Welcome to the Eclectic Drama Podcast. Today is Sunday, August 11th. This is episode 94. I am Tony. I am Dennis. And I have a disclaimer. What's the disclaimer? Before we go into things, just to make sure people know that my personal subjective opinions are wrong, they have not been sent to or passed the Zach Minney of Straight Down the Middle, a pinball show, or This Week in Pinball podcast's test. So just remember, Zach's personal bias is that anything I say is wrong, and he obviously believes the exact opposite of everything I'm going to say during this entire show. And he complains about Zach and Minnie's feelings because I'm wrong, and he feels the opposite of me should go to Zach and Minnie. Which would be at thisweekinpinballpodcast at gmail.com. Exactly. So you must have heard his latest Twip episode. I did. Oh. There were some very... He likes you. He really, really likes you. Yeah, I got that feeling. There were some good things in that episode Really? You actually played the first decent game you've had on that show in forever But that's just another game that he stole from himself Well, that's fine At least it was finally a decent one Okay, well, that's good I'm sure Jeff, who can be reached at thisweekinpinball at gmail.com Will appreciate knowing that there was once a good game There was a good game, there you go The only thing I remember about that episode, quite frankly Is that the Market Trends segment was really long It was like exceedingly long. It was too long. One of these days I would like to see somebody get actual trend lines and compare every single thing. That's a lot of work. It's a ton of work. I don't have that kind of background. I think perhaps it is relied upon that no one will go to that trouble. I'm sure it is. But as you noted, Eclectic Drama Podcast, and it ain't about Twip is why. No, not at all. This has been a drama-filled smorgasbord on both the video game and pinball side. over the last couple of weeks. It's crazy. It's like seriously insane. I mean, on the pinball side, I'm going to chalk it up to, is this like a, you know how sometimes when people have babies, they have postpartum depression? Is there like a post-Penberg depression that people go into? Have we seen something like this in the past? I can't recall. I don't remember having this much drama locked into such a tight, small time period. I don't either, but I want to blame something because the drama has been very eclectic on the pinball side, but just pronounced and almost nonstop. Yeah, and it's overridden anything that can be considered news or other non-interest. It seems like pretty much anything that pops up has like a 48-hour life cycle and then is replaced or displaced by new drama. Right. It doesn't get resolved. It just gets displaced. It's very, very odd. Well, I guess in terms of intros, the only thing I'm going to add is I'm still dealing with my Buck Rogers flipper rebuild. I got one flipper rebuilt. The stupid roll pins are very frustrating. And the issue I've run into this morning is I was going to do the other one. I got the roll pin out pretty quick, bent the flipper assembly from the hammer strike, so I need to fix that. And the roll pin, now that it's free, I don't have it stuck in something to then vice grip my pin punch out. So now I have a pin and the punch halfway in it And I can't get it out So I need to borrow another pair of vice grips So I can start going wiggle wiggle wiggle That's how I'm going to do it But I'm not in a hurry on it But on the plus side I did finally I had to re-gap The other one that was the only thing that was going wrong With it and now I did test the one I've already Done and it's nice and strong So this will work eventually Awesome As long as I don't snap that assembly hammering it back And otherwise I'll have to find a replacement, which I'm sure Big Daddy Enterprises or someone will be able to secure me one. I would hope so. He does a lot with System One stuff, so I'm pretty confident. And I can drive there, as you know. Oh, yeah. He's only about an hour away. And I've got other stuff on my list that's growing of things to get from. You're growing parts picker lists? My parts list from, yeah. I'm just waiting for enough to warrant the gas. Yeah. And then I'll make time to go pick something up from Todd. So what have you been doing? I've got actual board game news. It's not big enough. I had someone write into me saying they were listening to some board game podcast, and it reminded them of the happy days where you talked about board games. I remember the happy days when I played board games. Maybe that is something that we'll talk about here in a minute, because I was going to bring it up at the end of my intro section. But I backed a Kickstarter, a new board game project. It's a party game. It's from the creators of Cyanide Happiness and from Skybound Games, the creators of Super Fight. And it is called Trial by Trolley. It is a party game. It's kind of like the, what do you want to call it, like Cards Against Humanity. It's kind of one of those evil, horrible person party games. Okay. So have you ever heard the thing where it's about, oh, there's a train coming and you have to choose which track it goes on to. and one track has like a kid on it and the other track has like five adults on it, which track do you divert the train onto? That type of thing? I'm not familiar with that one specifically, but... Something like it. More of the you're in the river and your two kids are equidistant from you and there's a waterfall, which kid do you save? Exactly. It's basically like that. In this case... By the way, the answer to that is your favorite. Well, yeah. It's a good one. Yeah. In this game, Trial by Trolley, one player out of your group is the conductor, and all the other players split off into two separate teams. And the conductor is driving a trolley, and the trolley line splits, and there are two things. And to start out, each one gets flipped off one of the top of the card decks, an innocent card, that puts an innocent victim on each trolley track. and then each team puts down more innocent cards or on the opposing teams they put down bad people cards to try and convince the conductor which group is the better group to hit. And the goal is to build up death tokens and whoever has the most points. Yeah, that sounds happy. Oh, yeah. No, it sounds horrible. But watching some clips of it and reading the rules and stuff, it seems like one of those very hilarious party games. It would be a fun game. Yeah, that's exactly why I backed. Okay. Cool. So we'll see when that comes and how it goes. So there is my news when it comes to board news. Okay. I've got some personal pinball news. Okay. I'm very happy. You are. I got a third place finish at the 403 tournament this year, or this year, this month. But it was this year. Which was also this year. and all that it required was for, you know, all of the try-hards to go to Pembroke. We still had good players there, though. Well, yeah, and we actually did have some really good players. And it was a decent turnout. There was a good turnout. Yeah, that was your highest finish ever. Yes. In the history of ever, at any tournament. I've never finished higher than fourth before this at any tournament. Yeah. And you stayed in winner's bracket a really long time. I remember that, too, which was not how I normally progress, even when I do well. I usually go into losers very quickly and have to just fight. Right. And the gentleman who took me out of winner's bracket is also the gentleman who took me out of the loser's bracket. Mm-hmm. So you won a bucket. I won a busket. Yeah. I did. And cash. And some cash. Yeah. It was good. It was a lot of fun. Mm-hmm. Twilight Zone just did terrible things to me. Well, it's not the best Lawler game. Yeah. No. And Adam's family was very kind to me. Yes. Yes. So it worked out pretty well. That was a pretty good time. Cool. And my last little bit of news is I've been informed by my wife that I need to get a hobby. This was modified because now I've been informed that I need to get a hobby that gets me out of the house. because apparently I'm driving her nuts being home all the time and worrying about work stuff and worrying about other stuff and just apparently being home too much. Okay. So if anybody has any good ideas for hobbies, because half my hobby ideas have already been shot down, then go ahead and feel free to send them in on the Facebook or to the email. EclecticGamersPodcast at gmail.com. Exactly. And we'll see. Maybe I can find a hobby because I apparently don't have one. Apparently not. And you're open to all sorts of suggestions. I am. So write those in. We need them. He needs them. I don't need them. I told her I wanted to build a scale model, a scale working model of my job, and she rolled her eyes and said no because apparently that doesn't get me out of the house. Okay. Which is valid. Yes, but, I mean, a lot of hobbies are house-based, so this adds quite a complication. Right. And that complication is new because originally I was just told I needed a hobby. Because I was going to say, well, you could build like a battle bot or something. Yeah. You're just going to do that out in the garage. Right. And then she's not going to have you out of the house. So that's not an outdoor thing. Right. And then yesterday she added that it has to get me out of the house. So I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do. Okay. Well, maybe the listeners know. Maybe the listeners will know. Save us. Save us, listeners. You're our only hope. Now that the fun's gone. That's my R2-D2. Now we go to drama. Yeah. Well, we're going to ease into that. We're going to ease into the drama. We're going to ease into it. So we're going to transition to pinball first. And it isn't all drama in pinball. It's just mostly. And we'll start with the non-drama. Okay. So first, as most people who have listened to other podcasts are aware of at this point, the gameplay of Jurassic Park from Stern was revealed. Jack Danger streamed it on Deadflip from Stern. I have a link in the show notes on it. I didn't know if you had a chance to watch the stream. I didn't. Okay. I did watch part of the recording of it. But I didn't watch any real play. And I only watched on the premium. And much like what I thought from the layout, it looks fun. The voice call-outs were pretty bad, unfortunately. That's the only negative I can really cite is it just felt very ham, hammy. Right. Like acting. Yeah. Thespian, over-the-top sort of stuff. But the animations, the custom approach that they took looked pretty good. Cool. Kind of like how the animations look good on Black Knight Sword of Rage. But, yeah, it looks like a lot of fun. I bet a lot of people like how the dinosaur interacts with the ball. And apparently that's a setting. So on those premium models, that's what I think is going to be the big pull for folks, is the Keith Elwin weighed in on Pinsight, actually, and noted, you actually have choices. You can set it so that it will do everything. Like it'll throw the ball into the pop section It'll sometimes pick up the ball And set it gently on a ramp And let it roll away And you can turn it off You can set it so it won't throw the ball It'll always just place it on a ramp If you want the consistency For a tournament or