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Did You Miss Us?

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 5m·analyzed·Aug 15, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.026

TL;DR

Blockade Podcast returns from hiatus; discusses pinball software lull and signs mysterious new NDA.

Summary

The Blockade Podcast hosts Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan return after a two-month hiatus caused by Jared's internet outages in Australia. After an extended digression about broadband infrastructure and customer service failures, they discuss the pinball software landscape, noting lack of major news from Farsight and Zen Pinball, while praising Zen's data-driven tournament design. They mention signing new NDAs with an unnamed company and discuss Chris's progress earning money through a pinball tournaments app.

Key Claims

  • Farsight hasn't released a table in five months (as of recording); Zen hasn't released a table in four months

    medium confidence · Chris cites community thread noting Low Nelly at 95% done and Big Buck Hunter pending, with no releases in five months; responds that Zen is similarly quiet for four months

  • Farsight launched Arcade1Up pinball cabinet version and has been updating it frequently with patches improving community reception

    medium confidence · Chris notes Farsight launched on Switch, redid storefronts, released Arcade1Up cabinet with ongoing patches; community feedback shifted from complaints to praise

  • Zen Pinball has tournament data showing 'one ball, one attempt' tournaments are currently the most popular meta

    medium confidence · Chris cites Zen's tweet tracking tournament creation data showing current popularity trends

  • Zen Pinball's game engine allows detailed data collection (ramp rejection rates, ball distance traveled) that Farsight cannot match due to emulation constraints

    medium confidence · Jared explains Zen's proprietary game logic engine vs. Farsight's emulation-based approach limiting data accessibility

  • Chris has earned $50 from a pinball tournaments app without spending any money

    high confidence · Chris explicitly states 'I've not put one dime into this app' and has crossed $50 earnings threshold after six months

  • Chris and Jared have signed new NDAs with a previously unnamed company outside their existing NDA relationships

    high confidence · Chris directly states: 'Jared and I have signed brand new NDAs with a new company, previously from any company that we already had NDAs with. However, to tell you who that company is would be spoiling the NDA.'

Notable Quotes

  • “No, because there's not much to talk about in the pinball world. There really isn't.”

    Jared Morgan @ early in episode — Establishes overall industry sentiment during content gap; sets tone for lack of news

  • “They're not telling a lot of people what they're doing. Like, in this, I guess that's the only thing that's different. They're not sending out a monthly newsletter with a lot of juicy stuff in it because it's not a lot to talk about.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Explains Farsight's communication strategy during development lull; contrasts visibility with Zen

  • “So it's like they would probably have a very interesting metric... we probably would have traveled probably to Uranus by now, and maybe way, way back to Earth with the amount of kilometers that we've traveled.”

    Chris Freebus @ mid-episode — Speculates on scale of player data Zen Pinball could collect if publishing aggregate metrics

  • “Hey, I do want to tell you folks out there, Jared and I have signed brand new NDAs with a new company, previously from any company that we already had NDAs with. However, to tell you who that company is would be spoiling the NDA.”

    Chris Freebus @ near end of episode — Major announcement of new industry relationship; teases upcoming content

  • “The problem is when you're up at the top end of anything, the air is rarefied up there, so you get nothing.”

    Jared Morgan @ late episode — Commentary on competitive ecosystem challenges in pinball app tournaments

Entities

Chris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonBlockade PodcastorganizationFarsight StudioscompanyZen PinballcompanyMel KirkpersonPinball ArcadeproductZen Pinball 3productShamangameRescue 911game

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Farsight generated likely cash infusion from panic buying of DLC/seasons before June 30th licensing deadline

    medium · Jared notes: 'Plenty of panic buying happening. So they would have probably had a little bit of extra cash to bump them up there after they minus all the licensing fees'

  • ?

    community_signal: Zen Pinball monitoring tournament participation metrics and using data to identify popular game design patterns (one ball, one attempt tournaments trending)

    medium · Chris states: 'Zen doing their custom tournaments... they just kind of made just a quick tweet about how the current meta of popularity is one ball, one attempt tournaments.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Minimal breaking news in pinball industry during recording period; hosts note lack of content to discuss

    high · Jared: 'No, because there's not much to talk about in the pinball world. There really isn't.'

  • $

    market_signal: Farsight emphasizing product updates and community responsiveness rather than major new table releases during content gap

    medium · Chris notes community shifted from complaints to praise: 'Oh, it's so much better. Oh, I'm loving what they're doing. They're responding to everything that we're asking for.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Zen Pinball's U.S. office is primarily a single-person operation focused on licensing/negotiations (Mel Kirk as head of negotiations)

    low · Jared comments: 'the U.S. office is, you know, it's a guy in a shed' and Chris confirms Mel Kirk handles licensing from Budapest-based core offices

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.198

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan hello hey it's been a while well It feels like it. It has been a while. Apparently, among the things that want to die and be killed in Australia is your internet. Yeah. My internet does indeed enjoy being killed off because it's a feature of the NBN.
0:43
It's a notional broadband network. It sometimes works. It sometimes doesn't. And in this case, it didn't for two months. The reason being is that some numpties at the NBN co decided to repatch us into a whole set of different ports on the node that we're connected to.
1:06
And, yeah, it's completely screwed up the entire neighborhood. So slow clap. Good work, NBN. Well done. Yeah, you know, you had one job, connect the cable back into the right socket. Can't even do that right. It's impossible. Well, I've been through that years ago when I dared to switch. If you people want to know how long ago this was, I was on Earthlink, which I know that makes no sense to you, Jared. It's all up there. Yeah, in the States, they were a hot up-and-coming Internet company at the time that AOL was king. Wow, disruptors. yeah and and they were they were hot the trot and doing all sorts of really good things and so i was really happy with their service and i was really uh not all that thrilled with my actual phone service and they offered this whole thing of of being able to switch over to their own phone so it's a voip phone service yeah and then they'll shut down they don't shut off your phone well they kind of did it in the wrong order or something, shut off the one before turning on the other, and then they couldn't turn on the other because the other was turned off because it was all BSL-based. Oh, right, yeah. And we were without phone or internet, and this is pre-smartphone.
Pistol Pokergame
NBNcompany
Arcade1Upcompany
Red Hatcompany
Gottliebcompany
  • ?

