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Same sh*t, different day

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·55m 45s·analyzed·Sep 18, 2020
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Blockade hosts debunk Zen Studios financial rumors, explain production delays via emulation complexity.

Summary

Chris Freebus and Jared Morgan discuss Zen Studios' operational status amid community rumors about financial troubles and delayed table releases. They explain Zen's strategic initiatives including physics engine updates, Asian market expansion, alphanumeric emulation challenges, and a 10-year plan, while contextualizing the broader market silence across digital and physical pinball cabinet manufacturers around holiday release timing.

Key Claims

  • Zen Studios is financially healthy and will continue operating in 2021 with no plans for the Williams license to change hands

    high confidence · Chris states with '100% certainty' based on prior interviews with Mel from Zen, not speculation

  • Zen's main delay factors include physics engine updates for original tables, Asian market localization research, and alphanumeric emulation implementation

    medium confidence · Discussion of Zen's known public initiatives and Mel's prior statements; emulation challenges inferred from FarSight's historical experience

  • FarSight's mismanagement of the Williams license makes their return highly unlikely; any license loss would be a multi-year future concern, not imminent

    high confidence · Direct statement from Jared with certainty about FarSight's prior failures and contract timeline assumptions

  • All major digital pinball cabinet manufacturers (Arcade1Up, Toy Shock, AtGames, Arcuda) are withholding announcements for Q4 holiday market timing

    medium confidence · Chris observes radio silence across all three manufacturers and predicts October-December announcement flood for Christmas sales window

  • Zen has created its own emulation engine (distinct from FarSight's VP9-derived approach) and is tackling alphanumeric emulation challenges without prior solutions

    medium confidence · Jared notes Zen's independence from existing emulation frameworks; inference about blind problem-solving based on known FarSight difficulties

  • Alphanumeric display emulation requires solving clock speed synchronization, segment animation rendering, and audio loop timing—problems FarSight encountered repeatedly across different machines

    high confidence · Detailed technical discussion citing FarSight's Norman and specific examples (Centaur, Firepower 2, Phantom of the Opera)

Notable Quotes

  • “Zen is okay. Zen will be here in 2021. The Williams license is not going anywhere. Um, so you can tuck away those little hopes that, oh, maybe FarSight will get it back.”

    Chris Freebus @ late in episode — Direct refutation of community rumors with stated certainty; key reassurance to anxious fanbase

  • “Just think 10-year plan, right? So quit looking at the one tree and look at the forest.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Frames Zen's delays as strategic planning rather than crisis; reframes 2020 as 'gap year'

  • “It's a duck on the water, there's a surface of the water, and then the legs are going like this. It's just stuff you don't need to know.”

    Chris Freebus @ mid-late episode — Metaphor for why internal business operations remain opaque; defends Zen's opacity as normal corporate practice

  • “There is no way FarSight is going to have a seat at any table again based on what they did with the Williams Bally license. It is just not possible.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-late episode — Definitive statement on FarSight's industry reputation and license negotiating position

  • “They would have gone back to Scientific Games and saying, hey, here is our 10-year plan for the platform. This is where you fit into that 10-year plan. Can we make our contracts reflect that?”

    Jared Morgan @ late episode — Explains why Zen's long-term planning would have already secured license renewal; reduces license-loss risk

Entities

Zen StudioscompanyChris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonMelpersonFarSight StudioscompanyArcade1UpcompanyToy ShockcompanyAtGamescompanyArcudacompanyScientific Games

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Zen license duration estimated at 3-5 years per industry norms; year two of current cycle now underway; 2020 disruption non-intentional but strategically reframed

    medium · Jared speculates typical license term of 3-5 years; 2020 presented as gap year but not designed as such; partners assumed consulted on 10-year roadmap

  • ?

    business_signal: Zen Studios holding 10-year strategic plan with partner alignment (Scientific Games) to secure license renewal and execute roadmap

    high · Jared states Zen would have approached Scientific Games with 10-year plan to lock in contract terms; this explains production delays without imminent license-loss risk

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinball enthusiast forums (Steam, Reddit, Discord) spreading unfounded financial rumors about Zen; hosts critique toxic fandom and Monday-morning-quarterback behavior

    high · Chris cites friend asking about Zen financial health based on Steam forum thread; hosts critique lack of context and logical reasoning among community members

  • $

    market_signal: Community speculation about Zen financial crisis (FarSight comparison) is unfounded; hosts position 2020 as deliberate 'gap year' for strategic planning, not crisis

    high · Chris directly refutes rumors with certainty; Jared frames delays as proactive planning via Mel's prior statements

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Potential future licensing pathway from Williams/Bally to Gottlieb after exhausting current catalog; Mel and Gary (Gottlieb) are known to be on good terms publicly

