Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, December 7th, episode 260. I'm Tony. I'm Dennis. It's going to be a lighter episode on pinball. Not as lighter on video games. It's always kind of like this when we get into December. I kind of predicted that maybe we would have something, but I think I based that off of sand. So I didn't really have a reason for it. Sometimes we do see... You had hope. You had dreams. I don't really have a position on it, per se. December sometimes is a month where Stern might tease their next cornerstone. Like we might know the name of it, but usually not this early in the month. So I don't know why I would have thought that. That doesn't really matter. What does matter is people want to know what you've been doing over the last couple weeks. Anything interesting? Not really. I took advantage of Black Friday sales to order a beginner resin printing setup. And the only question is we will see if there's enough airflow in my area I'm setting it up in to make it usable or if I'm going to have to go clean out a spot in the garage and utilize the garage for it because of the odors and issues and stuff. I've got, like, air purifiers and all this stuff to try and cut it down, but it's just how will it be enough. You'll have to see. Yeah, and if it's that, since my garage is not Carl Weathers sealed, it's not insulated in any way, shape, or form, I'll have to wait until spring to set the runs up because I'm going to go out on a limb and say it doesn't work well when the resin's frozen. Maybe not. I don't know. Maybe it just needs a space heater. Probably not. Probably not. I don't think a space heater could crank out enough considering that there is absolutely no insulation in the garage. Like just in front of the resin. Yeah. Not for you. The space heater's for the resin. Right. Well, I do want to say, oh, we do have a couple new Patreons. Welcome. Yeah, Michael K. joined our Patreon, and so did Loser Kid Pinball. Have you heard of them? I have. I have a hat from them. I have a hat, too. Yeah, mine's better. Mine's green. Mine's red. Yeah, I win. Why? Because green's better. Red's a Christmas color. So is green. I wasn't going to bring that up. I was going to just point out that red is a Christmas color. um speaking of red uh sith they like to have red lightsabers i would know because i finally finished jedi fallen order did you bleed your lightsaber uh i did not i did not but i there was a there are a couple of moments where you start seeing like red lightsabers around everywhere and it's like i guess these are pretty easy to do i don't know i did have to go to a little jedi cave and make a lightsaber so there was a whole thing with that oh you've played this game I have. Yeah. So, yeah. You know what? At the end, I'm just going to say I could have taken him if I had one more little health stem. Right. I could have done it. Yeah. I'm a Jedi. I'm a Jedi. It's a fun game. Yes. I really enjoyed it. And I have the next, I guess, kind of same style game, the Jedi, I don't remember the name of it. Survivor. Survivor. Thank you. Excuse me. I was going to start that last night. unfortunately when i installed it i i installed it to my external hard drive and requires xbox requires it to be on a solid state drive to be played so i had to move it last night over which was no big deal except you know it takes some time so instead i went and started the battlefield six campaign which so i'm just like all right so i'm i need to accept belief that the game opens with NATO is being replaced in a country by a private military contractor, and the private military contractor at the very start of the game has decided, we're just going to attack NATO. And I'm like, okay. I'm sure they've woven a background where this all makes sense. But when your own troops at the start go, who sold them jets? battlefield campaigns have i like battlefield the game in general but battlefield campaigns aside from the bad company games have always been terrible right like it's just like what is this dumbest stuff but and i don't i don't know this is gonna win any awards but but then again it's also not call of duty it's definitely beating call of duty in every way shape or form it is Call of Duty 7 is their worst experience in years. But we'll get into all the sad and fun video game news in a little bit. But I do want to go ahead and move us into the pinball topic. As I noted, I don't really have any pinball news, none that I deemed worthy of us having a conversation about. I think there's some stuff about accessories with X-Men stuff. We never talk about that stuff. Oh, we don't want to do a whole segment on the next topper that cost as much as like a car. I mean, I don't want to, but I'll probably have to at some point. But instead, I want us to do emails. Our listeners, they come to our rescue from time to time. They save us. They save us maybe every episode. It's hard to say. We do tend to get a decent number of emails. And actually, we have an anonymous email, and I'm going to ask you to read it, Tony. The reason is the person who wrote in asked for you to read it in a Kansas City accent, but with enthusiasm, wonder, awe, and with a hint of, what am I doing here? So do you think you could achieve that for this interview? Thank you for at least allowing the accent to be normal, natural, real. But with enthusiasm, wonder, and awe. And a hint of, what am I doing here? don't forget that part yeah just a hint though don't don't just a touch don't throw the end you know don't put the whole bottle of bay leaves right right one bailey one one one i don't want to do the matthew mcconaughey where every sentence is a question no matter what it is right my car is on fire i'm sorry i'm sorry i forgot his mcconaughey it's my lincoln is on fire Murph! Murph! Charge the battery while I'm gone! Murph! I was an attendee of the spooky Midnight Madness event where we got to play the games and place a deposit. It was wonderful. First we got to see the official trailer in a theater room. Then I lost my place. The excitement and the enthusiasm over the trailer was infectious. I've never seen a room of adults so joyful. It was like opening an Atari 2600 on Christmas morning in 1979. From casual discussions over the evening with multiple spooky employees, I truly believe that they are comfortable with the limit of game set. The message was consistent that they set this number based on experience, prior sales data, and production capabilities with quality. They really stressed getting these built in one year and making another game announcement in late 2026. It was also not a secret that they have three or four hot