Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, October 26th. This is episode 257. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. We're back. Yes. The YouTube recommended, I think, yeah. Well, maybe it didn't. Maybe I don't. Yeah. Yeah. I was scrolling through last. We had game night. We had a game night. This is a very weird intro, but I'm going to stick with it. So Tony's unfortunately had to see me three days in a row now. I wouldn't say unfortunate. I mean, so we had planned a game night. We used to do those pretty much monthly. But since the pandemic, we do them a lot less frequently, which in some ways has made it easier. Yeah. but uh so we went we played a bunch of kart racing video games and then we had a friend of ours from high school back in town on friday so we got together with them and then today we had to come and record so that's been what i've been doing other than playing alan wake too i am much much much further in the game but i still haven't won it yet i don't know how many chapters there are What have you been doing? I have been playing Beyond All Reason, which is a spiritual successor to Total Nuclear Annihilation. Oh, the RTS game. Yeah, it's an open source, free to play, yeah, version, modernized version of Total Nuclear Annihilation with some of the mechanics and stuff from Supreme Commander added in. It is very, it is designed specifically for big multiplayer stuff. When I'm saying big multiplayer, I have watched streams of games that involved 140 players playing simultaneously. That's a lot. It has the ability to support unit counts in the hundreds of thousands. Okay. So it is very interesting to watch. fun to play, especially if you were into that old style RTS. Total Nuclear Annihilation was always my favorite RTS. The AI for this one is a lot harder than I remember the old Total Nuclear Annihilation AIs being, or else I'm a lot worse. Could be both. Maybe. But I have been consistently getting spanked by the easy AI. but it's been fun good i said brings back a lot of old memories memories like the corners of something i can't remember is my mind or heart i don't remember anyway it doesn't matter yeah um all right well we actually have a whole lot of stuff so i figured let's go ahead and dive in and we have listener emails that have come in most of which are pinball related but we'll do those towards the end of the pinball segment so let's go ahead and jump right into that pinball segment Tony, Pinball Expo. You were not there. I was not there. But you were recently in Chicago, so it's very confusing to the listener. Yeah, I was in Chicago like two weeks before. Yes. I was not in Chicago. I haven't been to Chicago since the Expo we went to. You've been to Chicago multiple times since then. No, only once. I thought you went twice. The previous time was before that Expo. Really? Yes. Time has no meaning to me. It's a big, jumbly, all-timey-wimey. It's an ocean. That's an Alan Wake reference. But what is an Alan Wake reference? It's Barrels of Fun. You know Barrels of Fun. They did the Labyrinth game. Yeah. And then earlier this year, they released Dune, where they got the warrum that you can see come up out of the play field. Well, apparently, that's not the only thing that they've been working on. And they shocked pretty much everyone. I had heard no leaks anywhere about any of this. and at Expo they did a surprise reveal of Winchester Mystery House. Are you familiar with the Winchester Mystery House? Because it's a real place in California. No, until I saw all this stuff, I'd never even heard of it. I hadn't either, but a lot of people have, especially I think regionally a lot of people have. I think I've heard like Disney's Haunted Mansion ride was sort of inspired by this, but I don't know enough about the history and I don't need a whole bunch of corrections at IncollectiveGamersPodcast.gmail.com to come in. So I'm going to avoid speaking out of turn about exactly what it is. But it was licensed. They did license this. So the other thing surprising about the fact that the game was a surprise is that it sold out. I don't know for certain that you can't find it from a distributor. And so in terms of being totally sold through, however, my impression was that I've seen a number of people on some of the pinball discords I'm on that have not been able to find one. So I'm assuming that it is, in fact, sold out. Also, I don't think Barrels of Fun necessarily has – it's not like Stern where they've got dozens and dozens of distributors. So it's not as hard to sort through their list and contact them about the game. They only made 525 units. This game was designed by Carl D'Python Anghelo. If you don't know Carl, he is a big-time streamer on Twitch. His thing that I've always associated with it – well, he's done two things. One, he's the one who put out all of the specifications for those really cool remote wireless streaming rigs that everyone started building, like the ones that were super high quality that would use these UPS systems to keep the cameras, like proper cameras charged and then wireless transmission back to the computer so no cabling, all the really, really cool stuff. And then on his Twitch channel, which he is a Twitch partner, he is the one that likes to take a game and be like, okay, we're going to beat this game. Like, beat Iron Man, do or die, final mode, which required you to do everything on one ball, sorts of stuff. So very, very, very good player. So he did the rules in addition to the playfield design. A game was programmed by Eric Pripke. Art has been done by Brad Brad Albright. And so those are all fairly well-known names in pinball. But this is the first game that we've seen from Carl. So price was the same as Dune, $11,600. And as I noted, a 525-unit limited count. And obviously, pretty pricey game being a five-figure game. Also a pretty packed game. I've included in our internal notes sort of a picture of the flyer so you can get a sense of it. But just in terms of like the toys and mechs stuff, It has a ghost box in the back of the game, has a revolving hallway turntable, kind of think a little bit a la Harry Potter, has a collapsing tower, has a magnetic ball catch, which is their staircase to nowhere. There's a door to nowhere staircase ramp. There's more ramps. There's in-lane target banks. There's a crystal ball. There's a seance table at the apron. Or no, there's a spirit board at the apron. There's a seance table in the game. it's got multiple custom sculpts and actually has multiple magnets it's a four flipper game I believe three full size and one mini flipper I think it's something like four ramps five habit trails a couple subways a couple scoops a couple vucks two magnets one spinner one diverter etc etc etc RGBs of course all of that it's got a lot going on for it And so anyway, I guess the story behind like the creation of the house is Mrs. Winchester. I don't know her first name. Heir to the Winchester rifle fortune had felt that she was haunted by the people who were killed by those Winchesters. And so she had her this house and to, I guess, like hide from the ghosts and confuse them and stuff. She just kept having add-ons built onto the house, like this real house that still exists and like rooms that would go nowhere or would open up and like would let you like fall out of a window. And so like just like let's just say maybe she was a little paranoid and that maybe this building would not meet code. Maybe that's what I think I'm trying to say. But thoughts. so just sort of my thoughts i guess are kind of you know i don't want to totally dissect the game because we haven't played it uh but you can on anything that you want i'm more curious about kind of like your thoughts about the reaction to the game like it's a surprise reveal and then it just it just sells out in a day like this isn't like spooky's evil dead sold out like as of tpf when we were there in the kind of pre-show period they had just sold their last evil dead That was a multi-month sellout, and they were understandably and deservedly very excited about it. This game, granted a smaller run, just a little bit less than the original TNA run of 550 units, but one day sold out on a – I'm going to call it an F-tier license. It's a license, but it's not – I don't think it's inherently – there's not a lot of nostalgia for the Winchester Mystery House, I don't think. I may be wrong, but I don't think you're wrong on that. Okay. So just like, what do you like? Wait, why? What do you think? I think that it looks interesting. And they have so much goodwill built up that people were willing to take the chance on it. And with it being such a small number, 525, that it didn't take very many people being willing to take the chance on it to sell it out. Okay. Now, let me add a layer to the question then. Okay. I can see your argument. It was Ghost. Okay. Do you think the Ghost theme helped a lot? No, I think Ghost bought the game. Oh, Ghostbusters. Well, there are some humans who still want to buy it. So the ghosts have ruined yet another life in addition to Mrs. Winchester's. Yes. I don't know if Labyrinth ever sold out. Grant, higher count, I understand. Dune has not been selling fast. Like, it has a count also. They've not met it. Mm-hmm. Why Winchester the Winchester? And Little Miss I'm Afraid of Ghosts. I really don't know, other than just it has a look that is very its own. That, when I did the pinball show with Zach Minney, he really thought that the haunted house theme, just the haunted house themes may have a lot of pull in pinball. I mean, they've done well. Stuff like that has traditionally done well. I have to admit, I love the apron on this game. The apron is very cool. I also like the Pepper's Ghost effect going on in the back of the game in the house. The sculpts and stuff. But again, it's barrels of fun. Their use of sculpts, they world under glass, I feel, better than anyone. I think they world under glass better than, well, I was going to say Harry Potter, but I meant just JJP in general. I think you're right. Especially when you start thinking value for a dollar. And again, this is not an inexpensive game. I personally – it's really hard for me in a lot of ways to reconcile because while the company does have a lot of goodwill and a 525-unit count definitely leans more into the FOMO angle than something that's more around 1,000 units. I think it's Carl D'Python Anghelo. That's my guess. I think the number – it varies by person, of course. But I think the number one