something Or you're afraid that your pop bumpers are going to break or something So I thought that was pretty neat Can you set the chaos mode where it just goes insane? It's default mode apparently Is sort of chaotically random I don't know if it's – let me clarify that. I don't know if it's random or certain things are like, okay, he's going to just toss it or he's going to ramp set it. Right. I don't know if that's the case. But if you don't want it to behave in that random way, you can modify it so it behaves in a more structured way or you can just disable it so it's like the pro. Of course, if you're going to disable it, save the money, buy the pro. Yes, that would be my thought unless you're only disabling it for, say, tournaments or something. I don't want him to interfere in tournaments. We want that to be more flowy and more consistent. So anyway, yeah, it looks like a lot of fun. The 403 Club already has their launch party scheduled next month. So we know we're getting one. I might try to make this one. We get all the new sterns. Maybe that'll be going to more pinball stuff will help get me hobby covered. It might help. I don't know if going in location plane is enough of a hobby. I know. I don't think so. I don't see, I don't, I can. Getting machines, working on machines, that can be a hobby, but then you're in the house, so. Right. Same with video games. You're in the house. Right, but I don't consider video games hobbies any more than I would consider watching TV a hobby. I agree. I don't consider reading a book a hobby. Well, if you went into making your own video game, that could be a hobby. But you'd be in the house. I'd be happier making my own pinball machine, and it doesn't sound like fun. It sounds like horror. I wouldn't mind designing a pinball machine, but the moment my brain gets to the part where I'm drilling all the holes in the wood, I'm like, no. No, I never got into woodworking stuff like that for a reason. And this would be so exacting because you're talking over millimeters of this with the layout. Oh, no. So you've got your ramp in the right spot. If you couldn't CNC it, I don't know how you'd do it. No, I'd need to CNC and I'd need to design it in a program I don't know to do it. Right. They'd be like, nope, I'll just throw out my ideas to the public, and then they can just go, oh, they're such great ideas, but they'll never come to fruition. Sad. Yep, that sounds about right. Yep, that's right. Next thing before any drama, we both, at the tournament that you did so well at, got to play Willy Wonka from Jersey Jack. Yes, we did. Because that's been routed at 403 at this point, and that was the first opportunity we had to put games in on it. I put in several games on it. What did you think of it? I would like to put a few more games on it. Sure. So I'm still in this place where I'm willing to, I'm not fully set in stone on my beliefs. But if I was going to say it right this second, this is JJP's second best game. Hmm. Interesting. And it's fighting for the best position. Okay. Gameplay-wise. I've only got four games on it. Yeah, and that's how many I played, too. So it's a good qualifier to let people know. That's why. But, I mean, it's easily the only JJP game that I have found to be as interesting or slightly more interesting than it is Dialback. So the gameplay is amazing. It's really good. The sound was turned down. Yeah, it was way down. So I have no idea what the sound is like. I remember from the streams it seemed horrible, but I don't know. I couldn't hear it. And when I play, especially when I play in tournament situations, as you know, I go with headphones and very high BPM music because it helps me. So I don't know about the sound. I will say that this was a standard. Yes. And I will continue to stand by what I've said in the past about Wonka. The art's not that great. No. Definitely not JJP's best art package at all, but it's just not good. Yeah, my reactions are similar. I don't have enough time on Pirates versus Wonka to really say, like, gameplay-wise. My general read is that Wonka is more my style than the Pirates game is, in part. Not just because Pirates is wide and Wonka is not, but just in terms of the... Wonka feels a lot like Dialed In in the layout. Yeah. Except it seems like, almost like there are more shots in Wonka. But I, and I'm not at the point yet, because I have so many more games in on Dialed In. I still prefer Dialed In overall because I felt Wonka played a little easy, easier. Not like, I don't mean like Hobbit or anything. It's a hard game. But, well, it's a moderate game. Let me put it that way. But most of the shots fed back relatively, even if you bricked, seemed to be relatively safe. It was more like if you bricked the gobstopper, that was dangerous. And if you didn't get up the center left ramp, that was dangerous. Right, but it didn't feel like it was. Right. Everything else was fairly good. Yeah, the sound was turned way down, so I didn't know what I was doing. I tried to read the rules card. 403 Club's a fairly dark location. This game's lack of a GI is a problem. Very much. It's just, it's really, it was actually, I don't normally have a problem in low light situations seeing a ball. It's part of the reason why I don't need pin stadiums. But with this game, it was like, when they're doing the full, like, turn everything off and cycling the lights, it's really colorful and neat. But I couldn't see the ball. And this happened quite a bit. Right. There was also a problem with this one. The software takes care of it, but it's still annoying, where when you lock a ball with a gobstopper, sometimes instead of shooting it into the shooter lane, it shot it into the out lane down the drain and it went. I didn't have that. I had that happen to me twice. And the software knew, so they've programmed around it. But that's an interesting design flaw. Interesting. I wonder if a power setting can fix that. Flippers felt good. I've heard a lot of people say that when they played Wonka, the flippers had felt mushy. These were tuned up fine. Oh, yeah. These felt great. I don't know, again, because I'm still a little confused about the rules. If the rules are going to rise to Dialed In's rule. I really like Dialed In. I understood it. Right. Hit the power guy, charge the phone, phone our missions. And this seems less of a mode-driven game and more of a just keep shooting and stuff will happen sort of game. Kind of akin to what I thought Dwight Sullivan was going for with Munsters, though. This, I think, is going to appeal to more people. It's a better theme. Yeah, the rules may be better integrated. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of the Munster's layout, but it's so reminiscent of several other things Borg has done. And this is different enough from Dialed In. I mean, it's got an extra flipper, and it plays a lot differently. I agree with you. The art is not a strong package. For this day and age, the art package is relatively weak. It's not poorly drawn, but it's very – it's kind of like, well, I liked the drawing quality of Batman. It's one of my favorite franchise-style art packages that he did. So you could say, well, it seemed like a lot of times I think the same imagery may have been used over and over. I'm not – it's been a while since I've looked at the Batman art package. Here you can tell. Oh, yeah. No, it's super obvious. Here you can tell. It's like here's the same Wonka over and over and over and over. But they resized it and they cropped it in one place. And so I'm guessing that was compliance with license and everything. I'm not blaming the artist for not knowing how to draw different poses. Right. But nonetheless, compared to the art package of Black Knight or even the new Jurassic Park or the packages Dirty Donnie has done or Munsters, this is inferior. This is above Oktoberfest, but it's worse than just about everything else art-wise. I think it hides this through its light show Which is spectacular But that's not the same thing As saying that it's got good art It's not an exciting art package Again, that wouldn't make me a hang I'm not hung up about that This one at 403 Is off on the side It's not in the regular pin row It's where we used to have the Beatles game So you can look and appreciate The extra bland cabinet art I mean, it's like Sharky's Shootout levels of black It's a little bit above Sharky's Because Sharky's hasn't got any art on the sides of the backbox Poor Sharky's So overall yeah I thought it was a fun shooter From looking at it So I think that from a gameplay perspective I think it should be Very successful for Jersey Jack And since they knocked the price down by $1000 Versus their old standards It was a good opportunity for people to get in on it And so and as you noted, sound was turned way down. That's probably part of my confusion. I was reading the inserts, which were fairly explanatory, but I couldn't hear call-outs tell me what to do, and I thought it was trying to. I could hear some of the sound effects, and I'm glad it was turned down. I don't like it. I don't like the sound package. It's a slot machine, and it's not what I want to play, and I don't play with headphones, So I want to hear the Again that's not a make or break For someone like me But yeah it's a good game I quite enjoyed it I thought it shot really well For that reason alone I expect that it will do quite well For Jersey Jack And just remember Zach Minifil's the exact opposite of me Oh because you're always wrong Because I'm always wrong So he thinks it's their worst shooting game Well he sells them so he'll never tell us the truth on that So speaking of of truth in pinball let's go into the dramas with a z because there was a lot of drama the last couple of weeks pinball yeah especially this last week in particular but holy crap here's the thing i don't dive as deep into the pinball stuff into the pin side into all the pinball facebook groups and all that stuff like you do i still found a lot of this drama that's how thick and heavy this drama has been coming. Yeah. If this drama was a topping, it would be sausage. It's that thick. Wow. And made up of a bunch of disparate bits of stuff. Hmm. Interesting. Not where I thought you were going with that. No. I was going to go with something else, and then I couldn't figure out how to pronounce it. I said, let's just go sausage instead. I was assuming you were going to go peanut butter. Mmm. Peanut butter. Oh, that's much better because no one's going to think of, you don't really think of meats in the sense of thick, except for thick cut steaks. