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Episode 179 - Chargin' for Electricity

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 16m·analyzed·Oct 30, 2022
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Expo 2024 improved vendor access but charged unexpected electricity fees; toppers now cost $2,000.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss Pinball Expo 2024, highlighting vendor improvements (mixed vendor/free play areas, free seminar attendance) but criticizing unexpected $300 electricity charges for vendors, thefts during breakdown, and excessive topper pricing ($2,000 DLC toppers). They also preview their participation in a December 5K run organized by a Patreon supporter.

Key Claims

  • Expo 2024 charged vendors $300 for electricity on top of booth fees, which was not clearly disclosed upfront

    high confidence · Dennis spoke with Zach (Flippin' Out Pinball vendor) who pulled his contract and confirmed the $300 electricity charge was in fine print

  • Items were stolen from vendors and auction winners during Expo 2024 breakdown, including from Brian Allen and Flip the Script autism charity

    high confidence · Dennis reports seeing multiple reports of thefts while vendors were packing up; mentions Brian Allen had items stolen and charity winners had replacement items provided

  • Expo 2024 is now the most expensive booth location for vendors compared to other shows

    medium confidence · Zach (Flippin' Out Pinball) stated Expo is now the most expensive booth, per Dennis

  • Mandalorian pinball topper costs $2,000 as DLC, which Dennis views as excessive pricing

    high confidence · Dennis directly discusses the $2,000 topper cost and criticizes it as pricing that nearly doubles machine cost

  • Expo 2024 vendor hall and free play areas were mixed together, which attendees preferred over 2021/2022 separation

    high confidence · Dennis cites this as a major positive change that people praised to him

  • Seminars at Expo 2024 no longer had an attendance charge, unlike 2021

    high confidence · Dennis directly states this as a positive change from 2021

Notable Quotes

  • “That should be part of the charge that it costs you to be a vendor at an event. attending said event, becoming a vendor, paying your whatever it costs to go into the event should include everything, including electricity.”

    Dennis @ ~34:20 — Core complaint about Expo vendor pricing structure and hidden fees

  • “Expo is the most expensive booth now.”

    Zach (Flippin' Out Pinball) @ ~37:45 — Industry insider confirms Expo has highest vendor costs

  • “I will not go back to that facility unless I have a hotel room in that facility... If you want me back, that's going to be the rule.”

    Dennis @ ~27:30 — Sets condition for future Expo attendance regarding hotel accommodations

  • “You're just going to end up doubling the cost of your machine. You know, maybe. If you want a topper.”

    Dennis @ ~44:30 — Commentary on unsustainable topper pricing trends

  • “When people were packing up, I saw reports of multiple things being stolen while people were packing up, significant things.”

    Dennis @ ~41:00 — Documents theft problems at Expo 2024 affecting vendor goodwill

Entities

Zach MinneypersonDennispersonTonypersonBrian AllenpersonDwight SullivanpersonChicago Pinball ExpoeventPinball ExpoeventMandaloriangameEclectic Gamers Podcastorganization

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Hidden electricity fees at Expo may discourage vendor participation, reducing game availability for attendees

    high · Dennis: 'An obvious solution to a vendor would be... just don't get a booth at Expo... but it makes the show suck because then there's no good games'

  • ?

    event_signal: Expo 2024 experienced significant security/theft problems during vendor breakdown affecting multiple exhibitors and charity items

    high · Dennis reports thefts from Brian Allen, Flip the Script autism charity auction items; lack of vendor area policing during cleanup

  • ?

    event_signal: Expo 2024 mixed vendor and free play areas, eliminated seminar attendance fees, and increased vendor/attendee interaction compared to 2021/2022

    high · Dennis reports these as major positive changes based on feedback from attendees; previously vendor hall and free play were separated with limited hours

  • $

    market_signal: Expo 2024 booth costs increased and now represent highest vendor expense compared to other pinball shows

    high · Zach (Flippin' Out Pinball): 'Expo is the most expensive booth now'; $300 electricity charge on top of base booth fee

  • ?

    community_signal: Jeff may not be involved with Twippies/This Week in Pinball Awards this year, first time in panel's history

    medium · Dennis heard on The Pinball Show from Zach Minney that 'Jeff purportedly is not going to be involved with the Twippies this year, which would be a first'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.228

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, October 30th. This is episode 179. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. Yay! Okay, what's been going on? We've got to do our intros. We got to do our intros. This is the big expo spectacular episode. I did an interesting thing. So back when the school year started, we took my daughter to this specialty shoe place to get her cross-country running shoes because, you know, they're like, hey, go get shoes. They give us these to places that have discounts for the cross-country shoes. And we went in, and they did, like, this little computer LIDAR thing that, like, scanned her foot to give us, like, exact information on, like, her feet and let them do a better job of picking out the best shoes, supposedly. Which she says they're the most comfortable shoes she's ever worn. So it's like, okay, whatever. Well, I needed new exercise shoes because my exercising shoes are, like, blown out on the side and ripped falling apart. So I needed new exercising shoes. So I'm like, I'm going to go there and have them do the fancy stuff to my feet, and let's see what they can find for me. I'll tell you what they found. They explained why I have problems with shoes. I have one foot that has a very high arch, one foot that has almost no arch, and one of my feet is almost not quite an inch longer than the other.
1:41
Mutant. Probably because the arch is so much lower. for one foot they say I need a 12 or a 12.5 and the other foot 13 and everything's triple wide it's the triple E extra wide it was interesting so that explains a lot of my weirdness on finding shoes that I've had why basically depending upon the shoe I wear anywhere from a 12 to a 14 because it's trying to find something that works with both of my horribly messed up feet. Now, hopefully it also explains my ankle issues because of just how different my arches are. And I got insoles to help with my ankle problems, and it helped one of my feet but not the other. Well, it's probably because the other one didn't need the same type of insole support that the one does because the arches are completely different. So I'm now in the midst of experimenting with changing that on that foot, and I've had less ankle pain. So it's made running and walking and stuff better. So it's interesting. It is. I've got weird mutant feet. Yeah. You're a freak. I'm a freak. Well, we already knew that. But it turns out not only am I a freak, but I'm a freak of nature.
Flippin' Out Pinballcompany
Flip the Scriptorganization
Twippiesevent
Jeff Pattersonperson
Marco Specialtiescompany
Pinball Industry Awardsevent
$

market_signal: Mandalorian topper DLC at $2,000 represents unsustainable accessory pricing that could nearly double machine cost

high · Dennis: 'You're just going to end up doubling the cost of your machine... Paying a third of what your machine costs to add a topper to it'

  • ?

    announcement: Mandalorian pinball features hologram topper with new DLC game modes programmed by Dwight Sullivan

    high · Dennis discusses Mandalorian topper with hologram feature that enables new programmed modes via $2,000 DLC

