actual period-specific weapons, not prototypes. Really? Yep. Well, that alone makes me more interested in that game than I was. Yep. So they got it. Because I hated it. You're not going to get those machine guns and stuff. It's bolt-action rifles.
    52:50
    And, in fact, what team you're on, it will restrict. Like, if you're on the British side, you do not get to take your German sniper rifle. That's the German's weapon. So you wouldn't have it. You would have this. You get that. So it actually limits you specific to the armies themselves. So, yeah, I watched a YouTube review of it, and the guy was very positive. He's like, yeah, in some ways it's a lot harder because now people who wanted to be snipers, well, you can still kind of try and snipe. But they didn't have people out there with scopes all over the place. So now instead that class is basically taken off the table. the scouts their value is still with the spotting flares with the flare guns and stuff because they had those but yeah it's just so interesting little thing so yeah there's still there's still going to be a lot of support because that game is so new uh and i like the direction they've gone with it in a lot of ways so it's not well it's not overwatch good it's a lot of fun and it is my second favorite game of the year i guess my what i'd say my third favorite is would probably be Forza Horizon 3. I'm not a big racing car person, and I don't think I've really spoken much about Forza here, but it's sort of my go-to game if I just want to chill. So I'll just pop it on and I'll drive around. And it's not like Forza Motorsport where it's super competitive, super realistic racing. It's competitive, but they got the rewind mode and all that. You're not supposed to crash into people like Burnout, but it's more casual. It's a casual racer. So I do that, and I still do a lot of Gyms of War, actually. I usually play a little bit of Gems of War three or four times a week. And I might only play for five or ten minutes, do a couple puzzles, and continue to work my character up. I'll probably let that fall out once I get my character all the way to level 100. But for the time being, it sticks around. So those are kind of the four games that I've really embraced quite a bit throughout the year. And that makes me happy. So anyway, Overwatch, though. I'm really glad that I did get Overwatch. Yeah, Overwatch is, I mean, I think Overwatch is the 500-pound gorilla, get it, in the room when it comes this year. I think that I'm honestly going to be surprised if Overwatch doesn't end up taking a lot of the game of the years on a lot of these review sites overall just because of how big it hit. and I mean the fact that they utterly annihilated other games that came out of similar style just they were DOA like Battleborn was just pretty much wiped out by Overwatch as soon as it dropped and Overwatch still is more Battleborn they were they got taken out bad and the well and it did help that on the day Battleborn released, Overwatch opened a free beta test. It did an open beta test for the three days starting with the day that Battleborn released.
    56:09
    Now, let me ask you, since we're in review here, but I'm going to do a little bit of, ask you to be a bit of a futurist. What do you think is the fate of Overwatch going into 2017? Is this like blizzard's new world of warcraft and they actually keep the momentum or even grow the player base or does it start to lose out to the 2017 shooters because it's not capable of releasing enough free dlc or are they going to do paid dlc i you know i don't know what what your thoughts are do you think they think this is a franchise where we just keep minecraft style or world of warcraft style which is more of their cup of tea building on or do they eventually go and say well we're going to do a war overwatch 2 at some point instead i think it's more likely that they will do the occasional paid dlc releases uh but i don't think it's going to turn into something blizzard has gotten very good at once they hit a certain point in a game they just iterate i mean since diablo 3 came out they just iterate diablo 3 and diablo 3 now is completely different than what Diablo 3 was at launch. It might as well be Diablo 4. The game's so completely different, and it's been revamped so much. I should probably try it again then. Oh, yeah, it's been massively revamped.
    57:30
    And pretty much all the stuff that was considered really bad when it dropped is gone. So it's a lot more fun. I still play it from time to time, especially in the spring. I was playing it real heavy with one of the guys from work, but I haven't played it basically since Overwatch came out.