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's like peanut butter. It kind of gets stuck everywhere. The odor doesn't go away for a long time. And it's good in certain things and terrible in other things. So, yeah. Yeah, I like that. And some people go into anaphylactic shock because of it. That's true. That's why we've got our EpiPens. If you could afford them. Yes. if you could afford them. And I can't. I don't have EpiPens, folks, so if you have a nut allergy and you eat nuts around me, I can't help you. Except, I'll say, oh, that's unfortunate. I can call 911. Yeah, I guess I could try that. I mean, maybe. Maybe. I don't know. Does that work? I think it depends upon what state you're in. Hmm. Okay. Or country. We do have an international audience, and some of them do use different numbers besides 911. Some of them make more sense. Mm-hmm. So let's go into some things that don't make a lot of sense. So we've got a number of items here. So let's start with drama item number one. And on some of these things, we're going to get specific. And on some of these things, we're going to keep it a little more general because I don't need to give all of this stuff legs. But let me open with this because this is very interesting. Let me call out, not specifically, but let me call out some of our brethren, our brothers and sisters, our peers in the podcasting world who don't ever want to weigh in on drama. One, you picked the wrong hobby because this hobby is full of drama. I get it and I don't get it at the same time because for me it's a twofold thing. you can say that you got into pinball to get away from your day-to-day whatever, but if you're commentating on this hobby, this is part of it. So there ain't no escape, because then all you end up doing is referencing it to talk about how you won't reference it, which is still talking about it. It's talking about it, but also trying to pretend that you're above the front. Oh, I'm too good to talk about that. And most don't couch it in those terms, But it's more like, well, we only want to be happy in the hobby. And it's like, yes, isn't the venue I would use for that then? Because what happens is it puts you on the opposite look at it from the opposite side of the coin What if bad things are happening and your stance is well I don do drama So now you don weigh in on anything You don weigh in on anything substantive You just do fluff. Well, we don't do fluff here. We attack peanut butter straight up when we need to. Because there is bad behavior in the hobby, and if no one talks about it, it looks like you're tacitly agreeing with it, and that's a problem too. That's right. Peanut butter is only acceptable in no-bake cookies. I actually don't care for no-bake cookies either. I don't like peanut butter in any cookie. That's the only way I really eat peanut butter. I will eat peanut butter with jelly on bread. I'll do that. I won't do that. Okay, well. We're going to move on from peanut butter analogy at this point. Okay. So some of these things you wouldn't need to touch on, but I'm going to touch on them just because I want to show just how much drama has been going on since our last episode. All right. So the first one is on one of the pinball enthusiast groups, and I'm not sharing a link to this. It's not necessary. There was a mean-spirited meme that was posted in reference to one of the programmer rules package developers for one of the pinball manufacturers. So all it was was an image with a quote from the godfather to the person was using to convey how hurt he felt if he found out this person was in charge of rules. Okay. It wasn't funny. It was a stupid meme. And normally, I think people would, when they see a stupid meme, just move past it because it's the internet. You do see a lot of that. However, friends of the programmer came in and attacked the person for posting the meme. And then the next thing I knew, there were over 100 comments on this meme about whether it was okay to do the meme, whether it was wrong to do the meme, whether the sentiment was fine, but it should have been articulated outside of a meme, whether it shouldn't have been articulated at all. Well, all right. First, I mean, people can do what they want. That being said, if you want people in the industry to interact publicly, it might be best not to call them out in that sort of fashion. And I'm not perfect about that either. What I try and do is criticize the product, not the person. That's what I try and do on this show. I'm not saying I always do it that way. I can tell you, for example, that Pat Waller isn't one of my favorite designers. His style overall, if I look at his entire repertoire, is not what appeals to me. I will say something like, Roadshow sucks. That's the game. I'm criticizing the game. I think having a microphone means I'm supposed to criticize things. That's my interpretation. I'm not here to shill. I'm not here just to spout sunshine and rainbows And peanut butter at people And say that it's all good and you should eat it And you should be grateful And that the only way we grow the hobby Is to only say optimistic things That's a terrible idea It is, it's destructive actually But you don't need to go out there And I would also never go out there And be like Pat Lawler He's like look at what he did to my theme Oh no He's just like no That's not the right way to be constructive what would be constructive would be to criticize oh let's say you had a problem with the rules say gosh i sure wish we didn't have to have multi balls constantly doing this or i sure wish i didn't have to stack three multi balls to blow up half the jjp lineup that'd be a fair criticism if you hated that yeah other people love it but so that's sort of the thing that's when it comes to opinions, people have different ones and it's okay to have a different opinion than somebody else. Yeah. Now, in terms of this, I mean, I doubt the person who the meme was about, if they even saw it, they were tagged in on it. Someone tagged them. I don't know if they ended up looking at it or not. There is a degree of thick skin that's sort of necessary whenever you're putting out any sort of product. So I doubt that they would be as sensitive as some of their defenders make it out to be. But that said, you know, we don't need to critique in that fashion. There's a healthier way to do it as well versus just making fun of the person with a meme. Maybe make fun of the rule you don't like and say, let's have a discussion about why is this done in pinball? It's stupid. Let's not program a rule that way anymore. I don't like hurry ups. Let's give it a hurry ups. You know, something like that. Something. Yeah. Because the thing is, I don't actually have a problem. I mean, other than the fact that I didn't think the meme was funny. I've seen that meme used in ways that I thought was completely hilarious. But I think that's the inherent issue with memes is sometimes they work really well and sometimes they just don't. Well, you're never going to get intellectual depth with memes. No. Because it's too short. I mean, yeah, exactly. But at the same time, I think if it hadn't had so many people roll in on both sides of this fight, it would have just vanished in like minutes and been gone. Yeah, it was. Because it was forgettable. Yeah. It wasn't the meme itself that I think caused any of the drama. All of the drama came from everybody because it's gotten very noticeable in the pinball hobby. that people have teams and people are very much overly enthusiastic about their team. We see it everywhere. There's the people who love JJP and hate Stern. The people who love Stern and hate JJP. The people who think that Dutch pinball is the greatest thing ever. Don't you understand that if you just give them a little bit of time and some more money, it'll come rolling out and they'll steamroll and destroy everybody else in the hobby. You just have to have faith because people can't let go of their teams. And the thing is, is their opinions. And I might not agree with your opinion and you might not agree with my opinion. And we don't in a lot of situations. But the truth of the matter is, is it's not worth getting this upset over. And this is something that we're going to see us talking about more and more during this episode. And I'm honestly afraid it's something we're going to be talking about a lot more going forward. And we've already talked about it on the video game side in the past, very recently, with the whole Steam Epic Game Store stuff and the review bombing of games and all that stuff. This has become an extremely prevalent thing in our society. and it's doing nothing to help the world at all. It's making everything worse. Do you think that we are so, I guess, jaded to this, and by we, I mostly mean you and I, especially compared to Pinball, other Pinball podcasters perhaps, because we have survived so much of the console wars and seen all this fanboyism on the video game side, which is a, even though it's a younger hobby, it's much more mature in terms of it's developed through a lot of these phases that Pinball's now going through because there were so many people involved with video games at all levels for so long, whereas Pinball, like the collector stuff, is much newer. I think it's a really valid argument. I mean, I could definitely see it. It's something that has been seen and it's blown up and honestly, it's gone away in consoles. I mean, it's still there but it's not as bad as it was, say, in the 90s. Well, yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I remember when people would have meme-ified. We didn't really have memes in the 90s, but they would have gone out and called out John Romero by name and called him all sorts of stuff. And there wouldn't have been, outside of just generalized believers in his spirit, an ardent defense either. But that's another thing with game journalism. There's a professionalism with that. here and we're not journalists we not like none of us are pretty much who are in podcasting again i'm using podcasting example because it's the one we do but this is part of the reason why we i at least in my view this is part of the reason why i have not explicitly gone out and tried to make friends with people who work at manufacturers to keep myself from feeling obligated to weigh in on things because i think it's dangerous if they want to be friendly i'll be friendly but i'm not I didn't start podcasting to be like, oh, God, I just want to be friends with my favorite designers and stuff. Like, I don't. That's kind of creepy fanboy you there. Yeah, I didn't. Maybe I phrased it in a weird way. But it's sort of like, you know, a lot of people seem to develop relationships and make friends. And that's nice, but that's not why we did this. Right. We did it because we already were talking about this stuff and we thought, let's record it and see if anyone wants to listen or not. Yeah. And that was it. It wasn't, hmm, and then maybe we can be friends with Steve Ritchie and Scott Denisey and it'll be awesome. And we'll all go out and get pizza together. That would be awesome. It would, but we didn't go into this to do that. Right. So. Because, I mean, that's just like meeting any other person that you really admire. It'd be awesome to sit down and talk with them, but I'm not going to go out of my way. I bring it up because that's what I think in this case some of this was. It wasn't about even the teens for everyone. It was about friends. It was actually just, it got personal. Yeah. And that's why I think it blew up more than normally you would have thought it to be. So I can't tell people to not take it personal, but it was interesting. So I guess my thought would be, you know, maybe as tight knit and small as the hobby is, maybe express things in terms of philosophy and view, not so much targeting people in particular. Right. And then if you want actual change, that might be more productive. That would be my thought. But speaking of productive, let's move to the next drama thing, because this actually was pretty middling as far