    • 3:11
    Horrible deformities. They're terrible. It's sad. It's much sadness. But now that you know. Hopefully things will get better. Yes. Maybe. We'll see. You'll see. Possibly. I won't see. I mean, you could see. I take my socks off. Okay. You can look at my weird feet. Weirdo. I'm tracking someone. I don't know. His feet seem different sizes. We're looking for some sort of carny I don't know maybe Maybe it's time that I start an OnlyFans Just for my feet And only feets For my weird feets Do they tip on that Or what is there is this a subscription I don't know how that works You'll get all the money I just show people my messed up weird feet I just throw dollar bills yeah it's like a dollar bill between each toe each little mutant toe speaking of uh of mutants uh and and funding we i will go ahead and use this part of the intro to thank our latest patreon members we have picked up some more patreon members since the last episode and so at our high support level we now have danny at our intermediate at support level we have brian and at our basic support level we have derek so thank you very much for supporting eclectic gamers podcast and of course occasionally one of the things i have to do on eclectic gamers podcast is issue a correction and i have to correct my correction from the last episode that was correcting the prior episode statement it's it's getting weird this was gonna be the end of it i ain't gonna if i'm wrong anymore just i don't we don't care Not just I don't care. We don't. I've decided. You've decided for me. I have decided for all of us. You're rolling out the royal we. Not just you and me, but for the listeners, too. They're like, we don't care, Dennis. No one wrote it. I caught this myself. But OK. So last episode in the intro, I issued a correction and I was talking about how there wasn't a Jeff. And I was talking about the Game Awards. Remember Jeff and Jeff Keighley? well in it I mistakenly referenced Jeff Patterson being with the pinball industry awards and he's not he's with the this weekend pinball awards I think I just said Jeff but there has never been a Jeff that I know with the PIAs so I don't I can't I couldn't remember if we've ever had a Jeff work on the PIAs but anyway I was speaking about this weekend pinball Jeff but in order to clarify that I didn't mean him for the game awards because I miscalled the game awards the pinball awards and And so the cycle has just been – it's been rough. So, no. I meant to say the pinball – the This Week in Pinball Awards, and that wasn't the one I was originally referring to at all. I was talking about Jeff Keighley with the Game Awards. So I think it's all straight now. Maybe I don't – again, see, I don't think anyone cares. But I'm just trying to be accurate. We're sorry, Jeff. Yes, we are sorry. Though I did hear on the pinball show last week when I was recording that with Zach Minney that Jeff purportedly is not going to be involved with the Twippies this year, which would be a first. They've always had, at least as far back as I know, they've always had like a panel working on it. And so I'm assuming they'll still have a team putting it together. But again, that's one of those things like when I've been involved the last two years with the Pinball Industry Awards. And the number and people involved changed both times. And Zach Minney was not involved. He hosted the award ceremony last year or earlier this year for last year's awards. But he wasn't involved in any of the planning because he didn't want to. I mean, it's a good recipe for burnout. I don't even know if I'm going to do it this year because I'm just like, oh, my God. It is so much work.
    7:08
    It's never work if you're doing something you love. You think that until you start building in the skip logic for the voting ballot, and you're like, you know what? It is work. Even if you think it's cool, it's work.
    7:22
    In terms of stuff I've been doing, I've not gone shoe shopping. I have started to play Far Cry 6, though. So now I've been playing Fall Guys, Overwatch 2, and Far Cry 6. I think I mentioned I got Far Cry 6 on the last episode. I finally started it. So I have a pet crocodile, and he helps bite people. But I don't allow them to ride in the car, which I think is kind of like cruel, kind of mean, really. Six is the one with Giancarlo as the bad guy. Yes. And the crocodile. Five was the one with the religious extremist. They all just kind of run together in my head. Well, let's all go and clear these areas and take up these bases and claim more territory. There's a formula. There's very much a formula. It's the Ubisoft formula, and it drips and far. In fact, there was a far cry. I think it was four. which then they did Far Cry Primal, which was the same map. They just made it like Caveman times.
    8:19
    But it was the actual same. They reused the same map. They just changed everything to huts. It was a fun game, though, because I got to throw spears. It is the video game version of just reusing the play field layout. Yes, exactly, exactly. Now, speaking, though, of thanking our latest Patreon members, I guess we might as well. okay so we've been asking for ideas from people on things that they might like to see you know i've not made any promises on additional items to give to patreon people but i've been trying to do things like we got them a baby's first uh i might have something uh based off of today's episode that i'll provide audibly for them that we will provide audibly for them you don't know about this yet but it'll be smooth don't worry it's not it's gonna be it's weird i need you to read read this I need you to read the script I mean I'm pretty sure this is no that's just straight porn Dennis but it's your feet porn so it's ok so the ball quivered in the trough waiting just waiting for the plunger to strike home and slam it burning hard onto the field of play that's pretty good Teak.
    9:38
    Mahogany. So, anyway, one of our Patreon members – I mean, we've seen people say, how about you guys start playing games, like games you guys would not normally play? Or how about you do – like talk about the movies or – some of this is stuff we suggest and they're all like, we don't want to hear that. We had someone – because of – this is your fault. Because of your walking stories and this shoe thing isn't going to help. Everything is my fault. It's your fault. was like, hey, guys, I really think you two should do a 5K. I've already done a 5K. I know you've done a much. Tony has done a 5K. I have not done a 5K. You guys should do a 5K. This is one of our listeners who is, and I won't name him, but he is a marathon runner.
    10:25
    I'm not running a marathon. Yeah, no. I'm not running a half marathon. I don't think I'm going to do 10K. At some point, the training takes over your life. Which, hey, if that's something you guys like, that's fine. So anyway, he's like, hey, I'm giving you this so that you guys will do this 5K. Well, Tony and I did talks. Tony, as he's spoken on before, his eldest daughter loves running. And so he told her about this idea. And my understanding is she was very enthused at the idea of us running a 5K. Jumping and squealing happened. Okay. Okay, so Tony has signed us up as a team with me and him, his daughter, another person Tony knows, and we're going to do that mid-December. It's like on the 15th. Yeah, it's like the 15th or the 18th or something like that. I checked the calendar. I'm going to have to tell Zach because that's normally when I would record TPS because this is when we would normally start recording TPS. Yeah. It's like, so I might need to be an hour or two late. Yeah, it's weird because it's like 9 a.m. on a Sunday. Yes. So and it's that it's TPS record Sunday, not not EGP record. And so we're registered for it. I it's ironic because I love the message because this is how all the Patreon people are. This is part of the reason why we probably never did it initially is like because they start giving you money and they start demanding things like, hey, you guys, I'm giving you the support so that you can. And to be fair, this individual is supporting us at the highest tier level. But that said, it would be over half a year worth of payments before I would even cover the registration fees for just you and me. Yeah, but it's still worth it. But we're still going to do it. It'll be fun. So I have started. I'm trying three days a week to traverse 5K on foot. That's what I'm – to train for it. Yes. I'm not going to be setting any records here. No. All you need to do – I will try and run it as best I can. You need to hit 29 minutes.
    12:23
    To complete it in 29 minutes? Yes. Isn't that like a. See, here's the problem. That sounds way too fast. Is my daughter demanded that I run the whole thing. And when I got done laughing at her, I told her I'm fat and I have permanent injuries. And there's no way I'm going to be able to run this at her high school level cross country pace. Right. So I told her you do it with her. So congratulations. You have to run the whole thing. at a high school cross-country runner's pace at 40-plus years old. Yeah, I don't think I could. I looked online. The average for my age group of a 5K completion would be somewhere, I think, between 32 and 33 minutes, which I'm not sure I can do that either. We'll see. Now, I did try and jog the entire thing the second time I tried to do a 5K circuit, I got over two miles. Well, that's good. But here's the thing.