thing is Carl D'Python Anghelo is a very good player and very popular with pinball enthusiasts via his stream. So I think we're seeing a Keith Elwin, Jack Danger effect where here's a guy we know, like he's a known quantity. People like him. People are entertained by him. And so you've got the, I think you've got a bifurcated thing. You've got the Keith Elwin aspect of, all right, Carl is really good, really, really high-level player. So we saw how great games have been from a high-level player like Elwin, who also does his own rules. So now that Carl gets announced doing a game and his own rules, people got excited. And then the secondary aspect, the Jack Danger angle. Jack Danger is a very good player. Not that Elwynn, Carl D'Python Anghelo level, but he's an entertainer. And when Foo Fighters came out, and I think Foo Fighters is a really good game. I think it's Jack's best game. But when it came out, I knew a bunch of people in the hobby that said they were buying Foo Fighters because they wanted to support Jack Danger because they like him. And I think a lot of people like Carl a lot too. That makes good sense. I hadn't thought about that. because you don't watch him i don't watch i don't either and that type of thing didn't pop into my head but now that you say it that actually is i i would go i would agree that that's more likely than not the primary reason at that point from what i've seen online i think we have an email later to cover on this topic as well different people have different theories there's there's definitely been the it's really more about barrels what kind of what you open It's about barrels and it's about the FOMO. It's black magic. And it's about the excitement. Another angle that maybe the email might touch on, but Zach brought up, so I'll mention it here, is giving credit to Spooky. That after the reaction, people want Evil Dead now that can't get it. There was a big window where they could have gotten it. So I don't have a lot of sympathy inherently. But for – I do understand if they work like how I work, which is I don't want to buy a new game until I play it. If you – like by the time you got to TPF, it was sold out. And that was the first big show it was at. So there is definitely that. So in that regard, there was sort of a could we now be back thanks to what we've seen with Evil Dead to a scenario where we saw this before, you and I, Tony, because we've done this for so long. where in pinball there's just that FOMO drives everything and people just start scooping up limited editions. And 525 is pretty limited for today's pinball. I mean, Stern has brought down their LE counts and stuff, but they're still well over 500. Right. So maybe. I don't know. Again, I think it depends on the buyer, honestly. All right. That was not the only thing, though, that came out of Expo, Tony. I think that's the thing that sort of won Expo. That's the thing that stole a lot of thunder. Hexa Pinball, you might remember. We've very briefly touched on them before. They're a French pinball company. They made Space Hunt last year, the Pepto-Bismol-looking game. They didn't have a game there. Well, maybe they had Space Hunts. I don't know. But they announced that they are going to do The Three Musketeers, and it has sort of a custom animation style look to it. I didn't include in our internal notes any pictures of it. What do you think of The Three Musketeers as a pinball theme? Obviously, Dumas, French author, The Musketeers are French, makes sense that a French company might be interested in doing it. I think The Three Musketeers is overall a popular enough storyline. We've seen enough movie and TV shows and stuff based around the concept. I think it has its own inherent draw. it's one of those instances where it's a thing that's not original but not licensed because it's in the public domain what do you think though of that it's not based off of a movie like like if they were to do the disney three musketeers i think there would be a lot more demand for it because a lot of people really love the version where tim curry is is cardinal Maurice Liu. That movie is... Of course, almost every Musketeers movie, actually all of them I can think of are campy. Right. Because I also like the one with Mia Jovovich in Orlando Blue. Isn't that the steampunk one? Yep, that's the steampunk one where they got airships. And then there's also the, I can't remember if John Woo directed it, but there's the kung fu one. Yeah. Where D'Artagnan's doing spin kicks and stuff. It's just stupid, but it's fun. The action's really good in that one. But here's the thing is you just named a whole bunch of different takes that are all very good, and there's no reason to believe that you can't get the same kind of enjoyment out of this even though it's not based off one of those. The thing that I guess I'm arguing is any one of those three could have an argument for nostalgia. Right. The book – how many people do you – have you read Three Musketeers? Actually, I have. Okay. I have too. I was going to say, do you know anyone that's read Three Musketeers? Okay. Now, I have a feeling that we might be the only people who have ever read it, Tony, who are listening to this. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. I mean, they're all too busy reading Dungeon Crawler Carl. As they should. As they should. There's a graphic novel getting kick-started right now. Is your wife going to read Dungeon Crawler Carl after even I try to convince her to read it? She won't read anything that I think she would like. And if she accidentally backs into something that I thought she would like and I just didn't bother to tell her about it and she finds out I read it, I think it kind of annoys her. I'm like, oh, yeah, I thought you'd like that. But I wasn't going to say anything because you won't read anything. I even tried to get her to read it, but I don't think I had success. She doesn't like funny books. Oh, okay. Well, maybe it's for the best. So, yeah, no, I think this is going to do better than Space Hunt because it's a known thing. I do think that if you're going to do Dumas in pinball, I think Musketeers is his most famous work. That said, Count of Monte Cristo does seem more pinball appropriate because you could really focus on the prison escape as a huge backdrop to the game, like as a feature. I mean, what are you going to focus on with this, Porthos? Like, no. oh it's paris don't get me wrong there's plenty of ways i was gonna say really really like i'd be really derogatory to the concept for no reason wow other other than to make count of monte cristo but i finally i finally watched the movie so so so dennis obviously has a preference no i haven't read count of monte cristo i did it's the one i most recently watched oh because the only things I know of Dumas, the only Dumas I have read is Three Musketeers. The only stories of his I know, thanks to film, are Three Musketeers, Man in the Iron Mask, and Count of Monte Cristo. That's it. I think Three Musketeers is his most famous story, but Count of Monte Cristo feels a little more pinball appropriate to me. They're all in the public domain, So I guess I would just say why not have him trying to escape as a big toy? I don't know what the toy in the Musketeers is going to be. I'm going to assume they're going to have a sword ramp, but maybe not. I might be wrong. You just have to wait and see what they do. If it was a steampunk version, though. It would be great. They can have an airship. Everything should be steampunk. Mia Jovovich could do the call-outs as Milady. I mean. was mads mickelson was uh i always forget the name of the the swordsman who was the former musketeer that they always have as the the primary combat antagonist in these films though in the book very different uh outcome for him than any film version i've seen uh anyway it's interesting i'm curious i'd again i've only seen like some clips of like what their their animation or the stills of the art style that they're going with i should say i shouldn't say it's the animation, I'm very curious to see what they do with the layout. Space Hunt's layout looked okay, but it's not memorable. I don't really think much about it. All I remember is the game's really pink. That's all I remember, really. But that's my fault. I haven't been able to play one in person. Yeah, and who knows when or if we'll ever get a chance to do one. Well, we'll see on this. I mean, I'm cautiously optimistic. I would say, though, if we're going to burn Milo Jovovich for call-outs, Can we get Fifth Element? I mean, it would be where I would start. But for a company like Hexa, going with a non-original, unlicensed thing makes more – like financially makes a lot of sense. No, I think it makes complete sense. I just think that's a good space for smaller, more upstart companies. If you can't do a license, or at least a license worth doing – I mean, obviously, even really small licenses have potential. Winchester shows this. Here, let's be honest. all we have to do is let hexa put out three musketeers have it turn out halfway decent decently and then jjp will get the license to make their version of it just like they do everything else well we will be talking about that so but not yet not yet cgc we gotta talk a little bit about them now this is a game we are familiar with medieval madness heck yeah and They had their Merlin edition remakes this year. They have confirmed they are going to do more Merlin edition Medieval Madness remakes in 2026. Do you have any thoughts about that? Is that a good idea? I mean, I think they'll sell. So it sounds like it's probably a good idea. Yeah, I agree. Maybe CGC has decided that they're done with money. They don't want money anymore. I would argue if they really wanted money, they would be doing more Attack from Mars remakes because it's been a long time. It has. That's probably in the queue for next year. I hope so. I hope so. But we'll have to see. Dutch pinball. Don't you sigh. We got stuff to talk about in the Dutch. All right. So Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. You might remember we've talked about this game. It's the one where she looks like sort of a – AI slop in Wonderland. I was going to say more like a trailer park aesthetic to the art. It's sort of the approach. It's a very different take for Alice, but she looks like maybe meth is her preferred mushroom of choice. Look, I'm just saying. It's like all the AI redneck Hogwarts stuff or the redneck Lord of the Rings. I haven't seen that. Now I'm