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Episode 4 – Ghostbusters, TPF Wizards Tournament, Early Access, Fable Legends, & Star Realms

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 10m·analyzed·Aug 18, 2016
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Stern announces Ghostbusters pinball; Texas Pinball Festival scrambles to fix tournament logistics.

Summary

In this March 2016 Eclectic Gamers Podcast episode, hosts Tony and Dennis discuss the announcement of Stern Pinball's Ghostbusters machine (designed by John Trudeau with art by Zombie Yeti/Jeremy Packer), featuring three tiers (Pro/Premium/LE), holographic modes, and magnetic slingshots. They also cover significant last-minute changes to the Texas Pinball Festival Wizards tournament qualifying structure, reducing player cap from 200 to 160, attempts from 30 to 20, and requiring only top-10 of 12 machines due to mathematical impossibility of original plan.

Key Claims

  • Ghostbusters pre-sales are doing 'gangbusters' and appear stronger than Game of Thrones based on community reception

    medium confidence · Dennis notes 'this thing is doing gangbusters on pre-sale' and observes no significant art complaints unlike Game of Thrones

  • The original TPF Wizards tournament format was mathematically impossible to execute with 200 entrants, 12 machines, 30 attempts per player at ~5 minutes per play

    high confidence · Both hosts confirm the math didn't work out; tournament director realized they couldn't give all players 30 attempts and changed structure accordingly

  • Ghostbusters Pro model includes Slimer toy and Stay Puft on playfield, but Stay Puft lacks full motion compared to Premium/LE versions

    high confidence · Tony and Dennis both note these features in Pro version during art package review and gameplay observation

  • Magnetic slingshots on Ghostbusters Premium/LE only activate when slings are touched, similar to hologram projection from Pinball 2000 era

    medium confidence · Tony explains his interpretation of magnetic sling mechanics after research; notes similarity to Pinball 2000 technology

  • Stern announced an LCD display upgrade coming later in 2016 for an unspecified machine

    medium confidence · Tony mentions hearing from Stern announcements that LCD is 'coming later this year for something' with no specification of which game

  • Modern Sam/Spike era Stern machines retain 90-95% of their purchase price on secondary market

    medium confidence · Tony notes used Stern prices drop only 'a couple hundred dollars' vs new in-box, making secondary market savings negligible

  • John Trudeau designed Bride of Pinbot, WWE, and Creature from the Black Lagoon

    high confidence · Dennis states these designer credits in opening Ghostbusters discussion

  • Game of Thrones Premium/LE versions include walker bombs and crossbow features absent from Pro model

    high confidence · Tony uses Walking Dead as example of significant mechanical differences between tiers, specifically mentioning walker bombs and crossbow

Notable Quotes

  • “I personally have had the plague... I've spent about a month sick, and the last two weeks have been the worst of it.”

    Tony @ ~0:30 — Opening context explaining Tony's absence from tournament and limited pinball activity

  • “The worst kept secret in pinball was that they were working on a Ghostbusters pinball machine.”

    Tony @ ~4:30 — Acknowledges Ghostbusters had been heavily rumored before official announcement

  • “Ghostbusters answers most of those complaints, in my opinion. It satisfies the people who complain about Photoshoppy clip art dropped all over the play field, which was the big gripe about Game of Thrones.”

    Tony @ ~20:00 — Indicates Stern responded to community feedback about Game of Thrones art by commissioning hand-drawn art for Ghostbusters

  • “I think this is one of those situations where they just had to make hard choices and they went with the best that they could within a limited amount of time while still getting the IFPA approvals.”

    Dennis @ ~48:00 — Justifies TPF's rushed tournament changes as damage control rather than ideal planning

  • “From a professional standpoint, it's embarrassing because it shows that they don't really know how to organize... in a way, from a professional standpoint, it's embarrassing.”

    Tony @ ~42:00 — Criticizes Texas Pinball Festival's planning competence, comparing to weak fighting game tournament organization

  • “I think them having such a bad showing if people weren't able to run all their qualifying times... I think it would have been a problem.”

    Dennis @ ~34:00 — Explains rationale for TPF needing to make changes to avoid tournament collapse

  • “The problem was there are differences. There were, in my view, significant differences. Walker bombs missing, the crossbow, that sort of stuff.”