    13:28
    I was jogging so slow. It's like doing the old man jog because I compared with my little Google Fit thing. My pace with jogging and walking is faster than that. So it's probably smarter for me to – I will say – so this – the way – the route I'm going because I just do a circuit is – I don't know. Actually, it's a little more than five. It's like between 3.7 and 3.8 miles, something in that range. And so that's just the route I've been taking in the mornings. And so it's like, I don't know. I have gotten mile one under nine minutes, but I fall off like off a cliff at that point and go. And I'm just once I start and everyone probably has their own rule. And I don't and I should say, well, I don't have any problem doing distance. I hate running. I've always hated running distance. As a kid, I only liked sprinting. Like I wanted to be – we didn't know Usain Bolt back then. But I wanted to be – when it came to running, I wanted to be Usain Bolt. I had no interest in marathons. Anything over a mile as far as I was concerned was boring. And I still feel that way as I do this. I'm like, I'm really bored after the first mile. Oh, yeah. So anyway, but we are doing it.
    14:45
    Tony's fun. This is very happy. No, I mean I haven't collapsed yet doing it. But sometimes I'm just like, once I start breathing in and out of my mouth, I'm like, I'm going to walk until I can start breathing in through the nose again. And then I try and pick it back up. And the best part is it's probably going to be like four degrees when we do this. Yeah. When I mentioned it to Tony initially, he's like, oh, yeah, no, but we got a train and stuff. We can look for some time, like in the late spring. I was like, the Patreon dude says we have to do it in the next four months. And Tony's like, okay, there's one on December 15th. It's the Santa run.
    15:24
    What's your shirt size? That's how it is. So anyway, so we'll share some information on that after a photo or something. I don't know. We'll put something up. It'll be fun. FYI, that's what we're doing. So guys, quit demanding more stuff because Tony and I are very exhausted right now. He's got to deal with his mutant feet thing, and I have to deal with the fact that my lungs hurt constantly.
    15:45
    We'll have to see. We'll figure something out. Yeah. First day I did the 5K circuit, it was really cold. This was like two weeks ago. I was just like, oh, my God, I'm never going to be able to. My lungs hurt so bad. I'm looking up. Do I have exercise-induced asthma? Because this really, really hurts. It hasn't been as bad since. Yeah. It was because it was cold. You really need something. You need a face mask. When it's cold, you're just dehydrating your lungs. That's what it is. Yeah. Okay. So anyway, that's what we're doing. So now let's get into what people actually want to hear because we're 16 minutes in and they're like, oh, my God, these guys. So pinball.
    16:26
    They love it. No, they don't. They hit the 30-second skip button. I know because they tell me. I hit the 30 seconds like I need to know every time. I don't need to know. I don't. You know what? Listen to someone else. We don't care.
    16:39
    Another thing we don't care about, Pinball Expo. I say that because we do. Oh, ouch. Burr. Hashtag burn. Because we didn't go. No. We didn't go. In fact, we knew we weren't going pretty much while we were driving back from last year. Yes, we did. Which was approximately a year ago. It was. I just got the notification, the timeline notification on my phone. It says, hey, remember last year you were in Schaumburg? Wow. Which TPF does now have the passes available. I have not purchased mine yet. I haven't purchased mine yet. But we have the hotel room book. Yeah, that's the important part. Yeah. Okay.
    17:13
    Lots of people. I mean, I've lost track of the number of people who have contacted me saying, Dennis, it was way better. It was way better. Dennis, it is. I don't know if they would say it was good or not. See, this is why I'm going to throw a little bit of salt in on this. Here's the problem with everyone telling me. All right. I will. Let me concede that the as far as I've heard, everyone who went to 2021 and 2022 says 2022 is better than 2021. So I'm not debating that.
    17:45
    That said, many of the people who are, I don't know, harassing me about this live in the area and they have a vested incentive to try and make everyone come to their local show. So if you live in the Chicagoland area and you're trying to convince me that Expo was good, I'm already ignoring you because your bias is so blinding you would never say anything negative about it anyway, in my judgment. And my judgment is the only judgment that matters right now. Also, if you're one of the Chicagoland people who try to say that Malort is something that is acceptable for human consumption, we already know you have terrible taste. They're just proud of it. They're just proud of their shame. So the main changes that sounded like went over very, very well with Expo were they mixed together the vendor hall and the free play section. When we went in 2021, they were demarcated, and the vendor section had very short hours compared to the previous one. It was barely there. Right. So there was a better blend of that. They're all mixed together. So you had more time. The vendor area was the important area in 2021 because that where all the new games were like all of them other than a little row of JJPs So that was a major highlight for a lot of attendees Another thing is if you wanted to attend the seminars, there was no longer a charge to going and sitting in on the seminars versus just sitting right outside the seminar and watching it for free on Twitch, which you could do in 2021.
    19:18
    So those were two very, very good, very, very major changes. Now, I've already let Zach know and others who listen to the pinball show that I will not go back to that facility unless I have a hotel room in that facility. Oh, yeah. And because we have big like 5K Patreon money, I also said I ain't like queuing up and fighting for that room. Like it needs to just be given.
    19:45
    I'm not working for it. If you want me back, that's going to be the rule. I'm going to be on site because here's part of the problem. And this is not Expo's fault. No. That location in Schaumburg, though, there is no hotel within reasonable walking distance remotely near it. I think, honestly, the nearest hotel is almost two miles away. It is. It was terrible. Which, even in 5K mode, I do not do two miles after I've drank. So that's a good way to run from a car.
    20:14
    It's cold. It's wet. And that area is not safe in the sense like it's all like high-level like interstate traffic. Yeah, yeah. It's weird. We thought Dallas is Frogger. I mean part of the reason we don't ever go to the old hotel we used to was because we had to play Frogger. Right. They finally put in a crosswalk. Yes, I saw that last year. See, Dallas understands. Frisco understands.
    20:39
    So anyway, moving on though. So that is not to say that everything was sunshine and rainbows. No show is perfect, though. Never is. But we're talking about Expo, so let's criticize a little bit of some of the stuff we heard. One of the things is they had, and I thought this was sort of pretty big last year, too, but they had a lot of console gaming on location. Do you remember that section? I remember that, and there was a lot of people playing it. Yeah. Well, I don't go to shows for console gaming, because you know what? I have a console right downstairs here in the living room. The thing is that because of that, I had asked someone, were there more free play games this year or not? And they struggled to be able to say if it was more or less because the console stuff spaced everything out too and was all intermingled and they couldn't tell. So was this filler? Was this our ice cream full of air? This illusion of console? you know, using console games to bloat your show to make it look like it's got actual a lot of stuff we actually wanted to play.
    21:43
    But I think that could also be a good way to bring people in. So I don't want to totally criticize it. I'm just saying that it wasn't clear to me whether or not there was a better presence of community supplied games. Right.
    21:56
    Another thing, this does not impact the attendees, but it does impact the vendors. And I'm starting to want, again, the vendors are who are bringing the modern games. So having a robust vendor attendance is very useful to a show. They charge for electricity, though. Wouldn't that be part of the cost to be a vendor? Not at Expo. No, no. Okay. Maybe that wasn't at Expo. Let me rephrase.
    22:25