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.167

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i am your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan hello everyone How you going? Well, you know, we go, I guess. We are going. Yeah. So we've had a little time away, haven't we, Jared? Yeah, we have had an extended break. And it's not because stuff was really happening in life, it's just there was nothing to talk about. Yeah, I went through the effort of actually having something special planned for you guys last week. and well it was special for me I don't know how special it would have been for the rest of you basically I had lined up an interview with a local sports radio host who's on the number one show in LA for sports radio and we had a nice 20 minute long discussion and it wasn't about sports it was about pop culture and what it is to be a broadcaster in this day of podcasting very informative really awesome loved it, got done with it, went and checked back the recording and none of the audio recorded.
1:28
And to say the least, I was a bit too embarrassed to email the guy back and be like, can we do that again? No, I'm not going to do that to the guy. I mean, he's a 25-years professional in the business. Yeah, I'm not doing that.
1:44
You know what, though? It would have happened to him at some point. And he probably would have gone, you know what? That sucks. And I feel it. But no, I'm not recording again.
1:56
I wouldn't have been... I might have actually thought about it if it hadn't been for the fact that it literally took us 15 minutes just to get interfaced in here. Because my audio was muted and I was trying to figure it out. And I couldn't. And I finally did. And it was one of those things where the computer is just making things happen for no apparent reason. Or not making things happen, as the case may be.
company
PlayStation 5product
Xbox Series Xproduct
Pinball Arcadeproduct
Pinball FX 3product
Steve Masonperson
Normanperson

low · Jared mentions prior speculation about logical next step; Twitter evidence of friendly Mel-Gary relationship cited but not detailed

  • ?

    licensing_signal: FarSight's prior mismanagement of Williams/Bally license effectively eliminated them from future industry partnerships; Zen's license renewal assumed secure under 10-year plan

    high · Jared states FarSight 'no way' to regain seat at table; Chris asserts with 100% certainty Zen's license is secure

  • $

    market_signal: All major digital pinball cabinet manufacturers (Arcade1Up, Toy Shock, AtGames, Arcuda) withholding announcements; anticipated Q4 flood for holiday season sales window

    medium · Chris observes radio silence and predicts October-December announcement pattern; rationale is Christmas holiday purchasing power and console launch avoidance

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zen's alphanumeric emulation project aims to solve at-once the recurring technical problems FarSight had to re-solve for each individual classic machine

    medium · Chris speculates Zen is engineering a general solution to alphanumeric challenges rather than case-by-case fixes; aligns with Zen's quality track record vs FarSight bugs

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zen's confirmed pipeline includes physics engine overhaul, alphanumeric emulation, PlayStation 5/Xbox porting, and Asian market localization

    high · Chris and Jared list multiple active initiatives; Mel prior statements confirm 10-year planning; alphanumeric delays explicitly referenced

  • ?

    technology_signal: Zen has built proprietary emulation engine (distinct from FarSight's VP9-derived approach) and is solving alphanumeric challenges independently

    medium · Jared notes Zen created own emulation; discussion implies blind problem-solving versus leveraging prior solutions