licenses in development. One employee mentioned that they have had Beetlejuice for years and that licenses do have time limits attached. It is only my speculation, but I believe these time limits also come into consideration when setting the limited number of games. whether it is trying to renew Beetlejuice if time runs out and now there is a sequel which might complicate renewing that license or a title and development needs to get built before it runs out I don't know conversely, I think Barrels misjudged the popularity of Winchester by a lot I think they wish they could build more but they are afraid of the blow back by the community the truth is out there What a great time to be in this hobby. Okay. Well, thank you, anonymous emailer, for emailing your anonymous statement. So, okay, we obviously have talked both about Winchester and Beetlejuice. I guess you didn't really have a question for us. It's more of just opining on your thoughts. I think it's good opine thoughts, though. Well, I mean, the concept, I hadn't really thought about it, but the concept of part of the reason setting the limit is so low is because it's what they know they can finish before they would need to renew the license. That makes sense. Yes. And Spooky has generally tried to embrace this idea, I feel, for quite a while of getting through a production run within a year. So I do believe that. However, I do also believe they have the capabilities of building more than 1,000 units in a year. Now, you bring up the quality issue. Anonymous brings up the quality issue, I should say. The Fairpoint. But is 1,000 really the limit that they can maintain quality at? Is 1,200 really that hard? Maybe my suggestion of doubling it is. But I'm going to push back a little bit that I'm very skeptical that they really can't maintain quality once they move past 1,000 units. I think it's more likely that they can't maintain quality and get them out within the time frame they want to designate to get it out. And we've seen how drastically on some of their past titles their quality has dropped off and the issues they've had. Well, let me ask you this because I'm not sure on this. So I'd love your thoughts, Tony. Did their quality really get worse with their games? It was always pretty bad. It was. It was. And I remember the early days where mentioning that you had a quality problem with Spooky had the fan base coming at you with pitchforks and torches. Right. And that was always the – there's a segment for those that aren't familiar with it, those of you maybe newer. There's a segment. And it's not just for pinball. It's true in a lot of things. But there are certain individuals that they feel so strongly that shows media, things like what we do, that we should be operating from a perspective that our words matter and it is on us to try and make sure these companies stay in business. Now, I will say I do agree with them on one thing. Our words do matter. to us and to some of our listeners. But I have absolutely no obligation to try and support a company and keep them profitable and existing unless they're giving me a paycheck. I have no requirement. There is nothing that says that. And if you think that my role as a fan is to support even things I dislike or to not call out problems that I see because I don't want to rock the boat and because it's my duty to sort of protect the hobby, that's the kind of thinking and the problems that destroy hobbies. when you get to the point where you think, well, blank person can do no wrong because they're blank person, no matter what they do, that is a problem. This company we have, yes, this, yeah, they have a quality control problem, but we're not going to talk about it. We need to be excited and high energy for their new releases because if they don't sell well, then the company will go away and then there'll be one less company. Well, you know what? Let there be one less company. We don't need low-quality bad games giving people that are trying to enter the hobby bad experiences and leaving a bad taste in their mouth. If a company cannot stand on its own two feet with a mildly decent quality, good gameplay, and a smart grab of licenses, then they're in the wrong business. Period. They don't need my support. I'm not required to help them. Yeah, I personally don't really understand the mentality, but it comes up from time to time. What do you think about the anonymous's point about the license and how they noted that they'd had Beetlejuice for years? So maybe also in this particular instance, some of that drive is like, we really need to get it done in 2026. That would make sense. I can see that. I mean, we know licensing deals can be fickle. Both in the, like, setting them up and getting them. And they normally have time limits involved. And then, depending upon the licensor, you can be fickle with the release just because you have to get so many approvals before you can even show anything or mention anything. So it doesn't surprise me to have licenses sitting around for years. I've never really considered it to be a thing where, oh, we got the license and the game that we got the license for is coming out next year. I've always figured it would take more work than that. And it makes sense that you're working on multiple licenses in the background. I like attempting to get like multiple licenses in the background. Yeah, no, I could definitely see that that may be in play, though. Though if they if they've I'm going to use the phrase fallen behind. I don't know if they've fallen behind or not, but for example, if they actually only have the license through the end of 26, which is not what was said, but let's say maybe that's a factor, that could suggest that either they're taking too many licenses up, like they're just taking too many and they can't get through them all, or something happened and they fell behind, which is not a good thing. I don't have a spooky example for you, but I think the one we can all point to is Toy Story with J.J.P. and so my understanding of the behind the scenes with that instance was the reason why it toy story 4 and not toy Story is Pat Lawler took too long on the design And by the time he finally got something ready Toy Story 4 was about to come out and they needed to renew the license And when the license discussion happened, it was, OK, well, you're going to do four now. That wasn't the original plan. Right. By anyone. now we can judge whether or not JJP should have rolled over and accepted that or just taken Lawler's layout and done a different theme but the decision is the decision anyway those are some interesting points thank you Anonymous next email came