    That should be part of the charge that it costs you to be a vendor at an event. attending said event, becoming a vendor, paying your whatever it costs to go into the event should include everything, including electricity. Are they going to start charging for air? Oh, well, you paid to get into our event, but we need you to plug into this electrical meter to tell your electric usage. Also, the flooring we've put in place here is on top of a scale. So we're also going to charge you per pound per floor space usage. I mean, that's crazy. I was a little surprised. Now, again, talking with Zach, who did have a booth, he did pull his contract, and it did specify in fine print that electricity was not included. They didn't know that it was going to be $300 more on top of the booth cross. Are you what? I believe it was $300. And last year they had the issue with getting connected to the internet. And this year it was the electricity gate.
    23:37
    $300. If I'm remembering correctly. For electricity. I mean. That sounds. I mean. This is like convention horror story. Yes. This is like I have a friend who used to own a gaming store, and he attended a convention as a vendor in New York.
    24:02
    And he was charged not for his electricity, but he had to pay the electrician to plug in his extension cable because he wasn't allowed to do it himself. Right, it's probably a union. Because it was a union thing, just like he had to pay people to unload his truck because he couldn't do it because it was a union thing, but to just charge $300 to use electricity. It's something that you know they're going to need electricity. That the facility wants money for the access to electricity, I don't think is particularly surprising.
    24:34
    What I'm surprised about is why it wasn't embedded and amortized across all of the vendors already. Exactly.
    24:41
    The issue being, of course, that, and this is, I've not planned a pinball convention, but I have been involved in convention planning before. And the way we would do it is there were certain things, certain deliverables, you just assumed everyone wanted and you had that built in. You had to go beyond that. Like you'd have basic drayage. So you'd get a table. You wouldn't have to pay extra for chairs. You wouldn't have to pay extra for the tablecloth. You wouldn't have to pay extra to get on the internet and you wouldn't have to pay extra for electricity. If you needed more, like beyond the three chairs we would provide or a bigger booth or you needed some fancy drayage configuration, Those might be add-ons that we would then have to negotiate if you really, really needed it. But the thing with the electricity that's so funny is, of course, even if there are vendors that don't need electricity, most people kind of come in assuming that they have a spot right at the table to charge their phone or do their work on laptops. And that's why electricity is usually built in. If it's not metered, if it's just a flat, oh, you have to plug something in and use electricity, that's $300 for your booth.
    25:48
    That should have just been figured into the initial cost, especially for something like a pinball convention where pinball machines need to be plugged in. And that's why I wanted to – other than that, it's funny in that sort of goofy convention hallway to talk about being billed for electricity. the if the vendors are a main source of supplying games all the vendors that people want to visit need to have pinball machines in their booth so they need to have electricity and the attendees expect it because our whole thing about 2021 all we everyone who attended expo whining about not being able to have access to the vendor hall was not because we wanted to buy you know led light kits it was because they had all the good games yeah you're discouraging them from bringing them when you start saying, oh, by the way, here's the extra 300 or whatever on top for the electricity. Here's the thing. Again, this is from Zach with Flippin' Out Pinball who attends multiple shows. Expo is the most expensive booth now. Maybe it was. I don't know if it was before or not. It was now, though. It is the most expensive. I wonder, is the 300 per just a flat per vendor or is it 300 per booth? because some of those vendors would technically have purchased like four or five booth spots to take the amount of space they need, which would mean suddenly you're looking at like 1,200. I think it's probably per vendor section.
    27:18
    I'd have to ask because the way they did it is flipping out. Because I asked about the booth sizes. So the default Expo booth size, this was our convention booth size back when I worked governmental, was 10 foot by 10. So Flippin' Out did a 30 by 10 because they also included a section for TPN to do pinball network streaming. And I believe the 300 covered that whole area. So if you wanted to expand your booth, I don't think you had to pay additional amounts for like 300 every 10 feet or anything. Yeah, or it could have been 100 per 10 feet. But I assume if you had gotten two different booths in two different sections that it had been 300 twice. You know, like if they weren't contiguous. I don't know why you would ever not be contiguous at a show for your own – even if you owned multiple businesses, for example. I would just get one massive – like how Marco at TPF gets just a huge area. I assume it's one fee for the huge area or the small area because, again, I don't know if the charge is the hotel or the charge is Expo just finding another way to make money. Because remember they gave up all them seminar fees. Yeah. So maybe you decide to take it out of your vendors. The reason I bring it up besides the goofiness of it is when stuff like that gets around, an obvious solution to a vendor would be, well, just don't get a booth at Expo. Just come and network and mingle. The problem is to the attendees of Enough Do That, it makes the show suck because then there's no good games. Because if they're not getting booths, the vendors are not going to be hauling their brand new games to throw into the free play area, I don't think. is why would you? The whole point of having it in the booth is then you can engage in a conversation. If it's just out on the floor, it's irrelevant. But anyway, it's just one of those things. Another thing, much more unfortunate and not funny at all, was thefts. So apparently at the end of the day, I don't know what the deal is with security there or what, but when people were packing up, I saw reports of multiple things being stolen while people were packing up, significant things. I think Brian Allen, the artist, had a number of items stolen. There was a flip in the script on autism charity. Multiple items that people had won in the auction for the charity were stolen. I believe all the people that provided those have provided replacement, like, light kits and stuff to the people who won those things.
    29:42
    Yeah. So it's just like, and from what I saw, again, it was like, it was a free-for-all when people were packing up. And so people were able just to walk around while the vendors were still trying to clean up. and there wasn't really any policing at all. So, again, these things happen at shows, but it doesn't leave a good taste in vendors' mouths when their sections are being raided.
    30:04
    People who are helping them had their personal stuff stolen. Wow. So, yeah. So, enough about the show. Let's talk about some of the things at the show. Nothing but good news. It's all good news. It's all awesome. Let's start with the Mandalorian topper. Oh, have you seen the topper? I don't have a link in the show notes because I figure everyone's seen the topper. I have. Okay. It's a pretty cool hologram. It kind of reminds me of the little Ghostbuster ghost. Yeah. A little bit up top. It's kind of cool. And the holograms are part of the show. You've seen Mandalorian. Yeah. Part of the show. It's good. Sure. Why not? So do you think it's the best looking topper?
    30:41
    No. Hmm. What do you think is better? I'd have to think about it. You know, I really like the old Whitewater topper back in the day. That was always a good one. I liked the Chicago's, the fancy LE Mars Attacks.
    30:59
    You know what I mean. Topper. Attack from Mars Topper. I really like that one. Though I hear the saucer moving around. Drives you crazy after a while. The sound. Oh. I don't know. I guess I haven't played it enough to think about it that one way or another. But, yeah, no. I mean, it's got lots of cool tech in it. It lets you have new modes. I will say DLC I absolutely despise Topper based modes But we have DLC in video games Well are you a fan of the $2,000 Oh well you know me I'm definitely not a fan of Paying a third of what your machine costs To add a topper to it I mean That's We are getting to the point On topper costs Where you might as well you're just going to end up doubling the cost of your machine.
    31:51
