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Episode 230 - Alice in What?

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 15m·analyzed·Oct 13, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Dutch Pinball's Alice in Wonderland draw harsh criticism for resurrecting failed Zidware IP with poor design and inappropriate art at $12.5K.

Summary

Hosts Tony and Dennis discuss Dutch Pinball's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland reveal with overwhelmingly negative sentiment, citing the resurrection of a failed Zidware concept by John Papaduke, poor layout design including a problematic upper playfield with magna-flippers, excessive and inappropriate sexualization of the art package, bare mechanical engineering (plastic ramps instead of metal), and a $12,500 price point. They view it as a cash grab with minimal creative effort and a betrayal of the pinball community's trust in Dutch Pinball following their successful early recovery.

Key Claims

  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is limited to 500 units with ~300 for US and ~200 for Europe

    high confidence · Dennis stated official production numbers from DPX announcement

  • The game concept originated as a John Papaduke foam core prototype from Zidware in 2011

    high confidence · Dennis provided historical context on the game's genesis

  • The layout is nearly identical to J-Pop's original foam core design with minimal creative changes

    high confidence · Both hosts emphasized the striking similarity and lack of reimagining

  • The upper playfield occupies 60-70% of the upper section and is 'extra non-fun' similar to WWE's slings

    medium confidence · Dennis's estimation based on visual observation and comparison to other games

  • During the live stream reveal, developers had to remove the glass and manually make shots work

    medium confidence · Dennis referenced hearing this in the livestream coverage; indicates significant playfield setup issues

  • The art package features excessive and inappropriate sexualization beyond even Woe Nelly

    high confidence · Both hosts discussed specific details including incomplete clothing, exaggerated anatomy, and phallic design elements

Notable Quotes

  • “I think it's just absolutely horrible. I think it's a slap in the face to the community. I think it's a slap in the face of the hobby as a whole.”

    Dennis @ ~48:45 — Expresses the core ethical objection to resurrecting Zidware IP, establishing the moral foundation for the critique

  • “Cash grab! Because it's like they put in the bare minimum amount of work on the creativity front, on the engineering front.”

    Dennis (quoting Bruce Nightingale impression) @ ~52:30 — Summarizes the hosts' perception of minimal engineering and creative effort despite high price point

  • “There is no way on earth that this was an accident. They did not accidentally do this. I mean, everything about this was designed specifically to be what it is.”

    Dennis @ ~59:15 — Rejects any charitable interpretation of the sexualized art design, asserting intentional deliberate choices

  • “I would like to know your thoughts... You can start wherever you want. I'll tell you where a lot of people are starting, and that's the art package. I'm not going to start with the art package. Good.”

    Dennis and Tony @ ~47:00 — Shows the hosts' strategic decision to lead with Zidware ethics rather than art, demonstrating prioritized criticism hierarchy

  • “The plastic ramps are one of my favorite things about Star Trek because plastic ramps mean speed. And speed means fun. But I can already tell this game isn't fun to play.”

    Tony @ ~54:00 — Illustrates the disconnect between component choices and actual gameplay experience

  • “Dutch Pinball, who, let's be honest, had a rough open launch, but they made their people right. They brought everything back... And then they started their little DPX thing.”

    Dennis @ ~50:15 — Acknowledges Dutch Pinball's redemption arc but frames DPX as undoing that goodwill

Entities

Alice's Adventures in WonderlandgameJohn PapadukepersonDutch PinballcompanyZidwarecompanyMelvin Brewer-WilliamspersonLeorpersonTeam PinballcompanyJeremy Packer / Zombie Yeti

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Alice priced at $12,500 despite perceived minimal engineering, creative redesign, or innovation; characterized as cash grab leveraging Leor's sculpts and J-Pop's historical design without proportional development investment

    high · Both hosts emphasized $12,500 price point alongside criticism of bare-minimum engineering and creativity; Dennis invoked 'cash grab' motif

  • ?

    community_signal: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland reveals major split in pinball community over ethical revival of Zidware IP; defenders argue American prudishness re: sexualized art; critics see it as exploitation of failed company's victims and community betrayal

    high · Dennis noted Pinside thread defenders using 'American prude' argument; hosts characterize it as betrayal after Dutch Pinball's successful reputation recovery

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Significant negative community sentiment regarding Alice's sexualized art direction; hosts characterize design choices (incomplete clothing, exaggerated anatomy, phallic elements) as intentional rather than accidental, fundamentally misaligned with whimsical Disney Alice brand expectations

    high · Dennis: 'There is no way on earth that this was an accident... everything about this was designed specifically to be what it is.' Detailed discussion of 'tramp stamp,' phallic scoop inserts, magna-flipper shapes

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Alice layout criticized for superficial optimization priorities: heavy investment in Leor sculpts while using cheap plastic ramps instead of metal, minimal engineering effort on functional playfield layout, excessive focus on aesthetics over gameplay

    high · Tony: 'I've just imagined the meeting... [suggesting] they don't want to put too much effort in it we're paying leor and that's like where all the whole budget went'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.226

0:00
Welcome to the Collective Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, the 13th of October. This is episode 230. I am Tony. I am Dennis. And I am afraid that we have a new game to talk about. I'm so sorry, everybody. Yeah. Be forewarned. Neither of us are thrilled with it. So if that's all you need to know, you can stop the podcast here. But we've got a lot of stuff to go over in the sense that we actually have, I believe, three listener emails. One in the video game section. Two in the pinball section.
0:46
And, of course, we're going to cover the new game from Dutch, pinball exclusive. And, of course, there are some video game news. But before we get into any of that, Tony, it's been a couple weeks. I think you hit us with a laundry list of games you had been playing. Oh, yeah, last time. It was. Since then, I've only been playing Satisfactory. Oh. That is like it since then because I finished, I'd beaten, well, I completed Dredge. Right. And I completed Space Marine 2. What about the, oh, wait, I was going to say, what about Big Brutus, but that's what you went and visited. That's what I went and visited. Yes. Yeah. That was your trip. So no fun trips since then? No fun trips since then. No, nothing like that. I've been mainly working on Satisfactory and working on some stuff around the house. And I am continuing to evolve my camping rig so I can start doing more trips and doing some more camping. But mainly it's just been normal stuff. I did start re-watching a show that came out a while ago, The Longmire. I don't know it Longmire it's a TV show I'm pretty sure I've talked about in the past because I've read all of the books and the TV show is one of those things where it's like oh this is a really interesting idea we really like these books so let's take these characters and then throw everything else away but unlike most things that turn into utter crap it's actually really good on its own as long as you don't plan on it being exactly like the books so they're both very good things but they're it's all the whole wyoming western cowboy sheriff guy in the modern times type thing i mean that's my advice to people that like with rings of power it's like if you're hung up on it needing to be lore accurate to what happened like in the summer simerillion which i didn't read i i'm not a huge token reader i i like the lore though they've taken a lot of liberties with it but i still find the show pretty entertaining if you can check that out but you had to do the same thing with the lord of the rings movies yeah like there are a lot of change-ups versus like frodo and sam go on completely like different places and stuff in the books uh versus what happens in the movies and it's like you can either just go along for the ride or you can obsess about how it wasn't your perfect literary world translated perfectly into film yeah no and i think it's definitely well worth the ride i will say the other interesting thing that i i've done is i have started uh i'm i'm not positive but i'm pretty sure i've spoken on here before about me having some sleep issues uh uh and all of that i have started doing a bunch of like like listening to like asmr sleep video things on like the youtube but they're ones that they're lore related so it's somebody doing asmr talk with like a campfire background or a storm in the background whatever but while talking about lore for like video games and stuff like that and i i've come up across a couple that i that i really like like one of them he does like like he has one that's like the entire background history of halo and i actually ended up turning it off because uh i was so interested i didn't i was started actively fighting this leak because i i was listening to the lore because it was so good uh and he's got a whole bunch of Warhammer 40k ones and then I found another guy recently uh that I've been listening to that it's set up to be very much like a um like the oral tradition history of stuff so it's less of like a lore dump type video and more of uh like a background story that's like you're being told around a campfire so he's got like one um that he's released recently that's based around dune where it's like the backstory uh lee of the myth leading to the creation of their whole mythos waiting for the lisa and al gaib to come forward uh and he's got some other ones that are based around uh lord of the rings where it's talking about some of the stuff like from cimmerillion but as like an oral tradition so it's not exactly reading them off the book it's more of like it's a story being told around a campfire and in the background there's a camp fire and there's animals and this and that and the story's told over the course of uh an hour or two and then everybody goes to sleep and it's just background sounds and like a campfire crackling and stuff like that for like another eight hours so or well there are like another six hours so it's like an eight hour thing so there's still always a little background like like relaxation stuff going on, but it opens with like an oral history story and then kind of trails off. And those have been really interesting, too.
person
Dennisperson
Tonyperson
Bruce Nightingaleperson
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
Brent Rperson
Uncanny X-Mengame
Foo Fightersgame
  • ?