as drama went. This was forgotten within two days. Right. Until we dredged it back up. Because now I want to talk about sexism in the hobby of pinball. So there was a video example that came out of Pinbird. I'm not linking the video because I don't want the discussion to be about people. I want the discussion to be about the activity But how But most of our discussion is actually Going to be about the reaction of people To the reaction of the video So by this What happened is someone clipped this It was on Twitch And it was during I believe the finals at some point During the day of Pinberg finals Last day of Pinberg And there were three people in the commentary booth And so you know how that is Tony Because I didn't watch it But you and I, we've done commentary before in a booth, basically, with three people, in fact. And so I guess there was introduction time. So one gentleman was doing all the talking. And so he introduced himself by name. He introduced the middle commentator, another man, by name. And then he introduced the commentator on the other end, a woman, by name, and then referenced her good looks for being what she was. he didn't say she was I'm trying to remember exactly what was said I'm going to paraphrase it basically he called her the beauty of the booth and then he added on there was a pause what I describe as an awkward pause and then he added on and the brains which tells me he realized how what he said sounded the middle commentator and the other man was like oh that wasn't and the woman chimed in and goes No, that wasn't really good. And the the guy who who who made the attempt at a joke apologized and said he was that what he didn't he was trying to make a self-deprecating joke and it turned out poorly. And so the clip was about 12 seconds long. Here's this has become multifaceted in terms of the discussion about this. and I think this is a good lead-in for us to start talking about outrage culture or call-out culture in pinball and its uses coupled with what we've been seeing lately in the hobby. Because in lead-up to this, not because of this, it was well before this, but there have been a number of articles that have been released in what we would consider mainstream media versus pinball media about women's leagues, women's tournaments, And there has been some fairly aggressive blowback on social media of people who don't understand why there are these women events and they seem to their men and they seem to be upset that they exist. And so this comes out as an example of, while unintentional, just sort of that bias that exists in the hobby. Why wasn't this woman introduced just by her name like the men were introduced? Or why wasn't her pinball prowess pointed out? Why was it about her looks? And again, it was a joke gone bad. I don't want to know. I didn't see anyone. I didn't see anyone rake the sky over the coals. I really didn't. Right. But there was a segment of pinball people who I assume, again, getting back to our first drama piece, who are friends with him, who were very upset that this video clip was shared. Let's tackle this first. That's not relevant. It's not relevant that it got shared. It's not relevant if someone got his permission. It's not relevant if someone got the woman's permission. Because I had heard she also wasn't a big fan of the clip being circulated. Too bad. Too bad. This was a publicly broadcasted event. It was going to be archived anyway. Your opinion is not relevant to this. This is not secret cell phone footage of someone's private behavior. You went on air and you did this. You've subjected yourself to public scrutiny by definition. Yeah, you chose to be there. You chose to make those comments. You chose to be in that forum. that was all choses that you, or things that you chose yourself. There is absolutely nothing, nothing that you can say, oh, I don't want that said because it makes me look bad. No, you chose to be there. Every single thing leading up to that was something you chose. You weren't in your house with somebody secretly recording where you didn't know you were being recorded, where you could at least have an argument that you said something that wasn't for public consumption. It was literally designed for public consumption because you said something terrible because you did something terrible and you feel bad for it or you feel embarrassed because of it. It doesn't give you the right to say, well, let's forget this happened. It doesn't work that way. Right. So there is, while I understand, and it's a fair enough complaint to say, well, are we discussing the behavior or are we going to discuss the individuals that not knowing who they were would have been advantageous to keep people's friendships out of it? But there was no way to do that given the video had their names listed and it was an introduction video that was the problem. So we're able to do that because we're not using the clip to have the discussion. but there were a few people that got very zealous about this and is like, in this case, I don't see the grounds for the argument. Now, we can have a discussion about call-out culture, though, about in this instance and beyond with pinball, because this is something that's coming up more and more often. We're seeing people that behave in a way that someone or someone don't like. And so the approach has been to call out the behavior on social media, naming the individuals, naming what happened, and then a discussion. And I'm being very generous when I say discussion. Sometimes it just seems like a screaming match then ensues. What do you think of social media in pinball to deal with something like this? Is it helpful? Does it work, but it's not ideal? Is it the ideal way to do it? What are your thoughts? Because it's complicated by issue. As fans of the show, I'm sure have noticed, I don't have a huge social media presence. I have some. I use some. Even some of the podcast stuff. But I don't post all the time. And there's a reason for that. I'm not a fan of social media. Period. because all the kind of stuff that you see posted, even just the minor, like non-inflammatory stuff, just the minor stuff, it's stuff where it's like, I don't see why anybody would care. Why would I post something about this? I don't care about it. I don't see why I should post it for anybody else to care about. But, I mean, I do for the podcast some stuff, especially when we go to, like, Texas. I try to post a lot more, but I don't post, like, when we go to every tournament because it's pictures of us playing machines in a tournament. That's not interesting to me. I'll post them on occasion. If there's something really cool going on, something like that. I'm just not a huge fan of social media to begin with. And I think because you're not physically present with somebody, you don't have an actual back and forth going in the conversation, there are no filters, and people tend to take things in the absolute worst manner possible and they blow stuff up. And in all honesty, a lot of these situations and places, you have people who are running totally anonymous, so they're saying whatever they want no matter how terrible it is. And outrage culture has gotten to the point where you can't just disagree with somebody. Now when you disagree with somebody, you have to kill them and physically harm them and destroy their lives and all this. And that's where things have gone. I think this whole thing has been not just in pinball. In a wider view, made the world a worse place. In the pinball hobby itself, it's definitely not a positive. It might have started as a positive. The forums, the being able to talk, it's a small hobby. We're spread all over the world. It's great to have places to get together and talk about our stuff. But a lot of stuff has started to twist and turn and turn into something that is much, much more toxic than it has any need to be. And the thing is, like you were talking about the console wars and the thing with video games, we're in a place in pinball right now where video games really hit the big time into national and international news just five years ago. Like, exactly five years ago, because it was August of 14 when the whole GamersGate stuff started. Really kidding. And a lot of this stuff, especially the sexism stuff that's starting to manifest itself, is like the beginnings of that. That hasn't gotten nearly as bad yet. And we're a small enough hobby, it might not go to the same levels. But it's there. And it seems to be a real cyclic thing that we're seeing a lot more of. Yeah, I think you raised a lot of good points. I'm going to bifurcate them into two things. I'm going to talk about the call-out culture stuff first, and then I'll hit sexism second as a specific issue. In terms of the call-out culture, broadly, I agree with what you've stated in that I think the problem with the social media approach to solving problems, It's not that it's wrong to do, but understand that your audience is self-selected. And by that, I mean that when people create posts on Facebook, even if they are really broad with their friend list and let anyone in, you know, they think they're being really accommodating. It's still essentially self-selected groups. so in terms of calling out if you want to have a discussion about sexism, you want to have a discussion about how people conduct themselves in booths, at pinball tournaments and things like that and I don't mean to self-generate content for us we don't do a lot of interviews ourselves anyway, but that is the sort of thing where I think it's so easy to post on social media why not write an article about it if you care, if you really want to have an item to put something out there that can be discussed or go on a podcast to talk about the topic instead of some people. It seems like when they're on any of this stuff in an interview or whatnot, they don't want to talk about this sort of stuff, but they do on their wall. I guess not call it a wall anymore, but they're willing to on social media. It's like, I just don't think that that's the best way if you really care. If you really care, you need to be using the quote-unquote media and getting your message out there broadly and subjecting it to the criticism that that will possibly entail. Do you think it's because putting stuff out there in a tweet or on your Facebook or in an Instagram or something doesn't feel as real as being in an actual conversation with somebody and talking about that kind of stuff or doing actual research and writing an article with information and cited sources as part of your thing? I don't think it's that so much as social media because it's oriented around sharing already. It's just so easy. It's so easy to use. So if you're wanting a discussion, it's logical to think, well, especially if you live somewhere where not all the pinball people are, let's use social media. We'll get a nice, healthy discussion. I'll get feedback. And it's really easy to share clips of videos or screenshots or whatever you're using to be outraged by. The problem with it, in my view, is it's not that using the social media is bad specifically, but it's not as helpful because your audience is also self-selected. So, yeah, you could try and go out onto like a pinball enthusiast group or something like that meme was and try and start a discussion there. And