    57:53
    Yeah, well, it's understandable. And I think that in the next, I think Overwatch will go strong next year still. I think Blizzard does a very good job with keeping hype up and keeping games likable. I mean, if any Blizzard game was going to get shut down and trashed, it would have been Diablo, and they've managed to revamp that game, and it still has a player base. So I don't see Overwatch going anywhere. It's possible some games might overtake Overwatch, but it's going to be... I don't think there's any games that have the exact play style that Overwatch has that are going to be huge. I could be wrong that Quake Heroes game maybe something about it will blow up bigger than I'm assuming it's going to but I think all in all that they are just going to keep steamrolling like they are and keep basically where they have been and that's what Blizzard does really well they just keep chugging along and iterating on their current designs I lean towards that thought as well in the sense that basically much like again citing blizzard and citing like they do world of warcraft came along took the mmo concept and made it so that it was actually casual friendly so you didn't have to be a hardcore super hardcore player and that uh and that worked and you know they had subscriber numbers of over 10 million i think overwatch is they took what was the dominant form of essentially team fortress 2 was dominating this market i guess you could say but a very dated game visually it's behind and i think overwatch took those mechanics improved upon them improved on the look of it and then i well i can't say that because team fortress 2 is free to play that overwatch has completely eclipsed it in player count uh i wouldn't be surprised if the numbers came out that they do actually have an ongoing daily player average that's higher than team fortress 2 um yeah that wouldn't surprise me i would say they probably deserve it but Blizzard is so good about lore and making characters you actually are interested in that I think that helps them maintain the player base because people main characters and like characters and find characters interesting. That's why they've been going so big with the costumes and everything, and everybody's all like, I've got to get the costume, I've got to get the costume. I'm still angry I didn't get the Witch Mercy costume, and I don't even play Mercy that much. I think I only play Mercy in random hero mode.
    60:29
    Then you shouldn't be angry. I should have gotten it. I play her. She is my second most played character, according to my stats I looked at two days ago.
    60:38
    I haven't checked my stats since I posted them on the thing. I'm sure they haven't changed all that much, except for I know I've been playing a lot of Lucio lately, even more than I was before. So he might have climbed up. He might have taken my number one spot again. I'd have to check.
    60:57
    No, Lucio is my number one still. He and Mercy tend to be, just like I posted a while ago, the numbers have grown now, but they're still basically an hour spread. I think he's maybe more like an hour and a half at this point because there's certain situations, certain maps, like those fight over the point ones, where both teams are going for the same point. I usually end up on Lucio there because I think the speed's critical and the passive healing because people tend to actually stay on the point then, whereas with the payload stuff, it's like you don't know what your team is going to do. Oh, speaking of the stand on the point ones, I've had several games with solid people playing the new Symmetra.
    61:41
    And wow, if you get a shield booster set up that reaches the point when you're guarding a point and you have a Lucio inside the point, it is rough to break that point even with multiple solid players i mean you're gonna have to go into an old frenzy or find and destroy that shield generator that's for sure yeah her changes are i have not played her all that much since the changes have happened but i am seeing her on a lot of teams now i know some of that is just people playing around with the new settings but But actually, yeah, the shield generator can be huge. The main thing I've noticed that's been more impactful in my view than what I expect. I mean, I expect it to be good, but I didn't expect it to be as beneficial as it has been, which is her new Reinhardt shield launch stuff. Oh, yeah, that's been impressive. You see those things all over the place. And I've done several things when I've played her where I've gotten, And if you get it lined up right as you launch it, you can completely block a doorway from a long way away and just protect your team all the way up through a choke point.
    62:51
    If anything, better than when you've got Reinhardt running up through the choke point. Especially if you have a Reinhardt, because then you basically get a double layer shield rolling through that choke point. And it's normally more than enough to let you break through.