    licensing_signal: DPX acquired Alice design rights from Zidware; chose to minimize reimagining and preserve nearly-identical layout to original foam core, despite having opportunity to license Alice in Wonderland IP freely (public domain/Disney variants)

    high · Dennis: 'Alice in Wonderland has to be open use... There's no reason they had to take this version of it... Melvin chose to buy the rights to this'

  • ?

    community_signal: Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) replaced as artist; original Zidware backglass art by Packer removed for new DPX production, now serving as art director at Stern rather than DPX contributor

    high · Dennis: 'originally it was a Jeremy Packer art package. However, there have been changes up to that in moving to this DPX production run, not done by Jeremy Packer'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: X-Men Premium/LE arriving at venue with unfinished code state; bare-bones implementation suggesting either rushed release or delayed code development compared to precedent games like Foo Fighters

    high · Listener Brent: 'code is really bare bones at this point in time... Foo Fighters immediately hit it out of the park with how the game was more complete compared to X-Men, which is really bare bones'

  • ?

    product_strategy: X-Men playfield setup issues reported: shot next to left ramp not routing through kiddie lane correctly; sentinel head shots playable from only one flipper, not both; indicating potential post-release adjustment/upgrade needed

    high · Listener Brent: 'the shot next to the left ramp, being makeable, but it didn't go all the way through the kiddie lane like it was supposed to. Also, the shots around the sentinel head could only be made with one of the flippers, but not the other one'

  • ?

    product_concern: Alice playfield mechanics reported as non-functional at reveal livestream; developers required to manually adjust shots with glass removed; upper playfield described as unfun and poorly designed despite high price point

    high · Dennis: 'they had to take off the glass and start making shots by hand. That is not a good sign that your game is working right.' Referenced livestream coverage