    Tony @ ~25:00 — Examples substantive mechanical differences between Pro and Premium/LE tiers affecting purchase decisions

Entities

John TrudeaupersonJeremy PackerpersonStern PinballcompanyGhostbustersgameTexas Pinball FestivaleventGame of ThronesgameThe Walking Deadgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern's ability to innovate and take design risks has expanded as pinball market recovery generates increased revenue after 2000-2010 decline

    medium · Dennis notes 'pinballs are selling better now' and 'money to be made' enabling Stern to move 'out of the protectionist way of designing'

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival implementing live-streamed finals on Saturday to create 'centerpiece' tournament showcase, requiring reliable qualifying structure completion by Friday

    medium · Tony notes TPF planning 'live streaming the finals' and making it 'a centerpiece'; changes driven partly by need to avoid Saturday delays affecting broadcast

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Ghostbusters pre-sales exceptionally strong; hand-drawn art addressing primary Game of Thrones criticism has generated minimal negative community response

    medium · Dennis states game 'is doing gangbusters on pre-sale' and 'there's next to no grouse scene about how Ghostbusters looks'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Stern responding to Game of Thrones art criticism by commissioning hand-drawn art for Ghostbusters rather than using Photoshop clip art

    high · Tony states 'Ghostbusters answers most of those complaints' about Game of Thrones' photoshopped art; no complaints about Ghostbusters art package observed

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival made emergency changes to Wizards tournament structure with minimal notice (announced last week, tournament starts in three days)

    high · Tournament cap reduced 200→160, attempts reduced 30→20, players only need top-10 of 12 machines; changes announced with ~3 days notice

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.212

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. This is March 15th, 2016, episode number four. I'm Tony, joined as always by... Dennis. Hello, everyone. And we're going to talk about a couple of our favorite things. Let's start with what we've been doing this week. I personally have had the plague.
0:20
Mmm, the plague. Yeah, it's been great. I've spent about a month sick, and the last two weeks have been the worst of it. but I'm finally getting better. It's not killing me anymore like it was, but I haven't done much. I didn't get to go to the tournament at 403, and I haven't really played a whole lot of anything. I've basically watched the West Wing and read books. That's what I've done. Well, when one has plague, one can only do so much. Yeah, that's very true.
0:47
I did go to the 403 tournament, went to and out, which is my typical performance there. I find the competitions stronger and or I'm weaker on those tables than I am at Pizza West. Let's see. I also played and finished the story for Resident Evil Revelations 2. It was campy but fun.
1:09
Revelations was a good game, so I thought I'd try the second one, and I enjoyed it. I'm currently playing Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, which I believe is a mobile game that moved over to consoles a while ago. So I finally saw we've got our podcast approved for iTunes. I was really confused because I didn't get a confirmation email until I looked today and noticed that they sent the confirmation to the podcast email address, not to my personal email address. So oops on that account. In addition, I actually just before starting our discussion here for the podcast was watching Deadflip's Twitch stream because they are live streaming Ghostbusters Pro right now. So I was trying to get familiar with what that game is going to actually look like in play. I didn't realize that was going on tonight. I thought that was Thursday for some reason.

  • “They could have done partial refunds on the $60 because of the limited plays. They could have restructured the banks differently.”

    Tony @ ~50:00 — Offers concrete alternative solutions TPF could have implemented with minimal effort

  • “I also think pinballs are selling better now. The popularity has increased... And so I start, I'm thinking Stern's charging more for these machines now.”

    Dennis @ ~22:00 — Industry observation about market recovery enabling Stern to reinvest in innovation

  • “Texas Pinball Festival's big eyesore, from what I have read, has always been its tournament has been seen as weak and not very professional.”

    Dennis @ ~54:00 — Notes TPF's established reputation problem that these changes may worsen

    • Star Trek
    game
    Deadflipperson/entity
    Tonyperson
    Dennisperson
    403 Cluborganization
    Zombie Yetiperson
    Pinball 2000technology/game
    IFPAorganization
    Jack Dangerperson
    Pat Lawlorperson
    Pinsideorganization
    Pizza Westorganization
    Resident Evil Revelations 2game
  • $

    market_signal: Texas Pinball Festival's Wizards tournament struggled with planning and execution, reinforcing existing reputation as 'weak and not very professional' tournament

    high · Dennis notes TPF tournament has 'always been its big eyesore'; Tony criticizes changes as showing they 'don't really know how to organize'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Texas Pinball Festival's original tournament planning failed to account for basic mathematical constraints (player count × machines × attempts × time per play)

    high · Both hosts confirm original plan was 'mathematically impossible'; tournament director realized couldn't deliver 30 attempts to 200 entrants; Tony criticizes as 'amateur' and unprofessional

  • ?