    63:07
    Mm-hmm. Yeah. The changes are good. They're very good for her. Shifting from Overwatch, but sticking with our year-end concept on the video game thing, I was kind of wondering, much like we did with the pinball thing when you brought up Hobbit, what video game would you say that you played in 2016 was the most disappointing for you? Well, that would be the game that was an indie game that I don't remember the name of that I returned on Steam after putting like 45 minutes into it because it was so horrible. I don't even remember what the game was called It's so bad you've purged it from your mind Open your mind Quaid open your mind I'm trying to think The only really I don't have any games that qualify As like oh this game was bad I've got games that I haven't Put as much time into as I thought I would Well specifically here's one we've talked I know we talked about earlier When I first got it, I put a lot of hours into Battlefleet Gothic Armada, and I just kind of fell off of it, and I haven't really touched it since, oh, let's see. Let me call up Steam and look at the, since the day Overwatch released. Okay, that might not be the best example. Yeah, I don't know if that proves anything. for me it's uh i i would say it's not a game that came out in 2016 but it's a game i started in 2016 i believe i actually got it for christmas last year it's called dying light i'd heard good things about it i think the and it's not uh i don't think it's a bad game i just i couldn't get into the gameplay it's a it's like a first person shooter style i think it's got some like parkourish elements to it but it i believe it's very much designed to actually play in in like a co-op mode it's sort of open world while you're going in your you know there's zombies post apocalyptic sort of yada yada sort of thing but i tried to play it solo it's got a solo mode you can just sort of switch back and forth and maybe i should have tried it with some just pickup people the problem i had is i don't know anyone personally who owns dying light so i only played it by myself it got too hard there was a big difficulty spike not all that far through it i couldn't figure things out it was uh and what i was doing felt like it was getting really repetitive so i was just i was surprised at how i don't think i was this disappointed versus what my expectations were than uh since dark souls which now to be fair dark souls disappointed me way more than this did because my expectations were really high. I got like four RPGs that year as gifts on my list. I saved Dark Souls for last because I heard it was so good. And oh my gosh, I struggled so much to get into that game. I stopped it and started it. I think I, it was over a year before I won it. I actually, on the Xbox version, not counting the DLC because I didn't like it enough to buy the DLC. I got every achievement, and I did that so that when people would criticize that I just wasn't a good enough player, and that's why I didn't like Dark Souls, I could always say, no, I did everything. I won that game. I did every optional boss fight. I did all of that. So it's not that I'm not good. It's that that game was buggy and glitchy, and people calling those bugs and glitches difficulty. It was a lazy way to get difficulty. But anyway this is not about Dark Souls It very very old It got a huge fan base So apologies to those of you who love Dark Souls I just thought it was ridiculously tedious and I thus have not played any more of them But some people love it Anyway Dying Light It wasn that shocking to me because my expectations weren built nearly as high but I heard very good things about Dying Light and I was just like why Maybe in co Again it like Resident Evil 5 I could see playing that solo why people maybe hated it because a lot of people hated that compared to Resident Evil 4 but I played it all the way through on co from the get and I thought it was a lot of fun but I didn have an AI that was stupid making stupid choices my AI was a human being and when they were stupid I would say why are you so stupid and then he would cry maybe and then he would beat him with a switch now one game that I had high hopes for and I heard a lot of good reviews for and I don't know I just haven't it hasn't clicked with me as well it's not a bad game it's an enjoyable game it's just Enter the Gungeon, which is one of those top-down shooters where you run around through a little labyrinth maze thing, killing the enemies and this and that, and if you die, you're dead. Your run's over and you start over like Binding of Isaac.
    68:13
    It's not horrible. It's got a lot of cool guns and a lot of this and that, but for whatever reason, it hasn't grabbed me like the Binding of Isaac games did, where if I'm like wanting something that's almost completely mindless and just playing around in this and that, I can sit down and play Binding of Isaac or Binding of Isaac Rebirth with no problems and just go through it. But Enter the Gungeon is not the same way. I don't know. It's a lot harder also. Maybe that's part of it, but it just doesn't feel as good to play.
    68:47
    Hmm. Which is kind of creepy saying that Binding of Isaac feels good because the whole background and story and everything in that game is really, really terrible, but it's a lot of fun. Yeah, I've heard a lot of people really rave, quite frankly, about Binding of Isaac. I actually have not played that. I should probably watch for a Steam sale and pick it up just to give it a go.
    69:08
    If you're going to do that, just get Rebirth, which is the newer one. Oh, okay. It's like a second one, but it plays identical. It just has a bunch of new stuff and extra stuff.
    69:22
    Okay. Well, I didn't have anything else on video games I wanted to review. I think we hit on all the key points that I could come up with. Yeah, I think that's all of the big stuff I had. Let me double check. And, yeah, but those are the games that have stuck with me this year. I mean, I know looking at my Steam account, I see a whole bunch of games that I've bought and played, and I know I've talked about some of them like Offworld Trading Company and I don't know if I taught it and Stardew Valley.
    69:54
    They're both fun games, but they're not games that I will return to, that I keep returning to again and again and again and just losing myself in where it's like, oh, hey, it's bedtime. What did I do today? Oh, I must have just played this game today. So, I mean, they're not bad. I just haven't been as locked into them.
    70:19
    Okay. Well, I guess we can go to our year-end review for the tabletop section. It's the tabletop. Yeah. So with tabletop, much like Texas Pinball Festival for the pinball side, both of us went to CantCon this year on the tabletop side. And so I got my first taste of the D&D 5e iteration, which I enjoyed. And then another game, which I've already gone ahead and forgotten the name of because the play group was so bad that it made me not enjoy my time with them at all, which is unfortunate because I thought the game concept was really cool. Yeah, the game was good. I've got the book here somewhere because I won the book.