    • 5:44
    And I've been sleeping extremely well, actually. Oh, good. I mean, I didn't wake up today until almost six. And for me, that's amazing. It is. Wow. The power of the campfire. Yep. With lore. In the oral tradition. ASMR. Yay. Click, click, click, click, click, click. Yes. Well, after our last episode, you had mentioned the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster. So I went ahead and bought that for my Xbox console and have been playing that since then. I finished Final Fantasy 1, which I was not able to win when I was a kid. Right. It was just too – and there is a big – like, I had to go and leave. I thought I was missing certain – like, I'm looking up guides. I could not beat the last boss. And then I was just like, I need, like, five more levels. You had to grind? yeah i had the spells and equipment that they recommended which was good because i sold off a lot of stuff um and some of this was the stuff you had to find um but i did happen to still have all the key things that they had recommended and so yeah i just i left the place and went back and that was enough encounters that it actually got me up to where i needed to be so were you did you remember to keep the most powerful sword in the game so you could throw it at him and dart him with it no i didn't dart him with it but i did uh i did hit him with it a lot because actually there was an item and some magic that you could do. You could keep casting or using this item on the guy with that sword and it exponentially stacks. The game never tells you this, but it stacks and so you could actually make him exponentially stronger every time you applied it to him. But I actually ended up doing that to my Black Belt. Which, alright, these remaster games, I have a complaint about them. They have some quality of life improvements. You can turn off encounters. so that you're going back and forth in all these mazes and stuff, which is part of the reason I was five levels too low, because sometimes I'd just be like, I'm turning these off because I'm going to run out of magic. Right. And it's like you have to leave to get magic back unless you have potions, which were super expensive. So not to belabor it, but one of the things is when you go to equip stuff, there is an optimal button, and it will optimize what the people can wear. So in the first game I was doing that, and it'd be like, it puts the best sword on the fighter. It puts the best staff on the mage, you know, things like that. Well, I'm going along, and my party was White Mage, Black Mage, Fighter, and Monk.
    8:12
    And Monk was just, he was getting worse. I'm just going along, not like he was doing less damage. He would take a ton of damage when he was hit, which his only weapon were nunchucks. So he started with wood nunchucks. I got him iron nunchucks. I'm like 10 hours into the game. He's still got iron nunchucks and I'm not finding anything for him. And I'm just, I'm going along and it's just, uh,
    8:40
    finally I just looked up. I'm like, is there like a place that has like some special ultimate weapon for him or something that I just don't know about? Because I can't, you know, no stores have anything for him. And, uh, and cause he's wearing like certain basically can wear what the mages wear cloth armor. So anyway, look it up. See a little discussion thing is like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Dennis, Dennis, Dennis. You don't. He doesn't wear anything. What's wrong with you? The whole point of nunchucks is for the starting game when his stats aren't working the way they're supposed to because he's too low level. His damage, his attack is two X's level if he's barehanded. Otherwise, he's limited to what the weapon is. He's better than any weapon.
    9:31
    So he's like level 35 now. So he's supposed to have a base attack of 70. And so it's just like I took it off. All of a sudden he's doing more damage than fighter. Everything just melted. And the armor. You're playing hard mode. Well, and the armor because it's showing like better defense. Like, no, take his armor off. Don't have him wear clothes. He's better. His evasion becomes impressive at this point. So no one can touch him because he's a monk. So anyway, he's actually who killed the final boss. I stacked everything on him. A lot of people don't play with monk because it's not the default four. It's thief instead of monk, but I swapped it. Yeah. So anyway. So when are you going to do the speed run cleric playthrough? With four clerics. I know. I remember Nintendo Power talking about the four white mage playthrough. But maybe after I get through the other games. So I'm in Final Fantasy II, the original two, not the two in America that was four. correct so i don't know this game i'd never played it before i thought i was going to finish yesterday but i'm not because i went and i fought the emperor and i won and then their emperor's right-hand man took over the empire so i went and confronted him but now the emperor is back somehow he returned yeah well no he's pretty it's like you know it can't be and he's like i think he literally says yeah i'm back from hell i was like oh well i mean to be fair We didn't consider that option, but apparently in Final Fantasy II, that's a thing. So, yeah, he's much more powerful now. Yeah. So, anyways, I'm playing that.
    11:12
    He's got the event horizon behind him. Yeah. It was pixely, but his appearance was as grandiose as you would have expected from an 80s game. I am home. Yes. if only they had hired some voice acting the first time I fought him he did do I think some of the enemies blind you all the time you won't need eyes to see but I used to in the first game I would ignore blindness because I could still hit everything when I was blind because I didn't need eyes to see apparently everyone still hit everything but it was weird okay let's go ahead and jump into the pinball section and i'm actually going to open with one of the emails so brent r wrote in thank you brent we appreciate it and let me see where we're at with that to make sure i am good to go and yes all right hey tony and dennis i wanted to write about my experience with the uncanny x-men pinball game the le specifically i didn't watch the gameplay stream that stern did only saw the trailer beforehand so i didn't know about the feedback of the shots being hard to make. I can say that the shots are very makeable, but this is a machine that must be properly set up correctly. The machine I played on had one of the shots, which is the shot next to the left ramp, being makeable, but it didn't go all the way through the kiddie lane like it was supposed to. Also, the shots around the sentinel head could only be made with one of the flippers, but not the other one. The code is really bare bones at this point in time with completing the eight missions just sends you what to what i coined as the endless future mode the bishop action button needs clarification to properly use it since on the machine it says press it but it's more like hold it down action button it reminds me of the awkwardness of the spider sense and venom since that one was hold it and then press it uh overall i feel like x-men has the makings of being a great game but the code isn't there and the machine must be properly set up to make the shots if comparing to jack Dangerous Other Game Foo Fighters, I felt like Foo Fighters immediately hit it out of the park with how the game was more complete compared to X-Men, which is really bare bones at the moment. Also, this is the first time I've really played a Stern Premium LE first before the Pro, which for me is I usually play the Pro first and then later on finding a place that has the Premium since the area I played in usually gets Pros and never really Premiums. Keep up the good work, Brent. Well, thank you, Brent, for giving us some feedback because Tony and I still have not had the opportunity to play the uncanny x-men i believe it is going to 403 club i want to think i saw i don't know if it's there yet right i think i read an announcement because the plan i believe is they're getting rid of james bond and bringing that in because apparently people were upset about losing james bond i guess the attorney people like where the rules are at oh well i mean okay it's been i mean i haven't played james bond since we did that uh pinball awards thing at zack's barn Oh, was that two years ago? Yep, two years ago because we didn't do the awards for the last year.
    14:25
    Anyway, again. That was the fun road trip. You like all road trips. I do. I love road trips. That's why you're into camping and stuff. I love road trips. I just like driving. It's just like adventure.
    14:37
    That's your quest. That's like your dragon quest without the slimes. Yes. But maybe someday there will be slimes. We don't know. Maybe. It could be. I mean, it could be one of those things where it becomes one of those lit RPG books where suddenly the world is turned into a RPG thing and you get an inventory and leveling and abilities and all that stuff.
    14:58
    I'm still going through the Dungeon Crawler Carl books. Oh, okay. They're so funny. Oh, God, they're so funny. I actually was late getting here because I was in it in the middle of a fight scene. Yes, you were very late. I drove around the block twice to finish the fight. I literally was like, oh, here's the turn to go onto Dennis' road. I'm just going to go all the way straight to the next main road, and then I'll drive around. The fight's still going on. I'll go all the way to the next main road and drive around. And I did that twice. Because the audio wouldn't play if you parked. No, well, it would have. I just didn't want to stop in the middle of your driveway and then just sit out there and wait for a battle to end. And I didn't, but I did really, I was laughing so hard I didn't want to turn off in the middle of a fight either.
    15:48
    Understandable. Well, speaking of things you won't want to turn off, let's talk about DPS's latest hit game. Wow.
    15:58