    product_strategy: Farsight has not released a new table in approximately five months; Low Nelly reported at 95% completion status one month prior

    medium · Chris cites community comment: 'Low Nelly was 95 percent done and Big Buck Hunter was on the way. And that was a month ago now, like, so it's been five months since Farsight has made a release.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Farsight's emulation-based architecture limits granular gameplay data collection compared to Zen's native engine

    medium · Jared explains: 'because this is the problem with your game being locked behind emulation... you don't have the keys to the city' to access detailed metrics like ramp rejection rates

    • 2:30
    So basically you were completely disconnected. Yes. So without phone or internet for an entire month. Oh, wow. And that was also during, I think it was the month of November. So it was like holiday stuff, and it was... Horrible. It was pretty horrible. So I can imagine what it must be like for you when so many devices connect to the internet beyond just your phone, and then they're void of it.
    2:59
    It's very frustrating because both Kim and I, my wife, we do work from home during the week. so out comes the phone out comes the tethered hotspot burning through the mobile data at a rapid rate of knots yeah you know trying to actually connect into work so i can actually do my work from home which i need to do with sienna um and you know we would have burned through i think because we we realized that we had unstable internet since about 11th of july because that's when when they did the port switch over and they realized they balked it really bad So they did a workaround at what they call the pillar, which is the node.
    3:39
    And they did some jiggery-pokery there to get it working temporarily. And then when they had to go back and do it properly, they completely screwed it up. So we were sitting here for two weeks, basically, with zero internet and about a month and a half with dicey internet. so internet that kept on dropping out and um not linking through and just generally sort of unreliable and the reason why we're burning through so much data is because the the phones are smart of course they go oh well you need a connection well your wi-fi connection is technically on but no internet so i'll just i'll switch on 4g for you and um and you'll you'll be seamless you won't even notice you'll be fine great experience except when you're paying for data yep and so we burnt like kim would have burned through over the course of last month about 10 gig oh my god and i had to switch plans midway from via to belong which is through our major carrier over here telstra um they're like an nvno but they're owned by telstra and they're actually pretty good you get like for us over here um it's pretty good we get like five gig for i think about 30 bucks um and you get like unlimited calls and all that so and you can bank your data too so after all this shenanigans is over i'll be banking probably about three gig of data each month up to 50 gig so i'll go and reset for ages um yeah so it was i guess it was kind of good because it made us rethink our mobile plans and stuff like that but yeah it's not good at all so i'm gonna have to now contact my ISP who would then have to contact NBN code because they're wholesalers and say look I want two months of internet like reimburse for me because this is rubbish yeah so fun times ahead for me the the most fun part that I had with my whole experience was dealing with the customer service because all their customer service was handled through India which was typical except for the fact that I would get through probably within five minutes I would explain real quickly what my situation was and after my first time dealing with this I had then a trouble ticket and then I'd be proceeded to put on hold for on average a half an hour the longest I was on hold for was one hour and a lot of times it was about 45 minutes before i'd finally get to talk to somebody and then i would yeah and then i would get to talk to them and and of course i'm having to do this on a uh a work cell phone because i had no other phone to do this with and they would kept on being like, well, can you test the phone at your home? I'd be like, no. Not only would I be saying no, but I'd also be like, it doesn't work. You can't test anything because it's been disconnected.
    6:46
    Yeah. It's just a comedy. And my wife just reminded me, they tried calling my wife to set up an appointment.
    6:53
    On what? Exactly. so so then the so here here goes where here's where it really gets fun so finally get a technician oh the the back and forth between technicians was nightmare but we finally yeah got it this story is epic um but we finally get a technician to come out to the house and i'm talking with the technician and he's like okay well i need to make an appointment with uh uh with your local phone company i'm like great and he goes well no because i gotta do it through my dispatcher. I'm like, okay, what's the problem with that? Dispatchers in India.
    7:31
    So literally the two of us could be standing there talking to each other and we could not make an appointment with each other because we have to go through this dispatcher and everything had to be routed through India. And so the amount of time it took to do anything and not on top of that, there was the language barrier.
    7:52
    And so things weren't quite being communicated in the manner that they needed to be communicated because they didn't quite make sense to whoever was writing it down. Yeah, it was, it was glorious. And, um, wow. Let's just say I complained so hard on, okay, you're ready for how old this is on my space. Oh, well, I had a three part blog about this whole adventure that I wound up getting contacted personally by earth link.
    8:20
    They had read it. we're horrified by it and we're wondering if there was anything they could do to make it better. Unfortunately, this was two weeks after I'd finally get my phone hooked up again, back with my original carrier. Oh, and that was the other thing. The original carrier couldn't hook the phone back up because I had said that I was going with a different carrier.
    8:41
    Yeah. And it was locked and it was locked and they, I would have to get ahold of the carrier to get them to release it. And they couldn't release it because they screwed it up totally on their end. Exactly. it was just a horrendous comedy of errors that is just terrible it makes me feel a bit better about the NBN because I mean in this you know in the age we live in now it's actually not super bad you still can get access to the internet but you know back then you were high and dry and if you didn't have a phone as well like what do you do you can't do anything it's just terrible so yeah I feel for you man I know I can imagine well that's why I understand exactly what you're going through where it's just like oh please make it stop yeah we're back in line and the reason why they did the work to start with was because in our telephone pits in the street they have these things called unions inside the pits and they join the cable pairs between like each sort of stretch of cable and they they were known to be a bit dodgy we have what they call rotten copper in our pits which usually requires the tech to come out every year and repatch us through to a new pair so what they've done is they've replaced these unions in all the pits leading to the node so the upside of it all is that we should have a pretty good stability moving forward now with the copper.
    10:13