    71:02
    Yeah, I don't know. It's somewhere. It was a fun superhero game. I've actually got half, maybe a little bit more than half of a run in that game designed and written out for playing an actual, doing an actual playthrough that I've been combined with some other games, kicking together ideas and stuff to eventually DM a game again. Yet I just keep getting distracted by other things that are more important and stuff. so maybe before CanCon comes around again we can give it a run because I've got a lot of good ideas that would work really well in a superhero game and that would not work at all in any other type of game but with a superhero game they'd be perfect so we'll see well in terms of a game that I have one that stands out for me that I really really liked I guess that was new to me that I hadn't played before and that would be Secret Hitler that definitely is my tabletop highlight of 2016 i was amazed at how part about just how good it got the group engaged with our our game night uh thing which we need to hit on once we're done with the tabletop section because we had a question about that and i don't want to forget so i'm putting in the reminder here but yeah secret hitler it was just it was the really the first that i can recall of me playing one of those sort of social experiment type games where you're doing the deceptions and you're trying to manipulate people to that sort of degree and i just thought it worked really really well i thought the rules were pretty easy to understand i thought once people got you know we did that trial game through it it just it just kept going and going and people won like everyone wanted to just keep playing it and we played it until we ended until we stopped the game night so that definitely was my my highlight more than the dnd 5e or anything I think Secret Hitler was a big winner with me. Yeah. Secret Hitler, I will also say, was my favorite new game of the year. And probably, yeah, no, it was my favorite new game of the year. It was close run. I played another game this year that I really liked that it wasn't new this year, but I'd never played it before, and that was the Castles of Mad King Ludwig, which I recall talking about in an episode where it's a game where you're building a castle. I really enjoyed that game quite a lot too. I just think Secret Hitler kind of locks in with our particular group is a game that locks in a lot better. And I'd like to play a lot more of that. I need to get a copy of that game picked up because that game was a lot of fun. Oh, and I found the game from Can't Con. It was the Ultimate Hero Game System. It was the Dark Tide game that we played. that was the superhero game well in terms of game that was disappointing again disappointing difficult because it would imply expectations but let me phrase it a little bit differently game I hated absolutely hated and again much like you and certain returned steam green lit video games this I have purged the name of the game from my memory though I know we have it in the past listed on in the show notes that one where we had to put the stupid things in our mouths and try and pronounce the words oh god that thing my my gums hurt for like a day afterwards there will be blood there was probably there was blood that's what it felt like i mean it was no that game was terrible was it speak out i think so and you know after we did that i saw that freaking game was featured in one of those ads on network television for the live video streaming that facebook has they were showing people doing that and laughing and i thought whoa those are some good actors because nobody would be laughing who has that thing in their mouth yeah i was terrible at that game i mean i was flat terrible at that game but still it just hurt and was just no i didn't enjoy it that game i will agree that was also the worst game I played this year that was uh not even remotely fun I mean naming it it speak out is a bit unfair of me and I know that because it's sort of hard to say anything is worse than what inflicts pain but uh you know it was what it was and it definitely I mean I was just like I I won't play it ever again yeah I mean I can see what they were going for and I can see how it could be considered a good party game. I can see where it could be considered a good hey, we're drunk, hold my beer game.
    75:48
    But I didn't enjoy it. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I was drunk. But maybe you wouldn't have felt the pain of having it in your mouth, but then you're going to be slurring all your words anyway. So I don't know. I'd rather just see you just jump on the table and collapse it. I know it's redundant. Well, if I'm going to get drunk and play a board game or play a group game like that, it's either going to be Cards Against Humanity, or I've seen where a lot of people go and they use cut-up 2x4s to make enormous Jenga matches.
    76:29
    And a bunch of people playing a giant tabletop version of Jenga that's four feet tall, I could see where that'd be a lot of fun drunk. But, yeah, I'm not going to put that thing in my mouth and try and talk again. No way. Yeah. So anyway, that was it for me on tabletop thoughts. But did you have any other games you wanted to do in our review here? Yeah. I really enjoyed at CanCon.