    Okay, so for those that don't, this is our one pinball topic. We have a new reveal, though, so we're going to go into it. The Dutch Pinball Exclusive, also known as DPX, has finally done their full reveal of their game, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I do have a link in the show notes to an article with the Kineticist if you would like to read about this actual release and look at some of the photos, because obviously this is an audio medium. Here are the key highlights for people that are what you're going to mostly want to know about if you don't know anything about the game. So this started as a John Papatouk prototype design. It never got past the foam core stage. The foam core image is fairly famous. And this was back when he had his company, Zidware, trying to make games. This goes back to 2011. So this concept has been around for a very long time. One of the things that really started to get a lot of attention before the game itself was fully revealed was it has a lot of sculpts rather than flat plastics. Leor from Art of Pinball did the sculpts for the game, so those got a lot of positive attention up front. A lot of the original art concepts were redone. For those that don't know, Zombie Yeti, aka, I should say, well, also known as, real name is Jeremy Packer, who, he does art for Stern now. However, he did art for some of the Zidware stuff, and it was that art, in particular, I'd say, the back glass for Alice in Wonderland, which is what it was called back when J-Pop, or as John Papaduke is commonly just shorthand referred to as, was having that game done. So originally it was a Jeremy Packer art package. However, there have been changes up to that in moving to this DPX production run, not done by Jeremy Packer. Team Pinball did the code. You might recognize Team Pinball from, they did, I think, Pony Factory was their rule set. They also did that Mafia game. That was their first game, which they also built and coded, But since then, I believe, if I'm thinking correctly, Team Pinball has only been oriented around doing software. The design of the layout is credited to Melvin Brewer-Williams, who I believe owns the rights to this game, after acquiring them, and Barry Dyson. I might be mispronouncing those, so I apologize about that. However, when you look at it, a lot of this layout is very much straight up what J-Pop came up with. The game is limited to 500 units. Approximately 300 of those are slated for US shipment and the other 200 are to remain in Europe. It is a two flipper layout. It does have multiple multi balls. It has an upper play field which takes up a significant amount of real estate with two magna flippers and it has a lot of RGB lighting. So Tony I included in our internal notes a few of the images but of course you seen a lot about this already We both seen the reveal trailer We did not watch the live stream footage which I have seen a number of summaries of and I can only describe as disastrous So I'm not linking to it because I don't know if – maybe I should just so simply people can see just how bad this might actually be. I am not thrilled with this, but I'd like to know your thoughts. And you can start wherever you want. I'll tell you where a lot of people are starting, and that's the art package. I'm not going to start with the art package. Good. I'm going to start with don't support anything coming out of Zidware. But they claim it doesn't matter. They claim it's not Zidware. And John Papaduke wasn't involved in the DPX development. Right. It just looks almost identical to the foam core and is referred to as. No. Well, Melvin bought the rights. But it doesn't matter. Melvin got it. Melvin. These are still, there are people out there who are out a lot of money from the Zidware stuff. There are people out there who have suffered for years and years, and you're still building, you're trying to build your brand on the back of people that you've broken. Dutch Pinball, who, let's be honest, had a rough open launch, but they made their people right. They brought everything back. They did the kind of stuff that none of us, at least none of me, thought they possibly could. And they did a very good job of that. And then they started their little DPX thing. And the first thing they drop is something they're trying to resurrect from Zidware. I think it's just absolutely horrible. I think it's a slap in the face to the community. I think it's a slap in the face of the hobby as a whole. I think it's an absolutely just monstrous choice.
    20:39
    Well, I would attempt to play devil's advocate for the entertainment value. The problem is last week on the pinball show, I already brought this up as my chief concern. So I can't really, because anyone who heard that would be like, why are you talking about that? And I cannot get into the aroma. What's that smell coming from the other side of the table? Is that the stench of hypocrisy?
    21:09
    So, no. So I will not. I have to – I agree. I get it. Barry – or not Barry, excuse me. Melvin bought the rights to this property, the Zidware version of it.
    21:22
    The next to nothing has changed, so it's not been a true reimagining, not in my view. This – what you've said, I believe, is completely accurate. This stuff from Zidware just – it doesn't deserve to live. And so for that reason, there's – just come up with something new. Take the theme. If you love the theme, Alice in Wonderland, take the theme and do it. But quit trying to make us take J-pop back. Yeah. Alice in Wonderland has to be open use. Oh, yeah. There's no reason they had to take this version of it. No, he Melvin chose to buy the rights to this. So here is my problem with it is there is a I don't know if it's just the desire to prove it can be done or it's just a love of J-pop and 90s pinball and everything about it, because there are some people who love the stuff from I mean, John Papaduke's Bally Williams games, World Cup soccer aside, sell for a lot of money, like high dollar money. Tales of the Arabian Nights, Circus Voltaire, Theater of Magic. Those are all some of the most expensive non-remade Bally Williams games that are out there. And there's a certain style that he had. A lot of it is tied, I think, to the art and not so much the gameplay. But, you know, it is what it is.
    22:44
    So, no, I don't disagree. I wholeheartedly agree. I don't want to see any of these Zidware things coming back from other companies. They don't deserve to live as concepts. They don't. So so that in of itself, it just feels, I don't know, sort of arrogant in a way that I don't I don't like. You know, there's a line between arrogance and and confidence. And I just feel like this is this is crossing it. Here's another issue I have with it, given that the layout is so so not perfectly similar. I'm sure they had to try and figure out some stuff to now air quoting for people that can't see me because you can't see me because audio make it work. I'm using air quotes because I've heard that in the live stream, they had to take off the glass and start making shots by hand. That is not a good sign that your game is working right. It is not a good sign.
    23:33
    Here's the thing. It looks so similar to what J-Pop did. I would like to quote the great Slam Tilt podcast host, Bruce Nightingale. I'm going to do my best Bruce Nightingale impression. Cash grab! Because it's like they put in the bare minimum amount of work on the creativity front, on the engineering front. And instead, it just seems like I got the rights to this thing. What's the quickest way we can make money? We got to slap an art package on it that's going to feel like a J-pop art package. And we got to get it so that it quote unquote plays. But I don't want to go around like redesigning the ramp so they actually work. I don't want to contemplate whether an upper play field that takes up approximately, what, one-third of the upper section of the game, closer to one-half of the upper section. You think about it, the top third of the game, almost all of that is taken up by that upper play field. The majority of it, like 60, 70 percent. Yeah. With Magna Flippers, you've played Twilight Zone. You've played The Power.
    24:39
    Now, I don't really like much of anything about Twilight Zone, period. But the power play field is not the most fun part of that game. No. But this is occupied by such a boring toy, if you want to call it a toy. I'm just going to call it what it is. Yet another upper play field that is extra non-fun. It reminds me of WWE with the slings as an upper play field. That wasn't fun. But just play on the power play field on Twilight Zone, and you'll know how unfun power play field is because of how Magna flippers work. They're not real flippers. um it's just it does not look fun to shoot at all and apparently it doesn't shoot well which is a problem problem as well do you have any thoughts on i guess the layout getting past the wrongness of the j-pop concept existing getting past the wrongness of that concept and and the the direct slap at the hobby for taking something like this and trying to do it doesn't look like it flows at all. It doesn't look interesting in a fun way. And it's hard to detach the layout and the way it's put together just from the sheer insanity of the art package. and there are things on this play field that once seen cannot be unseen. Yes.
    26:11
    I'll point out some incongruities before kind of diving into the art for me. So here's where I think its one strength is, the sculpts. And I see why they emphasized and did close-up shots of all these Leora models, of all these creatures and such, because that's the only thing that looks like money was put into it. Yeah. You see these sculpts. You see the topper sculpt. You see the sculpts on the play field. You see the bright colors, the fancy caps to the pop bumper on the right and all that. And then you've just got these two humongous plastic ramps. Not habit trails. Plastic ramps. Now, don't get me wrong. I love a good plastic ramp. The plastic ramps are one of my favorite things about Star Trek because plastic ramps mean speed. And speed means fun. but i can already tell this game isn't fun to play so the problem is it just looks like hey well j pop came up with plastic ramps should we hey i've just imagined the meeting hey should we do things in metal uh that's gonna cost us some money let's just vacuum form some plastic real quick and slap it slap it on and but we're going to surround it with sculpts and stuff and you've got the flat plastic version of ramps uh in its place and i i just again it just is like well we don't want to put too much effort in it we're paying leor and that's like where all the whole budget went so and and they're doing all that and then they're still asking what 12.5 for it 12.5 no yeah that's another thing re-emphasize i don't know if i said it at the start i probably don't think i did i think i said the limit of 500 but yeah 12,500 for this thing the art you've mentioned there are things on the play field innuendo things that cannot be unseen you didn't mention innuendo but We've discussed it often. We don't want me to have to beep a whole lot on this episode. Correct. Now, let me mention this before you dive in, Tony. Okay. One of the things, because I've read part of the Pinside Thread that's discussed this, and some of the defenders of this game, there are a few, some of the defenders have kind of argued against any of the critiques on the art package, arguing that you're saying this because you're American and Americans are prudes.