    You know, maybe. If you want a topper. I get that visually you could tell and programmatically they put a lot into it. Programmatically? Well, because I'm thinking like the DLC stuff. Yeah, that's true. Programmatically, someone had to go in, Dwight Sullivan, I believe, had to go in and put in these new modes. I mean, they had to program software all driven by this topper. But, I mean, $2,000? I know the initial rush of sales was decent It always is I mean, the same thing was true with Toy Story 4 Remember the CEs sold out day one Granted, you can now go to distros and get a CE to your heart's content So sold out is always a little bit relative Sold out means distros bought CEs Yeah, I mean, I can't say I'm disappointed in the price or the deal. I mean, we've seen the DLC before with, like, the Jurassic Park topper. Right. And we've seen $1,000 toppers, which I already thought were way above what was reasonable for a mod of that limited. I mean, because you can't really enjoy it while you play. So it's really for others to look at whilst you play. I just, it's just not my thing. No, I'm not a huge topper person. I think the toppers that I've really always enjoyed the most because it is whirlwinds topper that gives you the fan and then like the toppers on TNA and high speed, which are just the beacons that go nuts at certain points. It's just an attention grabber. I think everything else is just window dressing. It's the extra pin striping on your car. Sure. But when it starts getting to the point where it costs that much, it's just crazy to me. And I still don't ever like having it as a mode that, oh, you can only play this mode in the Topper back version. My understanding is with some of the prior ones, like the aforementioned Jurassic Park Topper, when Insider Connected came out and the kits were released, the modes became available because there were achievements for those modes. But in this instance, I haven't heard that they're going to do that. So this could be a way to try and funnel people into buying the topper. I don't think there are very many people who, unless they're already topper people, are going to bite at let's get for some progressive mode stuff and spend $2,000. Right. DLC works on the video game side in part because it's affordable. It can be frustrating. But the argument has often been by the game developers and publishers, of course, is, well, this is additional work beyond the base game, so we deserve additional money. I think a lot of it in their instances were driven by in video games. There was very much a sense that we couldn't move the pricing past $60 or there was a desire not to for a very, very, very long time. And so the way around it was by selling DLC separate. $2,000 ain't $60 to $70. And it's not a $10 to $20 DLC. Right. So that's the issue. But anyway, I think it looks cool. I'm just, I would never be in the market for it at that price. And here's the thing. If you have it and you sell your machine, do you tack $2,000 onto the machine that you're selling because you've got a $2,000 topper on it?
    35:21
    Maybe. Is that enough to make somebody grab your machine over a cheaper version that doesn't have the topper? See, that's an interesting question. Or do you try and sell the topper separate? it see in this instance stern has indicated this is not a limited topper they've made zero promises in fact it sounded like they'd emphasize the plan to continue to build it so i've assumed they're trying to say don't pay above two thousand dollars second hand get one from us well right keep making it whereas it's but historically it's always been very difficult to get stern toppers they build them slow even before the pandemic they build them slow they seem to they they do pretty poor communication in fact this had poor communication too one of the interesting things about it was again hearing it from because i podcast with the distributor you know hearing it from zach and finding out like they the distributors found out about the topper when everyone else did when the trailer dropped the distributors initially didn't have any high quality photos from stern zach to populate his website was playing like their 720p youtube video and taking screen grabs to throw in. They did eventually, Stern did eventually, I laughed quite a bit when I heard that, did eventually send them photos. But it's like they wouldn't put it on the site immediately to get as many sales as possible. I mean, they're in business to make money. Why are all the ducks not in the row lately? It just seems like ever since Bond, it's like it feels like, did they turn everything over to a new crew at Stern? Well, I wonder if they're not having some PR issues where there's not, there's been, you know, changes in inside their PR crew level at a point where there's maybe some institutional knowledge that's been lost. Maybe. Or if things are there, they're attempting some new things and it is letting some of the old, uh, standby things that everybody knew are just not there or not being thought about as they concentrate on other stuff. I don't know. It's weird. It seems like a series of major PR-related stumbles for Stern when typically they've been one of the best when it comes to the PR stuff. Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense to me. And unfortunately, it's difficult to know. I mean, if there are changes, even if there are personnel changes. I mean, remember when Lyman Sheets left Stern, we didn't know for six months. Yeah. Because he hadn't said anything broadly, publicly, and Stern sure didn't announce the loss, which, I mean, I don't blame them. Right. When you lose your greatest programmer it kind of it doesn look good It doesn look good Um so anyway anyway the sad thing sad to me is the biggest news out of because the Mando toppers were at Expo But that's the biggest news out of Expo. You could say that Bond should be the biggest news out of Expo. And of course, your mileage may vary because Bond was there. They did have pros and premiums available for play.
    38:20
    Reports were mixed. code still pretty shallow um not a lot that you can do a lot of placeholder stuff still in place like there's because uh lonnie ropp is is working on bond i guess they still have a lot of like stranger things font in there because he's using that as his framework yeah which makes i would use a framework too um one of the uh i guess i'd say general consensus obviously again mileage may very general consensus is the right side of bond is pretty fun. The left side of bond, not so much. Some people still liked it. Some people don't like the left shots, but the right shot sound more interesting other than the pop bumper nest. It seems everyone dislikes the pop bumper nest as near as I could tell. Interesting thing, full credit to Ron Hallett, Jr. of slam tell podcast who called this out because I sure didn't catch it. And what little brief snippets of video I saw, he indicated having gone and played the premiums and the pros the premiums appeared to him to have run out of spots on the node board or whatnot they're pulling a home version the pin style thing the pops are all firing together when the ball hits anyone they they all pop no surely but not on the pro but on the premium and i know his his thought was is this because with the bond on a wand on the premium and all the other mech stuff that requires solenoids connections that they had to wire them all together because why else would they fire at the same time if it's not a node board issue because even if I tried to think about it as like well what if the leaf switches were so close to get as like well they would still stutter if one vibrating made the other one fire they wouldn't be in unison it'd be a stutter plus I've never had that happen And even with I've had a pop to start popping kind of randomly of it. So I've never had one make other ones fire on accident. That is so odd. So and I was watching a live stream and Ron was in chat and he's like, no, yeah, this is it's a thing. It's a thing. It's my. Anyway, per his opinion, which I will trust because he has forgotten more about pinball than I will ever know. Right. He's like, it made it not fun. and the pro pop nest is not very fun either, but the premium, it kills a lot of the momentum because, because the ball's going, the other one's already popped. So it's, so it's, yeah, it's just kind of like, it's just kind of, I would describe it as the way he presented is it made it play flat in the pops. Yeah. That would make sense. Cause you get less resetting. Yeah. You lose the action.
    41:05
    I mean, assuming he is correct on that, it's like, why do you, I get, like, okay, you've got so many. I get the one way it's like, okay, so they crammed so much stuff in there. But you don't put in another board. This is the expensive model. Yeah, why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? And we didn't talk about this on the pinball show because I wasn't aware of it at that time. I hadn't heard Slam Tilt yet.
    41:29
    Why wouldn't you put in just another node board, another control board, another? I mean, they are like, I mean, another board. I mean, they sell them publicly for, like, what, $250? ain't the cheapest piece of a plus with their chip shortages. But surely there has to be something else that you could combine together or that you could remove that would not have you do something that is so obvious. I based not just off of that, but factoring that in, if true, and I have no reason to doubt it, but if true, plus the bond on a wand doesn't seem to be able to physically swing like all the way across the play field it basically goes to where it can drop on the target it's like I don't know why you wouldn't get a pro with the like dead pop nest coupled with mech that sound and honestly when I first saw it even with the rescue 911 approach looked kind of boring yeah and you get the Austin Martin Vuck on both and that's like the coolest part That is the coolest. So you give up the physical ball lock at the rocket.
    42:40