scared. But so Dutch Pinball while this is still in production you know the makings of the Alice games they have announced they going to make three hundred and thirty three Well try that again I not going to edit that though 333 Retro Atomic Zombie Adventure Land a Raza Games That's right. The John Papadiuk design that Deep Root attempted to launch itself on until there was life insurance stuff that kind of made that less of a thing. It's now going to be handled by the Dutch. I'd like to know your thoughts on Raza. The only thing I can add is they have said there will be play field modifications. I think improvements maybe were said. But as near as I can tell, they're not really changing the layout much. I've heard something about like a magnet to help the ball get up that ramp. The right ramp that people couldn't get up. Like the solution to that is not to fix it, but rather have a magnet help you. It's a helper. It's a little helper. I would like to take a spray bottle and spritz them and say, no, bad Dutch, bad, bad Dutch. But Rasa, it's got art. Remember the art of Rasa? I can't. This is an ongoing problem. I love it. I don't. I love it. I do not understand. I will never understand. If one of you wants to write in an email explaining to me the thought processes behind what happens to make these people think that, hey, I mean, Raza and this whole thing, this is literally pinball's Oak Island. But this is eventually just somebody is convinced that eventually they're going to find a treasure and they're going to make it huge out of this stuff. Let's please ignore all the people that we have hurt along the way. That's okay because eventually, eventually there will be a big score. There will be some big thing. And the games don't even look good. Tony, maybe they're just – We can't even play nostalgia. What is the nostalgia? You got nostalgia for being beaten? Is that what this is? Is this somebody was beat so much that now they want to be beat more? I love him. My serious theory is that the creatives behind Dutch Pinball are just really, really big John Papadiuk fans. And they want to see more Papaduke games. That's what I think it actually is. What it feels like to me is a company that basically heard – and I don't – again, this is tongue-in-cheek, guys. That has heard me talk about pinball and decided we want to found a company opposite of everything Dennis believes in. That's what it feels like. And so it feels like they've taken – they're like they looked at my philosophy to pinball and said, no, he's wrong. Nobody likes Dennis. His ideas are stupid. His theories are inaccurate. Nobody wants to play a fun game. Nobody actually plays pinball. It's just – I'm just like everything they do to me feels so wrong that I feel like they're doing it to spite me. This is like, no. They're like, no. They're taking the spray bottle from you and spraying me. They're spraying me. It has gotten to the point. And it makes me laugh. The John Papadiuk worship is so sad in my mind. It has gotten to the point that any time I see anybody doing something like this, trying to resurrect one of these things, trying to make the giant, giant John Papadiuk thing work, is all I can see is somebody laying on the ground covered in welts saying, thank you, Daddy, can I have another? I just, but seriously, though, I just think that they, there's just this love. I mean, remember with Zidware, he got some people to preorder three games deep before he sent anything out because he never sent anything out. Like, there are a lot of people that love his pinball. And the thing that confuses me is – Exactly. I've never been able to rationalize – like, we all have different tastes, so I've always just chalked it up to subjective differences. Like, I prefer Steve Ritchie designs to John Papadiuk designs, but I also prefer Osler designs, Mark Ritchie designs, Pat Lawler designs, Keith Elwin designs, Mark Seiden's design of Avatar. They prefer meth. Yeah. Yeah, basically. Yeah. So for me, the struggle is I've always assumed – I'm guessing I'm wrong, but I've always assumed people like the art on his games. And it's always, to me, felt like people have just given him credit for the art packages. This is – I don't – but that's – because to me, that's the only really – not that his games are terrible. like okay yeah i get it theater magic i can see people like i like world cup soccer uh circus voltaire is over i mean i know some people that really love it i but like i just i don't i don't i i understand i agree i don't get it um i i don't this whole resurrection thing just it we've talked about it i i complained i've complained about it who knows how many times over the years that we've been doing this podcast because it just keeps happening it keeps happening and i don't understand why and there's nothing good to come out of it but it just keeps happening and i i cannot i can't get it i can't get it through my brain i can't i i it doesn't make sense it it makes no sense to me i just think that i just think the at dutch i just think they really really like i don't know if it's so much driven driven by a commercial thought i'm sure there is one i'm sure they're thinking there's money to be made here we've seen signs of it before other people have already made all of the money that hole has been mined out they're just what do they think oh well all these other people gave money to this in advance and they didn't get anything and people are still want people still do it so we don't have to complete this run they can they'll give us money and if it fails we'll just be another one in the long list of failures well what what do you think that it's it's let's say let's maybe take a more hubrick approach and say that they think that they can push this across the line where everyone else stumbled that their dutch pinball everyone thought they were dead us included definitely the whole contract with with ara i think it was uh fell apart for big lebowski's and they got across the line it took them a decade but they got across the line and when you do kind of the slow and steady wins the race maybe the turtle thinks he's better than all the hares and rabbits out there i mean maybe that's what it comes down to is there's a there is a feeling that their business acumen has shown that no they might not be the fastest they might not have the best build quality they might not have the best communication skills but they can get it done and they're gonna show this to you with the papaduke stuff instead instead of just kicking out a new game well being that's interesting let me finish i will they decided you know what we need to do we need to prove how good we are so before we start doing this the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to punch this baby in the mouth and make people hate me and then I'll show them that I'm so good that it's okay. But it's not like they're going to, like, I don't know, make people buy a terrible-looking game because they might want the hope of some stupid dream theme that doesn't need to be remade for any reason. I mean, surely they wouldn't do something like that in addition to this. Well, I mean, that is a bit of a separate issue, but somewhat part and parcel because it was all it was sort of all out of the expo i do want to note incidentally that um the oh for winchester back on winchester which has nothing to do with dutch pinball i just wanted to go ahead and note that if people want to read more about it i do have a link in the show notes to a kineticist article so they can go and look at the photos and stuff because we didn't spend a lot they really didn't spend any time describing the layout so yeah i just wanted to throw that in there real quick but speaking of pretty go look at it but Speaking of dream themes, okay, so yes, as Tony has alluded to very succinctly. So Back to the Future. It's been known for quite a while that Dutch Pinball has, or at least been claimed to have, the license to Back to the Future. So apparently in the course of this Expo event, it was said that – we just talked about Alice Adventures in Wonderland. It's behind schedule. I know you're shocked, Tony. It's behind schedule on production. So what they said, what I've heard they said was that those who buy Alice, as in don't seek a refund, because when they sold Alice originally, they said, you need a preorder. But if we don't ship it within a year, I believe it was 12 months, they would send the like you could request a full refund and get your and get your deposit back. Right. So, well, we're coming up on this. And apparently it's a concern or that's my speculation because they've said those who actually purchase Alice will be the ones to first receive Back to the Future games if they happen to buy Back to the Future also. So I am suspecting this. They not say this, but I am suspecting that they are very concerned with. I mean, this has been a pretty solid year for some pretty popular pinball machines that have been announced after Alice was announced. after waiting a year i think they rightly are worried that people will take them up on the offer for refunds and so they're trying to use as you alluded to the bait of a future not having to wait as long for back to the future to keep people locked in on the alice games if alice is taking this long what makes you think that it back to the future won't take as long i think that that maybe could be part of the psychology though of why would you want to be at the back of the line of like back to the future like again why would you want to be at the front of the line because your name is zach minnie co-host of the pinball show and back to the future is a dream theme and you're going to buy it no matter how terrible it is he hasn't confirmed that but he has confirmed it's a dream theme of his there are people like this there are people lots of people we on our discord we had someone huge star wars fan they bought the they bought the new star wars game now stern much more trusted entity very much so but i believe they've also posted that they're they're selling it yeah so i'm not surprised so in this case it could be a i really went back to the future and if i hate it i'm going to sell it so but do you want to wait a year or do you want to wait three years if you get alice you only have to wait a year maybe that's like you're trying to do the time math it's always trickier with the companies that are slow again with stern you don't have to do the time math in this way but you do with dutch pinball so and cgc for