    Because NBN is silly in the fact that we have plain old telephony service or pots all the way up to the house, but we connect to the node by the copper, and then from the node it's all fiber optic. So using like 70-year-old tech to connect to 20-year-old tech. Right. So what could possibly go wrong there? Nothing. Absolutely. So if you're wondering, folks, what any of this has to do with pinball, it doesn't. It's just why we haven't had a podcast in two weeks. That's right. So there's your 10-minute justification for why we haven't had a podcast. Please enjoy. Yeah. Did you miss us? No, because there's not much to talk about in the pinball world. There really isn't. To the point that I read a thread this morning or a comment this morning where the person was going, okay so i have me personally i had said that low nelly was 95 done and uh big buck hunter was on the way and that was a month ago now like so it's been five months since farsight has made a release come on guys what's the deal and uh how is farsight even going to survive this and my response was uh you know zen hasn't released a table in four months are you worried about them yeah exactly just curious you know um and in the meantime it's not like we haven't known what fireside's doing they kind of launched on the switch redid all the storefronts uh put out the arcuda pinball cabinet version have been updating that apparently quite a lot of patches have been going on and the threads of the people that have been complaining upon the initial release are now the comments that I've been reading is, Oh, it's so much better. Oh, I'm loving what they're doing. They're responding to everything that we're asking for. It's, you know, not instantaneously coming through, but things are trickling in that are benefiting everybody. So it's like things are happening. They are working thing. And on top of that, they've been working on the, certain pinball arcade vr version yeah uh there's lots of stuff that is going on yeah but it's not necessarily the thing is that they're not really doing a lot of broadcast and that's the thing yeah um they're not telling a lot of people what they're doing like i in in this i guess that's the only thing that's different they're not sending out a monthly newsletter with a lot of juicy stuff in it because it's not a lot to talk about it's all kind of it's not so much it's not game release stuff it's just more that it's um not as i guess attractive to tell your customers about that a dlc is well no somebody else pointed out yeah i wonder how many seasons farsight sold right up there until june 30th i'm sure that was a small influx of cash for them i have a feeling there was as well that we know there was plenty of panic buying yeah plenty of plenty of ill-informed platform panic buying happening.
    13:27
    So they would have probably had a little bit of extra cash to bump them up there after they minus all the licensing fees and minus all the other stuff. I noticed that they've got a tournament running at the moment on mostly Gottliebs. So there's old and new Gottliebs in there.
    13:46
    And yeah, I played it. I did it on Steam because I wanted to play some of those games I haven't touched, like Rescue 9-11 and what was the other one in the tournament? I think it was, oh, that's Alvin G, Pistol Poker. Oh, yeah. That thing, like really, yeah, okay. It was actually a five-minute tournament too, which is interesting. Oh. So they did a five-minute version of it, and it's pretty interesting to see how far you can get in Rescue 9-11 in five minutes. but you can actually get up to life force in five minutes and i think that's that's the key to getting really high score and that you've got to basically just keep starting those modes as soon as you can get up to life force complete life force and get your billion and then you'll be fine that's pretty much all you can do to get up to a big score in in that in five minutes i managed to get about half a billion in that time so yeah but all the other tables they're pretty low scorers so it's It's sort of interesting to see how that would be, what the scores would shake down to be in the five-minute tournament format.
    14:53
    Here's the genius of Zen doing their custom tournaments, you know, with what I do. Well, except for what I didn't do last week because I kind of forgot about it. But doing the weekly tournaments, you know, they keep data on the tournaments that are created and how many people joined in on those tournaments and all that stuff. And they just kind of made just a quick tweet about how the current meta of popularity is one ball, one attempt tournaments. One ball, one attempt. Yeah. Wow. Brutal. And the last tournament we ran was on Shaman, which, okay, you recall last podcast, we ragged on those four Zen tables. Yes, we did. I will say Shaman is not terrible. It's got a very wonky positioning for an inline drop target scenario.
    15:56
    I don't like the fact that in order to start the mode, you literally have to shoot into a hole that lowers the ramp, the jump ramp, then jump onto the mini play field, and then clear all the drop targets, and then shoot back, let the ramp rise up, and then shoot back up into the center to spell chaos in order to start the mode. That's what? That how you start a single mode on that game No wonder I didn do any good in that game It like wow that a very complicated sequence of events that has to happen And so as such, the tournament I set up was a one-bowl tournament.
    16:42
    You know, most people's scores, the high scores were, well, I mean, if I'm looking at these, the top, let's see, fifth place was 13 million. Fourth place was 14 million. third place was 15 million. And then there was a jump up to 53 million for second place.
    16:59
    And then I don't know what the heck this dude was doing on one ball scored 362 million. Jeez. Far out. He must have just committed to muscle memory, the motion to get the most I don't even know how to actually earn a good score on that table is still a mystery to me. I literally do not know how to where any of the scoring is.
    17:25
    Is it about multi-balls? There's no multi-ball on this thing. There isn't? No. You can shoot a ball and get it up this trick ramp or the shaman trickster ramp. It'll light. When the ball goes up on that particular thing, a little thing comes out and grabs your ball. Then the ball is immediately released. It doesn't lock the ball.
    17:49
    Okay. I'm like, why is there no multi-ball on this table? That's just silliness. It is. If you have a mechanism that is essentially capturing a wall... What does it do with it? So there's those things that very much make me scratch my head, but the coloring of the table and the layout of the table, other than that wonky... Inline drop target. Yeah, is very playable. so it's not that bizarre but the rule, like I said to go through that many steps just so you can do something is stupid Ridiculous Remind me never to play that game because I would not have the patience to go through all the modes and just keep chipping away to get the modes started because maybe that's the secret to the game, they're so hard to start that they're so lucrative when you actually get into them. You know what it'd be for me? I'd get into it and I'd just like to ball out immediately, basically. And it'd be game over.
    18:57
    Yeah. But the point is, I find it interesting that Zen is very much paying attention, apparently, to the metrics. Yeah, that's really good to see.
    19:08
    It's something that Farsight, I think, desperately use. I know that they can pull data from the game, but I don't know how detailed of data they can pull from the game. I think they can. They can pull how long people are playing a particular table and how often or how many times the table is played.
    19:29
    But beyond that, I don't think that there's that many things that they're able to pull because this is the problem with your game being locked behind emulation. Yeah, that's right. You don't have the keys to the city. No. To get the data. I mean, they would know, obviously, how many people participated in the tournament because they have that count. And they probably, because of their leaderboards, they can figure out what is the average score that's happening on a table.