in from Jeff R he didn't ask for who he wanted to read it so I guess I will do it Jeff is not from the south so he will be given a southern accent hey Dennis and Tony or Tony and Dennis I respect both hierarchical possibilities. To touch on the Beetlejuice launch and scalping as a wider topic, I wanted to chime in with the classic old man's take. With any hobby, no matter how niche or popular, you eventually find that the collecting aspect gets spoiled by the investor. Preach, brother. This happens literally in all hobbies. Look at Pokemon and the sports cards. As soon as Target opens its doors in the morning, You have a group of dudes rushing the card section to swipe it all. Meanwhile, little Timmy just wants a Charizard to throw down at recess in front of his friends. Be it sneakers, cars, action figures, stamps, retro games, comics, or even Scandinavian ceramics. Eventually, the investor rears its ugly head and ruins the thrill of the hunt and the community-driven ways of acquiring personal holy grails. It comes down to who has money up front and who has the time to be present at the exact moment, or in the case of pinball, before, of product availability to secure the item. I don't think there's a good cure for this, as it simply pervades all hobbies. And at some point in the last few years, pinball got invaded. Long gone are the days where a $900 bad cat could sit on the listings long enough to go and take a look at it on the weekend. Even longer gone are the days of selling anything at a fair price Rather than squeezing every last penny out of it Thankfully, pinball is still fun And it's still very accessible overall It's just a shame that the collecting site has become such a dogfight The podcast is neat You both swell gents See, I think that was the right accent with the swellness That works Thank you, Jeff, for the email Alright, so, what do you think? I mean, I think I made it obvious I mean, you're all like preach, brother, but it's true. It is. I am going to agree. I'm an old man. I don't like it. It's true. I don't. I do think that Jeff is exactly right. The investor mentality. I'm not even going to go so far as to say like investors like there are specific people, but the mentality of investing can ruin anything. it becomes more about anytime that it gets to a point where somebody is grabbing something and they have no plans to use it for its use they have no plans to enjoy it in any way shape or form other than what its actual monetary value is especially in a hobby i i feel that that degrades the hobby overall. I mean, and like he said, it's all sorts of things. No matter what you collect, there's people who do it. You get something, and then you just lock it away. Every time I see a listing for some new in-box game that was released a decade ago, it's like, new in-box, never played. And I'm just like, I hate that person. I mean, seriously, unless it was found like rotting in the back of a warehouse somewhere where it had gotten lost or a company had gone out of business or something and it had just been setting. It's like, why? Why would you? You literally bought it and just sat on it until you could hope you could make extra money on it. You did not. You did not enjoy it. you did not add to the hobby. You took it away from somebody who might have actually enjoyed it. And that's with any hobby. And just like he said, I see the videos online all the time of, just like he said, the people getting in and scalping stuff for money. And it is a terrible, terrible thing that has become a major part of our world right now. and I despise every bit of it. Yeah, there's, I mean, that I do agree with Jeff that there's not really a way to prevent this because when things have value, people will find a way to make money off of that value. And that's understandable. And in some larger hobbies, you might be able to say, if there's enough of a presence, enough of a variety of things, it is, you could say, let that go, pivot to something that hasn't been discovered yet. It doesn't work with pinball because there's so few. Just like it doesn't work with Pokemon cards because there's one producer. But like if you were into pocket knives and it's like, oh, this brand is too hot. Like people, there are plenty of other brands you could try that might like an undiscovered gym or like in the wristwatch world, there was a time where it's like, oh, look, all this stuff is really expensive. People are, they're sleeping on Grand Seiko. Grand Seikos became, and then until they became too popular and then the prices came up. But like there – so sometimes there's enough variety that there should always be something undiscoverable. We used to have – like if you go vintage pinball, you can – there's room to operate here. Like you used to be able to – Jeff's right. A lot of this is lost now. You used to be able to – until Slam Tilt Podcast came around and shilled them up, Stern Electronics games. Those could be a bargain to go and get, that sort of stuff. There's still some things, especially in the electromechanical side, that you could possibly still find and do things. But yeah, it could be a hard pill to swallow when you think back. I mean, he mentioned the $900 bad cats. When I bought my Xenon, it was working and it was like $800. My firepower was, I don't remember. Hoops. Yeah. Hoops sat when I went and got hoops. It had been listed for a few days. and i can't imagine something like hoop setting for a few days at this point it was all again and that one was kind of an interesting there you know there was some exception because again people didn't know what necessarily they had so the seller didn't do himself any favors by not actually listing the name of the game in his listing so we had to look at the pictures to know what pinball he had but nonetheless i was still able to schedule a time go out look at it and then actually buy it And so, yeah, in terms of like the new in box stuff, like what he brought up, Jeff brought up the thing about like the Beetlejuice launch. There are ways to do it differently that it won't solve it, but it can help. Here's one that I've seen done in a few in a few hobbies or industries that have hobbies tied to them. And that is rather than saying we're making nine hundred ninety nine. You could say sales are open for 48 hours and whatever orders we get, that's the number we build. I can see where that would backfire. It could if it got ridiculous. But if they're getting a non-refundable deposit on all of those and people end up backing out, you don't have to transfer the spot. You could say I'm keeping your deposit and that spot dissolves into Ether. So is it, I mean, again, realistically, were we going to see 2,000 Beetlejuices sold under that scenario? Maybe. 