    personnel_signal: John Trudeau (Ghostbusters designer) has established track record with successful designs (Bride of Pinbot, WWE); hosts express confidence in his ability to execute quality gameplay

    high · Dennis notes Trudeau 'has made some very good machines in the past discounting WWE'; Tony expresses optimism about gameplay quality

  • $

    market_signal: Modern Stern machines retain 90-95% of purchase price on secondary market, eliminating traditional cost savings for collectors avoiding new in-box purchases

    medium · Tony notes used Stern depreciation is 'usually a couple hundred dollars' on multi-thousand-dollar machines; drove his decision to buy Star Trek new in-box

  • ?

    announcement: Stern announces Ghostbusters pinball with three-tier release (Pro/Premium/LE) featuring holographic ghost mode, magnetic slingshots, and hand-drawn art by Zombie Yeti

    high · Official announcement Thursday; John Trudeau design confirmed; three models with specific feature differences detailed

  • ?

    product_strategy: Ghostbusters three-tier model includes meaningful mechanical differences (holographic mode and magnetic slingshots on Premium/LE only) rather than purely cosmetic distinctions

    high · Tony notes holographic mode and magnetic slings may justify Premium upgrade cost; observes these features weren't in earlier Stern games

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern announced LCD display upgrade coming later in 2016 for unspecified machine, marking potential departure from single-color DMD standard

    medium · Tony heard from announcements that LCD coming 'later this year for something' with no game specified; Ghostbusters confirmed to use standard DMD