    19:59
    But they're never going to be able to know how difficult is a particular ramp because of how many times people are shooting a particular ramp, how many times they're ramp rejecting the ball, whereas I'm sure Zen can pull up all that data real easily because I'm sure it's built in.
    20:22
    Yeah, because they're essentially not scripting, but they have their own game logic engine that allows them to, well, pretty much pick out anything they want or need in the game. When you think about it, there's a particular bonus that you can do that's distance traveled of the ball. Yeah, true. So that's like the, how would you even calculate that? That's what I'm saying. It's baked into the design of the game. Yeah. And things like, you know, they can basically inject things like, you know, extra ball save time into the game with the power-ups. It's like essentially they're plug-ins into the core game framework that override some of the core game elements or track them. So it's like they would probably have a very interesting metric. I wonder if they could tell us how many times around the moon have people played Shaman in its life, or since Zen Pinball 3, because that's when they would have had the attacking metric. It would be really interesting to see some of those. You know, I think they've had this metric for a while, because if I recall playing original Zen Pinball on the PS3, you could pull out all sorts of wacky stats. Oh, really? That you could look up. Yeah. They probably have, like, we probably would have traveled probably to Uranus by now, and maybe way, way back to Earth with the amount of kilometers that we've traveled. But they should measure it in light years. If we could ever get anybody from Zen to come onto our show, then I think we have some interesting things to ask them. Yeah, that's definitely one for the questions with notice sheet, I think. Yeah. Get some interesting stats. I don't know. We're going to have to brush up on our Hungarian first or Czech. Where are they? Hungary? Hungary, yeah. Budapest. Yeah. So, yeah, I think. So that's where they're, I think they call it the core offices, but of course they have a U.S. office. Yeah, but that's not where they do any of their designing or, you know. Basically, the U.S. office is, you know, it's a guy in a shed.
    22:38
    Well, no, one of the guys there is Mel Kirk. I follow him on Twitter. And you see him living the life.
    22:46
    He's the, what is his title? His title is the head of, he's the head of something. I think he's like the head of, he's the one who negotiates things, I think. Head of the negotiations. Oh, for licensing purposes? I think so, yeah. That's what he does in the US. Well, that makes sense. Because that's where the movie studios are. Yeah, yeah.
    23:12
    He's a nice guy. I would say there's a language barrier, except for the language barrier is here in the US, we learn one language and we quit, whereas I know in Europe, you pretty much know like five. Yeah. It's crazy over there. They are so multilingual over in there. So, like, the guys in – I know that when I was working at Red Hat, we had some guys in Brno in the Czech Republic. And, you know, these guys were very – were just fine with English. In fact, there were people over there who were doing technical writing for Red Hat, writing English manuals over there in the Czech Republic. So, like, their command of the English language is excellent. Yeah. And they're also very – they're very technically focused over there as well. Like in the Czech Republic in general, they're quite tech savvy. So not only were they technical, but they could actually speak and write English quite proficiently. So they're double friends over there. So here's a question that I don't know the answer to, and you obviously will. So in Australia, you're going through the school system. Yeah. And it's time for the second language class. What are the languages? What's the popular second language that people learn? At the moment, in primary school, both my kids are learning Italiano. Italian, okay. So that's what's happening at the moment. But I think in the higher years, they actually get Japanese. I was going to say, I would imagine that it's Japanese or Chinese for you guys. Chinese or Japanese, yeah, Mandarin. Mandarin, yeah. Mandarin is quite popular in the higher years, and certainly Japanese is too. I know my wife when she was over in New Zealand in the school system over there they were exposed to Japanese over there and when she graduated I think it was high school she was speaking with the proficiency of an 8 year old in Japanese language so she was able to have a conversation with someone under 10 because Japanese is that hard they actually have language layers in there. So they have like, you know, conversational. Then they have language layers and tiers, but then they have slang derivatives, and then they have business formal, and then honorific formal. And it's like, wow. Hey, at least she can communicate, you know. Yeah, and she still retains some of the language that she learned. She can understand some stuff, whereas I've, I'm starting to remember some of the Italian, because I did Italian when I was in primary school as well. I'm actually really good at it.
    25:53
    And now that Zachary's coming home and speaking Italian words, I can start to pick them up again. They're coming back from my little memory orbs, like in Inside Out. They're just being dusted off from the memory archive and then spun up into my little projector again whenever he says some words. It's kind of cool to revisit it. Because here, obviously, in Southern California, Spanish is the big... That makes a lot of sense. In fact, that's really useful. Right.
    26:23
    Except for the fact that Spanish isn't useful for business people. Oh, right. Yeah. True. They're planning on doing international business.
    26:34
    French was always very popular. But again, it's like, why? Yeah. You know. The interesting thing, if you get a base in French, you can pretty much learn any other European language because the way they're structured is quite similar. Right. German used to be a thing, but it's way lost favor, at least in California. I know if you're in the Midwest, it's still very prominent.
    27:01
    There's a large German culture. German was definitely something that we did in high school. Yeah, so it was Italian in primary school and German in high school.
    27:12
    But for sure, Mandarin has popped up as a language that you can study. And I'm not sure if Japanese also has gained prominence, but, yeah, it's... Both, I guess, both use glyphs, so, you know, the language is glyph-based, so that's good.
    27:37
    I think, I don't know, Mandarin, I think, is a little bit easier to learn than Japanese because you've got kanji, katakana, and romanji.
    27:54
    So you've got three different types you've got to learn in Japanese, where I think it's Mandarin. It's just either simplified Chinese or Mandarin where you have to learn it. So you can start relatively accessibly and get into it, from what I understand. I may be wrong. If there's any Mandarin speakers out there, you can send us an email and tell us that we're wrong and tell us how you could get started learning Mandarin. And then if you speak Cantonese, you can come in and really just mess with our heads.
    28:21
    Indeed. They used to always trip me out when I'd get a Hong Kong movie with subtitles, and there'd also be, well, I just went, why are there Chinese subtitles also? And they're like, oh, well, no, if the movie was in Mandarin, then they'd put Cantonese subtitles, and if it was in Cantonese, then they'd put Mandarin subtitles, and I'm like, wow. Yeah. It's far out. It's like basically the whole screen is just full of subtitles, basically, over the picture. Yeah.
    28:52