    28:21
    So, I give you this to run with. Okay, and that's a perfectly valid argument for people to have and to say.
    28:34
    But as I believe the majority of the people alive at this time with a history and a knowledge of Alice in Wonderland, Most of that comes from the original Disney cartoon or any of the numerous remake sense, most of which have been aimed more at a sense of whimsy and wonder, except for some of the like straight up hardcore Japanese porn hentai versions of it, which is definitely where this game has decided to pull its belief from. the full on I'm trying to think I'm trying to speak about this in a way that can actually be published because of how we try to keep this clean it is very over the top sexualized in a way that we have not seen in pinball in a long time I think it's over the top beyond even something like whoa nelly which felt like a joke uh poking at it where this feels like it's taking its its overt sexualization very seriously if you go from the the simple art package where uh all of the women are in almost utterly destroyed clothes that don't that just barely if anything cover anything while they're all super busty and and like the sides of the back like the size of That's the key area you're referring to. Right. Or even the sides of the machine where everything is laid out super to the giant tramp stamp at the very bottom of the machine. Oh, on the apron. On the apron to the upper play field that, quite frankly, is extremely phallic.
    30:34
    The inserts leading to the scoop. Yes, the inserts leading to the scoop. And the shape of the magna flippers. The giant blue spherical magniflippers and the shape leading to the scoop. I'm sorry that you see that now and you'll never unsee it because I saw it almost instantly the first time I looked at it. And once my laughing stopped, I've never been able to unsee it. That's true. It will not be. It's kind of like the phallic image in the Gandalf on the Lord of the Rings translate that people can't unsee anymore. Yeah. Well, that one was an accident. Right. Do you think this was an accident? There is no way on earth that this was an accident. They did not accidentally do this. I mean, everything about this was designed specifically to be what it is. I'm sorry I suggested it.
    31:27
    This isn't the How I Met Your Mother episode where there's the big rounded building with two spiritual entrances at the bottom. Uh, it, it's, it's no, the art package is, I will say that the, like, like it doesn't look like it's, it's clippy or weird or bad. Like, it's not that the art, it's like the choices made in the art is terrible, but the quality of the art is fine with just what I consider very poor choices. I'm just I was in shock when I originally saw it come out just how I don't even have a good word for it most of my original thoughts I literally cannot say on our podcast I think people have gotten the get the understanding of where you're going though and if they don't they will when they look um all right so regarding the art i'm gonna i don't so if they want to go with sexy alice we'll just put it that way they want to go with sexy alice i i still am i'm at a loss for some of the decision making so is this supposed to be a scary version of alice just a sexy adult version of alice but otherwise it's alice in wonderland or like there's uh There's an incongruity with, I guess, the direction that they're trying to go with. Like, I look at things like the sculpt of the Cheshire Cat on the top of the game, and I get the vibe that they wanted to do, like, a really dark and scary version of it. Like American McGee Alice, the video game, which I played that. I played that game. That game is fun. But it's just dark. It's not sexualized. Then I look at the sides of the cabinet, the sides of the back box, and I get this impression that it's a – and I'm stealing some of this from Pinsley because there are other people that really dove into what their issues were with the art and trying to push back against in their version. Like they didn't care that it was trying to be sexy versus not sexy. The pushback was more it doesn't fit the theme or they didn't like the way that – Alice. So, I mean, I've seen or just the the the I mean, I really enjoy the Red Sonja movie, but it's not how I think of Alice in Wonderland. Yeah, there's some of that and there's others. It's just like from people are like, this is not good art, like arguments of they took the fine line where you can, you know, in our internalist, you can go back and kind of look at the trans light, for example, that was done by Jeremy Packer. And some are like they took all the fine line work in detail that Jeremy Packer did and gave it all the refinement of a T-shirt. I can see that. And so or I've seen others say this is exactly what you used to be able to go ahead and purchase off of DeviantArt. Like this is what this looks like. Yeah, no, it doesn't look like Photoshop. It looks like DeviantArt. It looks like the fantasy of a 14-year-old coming up with, oh, do Alice in Wonderland, but do it edgy, sexy and edgy. And so here's art that's sexy and edgy. But then you get these weird things like, why is the Queen of Hearts the same age now as Alice? Alice is all grown up, I guess. So the Queen of Hearts is her sister? Because they look to be the same age, which isn't – so they're like, it doesn't fit with the story. It seemed like you put style over substance, and the style in and of itself actually isn't very good. There's just a lot of color everywhere. and so you look at the play field and just stepping back and not looking too much at the detail you just get a lot of color so I've seen some people say the strongest thing of the art is just a little bit above the flippers that shot with her walking that kind of reminiscent of how we really praised the JJP Avatar art and that different style like if something had been done like that with whimsy there would be something to get excited about but this just is not it's just it's just a bunch of stuff that whole section looks like a completely different art style like that one section was done by somebody completely different than the entire rest of the machine i mean maybe the art was was done by ai i'll tell you what i hadn't really thought much about it until you had asked me if the call outs had been done by ai so let's move into that we heard a number of the call outs in the reveal trailer oh my god guys you know what My rates aren't that high. I could have done better than this. Yeah. I could have done better. Definitely. It felt very flat. It was just unexpectedly bad. On Pinside, when it first came out, I went back in the timeline and read some of those posts. There, I believe, were multiple people asking, were these placeholder call-outs? Same thing has been asked for the Uncanny X-Men. Like, are the programmers doing playtell for callouts? Right. But people are like, wow, this is worse than X-Men. And X-Men has been dogged for its callouts. Both versions have been dogged for its callouts. Yeah. No.
    36:53
    Again, when I go back to that Bruce impression of cash grab, it seems like they spent money on two things. Buying the rights from Zidware to have the J-Pop version and Lior for his sculpts. Mm-hmm. Other than that, they went to DeviantArt to grab their Alice, grab their sexy Alice. Doesn't matter if it makes sense or not. Stuck her on the sides of the play field and the back glass and then threw a bunch of color everywhere. Had Team Pinball record the call outs for them or have Google AI do it, except it sounds a little rough even for Google's AI. and didn bother other than to kind of get the game to play get it engineered up and ready to go because you have to take the glass off to show how the shots work when you do a live stream this is a mess i i'm gonna open with or we're at the end of this but i'm gonna open my final thoughts tony with saying this just in case because some people they really like they're very sensitive to people judging what they do with their money. So I'm going to say it like this.
    38:02
    With pinball or with any hobby, buy what you like. Don't buy something because I don't like it. That would be silly. Don't listen. I hope you're not listening to me to make your buying decisions. I'm just going to give you my impressions on something. So you always need to do what's best for you. All that said, do not buy this game. This is not a good use of your money. This is not a good project to support. I don't understand why DPX is doing what they're doing. I don't like anything about this project other than the sculpts and you know what contact Leo on the side if you want a weird creepy Cheshire Cat and see if he can sell you one or build you a custom thing or something but I would not get anything about this nothing about this is exciting this does not advance pinball in any meaningful way the only thing that this has done is given me and you Tony a good item of discussion that has filled an otherwise fairly lackluster pinball episode. So those are my final thoughts. What would you like to say on this in finality? Because I don't know if we will ever revisit this again. We probably will. There's going to be future episodes. We're going to end up talking about it again. I don't even know where to start. Is it on your Christmas list, Tony? Most definitely. I'm not. I don't recall the art concepts were taken from the original and changed.
    39:29
    Did it list who did the actual art? I don't recall seeing that in the article. They didn't put a name.
    39:41