    • 2:00
    Yeah, they say they're going to stream it again, but I don't know when exactly. But, yeah, they're on the factory floor at Stern, and they were rotating through four-player games. And so it was an interesting little taste to it. Obviously, it's still a test machine. It is pro model, as I noted. So there will be differences on the premiums and the LEs, but we will actually get into that. And I'd say we'll get into that right now because let's go ahead and transition to our pinball segment. I agree. That makes the most sense. Well, we got a couple of pinball topics today. And the first one we wanted to tackle was the big news, which I kind of spoiled already. But that's Ghostbusters, Stern Pinball. This has been often by many other podcasts and forum posts known as the worst kept secret in pinball was that they were working on a Ghostbusters pinball machine. That was announced back on Thursday. Just some some quick summary information on it. It is a John Trudeau design. He's a well-known designer. He did Bride of Pinbot, WWE, Creature from the Black Lagoon. the art package it's hand-drawn art done by a someone who who operates under the name uh zombie yeti his actual name is jeremy packer and like other recent pinball machines uh namely game of thrones which was the last recent announcement there will be three models to this a pro a premium and an le so in addition to the standard differences which the le's and premiums tend to have the same stuff, same equipment, same toys. The pro models are the cheaper ones. They're targeted towards operators. They tend to be less maintenance required and stripped down. The premium and LE versions, in terms of beyond the toys, the known differences are different structure to the ramps, holographic ghost mode, and using magnetic action slingshots rather than traditional slingshots. But I guess, Tony, let's go ahead and start out. What do you think in terms of about Ghostbusters and what you've seen so far? We've both reviewed the art packages for all three versions. And that's pretty much all we know. As I noted earlier, I've gotten a brief glimpse at the gameplay today. I've watched about an hour of it. But, you know, it's all very preliminary right now. So we've really only had visuals to go from. Yeah, just from the art I've seen, I think I like the premium the best of the three. I like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and Ecto-1 on the sides, and all the Stay Puft imagery to me is very much a Ghostbusters classic thing.
    4:47
    I don't mind the – the pro looks okay. I don't know. I just – I wasn't real keen on the dogs in the pro for some reason, and the Slimer is green. It's very green. I do like that the back glass is an actual back glass and not a trans light. That's a pretty cool little addition. But I think the big thing is going to be the magnetic slingshot, how they work. I mean, if they're really crazy, like, you know, if they can get it set up so it'll just continuously bounce the balls back and forth between them or do weird stuff with the ball, that could be really cool and also a real pain in the butt for tournament play. Yeah. Yeah, I liked all three art packages. I was surprised, actually, at how similar the art looked. Sometimes when it comes to back glass and cabinet, there's very dramatically looking differences. But a lot of some of the same sort of themes were incorporated and just drawn slightly differently in certain scenarios. I would agree with you that I think the premium looks the best overall. all but a lot of that is probably derived from the fact that i'm when i think ghostbusters i think stay puffed so and he's he is the centerpiece i guess you could say regarding the premium whereas the le is focused on slimer and i believe the back glass sort of the dogs and there's a firehouse themed the pro on the sides of the cabinet i also i didn't care for the le's decision to go with slime green rails or armor or whatever they've got going on. It's just, I get it. I get the idea of it. I just, I think it's distracting. I've never been a big fan of those sort of weird color looking things.
    6:32
    Looking at the Pro, I was surprised that it did not look as bad or as bare bones in terms of play field stuff as I thought it would. Some of these Pros that have come out from Sturm, it's really, really obvious when they have less toys um and it just i mean some of them look naked and i did not think this looked that way you still have a slimer toy you still got stay puffed on the play field they've still got the cityscapes so you have the obvious stuff like the ramps that are plastic instead of the wire frame and not going everywhere all over the play field and more mechanical differences that are there but they did a really good job making it look nice um but i have to say that the hologram mode when I read about it, it sounded really cool to me. And until I see it, I'd be hard-pressed to want to settle for a pro, unless that mode is terrible, like either it's really hard to activate or it isn't cool. But that's sort of a gimmick where the holograms kind of seem to appear on the glass. That comes from Pinball 2000, back in the late 90s, early 2000s, and no one's really been doing it since those experiments. I also think the magnetic slings are a really interesting idea.
    7:47
    So I didn't know initially what exactly that meant. From what I've learned since, it sounds like the slings themselves do not physically fire. They're almost like dead slings where they're just rubbers, but then there are magnets near the slings and they'll be able to have a lot of control in terms of being able to manipulate the ball. I don't know. That could be really interesting. From a tournament play perspective, I wonder, is that going to be frustrating? Because sometimes on certain games, when the magnets are active, people don't like to shoot because when are the magnets going to actually interfere with the ball? If the magnets only kick on when the slings are touched, I think that's a very clever idea, and that's what I think they're doing here. I don't think it'll be like when the electric chair is active on Adam's family and you've got to deal with this magnet in the middle of the play field mucking everything up. So I really want to see that in action, and we haven't been able to yet. As is typical, Stern does pro first, so that's what they're demoing on deadflip right now. And premium will be the last to be built, but I'm hoping they'll give deadflip, Jack Danger, an opportunity to go and maybe show us an LE as those are coming off the floor so we can actually start to see some of those mechanics in action. What did you think, Tony, about their decision to keep using a single-color dot matrix display?