to be fair but i mean here's my theory my theory is financially there i don't know that they could recover i don't know that they could refund all the deposits and so this is my guess and this is a way this is a way to not have to come up with the cash That's my guess. My guess is that it would be extremely damaging. So, I mean, we saw, and I'm not saying it's in the same situation, but remember with Haggis, like, the first warning sign I think that was really obvious publicly is after that Texas Pinball Festival where we got to play the Fathom Revisited. They then broke their own word on the number of limited units to sell more models because there was interest after people got their hands on the game. It's like, why would a young company damage their reputation like that? And don't get me wrong. Stern's even done this before where they've gone ahead and revised the number of editions. It's been years, but they've done it, and it looks as terrible as it sounds. But with Haggis, I felt at the time, this is a sign that they really need the money if they're going to go ahead and start selling more limited editions of Fathom because it can get cash through the door. and then there were all these things about pre-order subscribe to the whole five game there were all these ways to try and get front loaded cash they have front loaded cash, Dutch does through Alice, but if you have to send that back, what if they're using that money to do back to the future stuff, hypothetically I have no confirmation of this these are the questions Tony questions that need answers yeah Yeah, it is going to be special. Okay, let's jump to happier news. Spooky. We already talked about Spooky Pinball. They've done great with Evil Dead. They've been chugging along, building those games. All right, well, the whole way this happened, I felt very, very squirrely. But Beetlejuice is their next game. They have now announced it. And the reason I'm pointing this out is – and I do have a link about the official acknowledgement of it to Nap Arcade in the show notes for people that want to read about it. But all right. So Winchester got announced, and then Spooky dropped a – on social media dropped a Beetlejuice meme on the same day, which made it fairly clear. And there's been some discussion about the tastefulness of that. But it doesn't really matter. Winchester sold out anyway. But then there was like a dealer that started taking pre-orders, explicitly saying you could pre-order Beetlejuice before they made the formal announcement, which I'm sure nothing will happen to them. Of course not. And then now we've got the formal announcement because, I mean, the cat's kind of out of the bag with all these – because once one dealer did it, all these other dealers start talking about, well, if you happen to want a game with Michael Keaton playing Beetlejuice, you could go ahead and get on my list. I mean, it was kind of like a lot of the thunder was stolen. Because this is a theme a lot of people are pretty excited about. But so, according to NAP, 999 unit count limited to that. $10,000 game. That's without the topper. Thoughts? I think it's going to do great. It's going to do great. It's going to sell out. I mean, Beetlejuice is a theme that plays right into the most popular of pinball themes. Do you think – I mean, because it's kind of been selling now, we're probably already past if it sold out day one, and I'm assuming no. But I agree with you it's going to sell out. Do you think we're – let me – this is more of a hypothetical, so I'm asking you to forecast out past Beetlejuice basically. But do you think we're now back with the popularity of Evil Dead, which sold out in not amazing speed, but did sell out? And based off of how – I mean, Evil Dead, guys, is really good. Like, really good. It is. I might – I'd like to put some more time on it, but I may rank it above TNA, which – TNA is not really a spooky design. That was Scott Danesi's thing, and they just sort of contract-made it almost. Right. They kind of acknowledge it wasn't their project. But Evil Dead is definitely the best spooky I can think of outside of that game, at least. So given that, given the popularity of a beetle, just as a far better license for most people than Evil Dead is. Are we back to, I guess, the old days of spooky where the FOMO just means near on instantaneous sellouts of their stuff again? because we lived through a cycle where what broke that? I think Scooby-Doo. Yeah, well, I agree. It was the quality that ultimately sabotaged the viability of the model. I think the first time where we really saw it go away was Scooby because they made a lot of Scooby-Doos. They did. So the count was too high. And Scooby-Doo was right on the tail of Halloween and Ultraman. which here's the impressive thing about halloween and ultraman is is you can very very easily say they're not the worst thing spooky ever did and that's sad the um that was the height of it's interesting i i feel like because there are elements about those games that like the voice acting for example in halloween i think is excellent it's not they're not as you noted They're not actually the worst things this movie made. The issue was that was the height of the, what I'm going to call their era of, oh, layout doesn't actually matter. Just put stuff wherever and just make sure we put the theme in there. And then you end up with a game that looks like whatever theme they're going for but plays like poo. Yeah, right. It's just like it was – I mean we played it with the Loser Kids at – was that TPS? It was TDF, and I don't remember. I'm not going to speak for them and their reaction, but I was just like, this game is playing long. And then when Scooby came out, it was the same thing. It was like, oh, my gosh, on default settings, this game plays forever. You and I, I think we spent like 35 minutes on one game. It was terrible. The two of us. It was just like, guys, oh, my God. But since then, a lot of improvements. There have been a lot of improvements. I don't think we're in a place economically. where we're going to be seeing the massive Insta sellout FOMO. And I don't think they've rebuilt the goodwill that had that exist in the first place. I think you're – I lean towards your direction. I would say I do expect Beetlejuice to sell out a lot faster than Evil Dead, but the theme is doing a big carry on that. And Spooky's art's almost always been on point. It's going to be on point here. $9,999 is, I mean, let's say 10,000. Please, guys, let's say 10,000. It's 10,000. However, when you consider that the competition like Barrels of Fun and JJP are selling higher than this, they're in an okay position. They're not a bargain, but their pricing is pretty median, really, when you think about it. Like you want to save some money, you could go like CGC or Stern. If you want to spend more, you can go Barrels or JJP, and they're just kind of there in the middle basically. We'll just have to see what their other licenses are. The count also makes a big difference. So 999, probably a smart count. I do think a theme like Beetlejuice can move 1,000 units. So I think them going with that number made a lot of sense in this case. I don't know about Spooky going and thinking this does great for them. I don't think they're going to jump back up to Scooby-Doo levels of production. I think that burned them too. They were still trying to sell Scoobies when we were at TPF. They still were selling Scoobies. I think Bug told us they had Texas or two. That's a really good game too by the way. I don't remember if they still had a Looney Tunes. I think they did. but those layouts like the Looney Tunes Texas layouts those were good layouts that was the start of what I call the good layout era they're in the good layout era now which I'm pleased with so interesting because a lot of people are pretty excited about the Beetlejuice so that's not a rumor corner that's just a real thing because it's been confirmed but I do have a rumor corner for you rumor corner rumor corner rumor corner rumor corner rumor corner today's rumor corner is going to be jjp and you already alluded to this many many minutes ago about well you know jersey jackson's gonna go and do the license they're just gonna take the license and do it themselves well do i have rumor news for you supposedly jjp is uh has acquired the license to ghostbusters and so i guess we're getting that again yay let's eat the scraps from stern's table but i mean jjp has never done that before pirates of the pirates of the you can't buy it because we gave up uh sorry sorry sorry a lot of people want that game but they gave up on it. I still think they made like a thousand units, but it's expensive to get for folks. Yeah, I don't know. Okay. What do you think about... Ghostbusters from Starn is a very popular game. It is, but it's a DMD game. Spike 1 DMD, not Sam, but it's an older game. It is DMD. That's fine, but yes, I understand there have been new Ghostbusters movies. Nobody's clamoring for a new Ghostbusters movie. And I haven't heard anything like... Nobody's claiming for a new Ghostbusters game. They're probably going to do the original movie, right? It's J.J.P. I'm assuming not. I'm assuming they're going to do Frozen Empire. Okay. I mean, they did do Toy Story 4. Right? I like how everyone says the 4 with such scorn. Because we have to emphasize it. You know what? being jjp i could see them going as far as doing the real ghostbusters cartoon i don't think they'll go that far i don't think so it wouldn't surprise me to see it come out of jjp just so it's like i mean i really remember that cartoon when i was growing up and it was it made me so happy a better jjp realist toy story 4 burn would be i could see them just doing Ghostbusters 2. I mean, it does have some iconic set pieces. You could have a part of the game be the courtroom. You could have a part of the game be the river of slime. And there you go. You filled the game with joy. Maybe get Rick Moranis to do the call-outs. You did it. Good job. Good job, JJP. All right. So, your thoughts? So, what about... I mean, I think it could do well for them. You know what? I mean, it's not going to do Harry Potter, but what would? Like, nothing's going to do Harry Potter. No, no. And the thing is there so many things out there that J could get on that could go this way They could make a pinball version of the um the uh sci mini series of dune no they please no they they they oh man they they could make a war of the worlds machine based off the tv series