    76:59
    Like you, I enjoyed 5e. I think they've made really good changes to 5e. And I think it's, playing 5e got me really interested in playing Dungeons & Dragons again, which is something that I've not really been that interested in since we played back in the day. But the other game I played, which is the one I kickstarted, is Planet Mercenary. And I really, really enjoyed that game. is a fun sci-fi game that plays on the normal RPG stuff by being more narrative and having a quicker, more active system of play, and it's being theater of the mind, where you're not really needing maps and minis and stuff like that. And I plan on, once I get everything, because it hasn't come in yet, we're looking at like spring is what it's looking like. Last update I saw.
    78:00
    I'm really looking forward to playing that. Cool beans. Cool beans. Beans, beans, the magic fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot. Yay. Do that one with the third graders. That might get you the poop question. That might get me the poop question. We can only hope. Or at least a parent will be reminded. Yeah. Or maybe somebody will think about the Dark Tower, which would always be acceptable. Would be. Well, they'll probably think about it more once that movie comes out.
    78:32
    I don't want to talk about that movie. I feel... I've got high hopes, and at the same time I expect Crash and Burns.
    78:42
    So... Yeah. We'll see what happens. But speaking of movies, I did see Rogue One. Took my oldest daughter to see Rogue One. I'm not spoiling anything I'm just going to say I enjoyed it and leave it at that well no I know we're not a movie podcast but I'm going to ask you to place it in the pantheon of Star Wars movies that wouldn't spoil anything and it would be perhaps useful guidance to anyone thinking about it though I guess I would have to know your entire rank so you put it third I would go Empire, New Hope, Rogue One,
    79:26
    Force Awakens, Jedi, and then the rest. Right. I would put it at four. And pretty much your same pattern, except I would put Force Awakens above Rogue One. I can see that. So we both think it's good. Yeah, for me, that was the tight thing between it and Force Awakens, but I think it's a little better than Force Awakens, or I enjoyed it a little bit more than Force Awakens.
    79:54
    So I was fine with moving it ahead of Force Awakens a little bit. Yeah, for me, there were some technical issues in Rogue One that I thought weren't in place in Force Awakens. So it failed. No, fail is the wrong word. It slipped because it technically is a less perfect movie, in my view. but it hinges so heavily on New Hope nostalgia that if you're a huge New Hope fan one could lean towards because it ties in more directly in a way but anyway, good movie, I do recommend it I can see that as a solid argument I think they're both very compared to the prequels, trust me you guys, if you aren't seeing these are worth seeing you should not be disappointed in the way that the prequels undoubtedly disappointed you as human beings Yeah, you might be disappointed, but not in the same way, not as badly. Not like pulling out the DVD and having somebody go, now tell me where the movie touched you.
    80:59
    Yes, yes, hopefully not. Speaking of disappointment, though, before I – so I don't forget. I know we had a question come in asking about – because we referred to game nights here, And they wanted to have us share some detail about what we do for these mythical game nights that we have. And there was a question about what are they, where we have them, how many people are there, what are done. I think Don wrote this all in. So thanks for the question, Don.
    81:31
    I guess I'll tackle the structure first. And then, Tony, I'll have you come in about kind of, I guess, the makeup stuff. Or we'll just see how it goes. But game night is just what we call, capital G, capital N, a generally monthly gathering of friends that we have done for years and years. And so basically, we pick a time, usually on a Saturday, once a month, with the exception of December, because December is chaotic, so we do not do game nights in December. And we rotate it between four of us. Four of us serve as the house host where people will people come. So that's the broad idea. And generally, game night runs time wise. It depends. It usually is about a four to seven hour event, I would say. Yeah. Barring the occasional ones before when there was only one kid in the mix and stuff when we'd have the occasional. Oh, look, it's 5 a.m. We should probably go home. Yeah. We don't really do those anymore. It was more ambitious back in the day. But, you know, life happens, and that's just how it shakes out. I think Don wanted to know about, I mean, size-wise, yeah, the one kid is now up to, they're usually three kids, and I know he wanted to know what do the kids do at game night? They go insane. They scream. They run and they play, and they are the sheer insanity that is children.