    9:08
    I'd like to say I was surprised, but honestly, I'm not. Stern is very much the go the old route, what works, works for a reason type company. Now, I was interested to see that in the announcements that they said that there is an LCD coming later this year for something. with no idea of what, but I'm not surprised that they stayed with the DMD. I wish they hadn't, but I think it's time to move on. I think it's been proven enough by other companies to be a decent way to go. Even if it's just replacing the DMD with something a bit higher quality, a bit more high definition, it would help a lot. It would look better, especially with how much licensing they do, because, frankly, the movie capture stuff on DMV just looks horrible. It does. And so far from what I've seen from the clips that I was able to watch on the Deadflip stream today, it does not look like they went that route with these dots. I didn't see movie rips. They look custom, kind of like the Star Trek ones were all custom. So the dots overall I thought looked pretty good for being dots. Like you, I was not surprised at the decision not to go with LCD yet. I was pleased to hear that they are planning to do that. I look at it from a competitive standpoint versus the other companies. Yes, they're dominant, and that's great for them. I do want them to up their game. Outside of that, I think Ghostbusters upped the game quite a bit. The idea, at least on the premium and LE versions, The idea of having projected holograms back into play, the idea of using some sort of magnetic slingshot feature, that sort of stuff is not what we're getting out of from other companies. It's mostly been, hey, why is Stern not sticking in as many toys as Spooky is? Or why does their art not look nearly as nice as Jersey Jack on the Hobbit is? You know, those sort of things. Ghostbusters answers most of those complaints, in my opinion. It satisfies the people who complain about Photoshoppy clip art dropped all over the play field, which was the big gripe about Game of Thrones. This looks busy. Even the pro version looks busy. the playfield looks full. And so I think they're definitely responding to that. I think it's a mix. I think they're responding to the demands that some of the collector community have started to express to them. And I also think that pinballs are selling better now. The popularity has increased. There are more operators on sites around that are buying machines. And so there's money to be made. So they are able to, this isn't like the 2000 to 2010, where everything was near dead and it was just barely surviving. And so I start, I'm thinking Stern's charging more for these machines now. They have been for a few years and we're starting to see a little bit of that, that additional funding they're getting being put back into the machines. Yeah, I have no problems with that at all. I think that's exactly what's going on is they are finally, partially they're moving out of the, I almost want to say protectionist way of designing pinball machines that they were doing that was getting machines built and getting machines out and in play and keeping the company afloat in the lean times and now that things are getting better they can innovate again uh they can they can afford to take the chances and i think this i i think ghostbusters had some chances taken and i think it looks really good the fact that the pro does as you say look is good on the table it doesn't look like everything's been stripped off is a lot i i like it i like how that looks i like what it says i like that they're doing the like the big slammer toy is on everything even though it doesn't have the full motion on the pro that it has on the premium and le it's still going to be there and i think all in all it was a good solid play by stern i think they've turned out a very nice looking machine hopefully it shoots well um trudeau has made some very good machines in the past discounting wwe we'll see we'll see how this turns out i mean i'm pretty i'm pretty happy with it from looking at it here's the big question is if you were going to order one what would you order well from a financial perspective i would have a lot of difficulty ordering above a pro just personally uh and and that's frustrating with a game like this because as i i don't think i've mentioned on the podcast before but what i i've mentioned to you before, I've only ever bought one new in box pin and that was Star Trek. And the reason why I bought Star Trek, it wasn't my favorite game that was in production. Walking Dead was. But the problem is I'd only ever and still have only ever played an LE version of Walking Dead. And I knew I'd be satisfied with a premium in terms of the features versus I didn't care about the art package for the LE versus the premium. The problem was there are differences. There were, in my view, significant differences. Walker bombs missing, the crossbow, that sort of stuff. That's on the premium and LE version, but not on the pro. Whereas with Star Trek, most of the stuff missing between the premiums and the pros was cosmetic.
    14:27
    And so while I enjoyed Star Trek, and I played a pro version, in fact, so I knew I liked it. I was comfortable doing that. With Ghostbusters, it's that same sort of boat. I'm looking at it and it's like, well, okay. I've now, I've witnessed some pro gameplay. I really want to see how those magnetic slingshots work and that holographic mode works. If that stuff's really cool, then I would want a premium. But given the price of the premium, I don't know if those features are enough that I would want to pay the additional, what is it, $1,500 to get that for just those features. In which case I would just, you know, monitor for when a used one pops up. But one has to acknowledge that when a used one pops up, how much cheaper is it going to be? And that was my issue with Star Trek and Walking Dead and all the modern Sterns that I watch. The price drop is next to nothing. It's usually a couple hundred dollars. That's why I ended up buying new in box. There's not a tremendous savings that you can get on these machines, these Sam and Spike version Sterns. They're just not dropping in price very much. people basically want to sell them for new in box prices and they're just subtracting out the mods so i would i would want a premium from everything i've heard so far i'd want a premium uh would i buy a pro i don't know i need to i need to try it i liked the look of the gameplay on the pro uh i wasn't it looked i mean it looked enjoyable it