3,000? Probably not. So I don't think there was a huge amount of risk. Honestly, if you had like 3,000, 4,000 Beetlejuice orders, maybe it's time to bring in some more staff to build them. That would be my statement. So, yeah, there are some. You're right, Tony. There are some risks, but I don't think it's like catastrophic stuff. We sold a million units. Okay. In the case you can't make good, then maybe you have to go back and say, all right, guys, sales were so solid. We just – we've done the analysis. You're getting your money back. We just – we can't make a million. Half a million is our limit. Like Stern works for us now, and we still – we have to draw the line. So I just – I don't think that's necessarily that big a – another thing could be – oh, this would be weird. And this one gets really complicated to do. That one's actually pretty straightforward. But in terms of doing something like, you know, how power companies will sometimes do peak pricing. Oh, yes. Okay. Do something like as the sales start at a price and if sales start crossing certain thresholds, be like, there's more available, but the price is now $500 more. Yeah. Like the first 1,000 Beetlejuices are the 10,000, and it's 11,000 after 999 until you get to 1,200, and then it's 1,500 more. And then now the scalping is undermined because the company is taking the money, but they'll have to trigger it almost like as new waves. But they could be done. It would be like, all right, we've hit our sale amount. We've closed it out. Spooky decides to open up for more sales, and it's going to be an additional amount. As long as it's disclosed up front. Yeah. Because you don't want to lie. Winchester issue that Anonymous brought up with us, you know, that I'm sure they wish they could make more, but they are making the right decision to not change the production. Right. And you don't, I mean, you'd have to almost go something along the rounds of like what J.J.P. used to do where there's like 40 bajillion variants of Wizard of Oz. Right. So it's like, here's Beetlejuice Edition 1, Edition 2. The Ruby Red Worm Edition. Yeah. Here's the Cartoon Edition with cartoon art. Right. And those are still options that a company could explore if they really want to. I think the reason we don't tend to see this is from the company's perspective, they don't really, like, it's not really their problem. Right. And that's perfectly fine. I think them putting in limits that hit goals that they want and goals that they have, and it's within their capabilities, is the correct way to work. We have a big problem not just in pinball but in everything right now where the numbers always have to go up. And if a company succeeds, makes whatever it makes, and it makes a profit, it makes a solid profit every year, but it's the same profit, for whatever reason, we consider that a failing company. Well, yes. And that is insane to me. I mean, if your company is profitable and you have done what you turned out a good product and you're profitable, that's a success to me. But if your numbers don't go up multiple percentage points every year, you're considered a failing company. And it makes no sense. Colin A. wrote into us. Colin said the following. Hey, Dennis. Not really a question per se, but an important point in the FOMO discussion on Beetlejuice. You're noticing we get a lot of Beetlejuice stuff this time. That's because it's the only thing that's happening. That's the only thing. The big reason distributors like Pinball Star were able to jump the gun on pre-orders is that Spooky had been sowing seeds, the seeds of FOMO, for months, maybe longer, across the community for Beetlejuice, primarily through friendly content creators and in community chats. By the time Pinball Star posted, it was an open secret that the game was coming next, and other creators had been consistently telling people to get on the list for quite some time. so in my opinion at least this was all manufactured and the desired outcome why they pushed this hard on a theme as safe as beetlejuice with such a limited run is an open question cheers and have a great thanksgiving colin well thank you colin what do you think of colin's uh interpretation i mean it's not wrong it was an open secret it wasn't like a big surprise to anybody Now, for the whole why did they push so hard on a theme that that was that safe, with how things had been going, both in the economy and in their recent level of games that they've put out, I don't know that they thought it was safe. I think they were probably a bit more on edge about it, and they wanted to be sure that it was a success because they were in a point where they could really use a good success. I agree with that. I really think it surprises me because I think if they had consulted with anyone, if they just needed a set of eyes, and I know they talk to other people that aren't just working at Spooky, but whether they trusted it or didn't ask the question or whatnot doesn't really matter. I agree with you that I think they just were not convinced that Beetlejuice was that safe, even though it's so obviously that safe. Especially when you just take a step like, again, this is where I'd be like, well, you know, they have their distributors like Pinball Star, Zach Minney with Flip N Out Pinball, just like showing them and saying, what do you think? Like, Zach has a pretty good read on the market. I looked at it once it came out. I didn't see it ahead of time. But once I saw the stuff, I'm like, how could you not think this is a hit? It's so obvious. But here's the thing. They thought Halloween was going to be a hit. Did they? I would assume so. Based off of what? The flash animations or the servos that take 30 seconds to lift the ball up? An outside person would have been able to. That's why I mentioned it. I understand maybe being worried, and I respect the caution. I respect the caution about being worried. What if we got it wrong? What if we're misreading the market? What if this art isn't going to click? What if, what if, what if? That's all fair. Well, see, that's what I mean is I think that they thought that. They thought they were good on some of their earlier releases that did poorly. So now they were second-guessing themselves. I think you're right. However, and I don't know if they could have changed it. I don know what the deal is with the license or I don know any of that I think after they saw and were able to because as Colin noted something I hadn thought about was like the community chats and stuff But they're really in touch with the community. They see a lot of this stuff. They see a lot of the discussions on social media, on the forums. They listen to the podcasts. I don't know if they listen to ours, but they listen to podcasts. So they're pretty attuned to the pinball hobbyist, which is good because that's their market. So knowing your audience is useful. what i'm laying the groundwork for is after evil dead sold out which was not an immediate success but we met them at tpf last this year they were so excited because they had just sold it out i mean they were pumped as they should be super pumped after that after all the buzz that colin has noted like all this discussion i mean they were really pushing you know encouraging all that I completely agree with Colin on all of these points. I believe he is correct. Coupled with watching what happened with Winchester Mystery House from barrels, there was enough there to not only be confident, they should have upped the count before they went public. That's what I think. 