    Yeah. No, I don't. Nothing that I recall. I'm going back and looking at it, in fact, because it was because jeremy didn't want to be involved with this project uh i think they they approached him and and asked him about it and he indicated i think he mentioned something publicly about how he just he wasn't he wasn't interested in going and revisiting this so the art was credited to freak van hagen but i don't know that's like a real name but maybe um i mean it's freak van hagen is associated with Dutch pinball according to the kineticist and did stuff on the Big Lebowski so they used their guy I guess or that's a name for a collaborative team I don't know because the name sounds Dutch Van Hagen I'm probably not pronouncing it right but the bottom line is to me when you look at it it's very clear that zombie Yeti's approach was looked at and it was an inspirational model but it's way blown out to deviant art proportions at this right again none of the subtlety of jeremy's work like his i i kind of like i'm not a big art expert but like he did a lot of the alice and where kind of like magic girl he did like really fine line work i don't know that he does that normally for stern but like with those projects there's like a lot of nuanced detail that had been applied it's that's not there no none of that none of this is there this is the quality that you would expect to see on a t-shirt i do think that's a fair comparison like this is airbrushed sort of stuff so fitting fitting with the thematic choice for alice i suppose but yeah i i don't know it's just yeah it's still better than clip art i guess i'm not saying it's much better but to be fair i've been completely burned out on the old clip art i think Do people care about this theme? I don't think. Here's the thing is they obviously think people care about this theme. I don't know. Did you ever read Alice? I did. I didn't. I've never read Lewis Carroll.
    42:00
    I read it years and years and years and years ago, like in high school. Yeah, probably high school it would have been. But, yeah, no, I don't really see where it's some big draw. The only reason I think it's a draw is because it's another one of the mythical Zidware projects that were going to be the perfect pinball, wonderful, super amazing thing of that giant, you know, scam. Just like everything else that has come out of it. And the fact that people are still feeding off of this trough is just disappointing to me. And the fact that people are still supporting it is disappointing to me. But I will say that, like Dennis said, it's your money. You can do what you want with your money. but at the same time there are better things in pinball you could spend your money on than supporting something like this well speaking of pinball we have one last item it's another listener email now this one i'm going to explain up front i've taken the liberty of truncating the email because some of the elements aren't going to work for what uh i'm going to provide here It'll start to make sense. I almost promise I can't guarantee that it'll make sense, but I think it'll make sense once I get through the email. So this is from Rob F. So thank you, Rob F, for emailing in.
    43:38
    Greetings and salutations, gentlemen. I think you both will get the laugh out of this and possibly some easy pre-expo filler material for your next show. You probably have heard the recent news of Google's new LM Notebook AI tool, which has the unique capability of creating a podcast from user-provided source material. I tried this thing out by feeding four recent NAPOCATE articles related to upcoming title rumors from various manufacturers. Of course, the first general takeaway when you hear what this thing can manifest out of thin air is terror, coated in sweet wonder, just like a milk dud. It is fascinating how the podcast generator can fill its own unique perspectives and commentary beyond the source material provided, even if it misses on fine details. Case in point, and specifically why I wanted to share this, of what the AI muses could, nay should, be the next theme for Bears the Phone. It also makes a point to highlight this theme again in the summary. It is shockingly hilarious. P.S. If I get the choice character voice for the next read, I would request your pseudo-Batman. However, Dennis, I think you should really stretch your range and give Arnold Schwarzenegger a try. Or if it feels more natural to parody a parody, the Simpsons' McBain. Up and at him. Thanks for the time, you guys. I'm putting into enjoyable content. Rob. All right. Sorry. That was Arnold, kind of. It wasn't. But it was what you get for that long of a thing. Holy cow. And it was even longer. There were some elements in the email, including the source material and such, and also some other references. Here's the thing. So Rob has sent me the audio of this Google LM Notebook AI Tools podcast. It was seven minutes long, and I cannot spare seven minutes to subject everyone to it, though it is an interesting lesson. So Tony hasn't heard anything of it yet. I have taken – it's under a minute. I have taken and I will overlay. Hopefully I'm going to try and play it for us here. It's not going to pick up well with the mics, but in post, I'm going to try and overlay it. But he wanted another live reaction. So I'm going to play what got sent in. So hopefully we can see your thoughts on this nap rumor podcast. And I think I've got it cranked up here. And here we go. Have you heard what barrels of fan is up to? Oh, you know, I have. Their labyrinth machine has been a smash hit. It proves you don't need a big name or a big budget to make a great pinball game. Exactly. Passion projects can really capture people's imaginations. For sure. And now that Labyrinth is winding down production, everyone's dying to know what they'll do next. I hear they might unveil their next game at the Texas Pinball Festival. Oh, a hometown reveal. That would be something special. Right. It'd be amazing. What do you think they'll go with for a theme? Well, if they're sticking with that Texas pride, maybe something with cowboys, oil barons. Could you imagine a barbecue-themed machine? That's an idea. Little sausages shooting out when you hit a ramp. Yeah. The possibilities are endless with pinball. Okay. I'm sorry.
    47:00
    Dallas, the pinball machine. Who shot J.R. Wizard Mode? I like that they decided that the Texas hometown theme would make sense, but then they ended up with barbecue. So maybe he didn't feed enough in about the response to the barbecue from American Pinball, but just imagine little sausages sitting down and you sit there. I remember watching the basting of beets. The great basting of beets at the last night.
    47:41
    No. This is not a good tool for use. Never use this again. The fact. And this is something that we're going to. I won't even go so far as to say this is something we'll see more of. This is something we're seeing more of now. I've noticed it online, even as much as on YouTube. A lot of channels, I've noticed, have started using AI voiceovers. And up to and including, I've even seen some that have gone so far as to cut away from the video that they're doing the voiceover of and to show an AI person talking. I've seen that. And then back to the voiceover. And it's becoming more and more common.
    48:33
    And it's not great. It's not. And I've heard, because one of the subreddits I follow is partnered YouTube, because I'm a YouTube partner for my watch channel. And some people will be like, I'm not getting, you know, like, I tried to get partnered or I tried to get monetized. I'm not. And one of the things, like, people, if they share their links, people will give feedback. Like, what do I need to do to fix it? And they're like, all right, you've got way your AI. You're doing AI audio like YouTube supposedly cracking down on this. Like they're not partnering. A lot of people that are just doing a bunch of AI dreck where you assembled a bunch of clips and decided that you needed it. Like, what are you making? Like, it's not your voice. It's not your original content. So you're gluing other people's work together. And then you can't even be bothered to voice over it. So it's some of that pushback. And I've seen some channels that started to do like the AI people talking and then they went back to just the AI voiceovers. So it's like, I don't know.
    49:31
    But I mean, I will give it. I mean, this this is the first time I believe I had heard the LM notebook AI version. And I will say, well, especially when the longer content, you can hear certain things where the inflections and stuff aren't natural. Even in the shorter content. Yeah. If you go back and listen to that barrels of fun, the way they say fun, she says fun. It's wrong. It sounds like they didn't know how to pronounce fun quite right. But it was interesting. Like they had some other like little trail offs. There was a part in some of the audio where at least in the longer audio where the male voice actually pops is he's too close to his mic and it gets that pop effect to make it sound more like how a podcast is. But here's the thing where they deserve the full full kudos. That AI successfully captured just how much truly meaningless drivel we do to sustain these shows.
    50:27
    Oh, yeah. No, wow. That would be real. I mean, I think back and I'm like, you know what? We do use this as a tactic in podcasting quite a bit where it's just sort of like, let's talk about what's going to come up at Expo. How many shows are doing that? we didn't just because we didn't bother but we've done it for texas and stuff we've done it before and it's just like oh wouldn't it be interesting what will this next theme be the lowest hanging of the lowest hanging fruits the rumors people sometimes write in and ask me about bringing back rumor corner you guys got too reliant on rumor corner that's why it's not here anymore that the point of rumor jones in for the rumor the point of rumor corner was to make fun of rumors and it just people started to take it too seriously and it's like that that's all this hobby is is wanting to talk about what's next what's next what's next that's not what all the other like i have other hobbies that's not what that's all about but in pinball it is and it's sort of and that and you're you're right that's very interesting to see the difference between how pinball handles stuff like that and other hobbies do you think it's because we just don't have enough releases like it's like and watches their releases every week so there's there's a little bit of oh well we're all like to do this but I mean there's just so much new stuff you don't care about the rumor side like the people content creators aren't like milking that right and they very well could be and see most of the content that I and the hobbies I do and the content I listen to outside of pinball are more like well I mean camping and adventure and doing stuff like that and most of their content isn't about, whoa, Splank Company has this new fancy widget coming out. Most of it's like, yeah, hey, we're going to the Grand Tetons, and we'll show some video, and we'll talk about it. And like in video games, we know years in advance what the themes are. So that's why I've always found it so foreign with them all. Yeah, there's an Elder Scroll coming. Did you hear? Yes, I did. I also heard there's a new Borderlands thing coming out soon. Yeah. After a really bad movie. Got to watch that taste out. All right. So let's move on to video games. And we do have another listener email from Chris C. So Chris wrote in, hey, guys, given my proximity to TPF, feel free to read this in a redneck accent or toss it through an AI to simplify things. No, we're not doing that, Chris. We're not doing that. We're just going to give you a southern accent. Getting bad. Wanted to provide a recommendation for the listener looking for a resource to learn more about retro video game history. Well, I'll admit it took me a bit to get used to their quirkiness.