    • 2:22
    And I'm telling you, this software drives me nuts because you try and set it up where it clearly says, my headphones are supposed to be for monitoring everything that is going to be broadcasting out to the show. But when I do that, you fine listeners, all you get is the double talk and echo.
    2:41
    Or, in this case, the fact that it didn't send any audio out. I don't know it was frustrating to say the least I bet I would imagine that yes you would have been saying a few choice words after realizing the mistake yes and then on top of that there's let's see California's on fire yeah like majorly on fire yeah if you look up on YouTube basically look up California Blade Runner, people have put the music... It's basically that. Well, people have put the music to Blade Runner over the top of visuals. Over the top. Because it really does look like the outer regions of Blade Runner. It looks like the world's largest Instagram filter.
    3:32
    Yeah. It's applied to literally everything. The Matrix has got a bug in it, and it's got very brown tints to it. Orange, I would say. Yeah, orange. You know. Oh, look, it's Cheeto mode. Right? It's the only way that he'll get any foothold in California. It's Cheeto. Cheeto mode, that's right.
    3:54
    So in other news, it turns out that I should have checked the instructions on my face mask because I decided to finally wash it, and you're not supposed to put it in the dryer.
    4:06
    Oh. Yeah, now it's a teeny tiny face mask. For little mouths. Yeah. Yeah, so it's been a week or two. Yeah, it's been a year, mate. That's what it's been. Like, you know, what I'm seeing over there in California is pretty much January for us this year. Because I've got a tweet in my stream going, oh, yeah, there was like two kids, basically. There was a kid from California over the Blade Runner-esque background. and then there was the other, the Australian girl that was made famous for, like, literally the fires that got to the beachfront, and she was out in the water to escape. Oh, right, right. And that was January 2020. So it feels like it was a lot longer ago than that, because 2020 has been such a nightmare of a year. But, no, we are experiencing the same thing in the same year. It's just different hemispheres of the earth. You're in the future. We are the canary in the mine for what you guys are going to be experiencing.
    5:14
    It seems. Love it. The cancer environment. Yeah. Well, we're going to try and make the best of all this, though. We're going to talk somewhat pinball.
    5:26
    Pinball adjacent, if you will. Of that nature. Because if you go through the forums, the various forums, and I do basically three different things. I do Digital Pinball Fans, I do Discord, and I do Reddit.
    5:41
    And across all three of them, there are some harebrained, just crazy rumor theories going on about Zen because you all aren't getting your pinball tables yet. Right, so therefore people think they're going down the path of farsight, aren't they? Pretty much. I literally had a friend of the show, but I don't need to mention who, ask me, is Zen okay financially? And I went, where the hell is that coming from? What shred of evidence do you have that would lead you to ask that question? And the response was, well, there's a thread on Steam about it.
    6:23
    And I was like, okay. Well, that's the Chronicle's source of information about business prosperity. And I get that not everybody listens to our show. In fact, not a lot of people listen to our show. Not nearly enough. But if you're going to be putting out harebrained guesses and rumors, maybe you should listen to a few places that actually have Mel on twice in the past year, guys from 1UP on, you know. it might be helpful to know that things are just fine for the most part. Just trucking along? Trucking along, yeah.
    7:07
    Just because you don't see tables doesn't mean the place is dying. I mean, in the case of Farsight, you could probably assume that. But they have other interests, and I think they're doing other things with their time at the moment. Yeah, so this is what I wanted to kind of bring up. Let's think about the things that we know that is out in public of what Zen is currently doing.
    7:33
    Number one, Zen is updating the physics for all of the Zen original tables. No small task. Oh, that was the other thing. The other question was questioning the reality of if Zen's pinball division is actually as large as they say it is, and are people being siphoned from that division into the games division and vice versa. Like Castle Storm, essentially. Right. When we've had Mel on multiple times telling us that's not the case, while there is a little cross-pollination in the terms of like, yeah, if a Zen table needs character animation, sure, go to the other department who deals with mocap and character animation all the time and have them do it and then send it back over. But it's not a question of, hey, the guy that's working on the pop bumpers is needed over on Castle Storm and has to go do that now.
    8:30
    No. No, there's a set team. They, you know, look, I'm sure we'll circle around to this, but, you know, just think 10-year plan. Right. So quit looking at the one tree and look at the forest. That's right. You know, so we've got that with the physics. We've also got the idea that they're trying to figure out what they need to do to break or expand into the Asian market.
    9:02
    Now, when you think about that, pinball machines haven't been readily available in China, Korea, Japan at all. I mean, in Japan, it's the case of space. In China, I'm sure it's the case of we don't want your Western whatever, and I don't know what the deal would be. Pretty much. And Korea just kind of follows suit with both of those. Yeah. So introducing – The funny thing is, though – What's that? The funny thing is, though, like once the Chinese and Korean folks have actually seen pinball, they love it. Well, and that's what I was just going to say. there's that video from Home Pin. Yeah. And they go, this is awesome. We want this lots, but none of the themes really resonate with us. We don't get these Western themes. Right, because that's what I was thinking. The humor that is on a Williams table is not completely lost. And do you really think that someone in China cares one lick about medieval madness?
    10:11
    No. So, yeah, it's a matter of you've got to find some themes that resonate with them. So mainly you're talking about whether it be historical events or famous historical events or legends, folklore, that sort of thing. Of which, what is it? There's one particular guy in Chinese folklore, or he was actually a real guy. but there have been hundreds of movies about him. Jackie Chan has like three. The Legend of the American Master is one of them, I think. That movie with Jet Li Hero is based on one of them. I mean, there's tons of those. And then there's the, what is it, the Monkey God or the Monkey King? Oh, yeah, Monkey Magic. All the legends of that. Yeah. All you have to do is tap into one of those two, and you're going to have that market. And I think the Western market, we already sold on pinball as it is, So we'd just kind of be like, oh, what's this? This should be interesting, you know.