    Okay. Which, I mean, that is a thing. But I just – anyway, I mean, whatever. It's just another thing that's like – just another disappointment. It's part of this whole rollout of – unfortunately. To me. Some may not care. But that's something that's been very noticeable to people who have been playing the pin. Is – or what we still call the pin. So, you know, the Jurassic Park and the Star Wars and all the other home edition games with Spider-Man. And it's like, oh, yeah, all the pops fire, the slings fire together. I didn't hear the slings are firing together. Oh, that'd be even worse. But it's just like it was already described as not a good nest of pops. It doesn't do anything. It's safe and boring.
    43:27
    I don't know. At least Star Trek's ultra safe pop-up or nest gets you a lot of action. Right Anyway, so there's that Queen, Pinball Brothers Queen was at Expo Oh good So people played that, I guess they had it on 2-ball To try and keep the lines moving General consensus of Again, from what I've read and heard from others is It's okay It's like, it's okay It's Queen Some people, yeah, some people Zach, many seem to like it more than most others I'd heard I didn't really hear anyone say they hated it you know, kind of lackluster upper play field.
    44:06
    Some people thought it played better than Alien, but it is a standard body, so that might help with that. Right. I would think it would.
    44:13
    And still playing better than Alien. That's not saying much. The biggest criticism I've probably heard from those that, and again, that shows it can be difficult to hear, but that the call-outs were pretty bad. Like, they got some band members to do the call-outs, but it came across. And I think that, again, I have to credit Ron for this. Cause I think I heard this on slam tilt, but you could tell they weren't coached. So they don't like jackpot and stuff like they're said unenthused.
    44:41
    Jackpot. Ooh, jackpot. Try jackpot. Doesn't even have that much energy. No, no. It's like listening to an audio book from the nineties where you get the, where you still hear the breathing and then everything's just very flat and monotone. I was going to say early on. wept early anime dubs oh where it's like i don't know they were quote-unquote voice actors or not but you could just tell like no one cared like context was not conveyed or no one cared or what this is like this this was the problem this was back and this is where everyone got all snobbish and said you had to watch everything in subs that comes from the history of having really crap dubs yeah when dubs got good subs make no sense anymore because you spend all your time reading instead of watching the animation. I digress. Magic Girl. It was there. The working Magic Girl.
    45:33
    How was it working? I heard it stayed up pretty much the entire time. They did have to stop play at some points because ball hangups would still happen because it's a bad layout. Though,
    45:45
    general consensus again seemed to be that as a layout, it's better than Raza was. That Deep Root was making. Which was a latter iteration of what John was working on. It's better than Raza. It's okay. It's just crabs, not chlamydia. Yay!
    46:09
    Is clap not chlamydia? I now need to – I said crabs. Oh, crabs. Oh, thank you. I thought you said clap. I did. No, I said crabs because I was thinking the other. And then I thought they were too close together, so I went with the holes. it's like gosh i'm trying to keep my come to the collective gamers where we randomly discuss stis for some reason relevant on a public on a public health front so that's yes all of we're about public health actually technically we are both kind of in public health just in different portions of it and i'm wrong okay clap is gonorrhea ah there we go so there all right so what about you've been you'd have been different diseases no matter what you just I never knew that innately. Just in May. It was your background. You know all the slangs. You know all the... Okay. So there's that.
    46:58
    Those are all the main items I was going to point out on Expo. Though I will say a special congratulations to Jake Danzig. You and I know Jake. He was actually in town recently. We weren't able to meet up with him. But first place for best homebrew pinball game was Dukes of Hazzard, which he's been posting about a lot. I know he's been involved in that project. It looks good. It does look good. I watched Dukes of Hazzard growing up as a kid. I had an – it didn't have FM. It was – I had an AM only Dukes of Hazzard radio as a kid. Yeah, and it was in the shape of the – I don't know if it was in the shape of the car or a building or what, but it was a weird little radio I had for a long, long time. I think I finally threw it away, but I don't think I have it anymore.
    47:44
    So that's all the main stuff I had about Expo. I didn't know if you had any other items you wanted to touch on with it. No, I think that touches all the major expo-y things. Okay. Well, then we'll tear through the rest of these, hopefully, pretty quick. Spooky Pinball. So they had a pretty big announcement here just a couple of days ago. They've brought in a new programmer, Matt Kemp. He's come in to finish up Halloween in Ultraman. Now, the announcement post was funny to me. I don't know if you saw the announcement post. I did not see it. The announcement post was really funny because I think they had originally hoped to have a major update to Halloween and Ultraman out before Halloween, like this Halloween, this October 31st. But the way it's phrased in the write-up, I had to read it multiple times because they said – because it's like stated – I should have loaded it up so I could quote it to you. But it's basically like we're really sorry that we weren't able to make make Halloween make Halloween the way we the as great as we wanted it to be.
    48:51
    They're phrasing it as a we're sorry we couldn't make the Halloween deadline for this great update. The way it reads is it sounded like they were admitting we're sorry that Halloween will never be a good game. That's how it sounded. It's how it sounded. It never will be a good game. I may try and pull it up here while we're discussing. But now I think he – I can't remember where Matt is based. I think maybe New Zealand. I apologize. I suppose it doesn't really matter. I'm not quite sure what else he's worked on. But I think of a lot of people that have wanted Halloween and Ultraman to get to the next level and have felt like it's just not doing it.
    49:39
    But, okay, so I've loaded up Spooky's page. So they've noted he's been programming for over two decades, so he's very experienced as a programmer. And I don't know if he's worked on any other pinball projects before.
    49:51
    Okay, here is the quote of the line that made me – that I was referencing. The update isn't going to quite make Halloween as we wished I think they meant the date Right, yeah, but It's just like, they're kind of way sound, right? You gotta pause for a second It's just like, well, we really wished Halloween was going to be, you know, good And even that can't change that I'm sorry that there is no code that will make Halloween what you wish Halloween was So, anyway But big news, big news So other big news Chicago Gaming Company You mentioned liking their Attack from Mars topper earlier in the show Well according to Nap Arcade and I do have a link to this Article in the show notes The Cactus Canyon remake LE Which I thought I had heard was at Expo Not positive I think it was I think I'd heard that Well anyway if you had ordered one it's delayed again Why?
    50:50
    The delays on it Have always been the topper Right, but I thought they had all the stuff And the toppers were coming and then they were going I thought that announcement came A short time ago That the toppers were good And everything's good now What's the delay now? I don't know But it's going to be from the date of this recording Over a month So We're well over a year from People putting money down For this remake the super fancy version of this remake I don't know maybe Pulp Fiction is slowing them up I don't know it's weird it's strange the fact that they've always said the topper was the problem and now they say they've got the toppers but now they have another problem all the toppers were built wrong they're one inch wider than the machine itself just let it hang rumor corner That's what it is. Rumor Corner. The toppers are one inch too big. They don't fit.
    51:58
    Well, speaking of Rumor Corner, I was going to say, let's go ahead and go into Rumor Corner formally. I already started it. I started early. Okay. Now we're going to start it on time.
    52:11
    Rumor Corner. Dennis Crissel's got the news before Napa Caves.
    52:25