that would actually be a little better even though it's social media because at least it's not just your page talking to your folk, your people. There's a problem, especially in the U.S., with a lot of people that are taking news sources that are already selected towards their own biases. so you don't subject yourself to other ways of thinking. And in my view, you don't need to read everything that's against you. That's not the point. But the point is you need to understand that there are different perspectives and you cannot put yourself in the position to think in the same way to understand that perspective. You're crippling yourself in terms of critical thinking. It's the only way to be able to make a successful argument is to understand where the other party is coming from. So, yeah, because if you lock yourself in a self-reinforcing echo chamber where the only thing you hear is other people who say the exact same thing and feel the exact same way you do, of course it's going to generate more outrage when you hear a differing opinion because you're like, look at all these people. They all agree with me and you don't. So obviously there's something wrong with you. And so just – and I've got a great transition related to that that I'll move into. but back on the social media side of things, when you're just putting it on social media, in a way, you're not really allowing your own statement to be subjected to a review and criticism. You've already gotten to define the terms. You've already defined the terms of the discussion because your thread is hosting the discussion. This is the same on a forum too. Your thread is hosting the discussion if you say wrote an article and had it published like a pinball news about here where I think there a problem with sexism and pinball Here are my example All of that Not only do you trigger the discussion, your own write up is subject to critique. And I'm not sure everyone who's trying to drive these conversations wants their perspective put under such critique. I don't. It's more work, too. So a lot more work. So there are things like that where it's the same with going out there and what if you came on a show and were doing an interview on Pinball Profile or something and you said something and now that's out there. You can always go back and delete your Facebook thread. Yeah, there'll probably be an archive of it. But you can try and sanitize your bad tweet. You can try and do – once you release things out there where you don't have that control, it's still about holding the control, I think. And that's where, coupled with the almost echo chambery nature of self-selecting your friends and such on such places, who you follow, who you talk with, there are just, it's not as robust as I would like to see. But I think it's healthy to have these sort of conversations. So speaking of the sexism part in particular, as a good case in point about critical thinking and being able to see things from another perspective, a good example, this was on social media, was there was a discussion. As I noted earlier, there have been a lot of people who have reacted fairly aggressively about seeing all of this attention on these women's only events. Misinformation included, like confusion that thinking they can play in women, women can play in women's only events and they get the regular whopper points that are only at the which are only in open events. Right there. There is a point system for women's events because there was demand for it. So it got created. And there was someone who he was very upset about. About this and from how he was posting there and there are a lot of people who are getting very frustrated with him because he wasn't, quote unquote, getting it. He didn't understand they were giving all these differing reasons about why they like women's events and all that. His focus, though, was very clear to me. He didn't understand why we aren't trying to stamp out sexism, sexual assault at the regular events. That's where he was coming from. He's like, if the problem is bad actors at general co-ed pinball events, why aren't we destroying those people? so he was coming at it from a different perspective not thinking about it as some of the it's not all driven by that sometimes you just want to play with other women in this case there were women who just want it for fun or for it's not bad for people to associate freely associate with each other that was my i that i normally would never weigh in on a sexism discussion because you just it's just trouble it's just trouble here we are talking about it but i mean on social media. It's just trouble. So I did weigh in on this and I said, look, this is my perspective on the matter. There are, you could have like neighborhood blocks that say only people in the neighborhood could play pinball as a way to bond your neighborhood together. It'd be an interesting idea if you were all, like if you were in a city and there was a store that had pinball machines, we're going to have a neighborhood league and only neighborhood folks can be here. there's nothing inherently wrong about that self-selection to happen. It's the same with women. You could do it with a Jewish center could do it and just say only members of the Jewish center could do it. This is all good because you want more people to play pinball. So let them use it to self-select to be together. This existing for women does not preclude us from trying to stamp out sexism at events. Why not both, as the little girl with the cake likes to say? Why not both? We can have both. It's okay. It's not a bad thing for pinball to see these sort of – it's not segregation. This is self-selected groups. We're not forcing women to have their own events. They want to. Let them do what they want. It's not our place to interfere with that. You want to do an Italian-American heritage associate? Not you because you're Polish. But that's okay. Let that happen. It's okay. People want to use pinball to bond or do things together with cultures or occupations or whatever, unified around some other common denominator. It's okay. That's okay. So is there a problem with sexism in pinball? Yes. There is. I think, and I also think there are some people that have a problem identifying that, because either they don't want to look like they're afraid of what they see in themselves. It could be that. It could be that simple. It could very much be that. It's hard to turn the mirror. I mean, you're used to it because you wake up and you see that you're wrong. Yeah, I know. I look in the mirror. I'm just wrong. So you're familiar with looking in mirrors. A lot of people aren't. And so it's not, again, it's not about being a bad person. It's about trying to be better people and just learning from what makes people uncomfortable. So, I mean, I don't have a magic elixir to solve any of this. All I can say is I try and pay attention to when I do things that are cringy and not do cringy things. Right. And can fall into all sorts of weird stuff. Nobody's perfect. Mistakes get made. Learn from it. Yeah. Because this is not, we don't have, as a partially censored from a gentleman I used to work with, we don't have magic effing wands. I can't just wave it and make everything work. it doesn't happen. But if you don't actively try, nothing gets better either. Yep. So let's move to the drama item number three. It's going to be a little bit different order than you see in the notes. Okay. I'm going to skip down one to do, because this is related to this discussion on the video. It makes total sense. And I will name out these folks, because there was a very public discussion on the Pinball Profile group about this. But Bowen Kerins, who does rule development for Spooky Pinball, and Christopher Franchi, who has done pinball art for Stern Pinball. I don't want to say necessarily that they got into a row, but other than I want to say the word row. But that's kind of kind of ish what happened. There was a cover photo update from Christopher Franchi that got shared where he said, and I'm going to quote from it because I have it right here in front of me. Bone Cairns is a bully and a troublemaker who builds walls in the hobby of pinball, not bridges. A self-appointed hangman. No trial, no jury. And my understanding is Franchi approached Teolis, Jeff Teolis, who hosts Pinball Profile, the podcast that does a lot of pinball interviews. Best voice in pinball podcasting. In your opinion, yes. Why is my voice not the best? It's because I'm not Canadian, isn't it? Yes. That is Americanist. You might want to work on your American prejudice. So anyway, the yeah, I know that didn't work, but I was doing my best. So Bowen had been on a recent Pinball profile. I can't remember exactly. Less than a month old, I believe. And the topic of Pentastic came up, which Christopher Franchi did the artwork for Pentastic. I think we weighed in on it. We did. Okay. It was a fairly controversial art package. Especially with everything else that happened at Pentastic. Yeah. And we're going to touch on that again here in a bit, too. That might not have been the best word choice for that either. I know, but I don't want to go back and edit. Apologies, we did not mean to have a double entendre with that. So anyway, Franchi was upset about Bowen criticizing the Pentastic artwork. And my initial take was he wanted to have a platform like Pinball Profile to respond, to counter what Bowen had said. TLS offered to have them both on to talk things out Franchi indicated that Bowen contacted him privately and said he would not be having this sort of discussion and so I believe after some arguing on the pinball profile page which was shared so that both sides could be seen at least through that venue it kind of pittered out but this is an example of something that in my view is not helpful Now, part of what was coming up was Franchi was citing Bowen was one of the individuals who shared that video clip of the Pinberg sexism example. And that that was bullying behavior. Now, we've already weighed in on that. We both agree that social media does not seem to be the best mechanism to try and actually advance causes in pinball in our view. though we also acknowledged, especially in this event's case, as it was a public broadcast, it's tough to say sharing something that was aired out for mass consumption is an action of a bully. You could argue that it wasn't the best way to try and address the problem. I think there can be a very healthy – and there was on Bowen's page. There were a lot of people who took issue with him sharing it and didn't think that was the best way to solve the issue. And that may be true. Like I've noted, I think there are better ways to try and solve it than on Facebook. We haven't shown the video. We've had a discussion about it. Sure. But if you want to let people – but I also get the perspective saying, well, I need people to at least hear the part of the clip about how they were all treated differently so you can actually see it in action and understand. And some people still didn't, by the way. There were some people that were like, well, he was just being nice. Wow. But, well, no. He was trying to make a joke. and he meant it to be at his own expense. But likewise, some people don't want you to be, quote unquote, nice. They just want you to treat them the