    11:13
    Yeah, it'd be something fresh as well. Like, not just Western culture in pins. It'd be something new and interesting. And, you know, we might even learn some things about a different culture. Yeah, and then if you want to go the licensed route, well, that's where you start going into your anime and video games themes that resonate more. It's not that they don't resonate with Western audiences, but it's that those are what resonate really strongly with the Asian market. That's right. So these are things that, obviously, Zen has got to be exploring. I'm sure they're already knee-deep in trying to license, get things like that hammered out. So there's that aspect. And if, indeed, that's what they're doing, those original tables, which means they're going to have to be creating those, I still contend that we're going to get an Operencia and a Castle Storm 2 original table. yeah i would think so uh i'm surprised we haven't actually seen a disco dodgeball table yet either well i was thinking i think that we should get uh infinite mini golf and then introduce a new mode to pinball effects 3 pin golf yes absolutely like it's obvious pin golf is fun yeah if you've ever played the format, so it would be awesome. Yes, Godzilla would be a natural fit there, selector. Oh, such a huge library of material that you could get Godzilla for, but I think Stern has the rights for Godzilla at the moment, because they snatched them from Spooky.
    12:50
    Oh, they were planning on making a new Godzilla then, huh? They were actually going down the path of, I heard ages ago now, that they were actually going to make a Godzilla pin, but yeah, Stern you inked the license off them. Would make sense from the aspect that there's the Godzilla vs. King Kong going to be coming out, well...
    13:14
    Who knows when it's going to be coming out now? It's already been made. Right. So that would make sense then. Okay, yeah, so good luck with yanking that away.
    13:24
    But still, you're on the right track. That is definitely what you've got to be thinking about is things that resonate more with them than us western audiences happen to have glommed onto them too yeah what else is Power Rangers man let's get that no Voltron over Power Rangers Voltron for sure based on the new animated series that Voltron looks pretty good I keep on saying Cowboy Bebop especially with the Netflix show getting ready to come out It prime for what you could do capitalizing on an audience that would be there So those are some things. You've also got to figure out that Zen is working on porting over to PlayStation 5 and Xbox, whatever it's called. I've got such a mental block on whatever the hell the next Xbox is going to be called. Xbox, the latest one.
    14:26
    That's what I call it. The picture that they just released of it, it looks like a speaker. Like it's Alexa.
    14:32
    Yeah, that's right. So, yeah, they're obviously working on that. And then there is working with emulating alphanumerics, which when we start thinking about why there would be possibly a delay regarding that, and Jared, you had mentioned this to me a little bit earlier too, Farsight had very similar problems with emulating pre-DMD ROMs because of clock speeds, correct? Yeah, they did. It was like the super low clock speeds of these older System 11, System 9 games. it was really hard for them to get the timing right without speeding up all the animations and everything. If they don't get the clock speed right and running right, all the animations and like DMD gets out of sync. Not DMD, the alphanumeric displays and everything get out of sync with all the action on the play field. And it even affects some rules because the clock's not running at the right speed. So they have to put serious, what essentially is in engines, you have a thing called a governor that controls the speed of the engine. so it can't go over speed. Well, they have to do that with emulation and put in like governors or restrictions in the pipelines to make sure that like it doesn't go fast. And that's really hard. The other thing too is that remember when Farsight was first implementing alphanumeric displays and they had all the problems with animating each segment of the display because a dot matrix display is a bit different. You just turn pixels on and off. But the way that Farsight did it, I'm not suggesting that CIN's doing it the same way, but their alphanumeric displays, each segment was a separate animated thing. So they had to address each segment as an animated item, and that really hit performance badly for them and for ages. Still now you see, if you play any of the alphanumeric games in Pimble Arcade, you see that there are some frames in the alphanumeric where, instead of going black, they just lock on and they stay the same. until a new frame refreshes over the top. So it's very hard seemingly to do, which is really weird, isn't it? Because it's old technology. You would think it would be easier. Yeah, but then you start thinking about it. It's like if you've ever tried running a DOS game that you bought off of Steam on your computer now, you have to go through five billion steps in order to make it run even remotely properly. That's right. You do. the other thing that I remember with Farsight and that was with Norman specifically on Centaur the audio was driving him bonkers because it kept on going out of sync when it would loop every single time it did a complete cycle it would be ever so slightly off of the previous cycle and if you played the game for any period of time things would get really off target the other really challenging thing with Centaur as well because all of the sounds were essentially automatically, not automatically generated, but they were derived from a chip and generated from a chip. And that chip could do interesting things with it, like with sounds speeding up and slowing down, and they were designed to do that. And so to capture all those audio states, he had to actually record about 13 minutes of music at one point i think it was for the phantom of the opera where when you're sitting in the shooter lane in multi-ball and it has a slow sort of ascending tone that just keeps cycling and cycling it turned out he had to record something like 13 or so minutes of audio to make sure that he had enough buffer to cater for that if people just left it sitting there without looping so these older machines because of the way that the audio was streamed essentially directly from these chips, a little bit different to DCS, which was essentially a digitally compressed audio that was produced on a workstation, and they just recorded the tracks. So that was a little bit different when they weren't generating the music on the fly, essentially. They were just streaming what is essentially a very low bitrate MP3, for want of a better word. So yeah, these older machines have very interesting emulation requirements.
    19:07