    Hey, I do want to tell you folks out there, Jared and I have signed brand new NDAs with a new company, previous from any company that we already had NDAs with.
    29:06
    However, to tell you who that company is would be spoiling the NDA. so we can tell you that we have but we can't tell you who or what exactly so there you go all right so that's our podcast for today uh um i i did cross a uh a threshold here jared in my pinball tournaments app oh did you i i passed the fifty dollars one of fifty dollars one and what does that mean do you get to cash out your winnings? I could. Yeah. But my point is, is that I've not put one dime into this app. All right. So you've got $50 out of vapor.
    29:50
    Yeah. So now I'm going to, you know, see if I can kick that up to a hundred bucks and, you know, maybe we'll see. It's only taken me what? Six months to earn this much. So how much before I can earn enough to buy a real pinball machine?
    30:06
    When you're 90. Yeah, that's a that would be for me. For me, that would be the absolute, though, ultimate. To be able to say that by playing a digital pinball app that I want enough to buy a real physical machine, it's almost as good as when I was serving jury duty. And at the same time, while I was, you know, in the juror.
    30:33
    Well, you don't know this, but when we get called into jury duty. before you're even placed on a jury you're in the jurors pool which is where you know a couple hundred of you are just sitting there waiting to see if you get and so they always have stations set up um again this was before wi-fi was a thing so it was if you wanted to use the internet you had to bring your own land cable and plug in and or even plug in and away you go right and so while i was doing jury duty i was doing online traffic school at the same time and that to me was just the ultimate in wins because you're paid to learn well to learn traffic school is hardly what you learn what i call learning but uh it was neither thing did i want to be doing but i was getting a perverse joy out of doing both of them at the same time so so it felt good man it felt good so that would be the exact same uh feeling here as if i was able to somehow uh accelerate my earnings in this, which I could accelerate them. Right now, I'm only playing the matches that at most win me $0.60, as opposed to if I played the matches that win me $6 per turn. I think you need to change your strategy. The problem is there's not that many people that when I say not that many, there's like two people that play at that level, and if I beat them too often, then I won't be playing against them anymore. Because I know you're good. No, because I bust out of the algorithm. Oh, right. Okay. There's literally... There's two other players that I play against right now that the only way that we can play against each other... What it offers you is if you lose, you can request a rematch. But you're only able to request two rematches for any given period of time. There's like a cool-off period. And so that's all we do is we just play... That's how we were playing with each other is just by purely asking for rematches because it never pairs us with us when you're against each other, and I'm not getting matched up with anybody beyond that. That's really terrible. The problem is when you're up at the top end of anything, the air is rarefied up there, so you get nothing. So you've really got quite a battle to try and enjoy the game at that level. Yeah So I saving my expenditures for when now and then the tournament allows you to actually if you place in the top three you actually win a money amount above and beyond what you would just earn for winning the match itself And the competition gets rather fierce when that actually happens. And so I save the money to be able to do the $10 drops on that because you can quickly jump up the ranks or recapture a spot by just winning one match. I can just imagine the clickbait title we could get for this strategy of getting your pinball machine from a digital app. You won't believe the 10 steps I took to get up to $8,000 just by playing pinball online. You know what it would remind me of? I don't know if you ever heard the story of the guy that traded a paperclip for a house. Yes, I did hear that. Yeah, that is genius. So what was that thing called? Just one red paperclip or something like that? Something like that, yeah. For those of you that don't know the story, this guy determined that he wanted a house, and he figured he could barter for it. And it all started with a red paperclip, and he just threw it out. I don't even know what system he used. It wasn't Craigslist or anything, or maybe it was. I'm not sure. But it was like, what will you trade me for my red paperclip? And somebody traded him a pen. And then from the pen, he just kept on upping and upping and upping until it started being he was bartering cars for things. And he was always scared of what would he barter for that might just stop dead and nobody want the thing that he got. Yeah. Where he apparently took a huge risk was he bartered for snow globes. Snow globes? Snow globes. and everyone's like, what the heck are you going to do with these snow globes? And he goes, well, they're collector's snow globes, and if I can just find the right person that's looking for this, they might be willing to part with something much more major. Yeah. And sure enough, it put him over a huge hump, and I think it was only two or three trades after that before he actually bartered for a house. Wow. It's incredible, isn't it? It's an amazing story. I totally recommend Googling the thing. Like I said, I think it's called One Red Paperclip just because it's a fascinating story of what steps this guy went through and what it takes just with a little gumption, a little know-how where you can go from there. His name – he was a Canadian blogger called Carl MacDonald. Yeah. And he's written a book. You can buy a book. He's also got a TED talk. So I will link those. So in other words, he's parlayed this into a career.
    35:58
    Yeah, he's a public speaker. And yeah. That's awesome. It's really good. Good on him. I have the utmost respect for people who can do that. Yeah. That's just smart. That's intelligence right there. So that's my goal. I want to parlay my winnings from – and I'm using both the pinball tournaments. app and using Zen's esports app because they all pool into the same money pile. Oh, right.
    36:27
    I'm playing those and that's going to be my goal. In 10 years, I might be a quarter of the way there.
    36:37
    Maybe. That's right. I think the easiest way, if you want to actually win a pinball machine, you actually have to go into real tournaments over there. and then you might actually have a chance of winning a real pinball machine. Some of the guys have done it here in Australia. They've gone to tournaments with pinball machines as prizes and have collected. Yep. So, you know, that's an actual valid proven way of getting a pinball machine. I don't know if you saw any of the video that just transpired at Pinberg with, I believe it was Bowen Cairns that won.
    37:12