200 more. 300 more. I think it was that obvious. And I think if they had asked, and we know they had other people outside eyes on it. Because people like Zach and Greg from straight down the middle were coming in to do their featurette and all of that. But anyone they would have asked, been like, hey, because they got plenty of people with the do the NDAs and stuff. Be like, they all had to be telling them this is going to be a smash hit. So before they went live with the sales. They should have known it was a smash hit, even if we couldn't agree that it's totally understandable that they just talking amongst themselves. would have been unsure all the way up until the final point. But there is a lot. You're right. There is a lot of background where they probably thought they had something good that ended up not being well. But again, an objective and I think an objective analysis of it will point to a lot of things they know about the quality control stuff, because, again, they listen to the community and the people who write in asking for help on things that aren't working right. Those counts were also huge. Scooby Doo was almost 2000 units. Yeah. and we have to remember that just because something is famous doesn't mean the nostalgia for it is in the same capacity of oh i want this in my home my go-to example for this is always the first licensed game that american pinball did hot wheels who didn't have hot wheels growing up and who cares now like right i don't have an emotional attachment to hot wheels like it's not it's not there's not a story there i understand that that game had a story because there's a youtube show that they built around as right i get that they thought they solved it except they lost the plot that that that doesn't exist in my child brain and my child brain hot wheels were just i had micro machines too it's they were just cars to play with i like to make them zoom around and do stuff and pretend they were fighting my gi joes gi joes had a plot doing gi joe would have been a better theme i 100 agree on that so i mean and that's that that's part of the thing and then you never know where nostalgia is going to attach anyway because i'm right in the vein of where beetlejuice would be uh a big nostalgia hit for me and i don't really care i yeah well yeah i mean we all have our own personal take but we know that it's a beloved movie by a lot of people yeah i mean it's a good movie don't get me wrong i enjoyed watching it but it's not a movie that I would consider something that I, I mean, case in point, I've not watched it in, I don't know. God, I don't know if I've watched it this century. Yeah, I haven't in a really long time. But I'm also not big into Tim Burton stuff. Right. I mean, that's just me. But I'm also, I don't think I'm particularly savvy, but I'm aware enough to know that that is a really good theme for pinball. It is. And there are a lot of people who really do like Beetlejuice Or once they see this, we're going to remember they liked it. Right. Sort of thing. Whereas, you know, there are other things where I might like more. A common one would be Big Trouble in Little China. Big Trouble in Little China, I will tell you, will not sell like Beetlejuice will. Never will. But it would be one I would be more interested in. I watch that movie like maybe once a year. So, yeah. I mean, that movie has a much bigger nostalgia hit for me than Beetlejuice does. And in terms of the – again, Colin is on point with they did seem to do a real big – it was kind of funny because after the game finally went for sale, it's still like all the stuff. Like there was the Loser Kid interview. You get the feature. Like there was an awful lot of full court press when they really didn't even need to show up for the game because the other team had already forfeited, so to speak. Like they did end up – I don't mean to make it sound kind of negative, but they did end up actually kind of wasting a lot of their time marketing something that was already sold out. Like they didn't need to put in nearly as much marketing effort as they ended up doing. That I understand more though than some of the other decisions. That lays a foundation for the next game. Sure. There are some things that they'll want to keep repeating. Right. I get why them always wanting to do a featurette just like JJP, be it Harry Potter or Avatar. They always bring in that ultra-fancy company that comes in and does the really slick trailer. I get it. They didn't need that for Harry Potter, but they've been doing it always. It's part of the marketing. That I understand. Our last pinball email comes from Andrew D., who wrote in saying, Hey, guys. Happy Thanksgiving. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on Dirty Player One as a pinball theme. and andrew thank you andrew what a licensing nightmare that would be oh my god i i mean are we doing book or movie honestly the movie would be easier licensing yes but because it's because because the assets are all owned by one company yes but i also don't i've seen the movie once and i've had no interest in revisiting the movie. The book was really good, though. Yes. I mean, it was. The second one, not so much. But it is very much a flash-in-the-pan type thing to me. It hit its nostalgia touches just right. I think there are very fun things you could do with it. But I think that about a lot of themes that have absolutely no chance to actually be good and actually sell. This would be such a licensing nightmare. that I don't think anybody would touch it with a 30-foot pole. I'm going to set, and I shouldn't set the, well, I was going to say, I'm going to set the licensing challenges aside, but it's a very good point. As a theme, I don't think it's worth doing, even with that. Ready Player One, as a story, in and of itself, is good, but it's there's nothing about it that tells me it should be pinball like the whole strength of what it did it's the same thing with stranger things in a lot of ways stranger stranger things first season and i've not seen stranger things so i can speak with it with full authority obviously obviously but the strength of stranger things when it first came out that i knew about what people liked is it was just like this huge nostalgia dose and that's what ready player one often tries to be is this huge nostalgia dose and especially the movie in terms of just like inundating you with all of these memories it to me is better to take one of those memories and do the pinball machine around that you do the pinball machine around he-man around gundam around uh voltron you know that's what you do not ready player one which is a hodgepodge of nostalgia of pieces it has a good story but do do a lot of people really remember the plot of ready like was it like this amazing tale not i mean it's good it's not it's not great yeah it's it's like avatar visual spectacle bravo story i'd say ready player one story is actually more unique than that but yeah i am again it's not it's not like it's not like everywhere everything all at once mind blowing, like really making, it's not like a thinker's thing or anything. Like, this is nothing, this is nothing, there's no nostalgia to Ready Player One than nostalgia to the stuff in Ready Player One. So that's why I think it's not a good pinball theme. Just pick something that you really liked in it and theme it around that. Like, what's the value, like Back to the Future is the movie people think of. Something else that has a DeLorean in it is not your Back to the Future substitute. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes sense. Also, just That's my tip. Just, man, a Gundam pinball machine would be fun. Yeah. Which one do you do, the original show? I would do something Universal Century. I would probably do the original show. I think that would be the one that makes the most sense. I think if you wanted to really sell, you'd do something newer. you probably do wing or uh one of the newer like seed or something i don't think gundam's popular enough with pinball collectors oh no totally not so i wouldn't do it but but yeah seed seed might be my favorite of the ones i've seen um there's a newer one that uh it's been oh there's a ton of newer ones wicks uh yeah and i mean there there's there's uh uh iron-blooded orphans and and and all sorts of other ones unicorn and yeah there there's tons of them what there are also tons of are pieces of video game news so much and i mentioned uh richard did write into us richard a uh gave us i don't have a quote of the email uh just in terms of highlights for the virtual pinball news that is out there. He noted things have been pretty quiet over the last couple of weeks. Zacharia has indicated, though, that they now have the license to the Blood Red video game series. Do you know the Blood Red? It didn't resonate with me. It's like a vampire. It almost reminded me of Blood Rain. It sounded like monster vampires. Oh, that is that vampire game that came out and crashed and burned on launch. Oh, okay. Also, he noted that Zen Pinball has their FXVR package is going to get the Universal's Monster Pack, a Charlie Brown Christmas Pinball and Godzilla vs. Kong Pinball Pack. These have already been in the base game. This is just for the VR one. And with the new Steam VR stuff coming out, that might not be a terrible. I did not know that they had a Charlie Brown Christmas Pinball. I'm sure it's got a sad little tree in there somewhere. It would have to. Would it be a Charlie Brown Christmas without it? You know, the only I've seen it, the one that I always watched a lot as a kid was always the one with a great pumpkin. Yep. You see? Yeah, that's the one. That's the one you do is a great pumpkin. Netflix, Tony, tell me about Netflix. Well, I mean, normally this isn't something that would be huge in the video game thing, but Netflix is providing regulators allow it to happen. Purchasing Warner Brothers in an eighty two point seven billion dollar deal. But that purchase includes gaming developers Rocksteady, NetherRealm Studios, and Avalanche Studios, who you would know better for making the Batman Arkham Asylum games, the Marvel Combat games, and Hogwarts Legacy that launched last year and did huge. so there's obviously no specific word on how those studios will be affected but that that is putting a lot of licensing uh into one big pair of hands and with with some built-in video game development capacity so it will be interesting to see how that all shakes out um what could be a very impressive uh uh timeline that my notes here this timeline moves so fast that my notes here are actually incomplete so on december 3rd an announcement trailer for the new postal game postal bullet paradise was released the same day the massive outrage over the completely obvious and massive amount of generative AI use in the game got so loud that on December 5th, so two days later, the publisher of the game, Running With Scissors, announced that they will not publish the game. They were canceling the game and they were breaking their ties with the games producer Goonswarm. Yesterday, which was the 6th, Goonswarm Studios ceased to exist. But it was just robots anyway, right? So, I guess. And that's the thing is I was watching a bunch of, like literally I read this this morning. They were doing a bunch of tracking and stuff and Goonswarm shut the entire studio down. And the entire Goonswarm studio is based in Russia. So it was just nothing but AI generating the AI postal game. Oh. And, yeah, it was, yeah. Dasvidanya. So, yeah, announcement trailer, and three days later, the company is gone. Wow. Okay. How does speed run a gaming failure? It's because it's the season for earnings reports. Sega has said in their latest earning report that they plan to leverage AI in development for efficiency improvements, but intend to proceed carefully to identify the appropriate uses for AI, which means they're better than the companies that are just like, we're an AI shop now. Either get on board or leave. Do you think that Sega is going to be acquiring Goon Swarm? I mean – Maybe it happened just now. I don't know. I mean, who knows? It's been minutes since the last time I read an update, so that timeline is moving so quick. We've spoken multiple times in the past about that whole light of Motorium, where Tencent basically turned