    It just kind of makes me think also that this was a problem that... For those of you that don't know, Farsight's emulation was virtually the same as what, at the time, it would have been a VP9 was using. They had hired Steve Elenoff, who I believe was partly responsible for Pin Mame emulation. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, so they had hired him to kind of help crack that emulation nut, and that's why Farsight's emulation kind of mimicked a lot of what was in there. To the best of my knowledge, Xen has completely created their own emulation. so this particular task would have been something they would have had to have tackled blind as opposed to just using something that previously other people have done with Farsight every single time though they did a new alphanumeric they had to solve the problem all over again and again going back to Norman when he was doing Firepower 2 the bonus count if he didn't do anything to it and use just what the emulation did it was a single-tone bonus count. He wanted that ascending tone, and so he had to record all 400 and whatever possible tonal variations that there were. He literally sat at the machine and did something until he did a bonus, drain the ball, get the bonus count, do it again, next month, do it. I mean, I think it took him like five days. I know that he called me and was just like, I'm going mental right now dealing with this. Yep, I remember that. But that was every single machine they had to solve that problem over again. Knowing Xen, I'm betting that they're trying to figure out a way of emulating this that solve it now, never have to worry about it again.
    21:03
    I mean... They're doing the engineering. I think you're right. I think they're actually taking the time to make sure that if they release this thing and they release it on all the consoles and all the platforms that it just works.
    21:18
    Yeah. Because, again, anybody that's dealt with Pinball Arcade versus Young Miss Zen, there hasn't been a lot of glaring bugs in Zen.
    21:33
    Here or there, there's been a minor one. I know that apparently there's a really massive one in Black Rose where if the ball isn't locked and then you nudge it, you can rack up some huge points, and it's not a ROM state. It's a Zen state that's causing it. it's the base the way that tilt interacts with the switches on the playfield essentially yeah um but by and large there hasn't been anything that as soon as it comes out you kind of go oh guys hey um whereas farsight my god there's to this day there was huge glaring bugs that never got fixed um they just sit there so terrible yeah that's what i'm kind of assuming What else is Xen up to? Well, we know that they're up to Arcade 1-Up.
    22:19
    I don't know how much responsibility they have with that, other than making sure the software functions, but I do know they're going to be involved in marketing for it.
    22:30
    So that's something that's on the plate. This is all stuff that's currently going on, and as Mel had told us, they've got a 10-year plan going forward.
    22:40
    So this, to me, would be the opening salvo. who knows what's going on. And more to the point, as consumers, why should we be privy to it?
    22:49
    This is just internal business stuff. It is. Think of it like this. Think of 2020 as like a gap year. If you think of it like that, a gap in strategic planning year, and if they mentioned that at the beginning and said, hey, look, we're taking a year off production of pinball stuff to get our ducks in a row so that we can make the next 10 years amazing for everyone. If they framed it like that, people would have gone, oh, yeah, cool, all right, fair enough. We get it. But I think it's because it's internal business stuff and, you know, there's no visibility and all the consumers can see is, well, there's nothing being released. So, therefore, what's going on? That's the problem. Well, I keep on going back to just thinking about it. Does Blizzard really give all sorts of internal updates about the goings-on of whatever their games are? Pretty much you stay quiet about everything. You put out the game. Hopefully the game speaks for itself. And then you hear the horror stories after the fact. But if you start telling all the problems that are going into the game previously, then people start getting a bad taste in their mouth about what that product is, and they're going to be looking for faults. Yeah.
    24:07
    That's right. It's people that need to know. It's just internal business stuff. And all this is to say, we honestly don't know what... I mean, we've been told that there's been delays because of Alphanumeric, and that's about the extent of it. Who knows what is going on, whether it's... Are they really having... Dealing with licensing stuff and all this other stuff? is there something, you know, think about when they put out the, when they were going to put out the Star Wars table for Switch. Who knows what the fine print was, whether there was, hey, you can't release a table X amount of time before or X amount of time after the release of this, and it's up to Nintendo to decide what the release date is. And, you know, but what would you really expect Zen to come out and be like, well, Nintendo's delaying us. Oh, great, so you're going to throw your partner under the bus, which makes your partner never want to partner up again with you.
    25:05
    Yeah, that's not a play in the Zen playbook, I don't think. So I just kind of love that. Again, it's inside baseball. No one needs to know. It's a duck on the water, there's a surface of the water, and then the leg's going like this.
    25:20
    It's just stuff you don't need to know. So just let me be as clear as I can possibly be about certain things, folks. Zen is okay. zen will be here in 2021 the williams license is not going anywhere um uh so you can tuck away those little hopes that oh maybe farsight will get it back why you would want them to get it back i beyond me but no the license is there for them to play with they're still going forward with it so let's just squash those rumor mill fires I'm saying that with 100% certainty yeah there is no way Farsight is going to have a seat at any table again based on what they did with the Williams belly license it is just not possible what could eventually happen years into the future is that Zen, for whatever reason, doesn't keep the license. But that's not a next year problem. No. That's definitely not a next year problem.
    26:31
    And really you don't need to worry about it. Yeah. It is interesting thinking about how long you think that they might, though, play with the Williams license. before it becomes time for them to delve into other licensing.
    26:54
    Well, you know, I think we've already said for a while that it makes sense for them, the next logical step after they've exhausted the Bally Williams licenses to then start partnering with CERN and go down that route.
    27:10
    And, you know, we've seen some tweets in the past where, you know, Mel and Gary are pretty good mates.
    27:19
    openly good mates on the Twitter stream. So, you know, there's certainly that credence to that idea. But I think, you know, as licences go, and again, we don't know the terms nor conditions of the licence deal with Scientific Games and Zen, but you can assume that it's something like three years to five years, depending on what they decide to licence.
    27:45
    So, you know, looking forward, This has been like essentially year two Yes And this is a year with largely not really a lot of output
    27:57