    No. there is and they were playing the final table was Harlem Globetrotters which is a mean beast of a table mainly because it has on one side it's a single flipper and on the other side it's the double flipper and it's the kind of double flipper that has no back oh yeah that's brutal he does this amazing thing where he catches it on the upper lets it fall to the lower but he caught it with the flipper up and then dropped it before it you know so it started to roll back he dropped the flipper and then slowly rolled forward and then he made the shot I was like looking at this video just going what did I just witness that is it is insane ball control absolutely insane and that's the level you need to be when you're at this level like you need to be able to control that ball like your life depended on because it really does in this case like you win a pinball machine the stakes are high yeah um i was listening to a podcast where boan was on the podcast and he goes yeah it's funny like it kind of feels like i think he was on talking about um uh iron maiden um and and sort of the the path he took to to make that because i think boan is the one who actually made iron maiden if my memory serves um because he did with Archer, his Archer pin. Yeah. So he said, look, it's one of those things where you just sort of, you know, you just walk up to a tournament, you're on the stage. The first time people that get up on the stage at the PAPA finals are just like, oh, no, I'm on the stage. I'm going to freak out. But he said my approach is like, oh, yeah. Yeah, hey, how are you going? I'm here again. I'll just play a game of pinball I guess so it's all about your mindset and your attitude there's actually a pinball tournament that is happening down in Newcastle in September and it's called Pinfest and when I heard Pinfest I thought oh you mean the one at Allentown in the US because that one's called Pinfest I think as well and And I was actually talking to our friend Steve at Arcuda, and he was going, oh, no, no, it's a one down in Newcastle. And I went, what?
    39:45
    There's a tournament down there? And he said, yeah, it's over two days, Saturday and Sunday, and anyone can go to it. It's just one of those open things where you pay, I think it's like $30 a day to get in, and you get, I think, it's something like 70 tables are on free play there. So you just walk in and just fill your boots all day. I think there might be a tournament running down there as well. There usually is on these things.
    40:12
    But I was going, oh, see, I missed Brisbane Masters this year because it's sort of like a whole weekend, and I was using that as an excuse not to actually go to the full event.
    40:24
    But I'm just wondering. I wonder if I see if I can organize a trip down to Newcastle and then accidentally drop into Arcuda on my way. Yeah, that'd be nice. They're in. Basically, they're in Newcastle as well. Okay. They'll be exhibiting at the event. They'll have, I think, maybe Thunderbirds there as well as Arcuda cabinets, I think, as well.
    40:51
    See, I don't even bother trying to enter tournaments because I do my Orange County Pinball tournaments monthly.
    41:00
    And I get schooled in it every time. I'm always middle of the pack. I'm not the worst player. I'm nowhere close to the best player.
    41:10
    And to me, I'm just like, why would I? It's me handing away money. I'm just turning in my entry fee. There is no chance that I'm going to do anything amazing with it.
    41:23
    So I don't even bother. Yeah, fair enough. I've done all right the last couple of times. I've been at the Brisbane Pinball Club. I've made the finals, and I was very close to getting money one time, but last time I played, I got some money, which isn't a bad deal considering that because I'm a schoolkeeper, I don't actually have to pay any entry fee. Oh, okay. So it is. I often, if I get money, it'll be like I might make it into the first or second round of finals. and you get, I think, $20 if the pool's pretty big. And that pays for my dinner that I have at Netherworld. So look, you know, win.
    42:02
    So I'm happy with that. The tables that we're going to play tomorrow for our tournament purposes, it's going to be Ghostbusters, Tawny, Flash Gordon, and Solar City.
    42:14
    Oh, wow. I don't even know what Solar City is. I'll have to look that up. Soul City is basically the same as El Dorado. Oh, really? Yeah, I think so. Okay. And then Flash Gordon. Oh, boy.
    42:29
    Yeah, I played that game. It's really brutal. I still don't have a handle on Ghostbusters. And Tommy, I haven't done terribly on it, but I've also got schooled on it.
    42:42
    It's one of those tables. It's got a really tight mode start shot on it, and it's rather brutal to get sometimes. So, yeah, that's an interesting one to try and get a decent score on. You can have, like you say, a really good game on it or you just get totally done on it. Flash Gordon, though, the biggest thing I found with that one is the kick up and the kick out from the upper to lower play field is the risky part. And there's a really, I think on the right-hand side, you've got like a set of drop targets that are in line and they are where you get your extra ball, but they're really risky to get. Right, because if you miss them, it's straight down the middle kind of. Yeah, it's brutal action. Yeah, so you've got to really know how to control the ball out of that stack to actually have any decent luck. But really, it's just keep the ball on the upper play field as much as you can, and that's generally a safe approach to that one.
    43:39
    Did you see the Stern announcement with Deadpool for the next game? Yes, yeah, I saw it. So I'm kind of bummed about one aspect, though.
    43:50
    I know that it's not related to the movie. This is purely based on the comics. But now when I play Zen's Deadpool, the voice just sounds weird. Because I'm sorry, but Ryan Reynolds does an amazing job of being Deadpool. It just, that's how it works. And so then when I hear the voice in Zen's, I just kind of go, ah, bummer. well, Stern hired the exact same guy to do their taping. They did? Really? Oh, yes. I'm like, oh man. Well, that's okay because then it'll sound exactly the same. You won't have any Stan envy. I can't believe they hired the same bloke. I guess Ryan didn't want to do custom voice work. Well, because they don't want to be tied into the movie. Yes, because it isn't actually the movie. It's a comic. And that's exactly where Zen went as well. But I thought that perhaps, well, Zen made theirs before there was a movie, but I thought perhaps they would just try and maybe get a sound alike.
    44:53
    For Brian Reynolds. Something of that nature. But no, they didn't. And it brings up an interesting thing that I haven't heard a definitive answer on, but I've heard rumor of what the answer is. but it's that could Farsight put out Deadpool in the Stern Pinball app? In digital form. In digital form, because Zen already has, here's the key point, Zen has a license with the Marvel Comics version. This isn't a movie version. And Stern's is also Marvel Comics, but it's in a physical form. So obviously physical form is different from digital form, so therefore not competing products. But you bring that into digital form and now you are competing with another digital pinball of the exact same name. Yeah, that's potentially a problem. I think it's a sticky point. That's what I'm hearing is that it's a sticky point. Now, here's the other point. Until Farsight figures out how to do the LCD screen, it's a moot point anyway.
    46:03
    Well, apparently they already do know. until I actually see it in a game released it's a moot point it's not even an issue I was playing Ghostbusters on Steam the other day and all the other tables in the people like hey we're performing just fine and then this thing loads up and it's jerky and janky and gross and that's on a modern stern so they've got a long way to go to making that emulation framework because I believe it's actually not direct wrong code in Pinball Arcade. It's emulated.
    46:38
    That's why it works. If you play it well, play it in the Stern Pinball app, everything's better. It really is better.
    46:47