same. That was what the discussion was like. Yes, but you didn't. But he didn't say it to the dude. That's what that was. But this, I mean, this fantastic art thing has kept cropping up over and over. It keeps coming up. So, I mean, my advice on this drama is just let it go at this point. Everyone got the criticism in. I can't imagine Pentastic is going to be moving forward with something like this beforehand. I should say in the future. I understand Franchi's perspective that he was exercising creative freedom to do what he wanted to do. And Pentastic chose to run that art package after they discussed it. So the matter is done. And if you don't like the art package, you have the right to say you don't like it. Yeah. And to tell Pentastic you don't like it. And if you think it's sexist or whatever, you can say that too. That's the price of putting stuff out publicly. It's going to get critiqued. You don't have to buy shirts of it or posters of it. You don't have to like it. You don't have to. I mean, that's. But likewise, it's okay. What this reminds me of, and the big reason I wanted to bring it up is there's a hypocrisy or an irony to criticizing getting criticism and being critical about it. You see the loop? That's the thing. It's like, okay, so someone called out something. They shouldn't get to call. They're calling it out because they're too sensitive. But are you not being too sensitive when you call out them calling out? I have had this discussion in person with people before, and they cannot see it. They don't even understand it. You can lay it out bit for bit, and they don't even – it just will not click with some people. Yeah, I don't know, and I probably didn't articulate it the right way. The way I guess I would try and explain it is if you get upset, if your feelings get hurt, when someone has their feelings hurt because of something you did and you think they were too sensitive, you are also too sensitive. Right. That is my point. I mean, this is where you start coming up against the non-apology, apology type things, the I'm sorry you were offended type thing. Right, right. Right. I mean, that's where you're. I do because this has been just so massively serious. And we're nowhere near done with as serious as this stuff's going throughout the rest of the thing. I want to take a moment of what is hopefully humor. Christopher Franchi had a large missed opportunity here with his cover photo change. Because with the self-appointed hangman, no trial, no jury, was the perfect spot to put in a Christopher Franchi-style drawing of Karen's as Judge Dredd. Yes. And Bowen did go and change, last I had seen, his Facebook profile to say his occupation is hangman, no trial, no jury. So I don't think there's much love lost between the two. I think T.L.S. was trying to you know he respects both of them both have done quite a bit of contributions to the hobby though I don't I don't personally agree with Jeff these people Bowen and Chris they don't need to like each other why bother trying to make them do it this is why I don't go around trying to make people like me this isn't middle school I don't care my personality is not going to appeal to everyone that's just how it is. How somebody else feels about me doesn't change how I feel about me. And if it does for other people, it's something they probably wouldn't hurt to work on. Sure. Being so wrapped up in other people's opinions of you. Yeah. It's a good area for self-improvement. I mean, it's hard to say, again, going back to our very first piece of drama and people getting up, I think the person who was criticized in the meme doesn't really care what that person thinks, if they even saw it. So, yeah, I think that in this sort of instance, they just need to get to the point of accepting that, you know, we're not all going to get along, and that can be okay. Maybe, I don't know if they can be less hostile to each other, but if it's just happening on social media, is it really a big deal? I don't know. But it was drama to talk about. Yeah, and I do appreciate TELUS's offer to have an actual forum, even though it didn't work out, with a moderated discussion in situations like this, I think could be a wonderful thing. Maybe if not recorded. I don't know. I don't necessarily think it needs to be recorded, but I think in a lot of these situations, not just in pinball, but definitely situations like this where you see two people with such animosity, a moderated discussion wouldn't necessarily hurt. I'm not saying that they will become friends. Like you said, I don't think there's any need to be friends, But that doesn't mean that you can't air grievances and come to a better understanding of each other's positions and mutually not care about each other. Sure. Except I don't really think there's an interest on, this is my assumption, on either party's side to understand anything about the other. Not really. Well, that's a valid point. So I would just shut up and move on, quite frankly. Until the next time. Well, until there's something to argue about, but I don't know. Depends what one wants to pick a fight over, I guess. So let's talk, let's enlighten things a bit and shift to Penn Stadium. So. Nice segue. Thank you. Now we're getting into the links. I have a link to this one. There is a thread linked in the show notes to Pennside where the issue of Penn Stadium having ad spam on the forum was brought up. Apparently, the issue was Penn Stadium's market pages were appearing in vast quantities on all sorts of game lookups. And in the Pennside Marketplace, when you associate products, if you go and you look up a game, for example, these marketplace items will appear so that you could, because you might be interested in shopping for the game you're looking up. Well, there were screenshot examples of people doing searches and then the entire listing on their screen was all just variants of Penn Stadium. And it appears from the discussion, the issue was the PinStadium Lights were linked to a vast array of games, like all the games. Homebrew games with one iteration existing. Mechanical games that don't have electricity. and it didn't always make a lot of sense. I believe former guest host Nicholas Baldridge posted on there about his, as we both played his multi-bingo, homebrewing product. He searched for multi-bingo and he went in and he said that it showed two Penn Stadium ads, one for the Stern set and one for the JJB set. And I believe he sort of asked facetiously, I wonder which set's better, though. Which one's the best set for my one existing multibingo? Or maybe he made his own multibingo. That's so awesome. I really appreciated it. Nick normally is just willing to talk all about the history of games, but sometimes it's good to see him branch out and talk about lighting to that degree with that level of passion. And the thread is now locked. Robin, the side order of Pinside, said that he would go in and work with him. It wasn't just Penn Stadium. There were some other issues going on. And there was a fight that broke out between the guy who developed the homebrew that we both played several times, Star Trek The Mirror Universe, and someone who I think was selling a shooter assembly who was refusing to pull the ad from being linked to that product, even though the guy who made the game and owned the game said that it wouldn't work and he didn't want the ad listed. That was weird. Not weighing it pulled. I thought it was really weird that the modder doubled down and was like, no, I'm not going to take my ad down. What an introvert. I'm like, only in pinball would that be seen as in any way a logical business move. Only in pinball. But so I don't know. you're not a prevalent Pinside user. Based off of the likes and stuff, the votes, the upvotes, because again, this is really just another social platform. It seemed a lot of people were in agreement that the ads were inundating and smothering in their nature, but it also, the thread, because it's Pinside, started to morph into a lot of people criticizing the product and then fans of the product started coming in and defending the product. I mean, I guess I don't want to get into that. I don't own any PinStadiums. I play games with them. They're bright. They do what they say they're going to do. I guess what are your thoughts on this marketplace model? What's the solution? Or do you think it's okay for there to be all the ads? I don't think that there should be just when you search for – If I search for an attack from Mars, I shouldn't have to scroll through 30 ads for PinStadiums before I find an actual attack from Mars. Right, and I agree. I don't know what Robin has done as the solution. I think the easiest solution would be to say you can only link an ad to one game, period. That would be the easiest. Because then you would have to go in and make hundreds of ads. And maybe the solution on that is you can't make more than 15 ads that are running simultaneously. Yeah. Because if you want to search for lighting or whatnot, then I think something like Penn Stadium should pop up. I don't think it needs to pop up when I search for baffle ball. But do these ads actually bring that many people to buy Penn Stadium? I have no idea. I have no idea. I mean, that's just a curiosity thing. I've known people that haven't been fans of Penn Stadium's marketing campaigns just in general. There have often been, I'll say accusations because I don't know if they're true or not, accusations that it's used a lot of guerrilla marketing tactics with people that are interpreted as shills going out there posting before-after photos to get people to buy the games and suspicions that they're compensated for that, suspicions that the photos are doctored, that they're deliberately designed to make the before game look extra dark through adjustments on your filtering or exposure or whatnot. Well, you have a background in photography. You know how you can modify images to make them. I don't know if any of that's true or not, but there have been people that have been very sensitive that its advertising approach hasn't been a very proper way to conduct business. That being said, the product has been the favorite mod of the year for the last two Twippies. So a lot of people like the product, or at least like to vote for the product. Yeah. So I think this one's resolved, but I'm just going to, since it was a big piece of drama this week, I wanted to touch on it, and I wanted to say that I personally agree. I don't think any particular product should be inundating with ads. And in this sort of case, I don't think a game should have multiple iterations linking. If it's like, here's the JJP version, and here's the Stern version, it should just be one version. Right. If that's on one product. There's really no excuse for that. Other than it sounds like lots of things were just checked, checked, checked, checked, checked, checked, and then happened. So, let's go to our last piece of drama. Oh, is this one good? Yes. Good as in bad. Of course it is. There's a link in the show notes to the Pinside thread about this one also. This thread was locked very quickly. But apparently Nitro Pinball, the Canadian distributor where Tommy of that company was accused of sexual assault, I believe, at an event just before, not at Pentastic, but just before Pentastic. Sorry, we