the amazon one no oh no no no no even worse the old one The old TV series from the late 80s. Oh, I don't remember it. That was the one where it was strictly a follow-up to the movie from the 50s. I like that movie. Where the entire conceit of the movie is that we just packed all the aliens away in 55-gallon drums and threw them into storage because they weren't rotting for some reason. And a bunch of the drums got radioactive waste spilled on them, and it brought the the the martians back to life and now they were immune to diseases so they were started setting up like a fifth column little underground terrorist trying to thing trying to take back over the oh so mad it was so bad i mean maybe yeah you want to know a this rumor is now dead so that's not really a rumor quarter rumor but um i had been here and there was a time there was pressure within jjp that like their ownership really wanted to borrow bob marley a bob marley pin i'm just like i mean his music's nice but it's like i don't i'm not sure i'm not sure this is the answer we're looking for i don't know i don't know it's like i sometimes sometimes i'll see things like like um harry potter i'm like jjp like really knows what they're doing and then And in other days, I feel like they are actively debating maybe doing one themed off of Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, the restaurant, not the song. Of course, the restaurant. And I'm just like, because then you could have a volcano and people will remember Congo. Like, that would be how the conversation started. I'm just, I don't know with them. I have a great idea for a pinball machine. Sure, man. What is it? Have you ever been to Cheeseburger in Paradise? People who buy the CE could get a coupon for one free cheeseburger at any participating location. Okay, we can't get the license for Simpsons. But remember, there was the one episode where it was in the future and old Bart was doing ripoffs of Jimmy Buffett by singing Dacorita-ville? Why don't we make a Dacaritaville game? Anyway. Alright, so that's basically all of the main pinball news. But we do have some emails, Tony. We love our emails. We love our support. So, Doug M. emailed to us. Hi, Tony and Dennis. Hi, Doug. Tony says hi. I think he probably heard you, though. My thoughts on why this game sold out in a day, this about winchester i don't think the designer had a huge role in that actually oh so doug disagrees with me well okay let's find out what he thinks oh he's got multiple points he's numbered them number one look at what has been released lately from the big player or even from barrels of fun dune is cool but not that old school wow factor you had when you first looked under the glass on a twilight zone a oh adam's family i'm trying to place that one um anything similar from the 90s, and if I'm throwing in a modern one, Godzilla. The game looks fun, unrepetitive, packed with interactive mechs under the hood. Number two, nearly everything is 3D. Even Jaws LE has flat plastics instead of actual things. Try to find a flat plastic on the playfield in this game that is meant to represent an object. In comparison, look at what Jaws Premium or LE, and you immediately see a printed flat plastic for a ship's wheel or the fishing reel. The reel isn't real. All right, Doug, that's a very good little burn quote. Yeah, that's nice. So kudos on that. Number three, it isn't a band, movie, or comic book theme with oversaturated colors. Oh, he's speaking my language now. Look at a lineup of new sterns from 30 feet away. They all look the same. The trend is so tired. This game looks like a 90s classic, but with a modern tryst with 100 times the code and LCD screens. And given the hype of Star Wars and the deflated balloon it ended up being, timing was perfect. It is a true breath of fresh air. I very much agree with this. That's a very good argument. His argument gets me. I can't support it. Number four. This is from a small, privately owned manufacturer. like spooky and unlike stern you can feel the passion that went into it these emphasis are there by the way guys i'm trying i'm just trying to put them in um just like just from the teaser video alone look at the mechs the upper playfield wood that was used the apron details stained glass decals the lack of any brown slash rusty spot welds etc it looks handcrafted not mass produced number five theme it is a haunted house that theme alone has proven itself a few times in this industry a home run theme that packs surprises twists turns and timed perfectly with an october release i didn't think about the october release i will i must acknowledge this genius marketing move sell a haunted house theme right when everyone is in the spooky vibe number six they kept it a secret imagine that only a handful of people even knew that this existed the morning of launch other manufacturers should take note of this alone if you leak your plans six plus months before the launch a lot of the hype fizzles out by the time the launch day arrives if i didn't need a new roof on my house i would have bought this three minutes after the trailer came out with love from your loyal one dollar a month patreon supporter doug doug i agree with you on on pretty much all of those and uh especially the whole color saturation uh for sure and keeping it secret we've often talked about just how tired you are of something by the time the actual announcement comes and you actually see it and the release date comes it's like it's so old news nobody cares i this was a very good email he made some extremely strong points i i hadn't really thought about the well i mentioned the sculpts and the and barrels world under glass look but it is a good point that that they do really avoid a lot of flat plastic use it just It feels more like an actual world because of that. The oversaturated color thing is, I've made fun of that quite a bit, so I agree with that as well. The passion thing, I haven't looked at the photos enough to know if they've properly hidden all their spot welds and everything, so I can't really opine on that. The passion side of it, I still feel like a lot of these games feel like – when I look at Jaws, I still feel like there was a lot of love that's in that game. And it's less seen on the play field. I feel a lot of it in the code, which I think is really, really good. So I'm not saying it's not there on Winchester. I'm just saying I feel like we see that in a lot of games. I think you see that in Harry Potter even, that they really cared about that license at JJP. The secret thing – that's interesting. and this is not the first time I've heard this argument. I mean, it was amazing that they kept it a secret. I'm of a mixed mind on this. I do think that appealed to a lot of people, but my problem with pinball is they're in the middle of the road on this. It's like, pick a lane, keep it secret properly, or be like video games and just announce it and sabotage. The whole rumor industry would collapse if you're just like, yeah, we're doing Beetlejuice. It'll be in two years. You'll see stuff later. And there's always been this – I know this view. Josh Sharpe has articulated this before who works for Raw Thrills that they don't – like the industry doesn't like to do this because they're operating on this mentality that the line needs to stay busy and you'll sabotage current sales on the line if there's something more exciting that's going to come out later. we're not in an operator driven industry anymore and i don't know how many people are just like oh gosh i sure haven't bought a pinball machine in a while i guess i'm going to buy some license i don't really care about because i didn't know that pokemon was about to come out like i just don't think it's moving the needle that much i think they could be like video games that start announcing these things the problem is what they do is not announce and then leaks sabotage all the and That's how the leaks fizzle the hype. If we knew the titles going in from years ago, like we knew Stern had Godzilla for years because Spooky told us they did. I don't think it hurt the – I just don't. So I'm going to push back on number six. I agree. It was amazing that they kept it a secret, but the problem – I partially disagree with number six. It's the leak that's the problem. If the companies were to be forthcoming about upcoming licenses, I think it would still result in a positive outcome. I may be wrong on that, but I do believe it. I can see the argument. Because, again, in video games, it's knowing that Elder Scrolls VI is officially announced. All it does is build hype. Like people get excited. Now, if you start having delays, maybe things happen. But having that confirmed, we're working on this thing. People get passionate. There are still people who are complaining about Scalebound getting canceled. It works. Knowing ahead of time is okay, guys. It is okay. You guys, most people just like to be surprised. I just think the rumor leak thing is annoying. Do you keep it secret? Look at this Beetlejuice thing. It's goofy. it's like why is the official announcement quote unquote official announcement coming out of a distributor and then your hands forced with no materials like I would rather them have just said yeah we've got Beetlejuice it'll come out in a few years like okay we know to look forward to it but be done when it's done and also thank you Doug for supporting us on patreon patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers we do appreciate that we have another email Tony from Tim Tim L hey guys as always love the show i was going to submit this question via patreon but i wasn't sure how often you check those messages as an aside and i've emailed him back to tim so he knows but for all patreon people when you actually message us on patreon we get an email at a click to gamers podcast at gmail.com so messaging on patreon works just as well as sending an email what doesn't is messaging us on facebook right which is why i emphasize if you want to reach out to us please email but commenting or sending a message on patreon is exactly like emailing so it's fine Fun question. I keep hearing all of these people talk about how much better the boutique companies are than Stern. I honestly like them all. They all have pros and cons. I've had to perform a lot of maintenance on my boutique games, but they are a lot of fun. However, I get well-playing machines with excellent code on Stern. So here's my question. If you and Tony each had the opportunity to take over one company