    Which, of course, was not by design. No, this was like, hey, you know, we need to stop, take stock, and actually plan so that we can actually do what we need to do for the next 10 years. So you can pretty much imagine that, you know, if there was any concern about the license running out anytime soon for Zen, then that would have been addressed as part of this planning work. They would have gone back to Scientificate and saying, hey, here is our 10-year plan for the platform. This is where you fit into that 10-year plan. Can we make our contracts reflect that? Because that's why you do 10-year planning. So you can go, hey, all the people we're engaged with, this is our roadmap.
    28:37
    Do you agree with this roadmap as a partner? Can we lock that in, please, Eddie? and that's why they do it. You don't plan two years in advance like Farsight did. You plan 10 years in advance and make your partners confident that you can execute.
    28:58
    Now, interestingly enough, Zen hasn't been the only one, though, that's been a little bit cagey with releases during this whole thing. Literally every single physical pinball table manufacturer in the market has been keeping their cards pretty close to their chest, haven't they, Chris? There is this horse race that's like it's not much of a race because nobody's come out of the gates. With regards to the cabinets, you've got Toy Shock. They did their whole big reveal about their cabinets, but have they dropped them yet? Nope. Obviously, Arcade 1-Up, they did their whole big reveal. Did we ever release it yet? Nope. And then there's AtGames. They've released their lap or portable deck.
    29:46
    They can play a myriad of games, among them pinball. But they haven't even released pictures of it, framework of it. Yeah, of their pinball cabinet. So it's like all three of them are kind of like, who's going to talk first? Then we get a tweet from Arcuda out saying they're going to have some news coming. It's like, hooray, Arcuda's back, but what are you guys waiting for?
    30:15
    Everyone. Everyone is just sitting on the information at the moment and I've got a feeling that between October to December, it is just going to be a floodgate of information happening. That's my gut feel. I think everyone is going to hard announce everything between October and December, and they'll just be available. They'll go, here's a product, place your orders now, and that's it. Oh, right. So no, it's coming two months down the line kind of thing. No, it's like, place your orders now. Pretty much. I reckon that's what they're doing. Because they need that Christmas market. That's what they need. If they don't hit that, we know that that is going to be a problem for anyone trying to shift product this year. Because that's when you buy. You buy for Christmas. So here's what I'm also wondering is, are they all being hesitant because they don't know when Sony and Microsoft are releasing their consoles?
    31:18
    Like, you don't want to necessarily go head-to-head with those either. No, because they're a significant purchase for households. So, you know, they're about half a grand each, essentially. Yeah. Well, certainly with the Australia tax, they're half a grand each. but maybe a quarter of a grand each in the US. But still not trivial, particularly in the times we're in at the moment where people have been laid off and they don't really have a lot of disposable income to throw around. So you don't want to be noise or considered noise in this market, do you? So this comes back again with everybody being all butt-spinkered tight about what's going on with Zen, look around. The games market. They're not the only ones. And you're not going to threaten about them, all those other companies, are you? You're just being fanboys, and I got in a little trouble on a Reddit thread accusing, basically saying how, you know, fandom can turn toxic.
    32:24
    That's what you've got to be careful of, though. It's great to be excited about a product. It's great to be a fan of the product. but instead of you've got to have your reality hat put on though right you've got to approach it with a bit of logic and a bit of grounding well quit focusing on the end result and realize that there is a hundred thousand steps prior to make that end result even happen and you know just have a little consideration for all of those things and you'll start to appreciate what it is but you know everybody wants to be the well the Monday morning quarterback or the exec that doesn't have an exec stress to figure it out.
    33:07
    Yeah, lounge room executives are the best sort, right? There you go, lounge room executives. Alright, we're going to switch up gears here, Jared. We're going to play a well, you're going to play a game that I was playing with my guest. My guest, by the way, his name is Steve Mason. He's on 710 ESPN here in Los Angeles. And he's also got a podcast by the name of Culture Pop that is all about pop culture. His latest episode, he just has Brian Cranston on who basically said that if Better Call Saul says, hey, would you come back and do a bit about Walter White, that he wouldn't hesitate and he would do it. Right.
    33:48
    Yeah, Steve gets a lot of really good people. So make sure you check out his podcast, Culture Pop. But he on And so the show that he's on on the radio is called The Mason Ireland Show. And in a lot of respects, it's what this very show is kind of modeled on in terms of we talk pinball, but then we have no problem going off on a tangent that is completely unrelated to pinball. They did the same thing where it's a sports show, but they'll all of a sudden have these games and little quizzes that have nothing to do with sports. Just break it up a little bit. Exactly. Keep things interesting. And it's one of those things that we discovered the other pinball podcasts were jealous of us being able to do that. No, we've got a good flow. We've been doing these for way too long. I mean, we love doing these shows all the time.
    34:40
    So, Jared, here's what the game is called. It's called Sport or Skill. I am going to read off an event that has been featured on a sports network at one time or another. I want you to tell me, is it actually a sport or is it just a skill?
    35:03
    Oh, okay. Okay, are you ready? Yes. All right, here we go. Your first one, archery. Sport or skill? Archery. I think it is a skill I tend to agree with you I wouldn't say there's a lot of athleticism to it and mainly I go back to would you call darts a sport? that was exactly my next thought darts and archery and to an extent, unless I'm going to steal your thunder here, like billiards and pool is essentially skill. And practice, of course, which is, you know, to be expected with sport as well. But I think it's more skill-based than athletic fitness-based. Well, yes, indeed, billiards was on the list. We'll just cross that one out now too. I figured it probably would be. Yeah, you know. let's move on to the next one, which is bowling.
    36:23
    Bowling. Let's just unpack bowling for a minute. So you grab your ball, you've got it in your arm, you need a certain amount of strength in your arm to do it. Right.
    36:33
    Then you've got to do a little run, and then you've got to let it go. So I'd say the kinetic motion stuff and that, is more just motor skills rather than fitness skills. So I'm going to lean on the side of skill for that as well.