covered this. And the Pentastic group pulled him as the sponsor of the women's tournament and I believe put together a cash value to replace the pinball machine that was going to be the prize from Nitro Pinball. Though Nitro Pinball still had their booth. And what happened was Tommy's wife took over. She came onto Pinside when that was all happening. We did not report on it immediately because this was still at Pentastic and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop in terms of what was going to happen. And the other shoe was the wife was taking over to Suzanne to run the business while Tommy went into treatment or whatever because there was alcohol involved and all of that sort of stuff was cited. Did the standard disappear from public view and come back very contrite and apologetic? Well, kind of. I mean, the disappear from public view included an apology, but it included a lot of the kind of mealy mouth approach. Like you're sorry, sorry that you were offended, sort of. It was like he apologized for touching one of the women, but his context of it was everything was a joke. The solicitation of sexual favors in exchange for sponsoring their upcoming women's tournament events was a joke. I apparently don't know what jokes are then. And no admission to the getting physical when they tried to forcibly remove him from the bar. That part wasn't addressed, that sort of stuff. So anyway what has happened is under Suzanne account not Tommy account there was apparently a message This is a message It wasn a post but it got shared publicly because it was sent to the person that someone had referenced Nitro Pinball Nitro Pinball is a big distributor for Canada in particular. I believe they also do part of the Northwest of the U.S. And so I'm going to read now. I'm going to quote from the message. So this is from a screen ground. Quote, best practices like Tommy, like, like the Tommy Nitro situation. You haven't got the first clue about my husband or his impeccable reputation with customers and friends. You reposted a, a FB, which is for Facebook post from a pissed off lesbian with an agenda without doing any homework. Shame on you. You're an absolute creep and the one that shouldn't be allowed in this community. I hope I run into you at a show. We'll see what a big man you are. Then look forward to meeting you, Suzanne. End quote. So, anyway. That's a lot. All right. For a very short line, there is a lot to unpack right there. So, this got shared out because the person who this discussion about the best practices, one of the women who was, I believe, the woman who was the one who came forward publicly about the assault right at the start of Pinberg. Excuse me. Pintastic. I apologize. shared some of this information. And so the thread got shut down pretty quick on Pinside, but I've even seen some other social media discussions now coming up. There were people have suspected whether or not, was this really Suzanne who wrote this? Is it Tommy who is writing under her account as her? You know what? I don't care. Why are they in business? I don't know. I don't understand why anybody would buy a machine from them ever at this point. And that's something that's come up. I saw a Canadian on social media say they're very, very uncomfortable. I mean, it's easy enough to not buy from Nitro, but that's where you get to like cancel culture and saying, OK, well, I'm just not going to buy products from groups that affiliate with organizations I don't agree with. Nitro has everyone. Nitro has Dutch. Dutch, Spooky, JJP, Stern, they all use them. So if you wanted to send a message to those manufacturers and say, I can't buy your products anymore until you quit using Nitro as a distributor, you can't buy a new Inbox Pinball. My response to that is if you want to do that, I'm fine with doing cancel culture approaches. It's just a standard boycott. Yeah, that's fine. So if you feel strongly about that, then you need to be true to your principles and just not buy new in-box pinball. And write them a letter and let them know. You can write a letter to Stern or JJP and say, I'm not buying from you anymore. It's not you and your company specifically, but you need to quit doing business with Nitro or else I can't ever support you. And there are not enough people who do it. I guess you'll either never buy new in-box again or you'll compromise. eventually on what your stance was. And that happens all the time too. But given this, I mean, I don't know if there's going to be a claim that the account was hacked. Given the thread was locked, there may be no claim whatsoever. This is not healthy. That's all I'm saying. This is not healthy. I don't understand why this entity needs to be operating as a distributor at this point. and I don't really care what happens to the rest of the employees, if there are any, at that organization. At this stage, you need new leadership to salvage the reputation or else it should just go away. This is the way things are in public, dealing with their customers. What must things be like working there? Who knows? Who knows? And it's like you can't save everyone. But so from a when you work for a bad actor, it's really unfortunate. But that doesn't mean you don't punish the bad actor. And Nitro is the bad actor right now because both the old CEO and the new CEO are the names that are on all of this. And even though this was a private message, Suzanne's account lashed out in that locked thread repeatedly with people who are bringing things up, including denial of some of those prior events that had only happened a few months ago. It had witnesses and everything. Yes, but it's all a part of the apparently the lesbian agenda, according to this. And it's like, OK, there are a lot of things that aren't healthy about this message. I don't see the point in delving into it other than to say that if it was my pinball manufacturing company, I would just pick up the phone, call Nitro, and say, you're done. Yeah. You're done. I don't need you. How do you not? I mean, because there are other distributors in Canada already. Right. So this is not a big business. I don't think this is a big business deal to sever ties with them. Honestly, even if there wasn't, it'd be a good opportunity for somebody else to move in or start up, to either expand, branch out. Maybe flipping out pinball would like to expand into Canada. Maybe, which means no, because I'm always wrong. True. Well, oh well. That's the pinball section. I'm glad we lightened the mood with that Wonka talk first. Yeah. That was great. That was fun. That was good. I guess we can play 20 questions, because I don't think the video game segment is super long. No. We can. And we need another break from drama, because that is what the video game section is. Yeah. So for those that don't know, 20 Questions is the hit game. It's not this or that hit. It's only Tony's second favorite game, where I will have Tony ask a series of yes or no questions. It will be about a flipper pinball machine that he has played before. And he can use resources as of question 16, and then he'll get it and we'll be happy. He may get it before question 16, though. He does that a lot, too. Because that happens, too. Anyway, that's how we play. So, Tony, you can ask your first question whenever you're ready, and I'll keep a count on how many you've gone through. Is it newer than 1980? Yes. Does it have a DMD? Yes. Is it a Stern? No. Is it a JJP? No. I guess they didn't have anything with DMDs anymore. Your guess would be correct. It's one of those where that popped into my head as I said it. It's like, bugger. There went that question, wasted. Well, is it a Williams? Yes. Is it newer than 1990? Yes. Is it newer than 93? No. Is it from 1992? Yes. Oh, hmm. Does it have more than two flippers? Yes. You know, maybe I could do that as my hobby. I could just sit down and memorize the release years of every pinball machine. I don't know how that gets you out of the house. That's true. I mean, I guess you could do it from your phone or laptop out in a park. What are you doing out here in the park today? I'm memorizing pinball machines. I'll go old school. I'll print it out and put them in a three-ring binder. You could have photos. Like little dossiers. Yeah. That sounds terribly boring. It probably would. Okay. Okay. Williams from 92 with more than two flavors. Is it Adam's Family? It is. I just realized, it's like, that movie came out, like, right around then. And I played the heck out of that game. You got it on question 10. That's right, Toph. New in the box, Toph. Your game that you completely relied upon to crush your opposition during the tournament at 403 Club. While the whole time complaining about how those games from that particular designer... Pat Lawler. were screwing me. Namely Twilight Zone. Basically, Twilight Zone was destroying me and then on Addams Family, I was getting my revenge. So, the Addams Family is March of 92, was the date of manufacture. This is technically branded as a Bally game, but Bally Williams is, I mean, it's a WMS Industries or Williams. It uses the Williams WPC board set, so it is both a Bally and a Williams, so that's why I went with that. Four flippers. There are three regular size, and then there's the little mini flipper, the thing flipper, on it. As you caught, you had two for your binder purposes, I'll tell you. There were two areas that you didn't, two questions you didn't need to have done. You know the JJP one. The other one was you had already determined that it was a DMD game, and then you asked if it was newer than 1990, DMD started in 92. So, you didn't need to ask about it either. I was thinking, I knew it was somewhere in there. But, yeah. I believe the first one came out in 92, I think. Adams was not the first one, but I may be wrong. Maybe it was 91. It was newer than 90. So, other than that, though, all the questions work really well. I used to do, like, to divide it up. I used to do, you know, is it EM or solid state, this and that. And I came to the realization that I could probably narrow things down easier if I just start with like 80. And then I'd just do decade graphs. Yeah, no, that makes sense. It narrows things down. And it worked really quickly for you on that. I mean, you did get it by question 10, which is quite productive. Yes. So, good job. Yay! And that's it for pinball. Yay, pinball. Yay. So, what's going on in video games, Tony? Luckily, video games has absolutely no... No drama? I wish. Oh. We got a couple big things. One of them is a kind of continuing rehash of what we've already been talking about with pinball. So I'm actually going to move that to the top of the list and start with that one. And we've talked over time, I mentioned it in our pinball discussion, about the whole Steam store versus Epic Games store issue and whenever something has been announced as an exclusive, a timed exclusive with the Epic Games store, they've been getting review bombed and such. Yeah. Well, a new situation came up where an indie game, one of many indie games, because this has become super common for indie games to announce an exclusivity deal with the Epic Game Store because the Epic Game Store has actually got a system put together where they're basically promising these indies a certain amount of money. Ah, yes. I did read about a game that said