didn't look like an issue with flow like wwe had or anything so that looked good but if the premium looks great then i wouldn't want to settle for a pro whereas like with walking dead i haven't tried the pro so i don't know if i'd be oh i don't really care if it has walker bombs or not uh you know i just the layout and everything i'm not i need to experience it same with game of thrones i've only played the premium there's a pro on location and i want to try the pro i like the look of the pro on game of thrones but you know it's a big question to say okay will i be happy with the version without the upper play field or do i need the upper play field to truly enjoy it. Initially, I would lean towards thinking the one with more features is going to be the more enjoyable one. That's why it costs more. That assumption is not always true, but I hedge that way. So I would want a premium, but price-wise, I don't see myself paying it new in box. Yeah, I can understand that. I think if I was going to get one, I would want a premium. I mean, price-wise, I can't see myself getting anything at this time. And honestly, I think the number one thing on my list right now would be a Game of Thrones. If I was going to get something, a Game of Thrones would top my list. And I've heard enough goodness about the Pro that I could see myself getting a Game of Thrones Pro. But I still need to try that one. I was going to go try it last week, but I had the plague. And it kept me from doing that amongst everything else that it's kept me knocked down with. Well on the plus side those will be on location for a while And let say fingers crossed that one of our operators in the area will end up getting Ghostbusters We actually I think the odds are pretty good 403 Club tends to get the new Sterns and given how popular Ghostbusters has been from everything I read this thing is doing gangbusters on pre-sale. I don't know if it's doing better than Game of Thrones or not. With the collector community, though, the shortfall on Game of Thrones was the art. There's next to no grouse scene about how Ghostbusters looks. Even the complaints about the DMD still being there are completely outweighed by the hand-drawn art. So given that, I think Stern's already got a hit on their hands, and I imagine we're going to see one in the area. I'm hoping. I'm hoping. I would love for 403 to get rid of WWE and put in the new Trudeau game instead. That might not happen, but he does tend to line up a number of Sterns at his bar, and so that's the place I think is most likely that we'd get a chance to see it. Yeah, we'll just have to see how it is. I'm definitely hopeful to see one locally somewhere.
    18:39
    And with that, I think we should step on to the big thing, the changes in the Texas Pinball Festival. When's that? Wizards tournament this year that came up all of a sudden. Yeah, this is our sad pinball topic, whereas Ghostbusters is quite a positive, exciting thing to talk about. Even if we don't know anyone getting one, it's still always neat to see a new pinball machine. In three days, we're going down to Texas, and that will be the start of the qualifications for the Wizards tournament that they're hosting at the Texas Pinball Festival. What had happened is the initial plan for the tournament was there were going to be 12 machines. You would play all 12 of them and have 30 attempts with your high score on each machine being what is kept. You'd pay $60 to compete in the tournament, and they would take up to 200 people would be allowed to participate in the tournament. And then based off of your ranking on those 12 machines would determine which people got to go and participate in the finals.
    19:43
    Apparently, what has happened is they realized that there was no way that they were going to be able to get all of the players 30 attempts. that it mathematically wasn't going to work out, that the average play per machine is just under five minutes. And with the 12 machines and everyone had to play all 12, that it just didn't work out mathematically. And there were some signs of these concerns earlier because they started to say when the tournament qualifications could start, they moved them up more and more. They moved them to noon on Friday and now they're at 11 a.m. on Friday. But we'll get into that in a moment. The changes that they made are they immediately capped the tournament at what the count was, which is 160. So it's no longer 200 people. It's 160 people. It's still a bank of 12 machines. However, it's only your top 10 machines that will count. So you don't actually have to play all 12. You can focus on just 10 machines. But there's also no longer 30 attempts for those scores. It's down to 20. However, the price of participation has remained the $60. I guess I should ask kind of what are your thoughts overall in terms of them making these changes and what changes they ended up doing, you know, how they changed it. Do you was it a good idea? Do you would you have done it differently? I guess I mean, obviously, this is the main thing that's been an issue is this is really short notice. Almost everyone's plans were already set. These things were announced last week. So there isn't much in the way of notice on these sort of shifts. And they're pretty significant changes. They are significant changes. And I think they did what they had to do. I think they were at a point in time where if they didn't make a change, it was going to be a major – it would have been a catastrophe for the tournament. And the tournament has had some issues in the past, and they are trying to kind of have a rebirth of the tournament and put everything back together and bring the quality of the tournament up. And I think them having such a bad showing if people weren't able to run all their qualifying times and this and that, I think it would have been a problem. I think the changes, they make sense. The loss of 10 tries is harsh. even if you only need to be the best on 10 of the 12 machines, still going from 20 or from 30 to 20 is still a huge drop in your stuff for what you paid to get into the tournament. And I think a lot of this could also be brought on by them doing, trying to get the finals on Saturday night to make it a big to do and make it highlight of the night, which I think actually makes really good sense for something like this. I think it's better off more showmanship-y to have it as a big to-do on Saturday instead of a middle of the day just before close on Sunday putting together thing. But it definitely strikes as a planning problem. I don't think they expected 160 entrants. I think they expected maybe 100 to 120 entrants.