and ride it into retirement, which company would you take over? Would it be Stern? an investor driven profitable company with well established margins processes and a limited bill of materials or would it be one of the boutique companies they were most likely running very thin with a lot of risk involved and then there's jjp they seem like to be somewhere in the middle however they have a huge hit on their hands with harry potter perhaps they'll be making that game for the next 10 years i see a lot of people bad-mouthing stern i would like to take them any day over the other companies simply because i know they are the one company who could survive until my retirement. Thanks. Glenn's best friend, Tim. All right. Well, thank you, Glenn's friend, Tim. Tony, retirement writing company. You can only control one. Here's the thing. What's the thing? Tim has already gone with the correct answer for the team that you want to write into retirement. That, Stern, is 100% the correct answer. So with that said, I'm going to go with JJP. Why? because we've already seen that JJP can be broken to will. So I finally get my Expanse pinball machine. I finally get my Babylon 5 pinball machine. I finally get my all of my – that's it. I will just start rolling the crazy out. Where's my Buckaroo Bonsai pinball machine? Let's do this. Let's ride this down in a blaze of glory. That's an awesome argument. I really like that. Tim, as Tony has noted, Stern is objectively the right answer. It is. It's it's the safe play. I'm pretty conservative financially anyway. So it like, yeah, especially like this is going to keep me alive to retirement. Absolutely. Stern. It's no question. So not picking Stern. Let me give you the second best option, which does not give me the flexibility that Tony is getting with JJP, but provides me a lot more financial stability with some more flexibility than I feel I would have with Stern. Chicago Gaming Company. So here's my strategy. Pulp Fiction. Okay. We know they can do original stuff. We know that they make bank on the remakes. So I take CGC. I continue to produce remakes. That's my major – that's my profit center. But then based off of that, every two years or so, I get to have an art project pin. And I don't mean like – this could be like Expanse or, in my case, like Event Horizon. We're going to do that. Or we're going to do John Carpenter's The Thing. Or I will do something that isn't a remake, like maybe two or three Williams remakes to one new licensed original theme that is more of my passion project stuff. So with Stern, I don't know that I could convince – like the way it's set up to feed the investor setting and all of that, I don't know that I could get away with doing that. With CGC, I think I could as long as I've got enough rebank because the remakes are just money in the bank. Right. And CGC's got the best reputation for build quality in the industry. The only problem with CGC, which I feel is something I could fix as owner, is their speed. I'll just have to help start turning screws. Right. I could do this. I can turn screws. I can help. So that would be my non-right answer because Stern is the right answer. Stern is the correct answer 100%. It is. Yes. All right. final pinball email is from scott v who has requested this be read in a texas accent which i'm going to do a southern accent and the texans will say that is not right and i have had texans tell me that they are not the south and to quit calling them that when i say you're in the south and they're like well literally yes but we're not southerners we're texans so you know don't mess with texas sort of the moral of the story i need your help tony and nanis i've created a juggernaut pinball game. This game is Texas summer heat lightning in a bottle. Not even the most critical of critics can find fault. I greatly underestimated demand so badly that it sold out before anyone got to see it in person. Sales suggest I could increase the limited production number by at least a third. We are a new company and this is our first hit. We need sales. We know who knows how long if ever We will have this opportunity again. What do I do? Increase a promised limited production number which could sustain this company into the future and perhaps grow the business or keep the number where it's at. Forgoing thousands in profits and hope the goodwill of the pinball community will support our future games. Thank you, Scott. Tony, Texas lightning in a bottle. Texas lightning in a bottle. Let me tell you. Almost a mystery of lightning. 100% in my mind every day the way to go in this is you go and make a couple tweaks, a minor art package change, and you just drop a new edition, a downgraded edition. A pro. A pro. That's what you do. You drop an edition that has all of the core stuff with a few light adjustments, and that's what you go. Your LE people are still happy. You're not making more LEs. You're not making something a bit higher. You're making minor changes that, let's be realistic, in a lot of ways, if you do it right, don't really matter, and you've got more games out there for purchase. In my mind, that's the way to do it. Yeah. I think that's a good strategy as a potential, which wasn't one of the two choices. But it's kind of the workaround that we've seen in other industries do where they'll be like, well, here's a super special one-of-a-kind thing, and now we're going to do this and another. This happens at watches a lot. We'll just change the dial color, and that's the regular version. So it can work. The one catch here is because I feel like this might be loosely inspired by Winchester. maybe maybe that whether or not the lightning in a bottle can be sustained by the time they came up with a because it's like we've we just now realized so you have to develop the new art package you have to develop the game with the different like are they going to put in the booty right flat plastics and just change the art package it still needs like will the lightning still be in the bottle by the time they get all of that done and then roll out the the which is a valid concern the non-limited edition um so so there are some risks to it so within the two categories that they could kind of immediately do the answer is you don't break your word you just got a lesson learned yeah in fact part of the reason why it sold so well could very well be driven by that it's 525 units that now because we saw the behavior with the 525 units that we know we could sell another 300 great but that's a different like hindsight is 2020 who knows if we had launched it at 825 if they all would have sold out right i don't know well and then the other thing to think about is if you're a smaller manufacturer your uh production time is going to be longer so you're going to have the time while you're producing the le's to finalize that r package for a for a secondary edition yes and one of the things to to bear in mind is uh what looks like lightning now may turn into a dry barren landscape later right we've seen we talked earlier in the episode about with spooky how they used to fomo sell out of everything a lot of that stuff because of their kind of year-long production cycle like when people actually played halloween in Ultraman, people were trying to get out of their deposits. Right. People were dumping their deposits at losses to people because they were now competing with a used market where the game, like Ultraman's one of the best value buys there is because the game is so disliked. Like, it's just, so Winchester, bear in mind, a lot of people who bought this, they didn't play it. So in this regard, if anything, if it stumbles while productions go like if it let's take Star Wars, Fall of the Empire. Right. Even the you know, we talked about our big complaints about Star Wars were just that they did Star Wars original trilogy five years ago. That's really what it came down to. Game wise, the game looked perfectly enjoyable. What have we seen from owners? Death Star Rejects. Death Star Rejects. Like I saw someone or someone wrote on one of the discords I'm on that they were seriously looking at getting out the Dremel and taking one fourth to a half inch off of the because apparently the opening of the Death Star is tighter than the ramp that goes into it. Right. Like, if Winchester has a Death Star that people haven't figured out, like, if there's a Demogorgon issue, there are things that could happen that could undermine the game. Again, lightning in a bottle is also about the period of time where the lightning is striking. It's not forever. What I would say in this instance is you keep your number where it is, and then you just, as a company like Barrels, plan to do something like this again. Don't just do the bigger Labyrinth Dune thing. Do something like this. Let's call it Boutique. Do something Boutique, but maybe next time have it be 200 units higher, or maybe do the two versions there, and have it an experiment and see, all right, maybe Carl is going to be doing these sort of things. This is the Carl project. We'll have Carl do his next game. I've heard he's already got it. He has been homebrewing. This game is not that homebrew layout modified. It's not like Archer becoming Iron Maiden. This is different than what he already has been working on. So you can experiment as a company in the future to kind of, yes, you've lost your sales here, but try and make up for it in the future. Granted, we do need to bear in mind that Scott is pointing out a good thing, which is this is a newer company. Like the need for capital to sustain is pretty significant. But there have been benefits already. One of the things we did not discuss, but I did hear about out of Pinball Expo, because I podcast with Zach, who is a distributor, interest in Dune increased after Winchester and more sales have happened. Well, that's good. Now, some of that may be Winchester excitement made people go, oh, I can't get that. Let me get Dune. That's a world under glass. And some of it could also be people got to finally play Dune at Expo and liked it. Yeah. So it's both. But the point is, like, this Texas company has seen benefit beyond Winchester recently as well. So I would be less worried in this hypothetical example if I use the hypothetical company that I'm using as my example, because I think that things are actually looking up for them beyond just Winchester now that Expo has passed and more people got a chance to play Dune. Apparently Predators were at Expo, by the way, Tony. We did. They had one of the movie