that. They're like, yeah, we're guaranteed to at least get this amount of money. Right. So we're doing it. So as long as we release, we get this amount. They basically, it's like, we don't have to fight for funding to finish the game. Epic is going to give us the money we need to finish the game. one of the indie games that took this is from a small two-person thing. The game is called Ooblets. And when they made the announcement, and this is the thing, previously they were getting all their money from, like, Patreon and donations. Right. Okay. Very small scale. When they made the announcement, part of the announcement is he kind of, the developer made a joke. about it, about the whole fact that people were so upset at Epic and didn't like Epic and this and that, and that came off poorly to the group as a whole, to the people seeing it, but it turned out to be really bad, as in massive amounts of harassment from people that they've never said anything about their game before, that have nothing to do with their game, and it's just about Epic. death threats, the whole nine yards, rolling in on this tiny little two-man development team. Because of their bad joke. Yeah, it's not even because of their bad joke. It was just... Just because of the deal with Epic? Because of the deal with Epic. It's entirely to do with Epic. I play games on the Epic Game Store. I will be the first person to admit, the Epic Game Store and their front end and all of that is terrible. It's horrible. but in no way, shape, or form is that any cause for death threats and harassment. We've talked about this in the past with the review bombing of other games by companies that have launched exclusivities with Epic. This is what Epic is doing to break into what's been a monopoly by Steam for 15 years. Yeah. Yeah. And no, they're not as polished of a product as Steam. Steam's had 15 or 20 years to get to that point. Epic's been going at it for eight months. Do you, I think the only thing that I find odd about this versus so many other things is it seems like in a lot of realms, gaming included, normally there's often, if anything, a group of people that want to cheer for the underdog. I'm thinking of how people got really mad with Microsoft having Internet Explorer built into everything. And so that's when you start having all the support for things like the Firefox and even Chrome at this point, despite it being run by a massive company. Or just cheering for the underdog boxer versus the Mike Tysons of the world, all that sort of stuff. But for me it's kind of weird because it seems like people are cheering for the monopoly they are that's not they don't want to change but they don't have to change they don't have to change they don't so that's why i don't i don't understand i have no idea why i can understand why people wish that they only had to have one front end period but there have been other blizzard has its own front end. I mean, there have been other front ends. No one makes you use any of them. No one's going to make you use anything. We didn't used to have front ends or digital stores at all. No, that's true, but youngins don't know that. And you know, you know from our history, when Steam launched, I hated Steam. Sure. Yeah. And then they fixed the things I hated, and I used them, not exclusively, but I used them very heavily. And I have a preference for stuff on there, just because that's where my library's already set up. Right. But I'm not going to go to this. I'm still, there's games I want to play. I put 10 hours into Satisfactory over the course of the last, like, week and a half. And that's an exclusive to the Epic Game Store. I don't like the Epic Game Store, but I like Satisfactory. So I've been playing it a lot lately. And I just can't understand the mindset, like the mindsets we were talking about in the pinball section, where the outrage culture has gotten to the point that it's like, oh, I don't like this. You need to die. I hope terrible bad things happen to you and your family. Yeah, obviously the death threat stuff is to the degree, I mean, that's actions that are grossly inappropriate and criminal. I don't, where I'm having trouble is, the idea on outrage culture in general is actually taking a perceived injustice. One can debate whether the injustice is true or not, but there's no injustice here. It's we don't like that there's a different storefront. There's not a moral argument, though. I'm not aware of anyone saying this is amoral. There's no morality to Steam versus Epic versus Blizzard versus Origin. So it doesn't fit. It doesn't fit the context of having outrage like this. It doesn't. This is like a console war. People don't pick Sony over Microsoft because they think that one's killing kids and the other isn't. It's not like that. It's usually about the technology. Or possibly, I like how one does business better than the other does business. But it's not really moral. Right. This is basically like somebody going, oh, I don't go to Walmart because I'm team Target. That's exactly what this is. Yeah, that's what it feels like, except it's like a mom and pop shop started up. Well, that's not a good example because this is being built with Fortnite money. It's like Amazon decided they're going to put in physical Amazon gets. Yeah. The target of Amazon. Amazon gets. And now all – and let's say Walmart was the only other existing thing. And so everyone who shopped at Walmart is like trying to make it go out of business, make the Amazon one go out. I don't understand. It makes no sense. Saying aside the death threats and stuff, which is just bad behavior, I don't understand why people care to this degree. They want Epic to fail. It's very clear. I'm just shocked that they care. I think competition is a good thing. I think with Epic's given time so their storefront isn't total crap and they add some of the stuff that Steam has added throughout 20 years that makes them popular, it'll just get better. And then suddenly you have actual competition. And things... I think it's a good thing. Real quick, I'm going to read from the actual announcement the developers made when they made this announcement last Wednesday. Okay. Because Epic, and this is a quote, so I quote, because Epic doesn't yet have the same market share as their competitors, they offered us a minimum guarantee on sales that would match what we'd be wanting to earn if we were just selling ooblets across all the stores. That takes a huge burden of uncertainty off of us because now we know that no matter what, the game won't fail. We won't be forced to move back in with our parents. But we do love and appreciate you parents. Now we can just focus on making the game without worrying about keeping the lights on. The upfront money they're providing means we'll be able to afford more help and resources to start ramping up production and doing some cooler things. And they followed that up with a where a lot of people got upset is they made a comment about the issues between fans of Steam and Epic and this and that and they made a comment, I quote, look at the things going on around you and ask yourself if there might be anything just a tad more worthwhile to be upset about. Ah. That's what caused things to get super dirty. Not a good comment. I mean, not... People make that comment all the time. That happens in pinball a lot, too. People will say, well, it's just pinball. It's like, because it's a game, you shouldn't put any moral standard to it. Because it gets into the realm of, well, okay, if we're not all out there curing cancer, we're wasting our time. So we shouldn't take anything seriously that isn't to that level. You see, it gets to absurdium. But it's nothing to get overly worked up about. It's a flippant throwaway comment. Yeah, no, it is. And it's one of those things. Even being a, I would even say, pretentious comment, it doesn't deserve. No. Nothing really would. Nothing would warrant a death threat. But it's just a, yeah. Okay. Well, the drama there. It's just growing. And we're going to go on from that little bit of toxicity into a perhaps larger issue, but not quite as directly toxic. This is a security leak. Hmm. because for some reason, E3 had a link on their website in their facts section that linked to media information for media attending. But apparently they decided the best way to link that was just to have an unencrypted, unprotected link up of a spreadsheet that has everybody's names and phone numbers and home addresses and everything where literally anybody could find it so this uh was found that there were more than 2 000 journalist editors and content creators so you know like youtube personalities twitch personalities this and that who had their home addresses and their phone numbers and stuff available for anybody who followed the link to look up online and get all their information. And in the kind of situations we've been dealing with lately between, I mean, it's toned down some since it was hype a year or two ago, but with stuff like swatting, more of the gamers gate harassment style stuff, and just the general bad behaviors we've been seen, it's scary that these people who thought they'd given their information to a company and that it would be protected from them being doxxed, they literally just put it on their website. They basically doxxed them all. Yeah. That, uh, you know, E3 is a really large, expensive event to attend, and this is so amateur. This is what I would expect from something like a local small event. Where 2,000 people is the total number of people who were there. And they were super happy. This is like something you expect out of a volunteer group. Not something that's been running for decades. And so I don't... I mean, obviously they're, I guess, moving to correct it. It's been corrected. Unfortunately, their initial correction corrected it, but didn't remove it from all of the online cash sites and everything. So they had to push out to get it locked down and locked out from there as well. And apparently when they were doing that, they found out similar information was available for attendees of the 2004 through 2006 ones as well. So that was added to the list. And it's just it's one of those things that's It's a security of data like this is an issue that is very important. And for such a large, major thing to just be this casual is disturbing. Is E3 dead? Not yet. It doesn't help. No, but I think that number of people showing up was going to go down next year anyway. because E3 this year wasn't as good. Yeah. And we knew it wouldn't be. Yeah, but seeing is believing. Right. Once we saw how down it was. I mean, we finally had an E3 episode that was shorter than prior ones, so I guess there was that. Yeah, because normally our E3 episodes just eat our entire, I mean, they're like three hours. Yeah. All of our longest episodes will probably eat three episodes. They are. That's true. They are. So. Well, to prevent this from being the longest episode, I think we're done. Yeah. So you can reach out to us, especially have hobby ideas for Tony eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com or facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and the Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers, which as I said, I'm terrible at social media. And remember I'm wrong. Always wrong. I'm always wrong.