    23:05
    And the 200 cap that they originally listed, I think, was just a, oh, we'll just cap it at this. We know we won't get any. That's not actually where we'll get, but that's what we'll cap it as, just to say there's a cap. Overall, I am glad that they made the change because I agree with the tournament director's concerns that having this happen at the tournament where people all of a sudden were going to be at the deadline on Saturday night and you weren't going to be able to get all 30 tries in was going to create a lot of hard feelings and it was going to be a managerial nightmare. I also agree with you that I think they assumed that the player count was going to mimic what had happened in 2015, which did appear to be slightly over 100 participants. I do not understand why they capped it at 200. what it tells me and i don't mean to throw the i don't know the tournament director and i don't mean to throw him him under him or them under the under a bus anyway but that planning almost says there was no planning that number is so off based off of what they've ended up doing that it was as if they never actually ran the numbers to see if it was realistic or like they didn't carry the one sort of situation where their equation was way off, which, of course, to me, begs the question as to was anyone checking whoever planned its work? I mean, where were there? Were there any checks and balances I have via Twitch? I've watched a lot of fighting game tournaments, you know, like Street Fighter and all of that. And this is that sort of amateur stuff I see on the weaker tournaments that go on there where they have terrible planning. They screw up their brackets. They're not ready. They don't map things out right. The times run way over. And it's just, in a way, from a professional standpoint, it's embarrassing because it shows that they don't really know how to organize. And I know that they were changing a lot of things about the Texas pinball tournament, but they really explained out why they did these changes mathematically quite well. I just, I don't understand why it wasn't done initially. So we've ended up with this weird situation. I'm fine still playing in it this way. I'm not going to win. Only the top 16 are moving on. So be it 200 or 160 or whatever, I'm going to get some IFPA points for playing, but I'm not going to go into finals. And that's fine. It's just, it seems really weird to me. I saw some complaints and I will, again, while it's not a big deal to me, I will agree It was odd in my view that they kept the price at $60 even though they dropped the attempts. The defense of this that I had heard is, well, one, we want to keep the price pull as big as possible because we're trying to be one of the bigger tournaments.
    26:02
    And two, we never actually set the price based off of the number of qualifying attempts. They weren't trying to do that pump and dump or Herb style, I think it's referred to, which you and I have participated in locally before where you pay for try after try after try. The thing is, it's understandable in my view that players are going to think about it that way. You've all of a sudden said you don't get 30 tries. You get 20 tries. Oh, and thanks for still paying the same amount of money. and to me the pies pull argument still sort of rings hollow because they didn't keep the cap at 200 so just as some what-ifs why didn't they keep the cap at 200 keep the bank of 12 cut the tries from 30 to 15 and say you're only going to need to qualify on six of the 12 machines and then so you only get 15 attempts but you only have to play half as many machines and then you have the number higher because you've cut your qualifiers down more, or if half again, I'm just, you know, I'm spitballing here, but I mean, they're keeping 160 players. That would just, you'd add 40 more, but you cut the tries in half. Does that not mathematically work? I don't know if that was contemplated or not. My sense from reading about this on Pinside was they realized there was a problem. They wisely decided they needed to correct it. And then they just scrambled really, really fast to get permission from IFPA to do something. They got that permission, and that's just what they're running with, and they're hoping that this will keep it smooth. And it might, but I think it's caused some other hiccups, like the Best in Era contest that they've got. These 12 machines are in four banks. They're four DMDs, four solid states, and four electromechanical machines. Well, the idea originally was everyone was going to play all of those. So they would have top scores in all the banks. Now, strategically, a lot of people are going to say, and myself included, that it makes sense to only play 10 of these machines, not all 12, so that we can get two tries per machine, which means I'm out of at least one best of era contest because I'm going to have to give up one of the banks. And that's if I do a 4-4-2. If I wanted to do a 3-3-2, or excuse me, a 4-3-3, I should say, obviously I'm out of two of them because there's no way you can win that without having played all four games.
    28:25
    So overall, yeah, I'm glad they realized this was a bottleneck. I'm fine with playing in it like this. I do think they could have handled it a lot better, but it was also obviously very preventable. So hopefully a lesson learned. But it's unfortunate because Texas Pinball Festival's big eyesore, from what I have read, has always been its tournament has been seen as weak and not very professional. and I don't think this is going to help that. I think this is one of those situations where they just had to make hard choices and they went with the best that they could within a limited amount of time while still getting the IFPA approvals to allow it and to try and save as much face as they can.
    29:09