    83:05
    Yeah, that's probably a good – I mean, where they play does depend on the house. So, for example, if Tony's hosting, a lot of times they'll spend – I mean, they'll be in the same room as the adults, but they'll also spend a lot of time in one of the kids' bedrooms playing. So when my brother-in-law hosts, they have a spare bedroom, which they've set up as a playroom. So the kids will spend time out there – time in there and then also time out in the front area with us. in my house they're usually in the front area or they go downstairs or you know or they'll go in one of the spare rooms which doesn't have any toys and do whatever and we'll go downstairs to get away from them and play pinball and then our fourth host uh suzy hi suzy if you're listening one of our few non-pinball playing listeners that i know about uh they usually yes uh they usually she has a sort of a side room off of the main room that we're in and they tend to be in there so a lot of time i mean they just they're kids they run around they do they do kid stuff so they don't typically want to play what we're playing if that was what you're wondering that's they they have their they have their tablets they have their own toy i even have toys like uh building blocks and stuff that i keep stored in my garage and i get those out when the kids come so they have something to do even though they didn't bring anything but uh in terms of what do the adults do which was also also one of the questions that depends on where we are so normally there's a core group of seven of us seven adults and that will play we have friends from out of town and stuff we'll try and schedule game nights to involve them but what we play heavily depends on what location we're at so for example i'm just going to try and make it easy for our uh listeners i guess they're the four hosts i'll just describe by one there's the me the dennis host and then there's the tony host then there's the eric host who's my brother-in-law And then there's the Susie host, who I already mentioned. So those are the four locations we generally rotate through. And so if we're at Tony's house, we typically do tabletop games because he's got the most of them. And when Eric is hosting, we typically play video games. When Susie hosts, we usually do tabletop. And then when I host, it's usually pinball and video games. So that's just because that's where all the pinball machines are. Because I'm the only one who has any pinball machines, so that happens there and obviously can't happen anywhere else.
    85:38
    Eric and me having consoles make it easy because the TVs, the large TVs, get consoles hooked up. So we're able to pass controllers around and do that. And then Tony and Susie have big tables, so it's real easy to spread out and do the tabletop stuff and get everyone all in the same room and do that. It's hard to get everyone in the same room in my house, for example, because of how it's laid out. Yeah, you've got that, what is it, a front-back split? Yeah, yeah. So people are upstairs at my – It makes the rooms all weird.
    86:13
    It's easy to talk to each other because people are going to be upstairs in the kitchen dining area, and it kind of overlooks the living room, and there's just a banister. So you can talk easily back and forth, but you can't really play a game that way, except maybe that stupid painful face thing. But we don't play that at my house. because I have rules against that. But anyway, so that's sort of the structure of how we do it. And it's just, yeah, we've done it ever since past getting out of the college years and starting everyone working. It's sort of when we, so around 2002 or so, I guess, is probably when we kicked them off. Yeah, when we moved away from the point of being everybody where we pretty much all lived in like two apartments right next door to each other and actually spread out and everybody went their own ways, we started doing it more often. Yeah, and some people that used to be involved moved away, and when they come back for visits and stuff, that's when we'll try and schedule and we'll get them back into it. And sometimes game nights just turn into talks, and we don't really play anything. But normally something's broken out at least at some point, some sort of game.
    87:24
    So anyway, thanks again for the question. and next time Dennis hosts no it's not actually an open invitation that would be horrible I am the next host in January I still need to pick a date it gets a little more challenging now we have those two monthly pinball tournaments and we try and avoid those dates because we one time had a game night and it was the one time I got third in a tournament and I had to stay so long I've never gotten third again in one of the monthlies and it's just we were so late oh i felt bad yeah that was that was i started getting messages and phone calls and this and that and it's like do do do do do do do do do i you get full credit you did not ever actually turn to me and say you need to just lose no i wouldn't do that that's not the way to go. I wasn't
    88:20
    overly concerned about it. Okay, yeah, we're going as fast as we can. Dennis keeps winning. I can't help it. This has never happened before.
    88:30
    My problem was I was real hungry because there was going to be food at game night, so I didn't eat at the restaurant like I normally would. I didn't eat all day. Maybe it was the hunger that focused me. Maybe I need to play hungry again. I don't know. I'll have to see about that. But, well, I guess that's it for my year end review I think that's it for my year end review okay well as a reminder for folks you can reach us I already said it at the start of the podcast but I'll say it again here facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast or you can email us eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com and we're available on twitter and instagram at eclectic underscore gamers and so feel free to send in questions anytime you guys have them we'll do our best to tackle them either here or uh you know we'll do it through social media as well we're not heathens and uh we'll see y'all in the new year so until 2017 this is dennis saying so long for now and this is tony enjoy your new year