    36:55
    Very good. All right, I'm not going to dispute that either. Okay. Esports. Esports? That's definitely a skill, yeah. there's little to no exercise or physical exertion required for that unless you're playing um uh virtual reality esports and you're on one of those like elliptical treadmills that you have to run around an arena in which i don't really see very much of with esports no you're pretty much seeing league of legends and things like that yeah i can't i'll tell you right now i pretty much assume if you can be drinking and doing the thing the activity at the same time, it's just a skill. It's a skill.
    37:48
    Alright, next one. It doesn't make much sense to you because I don't think you have it there in Australia.
    37:56
    Let's give it a go. NASCAR. Oh, NASCAR. Hmm. So So, NASCAR like... A lot of left-hand turns for 400 or 500 miles.
    38:13
    Yes, that's true. Well, you know, is driving a skill or a sport? That's the thing you need to ask yourself, isn't it? That is the thing. So, that's why, you know, this one is a little bit more difficult. It is because, and we know this, so you have NASCAR over there in America. We have V8 supercars over here in Australia. Similar thing, except for V8 supercars, you turn in more than one direction, and they're usually street courses or racetracks with more than just left-hand turns. So both sports are demanding on the body. Correct. So they require a certain degree of physical fitness to withstand the rigors of driving at that level. so I'd almost even though you're not running around like these guys just get out of their cars and they're just a ball of sweat and like they have to go to the gym and stuff to actually get essentially race fit to be able to do this they can't just sit there slamming beers back and you know that's their fitness regime so I'd almost suggest this one could be a sport I concur Sure, and part of that is, by and large, we consider, you know, if you were doing a foot race, that that is sport.
    39:36
    Yeah. There is a certain amount of psychology that goes into racing. Oh, a huge amount, yeah. And strategy and planning and dealing with adverse weather conditions, stuff like that. Yeah, all that.
    39:52
    And on top of that, there is the physical toll that it takes on you. So, yeah, I would call it a sport. I purposely picked NASCAR just because it is the most simplistic, as opposed to if I said F1, which I think would be much easier to categorize as sport.
    40:11
    The other thing that's interesting about NASCAR and V8 supercars as well is that it's not just one dude in a car driving around the course. It's a whole team of people behind the scenes that make that person driving around the race course possible. So I think that's another big, big indicator that it's a sport versus a skill. Okay. Next one.
    40:35
    Curling. Oh, curling. Yeah, look, you need more than one person to do that. So that sort of like, you know, rules out the solo versus team aspect. So you have to run after the thing. so that does involve some it's certainly not like uh aerobic or anaerobic but you know those the the people like grooming the field in front of the um the curling uh i forget the the term for it but the the the curling puck let's call it that's wrong i know but uh uh you know they're scrubbing furiously away so that'd be a cardio workout for sure so we're like grooming it down the ice field. So I'd say that's a sport. And that's in the Olympics as a sport. you know, I guess archery is too, so that sort of debunks that theory as well, doesn't it? I'm sorry, you're wrong. It's glorified shuffleboard. If you can play it on a cruise ship, it's not a sport.
    41:42
    Right. Fair enough I guess yes Speaking of another Olympic sport synchronized swimming That's not something you can play with a beer in your hand. No, it's not.
    41:59
    That is... But is it sport, or is it skill? That's the question. There's no doubt that skill is involved. There's definitely a team involved, because you can't do synchronized swimming by yourself because then it's not synchronized so swimming individual swimming individual synchronized swimming or asynchronous swimming as it would be known uh oh this is a tricky one too it's sort of a fine line you're making these later ones really hard, Chris. I'd say it is a skill.
    42:44
    Ding, ding, ding! That's what I'm going to go with that on, too. To me, it's a lot like dancing. Dancing is a skill. It's not considered sport. It's very athletic, but it's not a sport.
    42:58
    Part of that might be because their heads are underwater the entire time, so they'd never be able to hear the crowd cheering anyway.
    43:05
    Except muffled. okay your next one sport or skill golf oh golf yeah right um it is you don't do a lot of physical exertion particularly if you're rolling a cart around the track and you have a drinks cart following you around the track as well. So, you know, this is one of my favorite sports skills because you go there and really it's not about the golf. It's just about catching up with your mates, really. So it's a skill, totally.
    43:53
    I agree. It's just a skill. You can be really, really good at it. But it comes down to knowing how to hit that little white ball and, you know, get the gophers. So, you know.
    44:06
    Next up. Oh, what? Yeah, skill, yeah. Next up, rock climbing. Rock climbing. I know a rock climber, and he has to spend a fair bit of time on rock walls learning how to do it right, but he learns how to rock climb. He couples that with physical fitness as well.
    44:34
    I'd say that because of the demands of physical fitness it requires, I think that's definitely a sport. And I would agree because it's not just a matter of being really good at climbing a rock. You still have to do your homework. You still have to strategize. You still have to plan how to, your, your competitor is the rock face itself. That's right. So you're going against a team of a mountain. Yes. And that is your competitor. So yeah, I think it's definitely a sport. Yeah.
    45:07
    Skateboarding. Hmm. Skateboarding. Again, skateboarding, solo activity. You aren't really going up against something like a competitor, except for the other competitors in the field, which all run separately.
    45:28
    Is it a bit like surfing? It sort of is. I mean, it was derived from surfing, wasn't it? So they could do it in the summer or the winter when it was cold. So I think that's probably more of a skill.
    45:41
    I'm leaning more towards a sport. Why do you say that? I say that because it's judged with multiple heats.
    45:51
    Okay. And there is an actual format. There are specific rules to how to score like that. It's in some respects like gymnastics.
    46:03
    I guess is what I would, you know, what goes on with gymnastics where you're solo, but you're still competing against plenty of other people, you're being judged. It takes athleticism. It takes learning the skill and then applying all you know and putting it in motion. Yes. To combine it with a bunch of other skills that you've learned at the same time. So that's why I'd kind of tend towards sport on that one. Yeah, that's fair enough analysis. so I think I'd probably go with you on that in retrospect. Okay, we're going to make it a little easier on you for this one. Okay. Poker. I like it.