    53:06
    The They Create Worlds podcast focuses primarily on the business and people side of retro video games. So not reviews, rather the hows and whys of corporate mergers, spinoffs, how technical limitations, limitations, competition markets drove game design, etc. Coincidentally, I think they might be from the KC area as well. Chris did provide a link that is in the show notes. So if you want to go, it'll take you to the About section because they have like a blog and stuff in addition to the podcast. But I haven't listened to it yet, but I wanted to go ahead and get that shared. So thank you, Chris, for writing in and providing that because that was a request from a listener on a prior episode.
    53:47
    You mentioned Elder Scrolls, which makes me think Bethesda. Right. Is there Bethesda news for us? There is Bethesda news. How fortuitous. Cessna had just recently released their new story expansion for Starfield.
    54:02
    So many stars. And in the lead up to that expansion, GamesRadar interviewed their design director, Emil. I can't pronounce his last name. I'm not even going to try. I would just slaughter it.
    54:16
    But he was talking about the expansion and they asked him what making the RPG taught the studio that it will carry into future projects. And his answer was, fans really, really want Elder Scrolls VI.
    54:32
    Yes, they do. He also followed by saying that he feels good about Starfield's future and that they have more exciting stuff coming. Also that he's very excited about their mod community because it is modded so heavily that he sees Starfield moving beyond just being the game and becoming a platform for science fiction and space content.
    54:55
    And so he also followed that up by stating that in a lot of ways, it's the best game they've ever done.
    55:05
    And the derision from that comment online was such that he had to go to social media to follow up. And he said, quote, maybe it's a game of expectations. Fans want a lot, and we do all we can to accommodate them. Here's what I can tell you. Nobody, and I mean nobody at Bethesda, is patting themselves on the back while ignoring our players.
    55:31
    He also acknowledged that in addition to delivering Shattered Space, which is the new expansion, that Bethesda has spent a lot of time this year addressing the community concerns and making fixes. He added, we'll continue to do so and we'll be listening to our fans every step of the way. We make these games for you. As he did all of the damage control he could possibly do. You've played Starfield. Yeah, I haven't finished it yet. You were on my list, and I kind of backed off of it as the reviews started coming.
    56:02
    But you dove straight into it. So how's the mod community? Well, I don't do the mods. I know. Because I'm on console. I'm not a proper player. I'm a fake gamer. So I wouldn't know about the mods.
    56:15
    There are probably some weird ones, and there are probably some that are quality of life that would make the game more playable. I mean to be fair it doesn have like a Preston situation with Starfield from Fallout 4 Just like a truly annoying thing I think the biggest thing that was nice too but it wasn like Battlefield 2042 was bringing in the car so you could finally drive around. Sometimes the landing sites were pretty far away from where you needed to go. But that pretty far away was still like less than a minute of walking. It wasn't like in Battlefield 2042, you could be out running for minutes, and then the sniper takes you because you weren't anywhere near a vehicle. Oh, what a failure of a game. And I so love dice shooters so much, too.
    57:00
    Yeah, no, it's just, you know, it's a new franchise, or I think they hoped it was a new franchise. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being just a one-off game that kind of lives as it is. And maybe it gets to a, I mean, it had some ideas to it. But it's just I think what they lost sight of is what makes a space game fun and what makes games like Elder Scrolls and Fallout fun. And they didn't really go either way as fully as they would need to. Like they didn't have the same depth of questing and just go out and travel around and explore that you would have in an Elder Scrolls or a Fallout. but then when they go into space instead of like doing some of like the wing commander-esque sort of things or x-wing tie fighter sort of things it's like they just it made it so expansive and then you just fast travel everywhere so it doesn't feel like you're flying a ship yeah in in in low orbit or whatever you'll you'll you'll engage in some ship combat but it's really just a a fast travel system and they have fast travel systems in their other games once you get to places you can fast travel but sometimes you want to go on the adventure and journey in starfield you can't and you land on these planets where you can and there's nothing there there's very few planets that have any sort of life on them so how many moons do you want to land on where you can go and find the 12 different elements that you could possibly mine that you don't need any of that stuff for because honestly you don't care because all it's used for is base building which is pointless i it's just it doesn't do any one thing great as maybe a good way to say it uh some of the side uh quest storylines are pretty good so it still has some good writing yeah when you get and do that but that's not what most of that game is the game is like this imagine a bathtub and the bathtub is the universe of starfield and then the places you can land on it are soap bubbles but Most of the soap bubbles are just bubbles. There's nothing to it. There's no flavor to it. It's just sadness. It all tastes like soap. And then you toss in your rubber duckies and stuff. And those are the worlds where there are actual things to do. But there are only a few rubber duckies that float on a bathtub.
    59:18
    Yeah, no. I can definitely see where it's open world but not a well-populated open world. It's vacant. It's open but vacant. What's the point in going and exploring an infinite universe if there's nothing in it? And that's – yeah, it feels like they auto-generated a bunch of planets and moons and – but most of them, just like in space, most of them are barren. So again, unless you – It's a realism simulator. Yeah, it's a realism simulator. But I – it's just – it's not – I don't know. It doesn't do it in a way where you can achieve the zen of like Power Washer Simulator, which is a realism simulator I suppose in its own kind. I played that, and I got motion sick, so I had to stop. But while I was playing, I was kind of like, why don't I just go outside and power wash? I'm going to play a game. I don't have my own power washer, but if I did, why don't I just go and use my own power washer? Because then you'd have to be outside in the heat, and it's loud and noisy, and it's just annoying.
    60:20
    I kind of feel the same way because I've been playing Satisfactory a lot, which is just a factory-building game where you're just building factories to build parts, So you mine resources, use those resources to build equipment to make factories, use those factories to make parts, use those parts to make other factories to make other parts to eventually just ship them up off of a space elevator.
    60:44
    But it's deeply engrossing not because of an overall story or even your goal. But like when I played yesterday, I knew I needed to start setting up a new factory because I had access to some new resources. And I ended up spending all of my playtime yesterday exploring the world, just kind of running around and running into things and seeing what was going on.
    61:09
    So I didn't get done what I needed to get done, but I had a good time just being in the world. because it's a well-populated world with a lot of stuff, and everything's laid out, and it's curated.
    61:24
    No, definitely, I think it's something that we'll see more of how they decide, what information they take from this to try and make things better. And obviously, they know they need to get an Elder Scrolls out. They only announced it in 2018. It's just, it feels fine. I mean, especially if you get a discount now, it's not a bad game. Just don't go into it expecting it to be like Elder Scrolls in space. It's not. Right.
    61:51
    And to be fair to their announcement of Elder Scrolls 6 in 2018, they literally announced that like at the last second because they had to because people were so upset. Yes. Right. So it was one of those, we're working on it. And the working on it is they've got like three guys who have said, we should probably start making Elder Scrolls 6. Make the announcement. So yes We've talked a little bit in the past Also about the A Quiet Place the road game That's coming out that's based off the Quiet Place Movies and they haven't Entered there that's coming out very soon But they have announced an interesting little Option for it That it allows you to Engage your microphone while you're Playing so that Actual noise Around you While you're playing the game can trigger the creatures in the game, if you want to make it harder, because the dog starts barking at somebody outside, or you cough, or the doorbell rings because pizza's been delivered or whatever.
    63:01