    I'm working on what you have to suffer through the front end to get to the table. Yeah, you do. You kind of do, and it is terrible. But, um... There's a thing that I don't understand. What, well... Yeah, I don't understand what Farsight's waiting for. The front end of the Stern Pinball app on Switch, beautiful. I love it. It's great. Why has that not been implemented on PC? Why is it not implemented on PS4 and Xbox One? I don't get it. They're going to get rid of the Steam version of Stern Pinball for sure. And they're going to, basically that's going to go and it's going to be mobile only for sure. You can almost put money on it. That's what's going to happen. so they're just going to keep on sucking all the Stern titles back into Pimble IK because let's be honest there's a bit of a lack of tables happening for Pimble IK at the moment so they need content for the platform so they're going to be sucking them back into there but they really need to do some work on just the Stern Ghostbusters table in particular I played on mobile I played Star Trek and it was really good it smooth acdc same thing mustang same thing yeah but there's something about ghostbusters i don't know what it is but it is just no good yeah um and yeah that's that doesn't bode well because i think that is a crossover game between um a spike and white star or whatever they're um sam white yeah spike and sam so the two frameworks so if they're putting on video i mean some one of the i remember someone commenting about how they're going to do video in the stern um tables and the fact that it's just essentially like a rolling video with with stuff overlaid over the top right and i was watching some of the videos in things like batman and stuff like that and yes you could sort of say that is what it is at the very base level but there's still a lot of stuff going there's a layer of integration on that video screen that would take a toll on emulation as well there's no doubt that it would actually essentially a picture in picture view of the DMD running a video stream plus overlaid stuff over the top you've then got three layers you're dealing with in the game So it not as just quote unquote simple as just running a video stream in a window It far more complex than that Yeah So I don know what going to happen there I think it's going to be an interesting thing when they start releasing the video screens in the game.
    49:41
    So last bit of pinball information from me. So Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, they just announced that they purchased a piece of property to the tune of like $4.5 million on the strip, the south end of the strip, which if you've ever been to Vegas, you'll know that the south end of the strip is no man's land. Oh, right. Okay. But that's okay. It's still on the strip. And it's... It's better than their current location, right? It's way better than their current location. It's actually outside of the strip at the moment, isn't it? It's off the strip. It's one street perpendicular to the strip, but it's a ways down, and the current building, it's nasty looking. On the outside, it looks like a derelict building. It's just not pretty to look at. It has zero flash about it. The very first building that they were in was in a strip mall that had a movie theater, and it had windows, and they had it carpeted with Vegas casino-style carpeting. And I really liked the layout, and then the current building that they're in, it just looks like a dodgy arcade. No, not even that. Not even dodgy. It's just a concrete box with a whole bunch of machines in it and a corner piled with parts. yeah it's not very attractive not well presented but here's the deal with why you gotta love pinball hall of fame it's a non-profit business basically he's got a grant going for this and outside of maintenance costs all the additional profits he donates to I believe Salvation Army as his charity of choice. Oh, wow.
    51:39
    But it also allows them, because it's a grant, to pool money. So they've pooled all this money, enough money, that they can go ahead and purchase this property. And then what the plans are is to build a building worthy of being on the Vegas Strip. They said they want it to look like a pinball machine. Oh, that's going to be amazing. Like, basically, crazy Vegas strip lighting all over the building. Exactly, which is exactly what it screams to me. It needs it. Come on, pinball and neon? That's perfect. Yeah, totally. But here's the kicker. The reason why he decided he needed a new building, the current building, I think he has close to 250 machines in it.
    52:26
    He's got a warehouse with over 1,000 machines in it. Yeah. And he went, you know what? This is not doing me any good. I need a space where I can just dump all my machines. Yeah. So that's the idea. To build a space as large as a machine. He doesn't want it in his warehouse anymore. He wants them in people's hands. Well, that's awesome. Yeah.
    52:47
    I'm so stoked. My hat goes off to you, my friend. I cannot wait to see you get it set up. Oh, when that thing is set up, I will for sure make a trek out to Vegas again just to go do that. I won't even go for any other purpose than to see that place. To go to that. Yes. The thing that's concerning me is that at the moment it's well known that they're having trouble keeping up with the maintenance of just 250 machines on the floor. Yes, because it's a volunteer basis. Yeah, so they need to solve that problem first. Well, but if you're in a flashy, amazing building, maybe you can actually hire a person or two. I don't know. You never know. If you become the, I mean, because that was the issue within Banning, where they have the Museum of Pinball. They only open their doors four times a year, maybe.
    53:39
    Prior to opening the doors, they put out a big request, hey, who can come volunteer and get everything up to shape? First time they opened, they had a small army of help, and they said that there were so many tables they never got to. Second time they opened, they got to a lot of those. they said they've pretty much almost gone through all the tables now. And so it's just a matter of time of getting through everything and getting it up and running and going. But I imagine here's the important part is this new building, I imagine they'll actually have a workshop.
    54:11
    I think so. The current building doesn't really have a workshop. It's on the floor, maintenance on the floor type of thing. Yeah. Yeah, that's hard. Like, I know how hard it is. both of us know how hard it is to get machines working and doing it on the floor, I've had to do that a number of times when I've been helping out arcades and it's horrible to try and get your way around a machine that often people are playing left and right of you so you can't get down beside the machine, oh it's just horrible, so yeah having an area where you can just literally put the thing on a coffin wheeler, like the pinball transporter and just wheel it into the maintenance area, yeah, godsend. And if you have a maintenance area that can house, say, ten machines,
    54:54
    they can be in different various states of completion. That would be brilliant. I'm just thinking like this white room with white floors and white walls. So if you drop a part, you can see it on the floor. The hardest thing on a dark floor is seeing old, dark screws that are covered in chrome dirt. or like solenoid dust. Yeah, it'd be wonderful to work in an environment like that. So anyway, I'm excited for that. I wish him so much. Like I wonder when it's probably like he'll have to build a facility. Well, I mean, they still haven't even, obviously they haven't even started construction. I think they're looking at 2021.
    55:36
    Right. Something like that. Because it's not, because essentially the amount, I would imagine the floor area that they'd need would be something like a Costco. Yeah. In size. It would be about that size.
    55:51
    So that's a non-trivial building to have to build. So look, yeah, these things move slowly, but geez, man, imagine what this thing's going to look like when it's done. If it's done right, man. Well, and if he does it the way that I hope he would do it too is have it divided up into sections. He's got a massive wedgehead collection. Has he? It's massive. And so just to put those all in one spot, apparently he has a complete Gottlieb collection. Every Gottlieb. All the tables.
    56:26