    46:42
    Poker. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's one you can play with a drink in your hand. So, yeah, that's definitely a skill. That's one that there's something wrong if you don't have a drink in your hand while playing. Yeah, that's right.
    46:57
    Ninja Warrior. Okay, that's... I would say that is definitely a sport because I see how much effort the Warriors put into training.
    47:14
    And they built their own courses so they can practice the moves. There's a strategy involved to how to actually get through those courses effectively. So again, your competitor is the course that you're going up against as an individual. So I think it's a sport, that one. Well, and also because we've already declared that rock climbing is a sport and there's a lot of rock climbers in there.
    47:40
    There are, yeah. Yeah, you also get a lot of gymnasts in there. So it's not just one particular skill that you learn. It's kind of like mixed martial arts where you've got to have a mirror. Yeah, or CrossFit. It's CrossFit for competitive obstacle scaling. Yeah. Really, that's what it is. I think the only reason why people don't view it so much as a sport is because it's never aired live.
    48:07
    Yeah, that's true. It's always pre-recorded. It's essentially another reality TV format. Exactly. It's presented as a show, you know, even though... And there is editing involved in terms of how they place the order of people. So, you know, the show itself is crafting a story. But if you attended live, you don't get any of that. So it would be... No. Then it would be more sport. All right.
    48:30
    Fishing. Fishing is a skill. We don't need to debate that one. Fishing is a skill. Next. Last one. Last one for you. Okay. Competitive eating.
    48:47
    That's disgusting, and it's a skill. Yeah. 100% disgusting. Yeah. And 100% a skill. Yes. Yeah. no doubt about that absolutely disgusting the things that people do to put too much food into their body is just repulsive and they shouldn't it's amazing too because like one of the top competitive eaters is this teeny tiny gal and you're just like how does that even function and work i don't understand um but then you start hearing about what they what their preparation is beforehand and what do they do how do they do it because i've like i i know it grosses me out but i don't know what's involved in getting to the point where it grosses me out they were saying that there are certain foods that help keep the stomach elastic that they'll eat prior, you know, like for the week prior. You don't want your stomach feeling rigid and hard. You want it feeling elastic. You want it to be something that will have gotten the stomach acids working.
    50:08
    Right. And then I think, because it's not about you being hungry, you know, so they do tend to fast the day before, but it's they said you can't be fasting a lot because then that'll shrink the stomach back down. It'll shrink the stomach, yeah.
    50:30
    But I just can't imagine that feeling afterwards. I don't know how they managed to keep it down. I don't. You know when you just, you bust it out into the cold sweats because every pore of your body is like, reject this, reject this. Do not put any other thing in your mouth now, otherwise you're going to see it all again. I was going to say, it's literally Mr. Creosote Man from Meaning of Life. Oh, I couldn't have another bite. Oh, do so. It's waffle thin. Waffle thin bite, sir. Please have another bite. Yes. Yeah.
    51:13
    Well, that was a pleasantly disgusting way to end the show, huh? It was a pleasantly disgusting way to end the show. I approve. Yes. So here's the deal, folks. We are going to wait now for our podcast for any actual news to drop.
    51:36
    Because we think that it's got to be imminent. We've literally sent out messages to our various contacts going, can we do a podcast soon you know about something and they've been just kind of like be patient be patient um so yeah we're going to delay so if there's another three-week delay you'll know why um hopefully it's not gonna be that long but that's i'm just gonna put that out there that we're not gonna we're not gonna fill it no like this i think we did pretty well today feeling it but like you don't need to listen to that you come here for pinball stuff and you know you want to learn things and maybe have a laugh with us and if we're just trying to force out sausages from the big sausage machine that is Black Cape Pinball Podcast it's not going to be enjoyable to listen to so we prefer to you know give you time to do other things and not have to listen to us do. Right because this isn't competitive listening. No, it's not compared to listening. No. Definitely not. Where we're like, you must listen to us at two times speed.
    52:47
    Although when you do listen to us at two times speed, Jared's laugh is quite hilarious. Yeah. Yes. In fact, listening to any Australian at two times speed is... Yeah, it's an interesting experience.
    53:02
    So, yeah. Oh, hold on. We've got a question here in the pinball tournament. sport or skill? Oh, I definitely think that a pinball tournament is unfortunately, as much as I'd like to say it is a sport because I can buy equipment and write it off as tax, it's definitely a skill.
    53:30
    I 100% agree it's definitely a skill because I've seen very, very good players just walk up to a table that they have not even practiced on one iota and completely destroy it with zero training. Yeah, that's right.
    53:47
    Well, zero training on that game and that time with that configuration set up. They just don't need to worry about it. They know how to work a machine. Yeah. All right. Well, that's going to wrap it up for us, folks. we do appreciate you all of you that have joined us for our live twitch and have been jumping in here on the comments we definitely like that things you can do you can certainly go look us up on twitter give us a follow that way you'll be up to date the minute we know any information we pass it forward usually it's a forwarded tweet from lately it's been our cuda we forwarded theirs we forwarded zen's latest tweets so that's what we do on that one it's good to follow us if you really feel like being bold you can follow individually myself or Jared yes yours also is very very yes and it's really easy to figure see right now in the corner of the screen there says at Jared Morris and if you look at mine it says at show your traps but if you look over this one the main show at blockade so please do that also why don't you go head over to YouTube subscribe to our channel it goes up on YouTube faster than I can get it out so you'll be able to suck it up there and watch it again over there before I push it out to the audios yes so those are two things that you would be wise to do because I guarantee news is coming and you're going to want to be on top of it when we go ahead and post beyond that, until next time hopefully it's not just going to be Jared's favorite things stuff and things. We hope not. All right. Until then, folks. Bye-bye.