    Is that right, Tony? Yeah. Okay, so on today's official Rumor Corner, I have an interesting thing about Pinball Brothers. So we talked about them. We talked about Queen being at Expo. Well, according to the Rumor Corner. And again, reminder, folks, Rumor Corners, things are rumors when they are of unknown and doubtful origin. Do not assume that rumors in Rumor Corner are true. If anything, assume rumors in Rumor Corner are false. I like to always put these disclaimers. Hashtag liability coverage. So, Pinball Brothers. I have received a rumor that they have one more game in development. At least one more game in development. Purportedly, the Pinball Brothers are interested in doing more than one more game, but they don't have anything set in stone beyond one more after Queen. The rumor report is unclear as to whether or not this would be a licensed game or not. So far, everything Pinball Brothers has done has been licensed. Licenses that were carryovers from Highway Pendleton. Correct. But if it is licensed, the way the rumor provider described things is it sounds like it would not be as popular of a license as Alien or Queen was. So don't expect anything on that level. Again, per the rumor. Incidentally, here's a little add-on chaser to your Rumor Corner rumor. And purportedly, Andrew Highway, who was the owner-founder of Highway Pinball, which went defunct and Pinball Brothers sort of scooped up a lot of the assets, as we've discussed before on this show. He was offered to be the figurehead for Pinball Brothers, but he declined.
    54:07
    Okay. A lot to unpack here. So he didn't want to be just a figurehead. Understandable. Nobody likes to be a figurehead. I can't say it that way.
    54:25
    Okay. No, that's fine. I understand. He just wanted to take his ball and go home. He wanted to cut his losses. Whatever. Hydrofoils. It's fine. It was perfectly understandable. Hydrofoils. Them wanting to make one more game means that your theory about them doing a one and done. That was a prior rumor corner. Yeah. Yes, it goes directly against. It goes directly against. One of these rumors is not true for sure. Now, this is, we can guarantee one of them is not true. Yes. Quite possibly both of them aren't true. Somehow. It's entirely possible. I don't know. We could be completely wrong. Look, it's rumor corner. You know what? This ain't truth corner. I'm just going to call it RMS Titanic, the pinball machine. It's the one that sinks the company. Those poor people.
    55:15
    Yeah, look. I don't know. Look, all I wanted to ask is, are you rumor-tanged? I am. I'm very rumor-tanged. You know, yeah. So, again, remember, folks, you can send rumors in to eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com to provide us with additional rumors. Because I don't have a lot pending in the rumor hopper. You know, I do have one on – you know what? We're going to do a – I'm going to do a rumor corner just for the Patreon people. We'll put this part in separately. Okay. I'm announcing it here. So people, join our Patreon if you want to hear the rumor. Because I get some rumors that are actually about individuals, about people, and that's tough for me. That's weird. Because even though I'm fully declaring that, it's a rumor. It could totally not be true. When it's talking about individuals, I don't really like doing it.
    56:03
    So we'll do it for the Patreon. We'll do it for the Patreon because it's a smaller audience. I will say, it is not a rumor. It is 100% truth. I have weird feet. Yes. But we did that. That's why we did that in non-rumor. Exactly. Welcome to the video game section. To show right off the bat just how popular video games are. Steam has twice in recent weeks broken their concurrent record of simultaneous players on Steam. First, they broke 30 million simultaneous players, and now they're up to 30,044,046 simultaneous players at one point earlier this week. Wow. so uh steam use pc gaming is growing um they have no they haven't put any numbers down uh so that we know how much of that has been brought about by the increasing popular popularity of the steam deck um i will admit that the more of the Steam Deck I see the more I have been considering getting one because a lot of the games I play would work really well on Steam Deck. Okay. That makes sense. So I've considered it.
    57:18
    An old favorite of the show, Square Enix, because they always say the greatest, most They do. Wonderful things. Especially after they sold all their Western development. Exactly.
    57:30
    They had their big financial report meeting a little while ago, and they reported that they set new records for full-year net sales, but that they need to enhance their presence in the global market, which makes no sense because they just sold off every single Western developer that they had. but they stated that achieving major growth in the game industry is difficult now for companies that compete primarily in the Japanese market, giving its grain demographics. It is critical to produce hit titles to speak to the global market.
    58:10
    Well, okay. Yeah, because Japan's only got so many people that can buy games. And for whatever reason, most games that sell huge in Japan don't really sell huge anywhere else in the world except for a few outliers, which to be fair tend to be square games.
    58:31
    But it seems like they took a big step back for what they now say is the new goal. They are continuing their planning on starting up some new studios targeted to the global market. the studios they're wanting one of the things they did when they talked about having sold off all their western game studios and starting new studios targeting the same groups is that they want to target the global market but with studios that are more in line and tied with corporate in Tokyo so that's why they sold off their IPs and their Western studios. Okay.
    59:17
    I don't know, considering what some of their IPs were, if that was a great idea. We'll find out over the next couple years. But they did make it clear that they still think that the blockchain is going to be a very important part of future game development. So they're starting new studios. They're going to be concentrating on making games that utilize the blockchain.
    59:40
    Okay. Web 3. no one cares crypto bro crypto bro oh man uh call of duty very popular i've seen ads all over during nfl games oh it is it's a really cringe ad too where like everyone's singing to a to a military chant yeah it's it's They know their target demographic. Yeah. They do. Which is like everyone, except me, apparently.
    60:19
    Call of Duty is definitely aiming at the sports bros. It is a big portion of their demographic. It's the same people who buy Madden every year. They buy Call of Duty every year. But they are still releasing physical editions of the game. And the physical edition of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 has 72 meg of data on it that is basically a link that when you hit install on the 72 meg of data, logs you into the servers to download all 150 gig of the game. That's funny. That's right. For context. My very first, our very first family computer was an 8086, came with a 40 megabyte hard drive. So this is just a little bit too big to put on that. Just a little bit. Just a tiny bit. See, I remember, and Dennis can recall, there was a point in time where I hated Steam. Yes. Yeah, this was way back. Back when Steam first started, and you had to be online to play on Steam. But one of the things that had really angered me at Steam was I had bought a game. And when I put the disc in my computer, all it did was load up Steam and download the game.
    61:44
    There was no game on the disc. And that angered me so much that I pretty much avoided Steam for several years until now. and now that I'm okay with digital downloads of games, I own everything on Steam to the point where things that aren't on Steam, I tend to not care about.
    62:07
    But it's just humorous to me that they're doing this big ad, they're doing this big push, they're, oh, yeah, with physical media, and the physical, it's just, it's nothing. I mean, and at this point, Tom, I can understand if the data, if the game itself, if there is no game, if there is no playability on the disc, why would you even bother to buy the physical version?
    62:33
    I mean, to be fair with Call of Duties, the multiplayer is the goal, so you're going to want the digital version. But anything with a single player capacity, you should still be able to play it without an internet connection. but we've kind of moved beyond that and consoles, PCs, everything anymore. You have to have online connectivity to be able to play games. Even with some of, even like, I know some of my daughter's games on the Switch, you get the physical and you put it in and it'll do some. And the first thing it does is go, Oh, Hey, we need to do like this massive update. Yeah. So Phil Spencer From Xbox Was speaking at the Wall Street Journal Tech Live And he said that And I quote We've held price on our console We've held price on games and our subscriptions I don't think we'll be able to do that forever I do think that at some point We'll have to raise some prices on certain things But going into this holiday We thought it was important to maintain the prices So coming so quickly after PlayStation did their increase of prices late this summer, it sounds like Microsoft is probably going to be following suit fairly quickly. But they might just be waiting through the holiday to try and get some more segments of the market would be my guess.
    64:03