actors, not Schwarzenegger, there. I think the one who played Poncho, was it? Was that his name? I don't know. I don't remember. Anyway, I don't remember the name of most of the characters of the movie. But anyway, they had someone there trying goose sails. But I don't know. I think everyone's just too excited about Raza. Anyway, so that's it for the pinball section. We did have another email that I put in the video game section, Tony, because it's about virtual pinball. So it the transition It the segue topic It the segue topic Richard A emailed in again about digital pinball This email was actually massive so I not reading the email Instead I pulled the relevant highlights for the listener to care about One is just in terms of some clarification, Pinball M., which is in Studios Does, it's been really about horror tables. And he did actually note that they have one for The Thing, which I didn't know. Well, that's good to know. If you're interested in the thing, that is an opportunity there to see an idea for it. Richard also noted most of the email was about the best way to buy table packs. And so it kind of depended. So for Zacharia, they do have sales on tables. So that is an option if you want to wait to try and see if a particular table is on sale for you. However, they do have a starter pack. It's $17.50. That gets you 12 tables, and that's a pretty good deal. And they also have a second pack, which gets you nine tables. So those two packs are a good way to kind of get into Zocaria without having to wait. And then for Pinball M and Pinball FX, they actually run weekly sales. And usually whatever item is on sale is 50% to 60% off. So if you want to not spend the full amount of money, just pick those up every week. You can pick up something on a sale. So those were his suggestions. Yeah, I think that's a good way to get games like that. Is TwitchCon a good way to get games? Oh, TwitchCon is a good way to get bad stuff. It's always bad. It is. Why do they have it? Because all I hear is negative. I honestly do not know why they continue to do TwitchCon. Everything that comes out of TwitchCon is negative for Twitch, which is saying a lot because Twitch already has got issues that they seem to hit constantly. this TwitchCon on the very first day one of the big named female streamers Emiru she was assaulted during a meet and greet not by somebody in her meet and greet line by somebody else who crossed all the security barriers, walked through somebody else's line, just walked straight up to her grabbed her, gave her a hug and attempted to kiss her until her personal bodyguard shoved the guy away. And the whole time, Twitch's security was like, huh, didn't see anything. And it was an entire thing. It has turned into an enormous thing because none of Twitch's security was seen to do anything. And apparently, Twitch's security didn't even initially go after the guy after her bodyguard pushed him away. It wasn't until they were pushed by her manager later that they actually tracked the guy down. And all of this only happened because somebody was filming and caught it on video when it happened. Did you see if any criminal charges were filed? Last I heard, from her, in extreme, she put out, she said she's planning on pushing the criminal charges, But reports are that at least initially, Twitch wasn't releasing the name of the person to her group or the police. But they know who it is. They know who it is. They eventually found him and gave him a 30-day ban from Twitch until there was pushback. And then they changed it into an indefinite ban. Which means 60 days. You're right. When Emeru's manager blew up at them. Oh, my gosh. It is an entire increasingly bad-looking debacle for Twitch and Amazon, who owns Twitch at this point. Twitch's initial response was, I would say, lackluster. They eventually put out a response that the offender had been caught and banned from the event. but again that was well after everything had happened and it they didn't put out anything until it had become so public and viral that they had no choice in the matter and almost immediately after emery had put it put out a post that flat out said that blatantly said they were lying that they were blatantly lying about their response and she at no point did any member of Twitch staff ask her if she was okay or even talk to her about it until after her manager started pushing the issue. So once again, Twitch continues to have problems. They said – or Emeru went ahead and the day after, directly ahead of her big event that she had. Oh, like a self-event that she was hosting or what? Well, it was an event at TwitchCon. Oh, okay. But to not have that canceled, she had to do the meet and greet. So after the assault, she came back out to finish the meet and greet because she had to, to not get her other event canceled. Okay. It was like contractually obligated. Yes. Okay. So she did all of that. But before that event, she put out an hour-long stream where she just sat and talked about the whole thing and how Twitch had responded and how poorly Twitch had responded. And she has said she's not attending TwitchCon again. She's recommending other streamers not to. It's not worth it because for something like this to happen and for security and Twitch to ignore it with how high level of a streamer she is, the vast majority of the streamers at TwitchCon are lower-level streamers. And they're not going to have their own security on board. They're not going to be able to do any of that. So they're not going to have even a worse time than she did. Twitch's CEO, Dan Clancy, gave an interview that was very much the, I'm sorry that you feel like something bad happened, but it's society's fault that stuff like this happens. It's not our fault that we have bad security. It's the fact that society has a problem. Yes. Very sad. And then he had to do a – he did another statement. Oh, did that one not go over well? Yeah, apparently that one didn't go over well. So he put out another statement backpedaling and final saying that Twitch failed in allowing it to occur and Twitch failed in its response. But the truth of the matter is this happens every year at Twitch. This is TwitchCon where somebody broke their back because they had a ball pit that was just like a small layer of ball sitting on a concrete floor. So when they jumped in it, they broke their back. Oh, yeah. I forgot that was TwitchCon. They put the con in TwitchCon, don't they? They do, very much. I mean, I do agree that there is a major series of issues with the way a lot of these streams and streamers and their audiences interact and the way their audiences act as people. I don't want to discount that Dan may have a point about like fandom in general and maybe some of the quote unquote relationships that are perceived to be fostered between the fans and their streamers may result in some misunderstanding of like we're not actually friends. like sort of right i mean i don't i don't know nonetheless yes you hosted an event you claim to have security person is assaulted in front of a crowd of people it is filmed and your initial responses are well we'll ban them from twitch for 30 days oh and they won't be at this particular twitch gone again yeah wow big what what a great what a lift what what a moral leader you are he's So great. He's so great. He's not any related to Tom, is he? He has. Because he seems like a sniveling politician from a Tom Clancy book. He does. He has enough other questionable stuff that has come out about him that one wonders how Amazon allows him to continue to be the face of such a large portion of their portfolio. because he likes to spend his time with the younger female streamers, and that has been commented on by a lot of people. I keep thinking Amazon is going to close Twitch. Is it making money yet? Not – no. I don't – Last I heard, they're still spending more than they're making. Okay. So I don't know. Unless it's a loss leader, it's a big enough write-off. I don't understand it. I understand Twitch went from being just video games to being primarily all the IRL and all that. Just chatting, yeah. Just chatting and all that for the simple fact that that's where all the money was. I've gone to Twitch recently and looked at some of these streams. because normally when I go to Twitch, I'm specifically looking for one or two specific streamers or a specific game that I'm looking to see something on. And instead, I've gone and looking at just what's popular and what's out there and what's big. And most of it is, I don't know. I've gone into rooms with people where they've got, you know, a thousand people and they're watching the stream and they're not doing anything. They're like playing on their phone, and they're not even streaming what they're doing on their phone. They're just sitting there kind of looking at chat and chatting and talking back and forth a little bit. It's weird to me. But no, I will say there is definitely a fandom problem. But Twitch should know. This has happened so many times with them that Twitch should know by this point that they need to have a big security basis. They need to have handlers and actual staffing to take care of this kind of stuff. And they seem to just keep dropping the ball on it. I don't understand. So on to the slightly happier news. Yay. More than slightly happier. Yay. Well, I guess it depends if you're a Saudi investor or Jared Kushner. That's true. No, Battlefield is doing great. it's sold over 7 million copies it is in 5 days it is well on its way it is very much been reviewing well it's been well liked concurrence are still high we'll see how long that lasts over the course of a year I'm still playing it a few times a week but it sounds like they've had their first big success since 1 and it's doing better than 1 so good for them Last episode we talked about that open letter to MindsEye. Yes. Well, more has come out. Apparently, MindsEye launched in late June. Apparently in July, after they announced that they were doing layoffs, they held an all-staff meeting. And the founder and CEO, Leslie Benzies, claimed that the negativity was uncalled for and that saboteurs within the company were the cause of the bad launch and the negative reviews, and that those staff would be rooted out. Oh, no, not the saboteurs. And in addition to this, more came out that a big thing was that they had, there was a micromanagement problem that specifically came from Leslie, where he would play the game and he would have like a staffer sitting next to him and while