out an absolute clone of Horizon Zero Dawn that they were in, and so closely that PlayStation sued them, and they started changing all the art that they released in their Steam page to hide this stuff. Well in their negotiations in the lead to the court hearings which are scheduled in January they went ahead and agreed to halt all promotion and public testing of the game until after the court case is over or fourth quarter of 27 whichever comes first Okay. So we're not going to know anything for a little bit But I think that is a pretty telling Yeah our lawyers told us we might be in trouble So we're going to dial stuff back Yeah So we'll see how that all works out They're trying to get Sony has the initial hearing Is set in January Tencent has their hearing Or their request to dismiss and their lawyers have been negotiating to try it with the court to get them set so those two hearings happen at the same time on the same day. All right. So they can just do them together and try and get it taken care of. New filings from Saudi Arabia's public investment fund that specifically came out if filings that they had to make public in Brazil for Brazil's monetary thing said that shows that the actual breakup of the buyout of EA and it will end up with the public investment fund owning 93.4% of EA. Silver Lake will have 5.5% and Affinity Partners will own the final 1.1% because this purchase took EA from being a public company to a private company. This is a full buyout, and they pulled it off the market. The total cost of the buyout, as we've talked in the past, was $55 billion. But interestingly enough, there are reports coming out from the investment fund that after the cost of this buyout, plus a bunch of investments they've done into projects that are now in financial distress, that the investment fund is very low on cash and is now limiting investments for a time while they rebuild their cash reserves because they are invested in that big, I don't remember the name of it, that big line city where they were making like a megalopolis in Saudi Arabia where it was going to be just a giant single building that went on for like hundreds of miles and the whole thing started falling apart and the construction is way over budget and they decided to make just one little thing and cut all the stuff back. And they were invested in apparently a Antonio Cruz line that failed and a few other things. So some of their investments have failed. And with their giant purchase of EA, they are currently – they're not liquid. Right. They've got trillions and trillions in investments, but they're not in liquid spendable state. Also, going back to some more of our discussion from the Sega, during their Q&A session at their earnings report, They had spoke about their sales being low and how poorly their new releases have been doing. And one of the issues that was brought up is they, Sega and some of the companies that they've owned, have been very big into doing definitive editions that drop one to two years after the game comes out. Yes, yes, yes. And there's been a lot of thought that their sales are slumping because people are, no, why would they buy this when the definitive edition will be out in a year? It's got a bunch of extra stuff. Right. That's a good point. That is one of their concerns that they're looking at. CD Projekt Red, we are talking about putting out three, a new trilogy of Witcher games, so three more Witcher games, but they are planning to put all of them out in a six-year time frame. Okay. We don't have a firm date on when the first one will come out. That will be Witcher 4, other than they've said it will not be out in 2026. So 2027 is the year we're going to hear it. But the big thing is they are planning to use the exact same engine and the exact same framework for all three games. So once they release the Witcher 4, they'll use that engine and assets and everything to generate the other – to make the other two games. So they'll just have to plug in the new art assets and the new stories and stuff. So once they get to a point where Witcher 4 can come out, it'll be every two years there'll be a game come out. So if Witcher 4 comes out in 28, 5 will come out in 30, and 6 will come out in 32. Okay. RAM prices are still climbing. We talked about this last time where there's rumors that Xbox is going to increase their prices yet again. Since that time, RAM prices have climbed even more. They've doubled since August, more than doubled depending upon the type of RAM in some situations. And it's not looking like it is going to be stabilizing anytime soon because with the demand for AI and new data centers taking so much RAM, all the consoles taking so much RAM that prices have gotten so bad that some places are listing RAM prices. They're not even putting a price on it anymore. It's just market price. Like if you were going to go buy like Wagyu steak somewhere and it's just market, it's whatever the market is or a really fancy fish, whatever the market is, because prices are changing like daily on RAM costs. And there was a Black Friday deal on a PC that I had marked to watch for Christmas because my PC is so old and it's retiring. and so I actually sent it to my folks and said, hey, if you want to get me something for Christmas, here's a PC. I'm building my own. I sent this one and then they wrote me back later when I went over for Thanksgiving actually and said, oh yeah, that one it went up hundreds between and I thought, I bet it's the RAM. Yeah, there were several things I was looking at. It was the same thing where there were big sales announced and they were coming up and then prices just started shooting up because the RAM jumped again. That deal was supposed to be for a week and it was, I think, we talked three days after the listing went live or something and they mentioned, yeah, no, it actually jumped up. Black Friday sales, things are more expensive. Surprise! I didn't talk about it in the things that I did, but that is one thing I did between the shows is I took my whole family down to Hutchison to the Cosmos to go look at all the space stuff and it was a good time okay and i took pictures of lots of watches i sent them to you of all the spaceman watches the only thing i remembered though was that your kids were all like brahms yes we went to brahms and my kids were like it's mid dad it's mid but they like the ice cream okay well i mean i didn't leave them down there i considered it's mid what are they what what do you feed them normally that's so i don't gourmet i don't i will say my one daughter got the chicken strips because she's a chicken strips person i don't know if their strips