    So you can basically call it, you know, you could call it the ozone zone because that's all it would smell like when you walked into that area. It's just a whole lot of ozone. Yeah. So, I mean, if you can imagine just having a room or a wall or whatever dedicated just to that. From start to finish. in year order. When I visited his first location, that's essentially what he had done. He had a row that was nothing but Williams, a row that was nothing but Bally's, and they were in release order. Chronological order. Wow. Now the problem with that was that it became lopsided where all the people were. You want them spread. I think that's why the way the new building is organized, everything is just mixed up. of scrambled. But the problem with that is then it's really difficult to find what you want. What you want.
    57:21
    Essentially, going to a library and going, oh, well, the books are everywhere. So just go and try and find that title that you're looking for. If you want to go and play that Humpty Dumpty, good luck with finding it. 1,000 pinball venue, let alone 250. I mean, when I went to Pacific Pinball Museum, they had that concept of zones. So they had, when you walk in, it was the ozone zone with all the old EMs buzzing away. That was a really nice way to actually welcome you in because it felt like pinball when you walked in there. That was what Banning did. They had a section that was all EMs that was like half the floor and then the other half, they had all of the Data East lined up in a row. They had all the Williams lined up in a row. They had all the Bally lined up.
    58:09
    It was all very sectioned in that manner. They had It was kind of fun. They had a room that was lit with blacklight because there was a few tables that look amazing. One table was specifically designed for that. Which was blackout, wasn't it? No, that wasn't the table they had. Oh, no, Vibranite driving.
    58:32
    Vibranite was definitely a blacklight table, yeah. But what I remember, well, they also kind of made it as these are the adult pinball machines because they had Sopranos in there. They had a Stern Playboy in there. They had Big Bang Bar in there.
    58:50
    But they looked fantastic under black lights. It was really pretty cool, I've got to say. I think I've seen photos of the Attack from Mars remake play fields, which actually have UV ink on them. And they had those under black light, and they just look incredible. Yeah. The contrast of the colors that you see, blacklight, on this particular playfield, it just looks so good. So I really think that so long as you have that many tables, that'll spread the people out. They're not going to be coming together.
    59:28
    So, yeah, anyway. Don't know when that'll be. It'll be a few years off still, but that'll be pretty dang cool. Because the interesting thing is with Belly and Williams and Godley, there's actually EMs and early solid states and late model solid states all in those manufacturer eras. So you might find that each of the rows, there's not going to be a lot of people down the early end of the row, but there's still going to be a fairly good spread among the lines if you structure them in lines.
    59:59
    You wouldn't really have too much of a problem getting around, I don't think. But the fun thing is, is by having them by release date, you can really all of a sudden you play a table. Like, let's say, you know, and you're like, well, hey, here's all these other tables that I'm not familiar with. But apparently they're released around the same time. Let's try playing them. And all of a sudden you find yourself going, I love this era. This particular year of releases is fantastic. you know so it is a way of kind of expanding your knowledge about and your what you would be willing to put a quarter into exactly yeah it's i really did get that when i went to ppm it was um very interesting to see that very thing that you just talked about then it was it was quite eye-opening actually just have them all lined up in there just asking you to play them basically and even the different way that they attract you to playing as well like each year i had a different way of doing that yeah um so it was it was very interesting to sort of experience that yeah so yeah it's going to be pretty cool to see him do what he wants to do with his vision there for um the pinball hall of fame yeah so if if you guys out there happen to come across any uh architectural drawings of what this thing should look like. And I only stumbled across the article. I, it wasn't even, uh,
    61:29
    something that I, you know, a site that I regularly visit that had it posted. Um, so if you, uh, come across any renderings, I'd love to see them send them our way. You can do that by emailing us at blah, blockade at gmail.com or Hey, why not just go ahead and, uh, put it into the Twitter sphere and, uh, throw a little at in front of blockade. So then we can move, see it that way. Or you can go ahead and follow us at that very address. You can follow myself. I am at shut your trap and Jared is at Jared Morgs.
    62:04
    Then there is always, of course, the website you must go visit. That website address is blockade pinball.com slash episodes. because jared's gonna throw things like links for this a very this very very uh episode regarding what we were talking about with your red paperclip guy so your red paperclip yeah we've got to get go get links to that and all the other stuff as well that you know we we got show timing notes and all that sort of stuff that we put up there it's pretty much when i do post-production it's about the same time as recording the podcast because i have to listen to the thing again and make notes about the times and everything. So it's a bit of a process. I actually saw, just before we close out the show, there's another podcast app that's been, or service that's been released that is really interesting. It is a paid service, unless you go with a free service, which would be okay. But this one is designed to distribute the audio file recording across the individual's computers. It's all web-based.
    63:19
    And what it does is in your browser, you do the same thing we're doing here with YouTube Live. So you have like a live session when you're recording. And then what it does is it actually records the audio to the individual's computer. And then when the session's done, it uploads it into a central Dropbox. And then the service does a whole lot of post-processing and stuff on the three recordings. and audio syncs them and does all that sort of stuff for you so you don't have to do a lot of post-production. And within the podcast itself, you can actually have a soundboard that drops stuff in and you can do all your ads and, like, bump in and bump out the service itself. And it really does sound very, very nice. The paid version of it is $20 a month, but you get all the, like, the AI-driven post-production and unlimited recordings and unlimited guests as well because I think with the free version you can only have, it would be you, me and one other person in the podcast one time. So, yeah, it's pretty nice. It's a pretty good service. So I'm trying to get the name of that. I'll drop that in there as well when I go and do post-production. But a lot of people are using it. They say it's pretty good. So, yeah, interesting. All right. Good stuff. Well, folks, as usual, thank you so much for listening. And hopefully we'll have – well, we managed to fill our time despite the fact that we didn't have any actual pinball news to discuss.
    64:58
    We're pretty good with that. Yeah, we may. We're seasoned pros with filling episodes with stuff when there's not much to talk about. so anyway we always hope that there's some bit of news that'll drop during the weekend so cross your fingers if that actually happens but even if there isn't you'll hear from again next week so ta-ta later out, buh-bye
    65:37
    customization. Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blackade is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.