he was playing the game if he saw something he didn't like or thought was a problem he would have them make a note for it and they were taken down as special notes that they just called leslie yes leslie's they called them leslie's and they were brought down to programming and everything had to be dropped no matter what you were working on to correct whatever little thing yes the leslie's They come first. They come first. They come first. And then they wonder why this game was reviewed massively negatively. Oh, man. Starfield was the game that was looking to be huge. I've not played it. You've played it. Yes. I've not won it yet, though. Right. Because I keep getting distracted. By fun games. Yes. Yes. It's okay. I would describe it as okay, but definitely disappointing. Yeah. And that is what most people seem to think about it. I think space is just inherently boring is kind of where I've been at. Right. And that's exactly what their systems designer thinks. Well, because it's procedurally generated. I mean, you and I have played so many space games. Right. If you make it feel lived, yes. But like the notion of we want it to be real. Mercury isn't any fun. There's a reason why no one talks about the planet Mercury. Right. when you have a box that says okay the system will automatically build a world based upon all these things and there's only 12 things every world is going to feel the same there's not going to be you have to have a crafted kind of story and guidance and stuff the procedurally generated unless that's specifically what you're after is always going to be samey there has to be something to keep you going and most people didn't think that Starfield had that. It was okay, but it was definitely not a Skyrim or a Fallout. But those games also were like handcrafted, beautiful things compared to... It's... there's just... I don't know if it will resonate much with the listener. It will definitely resonate with you, Tony, but there's just... in Starfield, you can't just see a marker in the distance and just walk and encounter who knows what along the way and what's it going to be when you get there. It's all, here's a bazillion planets of which a bazillion minus 12 have no purpose to be visited. And the missions send you to the 12 that matter. And you keep revisiting them and you do the stuff. And that's Starfield. And, okay, that's how space actually is. And it sucks. It's boring. It's just, yeah. It's just, that's why when people praise Starfield, they're like, like doing like the missions for the corporations and stuff. Like, those are really good. Yeah, because they got stories and there's stuff to do. Like, where there's stuff to do, the stuff is good. Don't get, it's not a bad game. It's just, you get this idea that you're going to be flying around and you might encounter something interesting. It's like, no, you will not. You will not encounter something interesting. Do you want to go to that dead planet to mine it, or do you want to go to that dead planet to maybe find a space pirate in orbit? Those are your choices. Yeah, and there's not that many pirates. Yay. Oh, look, this planet's really hot. Oh, look, this planet's a gas giant. We can't land on it. Oh, look, oh, look, oh, look. You can visit it and scan it and see what its elements are. Wow. Yay. If you wanted to do that. I'd have been a real astronaut. Except I wouldn't get to go anywhere So yeah That game has continued to be a disappointment Yeah Another game that was a big disappointment Was FBC Firebreak Failed pretty horribly It's a live service Spinoff of Control Which is a good game Yeah an excellent game From Remedy Studios I like Remedy They put out an announcement that they put out a profit warning announcement because sales were so poor for Firebreak. And immediately afterward, their CEO stepped down. So they have reported that development of Control 2 is on track and that the project to do remakes of Max Payne 1 and 2, it's in full production. The game you've been playing, Alan Wake 2, was decently well-received. So all in all, they've got hopes, but their attempt to break into the multiplayer live service, because they are traditionally a single-player, story-driven game company. And I know everybody wants to break into the live service game because that's where you go, okay, we've got a good-selling live service game. That is our baseline of money to keep the doors open while we work on actual interesting games. The problem is a lot of companies end up breaking themselves on the attempt to make a live service game. Because if it does not take off, and the live service world is really saturated at this point. If you do not get something that really takes off, you're just out of luck. Yeah. I mean, it reminds me when, you know, World of Warcraft was so big and then people would try and make MMOs. And it's like, it's hard. It is hard to sustain an MMO. I mean, at this point, I don't know that I even I mean, it's still around, but I don't even know that I would say that World of Warcraft is the biggest MMO still in existence. I don't know. And you don't have to be the biggest to be successful, but people will gravitate to those that have a certain density to them. That's where another good example would be those, whatever the stuff like Dota is. There have been like three. Yeah. There's no space. We've seen like three can exist, and that's it. Yeah. Just enough to give variance for people who don't like one for whatever specific reason. Just enough differences to maybe attract someone to one of the other ones. Yeah. And that seems to be the thing. Because right now, I mean, I'd say there's probably three, maybe four big MMOs still in existence at this point. And all of them have had heavy drop-offs. I just saw a thing that was putting Destiny 2 is at its lowest player base ever. It is. Their player base is down to the point where it was with Destiny where they thought the company was going out of business. And that's where they are with Destiny 2 now. So we'll see how that continues to go. uh microsoft we talked about last time uh they had increased their game pass cost yeah they've cranked the cost of their consoles yep uh apparently they've also increased the cost of their development kits to make it even more expensive for companies to develop games for their consoles wow because of macroeconomic issues they must be really struggling for it to be profitable tony obviously that that has to be the reason it's not like they literally just announced that they're thriving and very profitable in july they just and at the same time they've come out to say that they are well on their way to prediction to production of their next generation console yes which i saw a thing where they've indicated apparently that it's going expectations are being set they're like it's going to be i don't know what the term was premium yes people are already guessing over a grand that would be my guess they are they are very much i think what they're locking into with this spread to push as many of their their their games as possible from their uh collection of companies to all systems is that they've decided after multiple console generations of not winning. That they just want to put out the absolute biggest, highest level, most powerful machine they can and live in that, oh, wow, I want a high-level machine, but I don't want a PC. Right. That's for spreadsheets. Right. That's me saying that to you. Yes, that's what it is. They want a console that is basically a high-level PC that's what they are pretty much at this point except maybe the switch yeah because playstation's pretty pcs i've heard it's much like developing like for a pc at this point so right which is probably good for developers which is good because they can't afford the developer kit anymore right i've heard that they're okay i have heard that that handheld that they kicked out that's uh oh the one that was the one that's made by somebody else but it's like xbox themed it's actually selling well. It's expensive. I did hear it sold well. It's very premium. It is pricey. But it is selling well. Which means there's definitely a desire for something like that. For Steam Decks. Yes, for Steam Decks. Which is the correct answer. Yay! Also, Nintendo has had to increase their planned production of Switch 2s because they had very high hopes for how well Switch 2 would sell. It has sold better than they'd hoped. Okay. So they are increasing production for the season. I've heard they're not hard to find, though. They're not hard to find, but from what it sounds like is the stores and the warehouses are getting lower than they want going into the holiday season. Okay, that makes sense. So they're selling very well. and the PlayStation 5 has now outsold the PlayStation 3. Okay. So lifetime. In five years. I guess so. Six years. Maybe six. I don't count. Yeah. But they've outsold the entire lifetime of the PlayStation 3. And just one last little quick follow-up from last episode. We were talking about the Elden Ring Tarnished Edition had been delayed. they've now given us more information on that delay. It is delayed to sometime in 2026. They're not even putting like a quarter date on it. Okay. And the delay reason is because they are working on performance adjustments, which means the Switch 2 cannot handle even the lower level stuff that they were doing with it. Right. So. Shucks. Well, they'll probably sort it out, actually. I'm sure it will run fine on the Xbox handheld or the Steam Deck. Yeah, but that's not a Switch 2. that's right that's why they're already it's already out on all of those devices so but that's what i have today we had so much in in pinball it was it was i love having large amounts of pinball news because it's so often where we have almost nothing this was great yeah thank you expo and thank you to the listeners for putting up with us if you want to reach out to us you can email us at collective gamers podcast at gmail.com or go to facebook.com dot com slash eclectic gamers podcast that we do prefer via email. We also prefer if you want to support us via Patreon at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers for as low as a dollar a month. That's our lowest tier. And yay for that. We're available on Instagram and Twitch as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks, probably with less pinball news. Maybe we'll know a bit more about Beetlejuice. Who knows? Hopefully. Yeah, that's my hope. But until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye. See ya.