    I just thought it's an interesting little bit of added stuff to the game that doesn't require much for them in the way to put in, but because of the theme, just plays interestingly. this was done with alien isolation it was back when all the Xboxes were to have connects so the connect microphone would allow the xenomorph to know where you were and I don't know if they had it from the get go but they at least eventually put in an option to turn that off because yes if you're you know people were talking in the other room and the alien was knew where you were all the time it became a but this is very much an opt in not an opt out from the sound of it. If they didn't have it in from the get-go, they got it in really, really quick. It was in by the time I started playing that game, and I got that game pretty early. Because I would definitely it's definitely something that me and a house full of people playing something like that would definitely have it turned off because between three dogs and the wife and kids and everything else going on, I would just be constantly doing it. I mean, I could see some people like it. One of my favorite things with the Evil Within and stuff would be to wait until it was night and play with all the lights out and get that full horror immersion. And that would definitely put to that whole immersion. That would be pretty good.
    64:23
    We've talked a lot about Blizzard and the issues over the last couple of years, and Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier is actually putting out a book called Play Nice, the Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment that is releasing here shortly. and it's based on first-hand interviews with 300 current and former employees and it covers the entire history of the company from the very beginning up until the layoffs earlier this year. I might add that to my list. Yeah, I looked at it. The audiobook version of it is TPF-lengthable. It's just over nine hours. Okay. Because I looked as soon as I saw it. That could be a good road trip one then. It could be a good road trip one. And then it gives us content to talk about with the listeners or to have our AI versions talk with the listeners. Yes. Let us know if we should just AI ourselves, and you guys want to listen to Eclectic Gamers Podcast AI Edition. Right into Eclectic Gamers Podcast. The Eclectic AI Edition. We can see if the AI can emulate our voices. They have so many samples to pull from. I bet they could. Zach wants to use some AI tool to get me to sing Radiohead's Creep,
    65:28
    and he put it on the episode. That is disturbing. Yes, it was. I can think of much better songs that we could do. Well, it didn't really have me sing. It just had me speak sing it. So it wasn't. So it was more My Fair Lady. Yes. There you go. Yes.
    65:49
    Oh, well. There were rumors last week popping up all over the place that Ubisoft was in the middle of a discussion with Tencent to be sold off and taken private. Ubisoft, primarily known at this point for Assassin's Creed as their main thing.
    66:12
    But Ubisoft has come out and said that they regularly review all strategic options in the interest of its stakeholders and will inform the market effing when it is appropriate, which is one of those,
    66:26
    yeah, sure, we've looked at stuff, but we're not saying nothing. You can't get me to say nothing, coppa. Deals are in the works. So, sales of Star Wars Outlaw was very weak And partially because of that They have delayed the release of the next Assassin's Creed game From November So it would be a holiday release until February Wow So that shows a very large lack of faith in that game's quality Yes Is what I see Because just because Star Wars Outlaw's sales were weak I don't think that would be the only reason to withhold especially an Assassin's Creed game, from out of the holiday season completely? I mean, I don't understand. Is the dream to goose Outlaw sales somehow? Because otherwise, why not just move on and cut your losses and say, we've got to get Assassin's Creed out for sure for the holiday season because Outlaws is not going to sell. That's what, to me, would make sense. But I don't think the game is polished enough. And I think they're at a point where they're like, we can't afford to drop another game that needs massive amounts of bug fixes and tweaks after launch. We can't take the hit anymore.
    67:38
    So we'll see because that adds, like I said, that takes it out. That loses them the holiday season for an Assassin's Creed game. That's huge.
    67:47
    Genshin Impact, which, again, we almost never talk about. No, but it's huge. It's huge. We know people who play it. I know lots of people who play it. My daughter plays it all the time. Its latest edition or its latest update is not fully voiced in English because of the SAG after strike. Or it's believed to be because of the SAG after strike. They say it's not because due to issues with recording arrangements. Yes, from a strike. Yeah, from the strike. So it looks like that that is an ongoing issue. I know we've talked about in the past about the strike. There's been no real updates because as far as I know, there's been no real change in the strike. The strike is still ongoing since the strike was specifically laid out in such a way that it only affected new content and not stuff that was already under contract. It doesn't – everything that's being worked on currently is still being worked on. So we hadn't felt the effects and nor have the businesses. But as those projects wind down and new projects need to get started, they're going to, in theory, finally feel this pressure. And I think this is probably the first of that. Do you think the strike is what impacted Alice in Wonderland's voice work for call-outs?
    69:03
    I doubt it because they're out of Europe and Europe's not SAG-AFTRA. Okay. Because there were big issues. I remember – I don't know – I do not remember if I talked about it on the podcast. But I remember there were articles where some of the voice actor unions in Europe were working on deals with SAG-AFTRA specifically to not allow their people to be replacements for people on stuff.
    69:32
    Because I was going to say that the voice work in the trailer sounded like scabs to me. It's scab work. I'm sure the more I think of it, the more I think it's probably AI. So AI is everywhere. This is like our AI episode. We've had multiple discussions. AI continues to gain steam.
    69:51
    Speaking of steam. What? What a transition, Dennis. Steam is now warning customers at purchase that they are only buying a license for digital content and not outright owning it.
    70:04
    California passed a law in September that goes into effect on January 1st that prohibits sellers from using words buy, purchase, or any other term that a reasonable person would understand to confer unrestricted ownership interest in a digital good. So Steam is just putting that in there ahead of time to cover their bases. So it's one of those things that I think anybody buying digital-only versions of anything has known for a while. And a frustration as it becomes harder and harder to get an actual purchase option. Right, because a lot of games don't release any form of purchase option. Or if they do release an actual disc, the disc just has a link. Yeah, it just downloads it. It just downloads it. You own the disc, but the disc doesn't actually have the game on it. Right. So there's no – it's still just a disc that says, oh, it's a license. I remember that was one of my original big hate-ons for Steam before I embraced the Steam. That's right. You fell in the shadow. It was Civilization IV, and I bought the disc. and when I installed, put the disk in my computer, it made me install Steam so I could download it into my Steam account. And that was one of my original hate-ons for Steam. Yep. Took me a lot of years to get over that. So long ago. We're up to, what, Civilization VI now? I think.
    71:26
    So, and the last thing I want to cover, Game Freak, which is the creators of Pokemon. I didn't remember that. Yeah, Game Freak is the main group in Japan that oversees all of Pokemon. They received what they've been calling a gigahack. It is such a massive hack, and they've had so much information stolen that it is enormous.
    71:53
    Just the littlest touches of it is the entire source code for HeartGold and SoulSilver has been leaked. beta source codes for older games has been leaked original sprites original animations and art for older games is out there information on unannounced games including a splatoon like game is out there some of that information is losses from something that's just called mmo tasks they have tons and tons of internal notes that have been released. It includes that they're referring internally, at least to the Switch 2, as Ounce.
    72:37
    There's been information released about three live-action Pokemon movies, including a pair of Detective Pikachu movies, and then yet a third non-related movie. Surgeon Pikachu, maybe. And that includes a complete script for a movie that has not been announced or nobody knows if it's gone forward or if it died or what. It's also included meeting notes, including reportedly the notes from the meetings where they were discussing the end of the Ash Pikachu era in the animation and the ways to handle it and to get it so that the fan base doesn't go insane. Yes. With their hatred. Kill him. So that's not how they did it. By Pikachu's hand. They specifically did it so that it was, from what I've seen in the notes, it was specifically done in a way so that it's the whole, and their journey continues. And then they can, they're just, we're just not going to follow them anymore. as he lives in his coma because he's been dead since the first episode. Sad. So sad. But no, this is actually a huge leak for... A giga leak. It was evolved. It's the giga leak. Giga leak. That's right.
    73:56
    It has a mega evolution of the leak. Yes. They'll get rid of it and they'll find a new special thing for the next leak. The next one will be the Terra leak. Magikarp uses fish. Magikarp is successful. Gloom.
    74:16
    Yes, that's right. But you impacted all of them. Yeah. They are all under gloom. But that's all I have for today, really.
    74:29
    Okay. Well, I think we gave them a lot. We did. They want to write to us about any of that stuff, they can do so at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. They could go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast as well because we do post there. Also, if you want to support the channel, it's as low as a dollar a month over at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. We're available on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks. We are not going to Expo, so we might cover some of the stuff that we learn from Expo. Right. The rumors swirl greatly about greatly things, but we won't actually be there because we're too good for Chicago. Until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. Bye.