    With the cost increases of everything across the board, I'm not wholly surprised by this. I was more surprised that they haven't increased anything yet, considering how much everybody else has. I'm assuming. I think you're right. I think they're probably still trying to shore up from the damage of the launch of the prior gen, where they just lost a lot of market share. This is a good opportunity for them to try and, you know, they're not going to pass Sony, I don't think. But they can make it close again like it was in the Xbox 360 PS3 era. Yeah. And I think that's what they're going for. And that's also, they kind of don't want to pass them until everything is done on this Activision Blizzard buyout. They have longer-term plans to become number one that don't involve winning this year. Correct.
    64:48
    Now, they have also stated, he also stated during this live that Xbox Game Pass is profitable now. It has gone beyond when it first started up and being just an attraction that was losing money. It is now actively profitable, driven largely by the launch of it for PC. Because with consoles, there is a much more limited overall number of players than there is on PC.
    65:23
    So the PC growth has really driven it. And they've driven it to the point where Game Pass accounts for 15% of their content and services revenue. at this point.
    65:38
    Okay, well, that's so significant for them. Yeah. And he did say that he doesn't think that it'll go beyond the 15%. He thinks revenues will increase, but he doesn't see Game Pass on its own increasing to be a larger percentage of those revenues. So the percentage will be the same even if the overall revenue goes up. so I think we have a real good feel at this point for Xbox's long term goal and how they're adjusting into the market I know in the latest round of their discussions in the UK courts about the merger one of the things that they brought up is that a lot of the stuff that Playstation has been saying would be caused by Microsoft picking up Activision Blizzard. A lot of that's actually impossible due to the contracts that already exist between Activision Blizzard and PlayStation, like the concerns about them pulling Call of Duty completely or doing Call of Duty on Game Pass and making everybody move to Game Pass.
    66:52
    None of that stuff is available for years and years and years due to contracts that already exist and won't be voided by the purchase. Right, right. That's been true for all their acquisitions. A lot of them had arrangements that they had to honor for things already in development. Yeah.
    67:09
    And in the U.K., they have opened up, the courts have opened up and now started accepting public comments about the merger as well as they're moving into the next phase of their decision on if the merger will go forward. A game that we don't really talk about, Genshin Impact. Huge game. Huge. My daughter plays it. She loves it.
    67:36
    Lots of people do. It's super popular. It has suffered a massive data breach, possibly bigger than the data breach that hit Rockstar.
    67:50
    Rockstar, as you recall, they had the big data breach where people released all that information about GTA 6, even though it's like super pre-alpha. In this case, Genshin Impact had what amounts to the details of every new event, every character, and every quest for versions 3.33 through 3.8 released, hacked out and released.
    68:18
    And that's basically every single thing planned for this whole year has now been leaked. Or for the next upcoming year has been released event-wise for the game. But included in that release was tons of information about employees and game testers and beta testers. They had their personal information and emails and some other stuff was part of the details that were pulled out and released. So that's An interesting little break I don't know if it's actually bigger than the Rockstars break But Rockstars is so pre-alpha And this is literally the next year of content Just out there for everybody to know I don't know how much it actually hurts them Because It's such a juggernaut Yeah Probably not at all Considering the sheer amount I mean, oh no People know about events that are coming My gotcha type games If I knew about more of the events coming up, I wouldn't really change my play at all on it. I might watch the developer's Twitter a little less waiting for. It's one of the few things I get on Twitter about is to watch for the news for when they start announcing the next event and what is going to be in it. Maybe some who are going to buy a character might, if they see another one they think fits their style more, might hold on that. Because I know that's how they make their money. So we'll see. We'll see how that goes.
    69:55
    The increasing popularity just across the board of these living games, the free-to-play games, as something that started in, like, mobile gaming and has now moved to the point where it's common on PC gaming. Genshin Impact's free-to-play. I've played some of the new Gundam Evolution which is free to play Overwatch 2 is free to play it's interesting how many things like the Call of Duties they have the Warfare or the Warzones which are the free to play versions they're becoming so major and such a primary call of most gaming that it's doing interesting things to how companies handle gaming in general.
    70:50
    I thought it was strange when Overwatch had first made their announcements that they were taking Overwatch 2 and going free-to-play. It seems to be working out for them, but they need to work on their moderation. And they have announced that they are working on their moderation because somehow someone was able to slip through a custom game mode called Sexual Harassment Simulator. It's a documentary.
    71:21
    That was very popular. And until they got called out on Twitter and other social media about it, Blizzard didn't even know it was there. Nobody noticed that the Sexual Harassment Simulator was one of the most popular game modes in their custom game mode.
    71:42
    They have, at this point, removed it. Well, as of last I heard, remove it is no longer listed in their game test types. But if you have the ID code for it, You can still generate and join lobbies of it, of people playing it. They just no longer list it on the custom game search. Okay. So they haven't removed it because we know how they feel about sexual harassment. But it's just harder to spot now. Okay.
    72:22
    Also, it's been reported, stores are still selling copies of Overwatch 1 at like $35 a pop. Hmm. But if you buy one of those copies of Overwatch 1, you install the game, which it'll do all of, when you go to launch the game, it transfers to Overwatch 2 and it keeps you over to Overwatch 2. And unless you had purchased, reportedly, the legendary editions of Overwatch 1 that were for sale, you get nothing. You just paid $35 for nothing. Reportedly, the Legendary Editions come with 15 skins, or came originally with 15 special skins. Those will be unlocked onto your Overwatch 2, supposedly.
    73:14
    And some people say it does, and some people say it doesn't. So even there, it's not 100%. We don't know for sure, because some people have reported them not transferring over. Okay.
    73:27
    So Overwatch 2 is still having some teething issues. Yep. I've still not played it. My daughter has now. She's installed it and played it. And she says it seems better than where Overwatch 1 was when she quit. And when it comes to the toxicity. Nobody's told her to kill herself yet. No, I haven't seen it. I've had my worst one since, I'm trying to think, nothing bad, GG EZs, standard gamer troll talks. Right. Nothing, and no one's messaged me either about a game. Because that's where she was when she quit playing. It was because she would, like, post matches, she would get messages from people telling her to kill herself and stuff like that. She quit playing because she just didn't care. Yeah, my assumption is because there's no easy way for them to make free accounts. If they do that, they'll not be able to play anymore. So that's probably helping force people to behave better. Because they'll have to change their phone number to get a thing. Yep, and they can't do a prepaid burner phone. Right, right. Because we talked about that last episode. And, you know, I'm kind of okay with that. Yeah, I don't miss not getting messages from angry tanks that felt you didn't heal them enough or whatever. Right. I mean, if you have to be a... Just yell at the TV like normal people and you don't need to message them. Right. Make people a little more accountable for their actions. Yeah. You don't have to be that just, it's like, nobody knows who I am. And if I get banned, oh, well, I'll just start another account. No big deal. Yeah.
    75:10
    Yeah. People. Okay. I don't know that. That's what I got from video games. Well, that'll be it for the show. So if people want to reach out to us, they can email us, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast and use the messenger tool to send us messages. Nice messages.
    75:32
    Yeah, don't tell us to kill ourselves. Yeah, that's mean. That's sad. We're available at Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. and we'll plan to be back in a couple of weeks and talk about more video games and the pinballs we like pinball I don't know what voice I'm doing it's a bad one no matter what until then I am Dennis I'm Tony goodbye everybody