are good quite frankly they were bland they were super bland but they came with like black pepper gravy and the black pepper gravy was amazing because i tried it i'm like well let's try yeah okay at that point the chicken strips would be a vessel to put gravy yes in your in your that's how dairy queen does it right uh but she doesn't like gravy so she just had bland chicken okay all right so back into video games i had nothing to do with video games i just forgotten about it it's been a long time since we talked about Embracer Group. Well, I was just thinking about them, though, because of all the stuff, you know, Saudi Arabia. Oh, well, we're kind of tight on funds right now. Liquid Capital. And now I'm like, does that mean we're going to start seeing them unloading pieces they just picked up in a year? It's possible. It is entirely possible because, well, A, that's what Embracer Group's doing. And part of their fall is that the Saudi Arabia group backed out of the purchase of Embracer that they were working towards. but they've sold off two more studios in their ongoing restructuring, Art Games and Cryptic Studios. Art Games has done all the publishing for Star Trek Online and Neverwinter, the Neverwinter Nights MMO. Yeah, I used to play Neverwinter Nights MMO. Yeah, and Cryptic does all the development for those two games. So they just dumped those two MMOs, basically, and everybody involved with them. um and for what three episodes now we've been talking about rockstar it's all a build-up to grand theft auto everyone's everybody's getting ready for grand theft yeah rockstar new stuff has come out about their alleged union busting termination of those 34 employees apparently uh at least some reports are saying that the the union uh like there there was an invite only Discord server for employees and union reps outside of the company. And the internal reason for the termination where they said these people were broken for violating rules on information was because on this invite-only server for employees and union reps, these people talked about a Ryan Policky change within the company. And so when the interviewers and journalists that had been hunting this information down reached out to Rockstar, Rockstar refused to comment on it. But the company, Rockstar, had recently made big changes to their internal Slack policies, and were making a bunch of internal adjustments and changes. and the people had commented on it on this outside server. Somehow Rockstar found out about the outside server and then terminated these people because they talked about company stuff on an outside server. They just happened to be the 34 people that were primarying the union. We're coming up on awards season. And by coming up on awards season, I mean the awards are Thursday, this upcoming Thursday, the Game Awards. Jeff Keighley, the organizer of the Game Awards, put out a social media post directing people to a statue in the Mojave Desert of demonic creatures, bodies, skulls surrounding a giant light-up portal thing. I think I see a picture of this. Yeah. It's weird looking. It's crazy. But nobody knows what it's about. Everyone's assuming that it has to do with an announcement. Kojima. But, I mean, possibly. A lot of the big announcement thoughts was Doom, the new Elder Scrolls game, or a couple others. But a lot of those companies have come out and said, no, we don't have any announcements coming out. Okay. So nobody really knows yet. We'll see on Thursday. But I highly recommend you, if you look it up, the statue is weird looking. I thought I'd finish up talking about some video game news. Video game movie news, specifically. We've been talking about video game news this whole time. Sonic's doing great. They're putting out a fourth Sonic movie in 27. Meow. And then they're entering an expanded Sonic Universe movie in 28. Something to compete with Marvel. The Sonicverse. That's just what we need. I don't know. I'm worried that they're thinking that people are watching the Sonic movies for anything other than Jim Carrey. And if there is a Sonic Universe movie without Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik, that movie is going to crash and burn. Because that is by far the most enjoyable parts of that movie. He is their Loki. He is. So we will see what happens there. The other big thing is the Helldivers feature film now has a director. And I think they picked really well for what the feel of a Helldivers movie should be. They picked Justin Lin, who you would know best as director of Fast and the Furious, Tokyo Drift. Fast and Furious, Fast Five, Fast Six, Fast Nine. He knows action. Yeah, it's the right guy for as tongue-in-cheek of a movie as a Helldivers movie should be. Because in my mind, Helldivers needs to be even sillier than Starship Troopers. It needs to be higher on the silly scale than Starship Troopers to work. I hope the script has a lot of good. I also would like it if they have some Fast and Furious stuff in there. Like, I live my life a quarter dive at a time. Something like that. I know he did direct the first one, I don't think, but... No, but he directed most of... Oh, I still shake my head at that line. That is one of those things I find hilarious, that at one point in time, I remember when they were young, more recently out, Tokyo Drift was considered the worst Fast and the Furious. Well, because they didn't have Vin Diesel. Right. And now it's considered pretty good. People really like it now. They ended up bringing back a character from it. Yeah. So it's had a resurgence. And that one was about drifting. It was just different. Yeah. It was Initial D, the Fast and Furious version. Yeah. But that's what I've got. Okay. Well, we actually had a pretty full episode. We did. Thanks to the power of video games. We had some weird little side tangents this episode. Whether they hear all of it, I've made notes because I might need to trim some of this down. I haven't decided yet. Yeah. But what I don't need to trim down is the outro, which is not music, but instead us plugging things, such as if you want to reach out to us, you can email eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. Also available at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. If you want to support the show, we would love for you to support us. And we have a tier as low as a dollar a month at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. We're available on Twitch and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we should be back in two weeks with more of the latest on video games and pinball. But until then, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, guys. See you.