    I don't think it was the perfect answer. I think it's an answer. I think it's a valid answer, and I think it's better than just letting the tournament go and turn into a train wreck. I think even all the stuff that could blow up and annoy people and this and that is going to put less of a black eye than if they've had people not done qualifying when it was time for the finals to start and having to push all that back. Because I know they're planning on live streaming the finals. They're planning on making it a centerpiece. And if it's going to be a centerpiece, you can't have it pushed back and messed up that much. Right. Definitely. I agree. Definitely they needed to make the change. The change they've made, I'm convinced, is better than having moved forward under the original plan. However, I also think IFPA was going to sign off on just about anything, in my view. They could have done some other changes that would have been better for Goodwill. I don't think they came up with the best that they could. I think they just came up with something to have run with that. And at this point, they don't want to muck with it anymore. But they could have done partial refunds on the $60 because of the limited plays. They could have restructured the banks differently. They could have tried to get more machines in if they didn't want to cut down on the number of machines to qualify on. There were a lot of different potential solutions that I honestly don't think would have taken more than a couple of hours to have run through. but the bottom line is it was not done or they were rolled out for whatever reasons they had and that's that's fine i'm just i'm hoping next time when they go in from the get-go it'll be a lot smoother and it will help if this is ends up being smooth and we'll see but i'm really hoping so because i don't want to be standing around trying to qualify all saturday i want to get as much of that done friday as i can because i want to have fun on saturday and since i'm not good enough to be a real competitor. I want to play on the free play games on the festival floor. I agree. And that's my hope. My hope is that we can all finish our qualifications on Friday. That way, when Saturday rolls around, we can spend the day going and checking out the other stuff on the free play floor and going and checking out the booths and seeing all the other things going on, you know, until it's time for me to go into the finals, because We know, of course.
    31:34
    It's a two and a half. I do it on almost everything, but this one time, this one will be different. I can feel it. It only takes one ball. One ball can change it. What's your qualification strategy going to be? Have you decided? Are you only going to play 10 of the 12? Do you know which banks are going to compete in? I'm only going to play 10 of the 12. I'm currently looking at putting most of mine into the DMD and Modern. I'm going to play the 10 as well unless I have a couple scores that I think are really good which I don't think is going to happen and then I may spread them out for the best of era contest but my plan actually will be I'm only going to do two of the DMDs and I'm going to do the four EMs and the four early solid states Oh, you're going for the earlier ones I figured the, well I guess one of the games is track of course which I'm sure is going to be your DMD Yeah, that'll be one. I haven't decided the other yet because they've got Demolition Man and Bram Stoker's Dracula, neither of which I have played physically, but I have played both virtually. And they have their pluses and minuses. And then there's Game of Thrones, which I've played once and I don't have virtually. But it's a nice table. So, yeah, I'm going to do Star Trek as an IDMD. And then I think I'm going to do Demolition Man. I think it's easier than Rob Stoker's Dracula. I understand it a little bit better.
    33:05
    So those are the two. And the reason why I decided to go this route is because your placement's based off of how well you rank on each particular machine. I think most of the players are more comfortable on the DMDs and that's going to be top heavy. Whereas people are going to be intimidated by the EMs, especially because all but one of them have two inch flippers. and while I do have a couple two-inch flipper EMs, I don't play them very much, but if I'm going to lose, at least I think I have a better shot because there'll be fewer people wanting to compete on them because they're intimidated by EMs and I don't care. So that was my logic, that DMDs are the most popular and EMs are the least popular and the solid state games are all pretty simplistic. So this gets to that strategy of also, do I know the rules and all the DMD ones have some depth to rules, whereas the EMs do not, and the solid stage don't have much. So from a scoring standpoint, most of those I can just look at the play field and they'll tell me what to shoot. So that's my strategy on that. But yeah, I decided after they announced their change that, okay, well, I'll just do two DMDs then because I'm not going to be a strong enough DMD player to rank well. Star Trek, obviously, I have my best chance on any machine because it's the only one in the tournament that I actually own. But even that, you know, compared to people who are really good at it, who knows? Yeah, I was looking at when I was looking at them. I mean, I was thinking about it's like, do I want to put it all in to the DMDs, especially with like Game of Thrones and stuff?
    34:40
    I don't know. I mean, I enjoy Game of Thrones. I like playing it, but I don't I haven't played it enough to be good enough. I mean, I've seen people putting up scores of a billion, two billion, five billion. And I don't think that's going to cut it. I don't think my $250 million to $300 million is going to cut it qualifying on a table like that. So there's a definite argument to be made for aiming more for the solid states and the EMs. I just hate two-inch flippers. I really do. Oh, yeah, they're very frustrating. I may very much regret that. But anyway it just from a competitive standpoint I thought what would be my best chance and my low skill on the two inchers versus that I have no idea how many people are going to be really strong on the DMDs I get the most practice on the DMDs but that what makes me concerned is that I think most people do So anyway, that's as much as my it's like the do I go first or second sort of question. That's as far as my simplistic strategic thought on this is going to be. But I figured, well, I'll just do it like that. And then at the very least, I'll get to play some solid states and EM machines I've never played before. So I'll get a good chance. And they should be some pretty good quality machines if they're the ones chosen for the tournament.
    35:55
    Yeah, they should. And once we get that done, we can hit the free-to-play stuff and go have a lot of fun and find the real interesting stuff out there. Yeah. Well, that covers our pinball section. So let's go ahead and hop on over into video games. And I know one of the topics that you were really interested in us covering on this podcast was the early access system that a lot of developers have been going with for video games.
    36:21
    Yeah, we've talked about the pre-order system with pinball and we've talked about Kickstarter a lot when it comes to board games. So I thought I'd talk we'd talk about the early access. it's early access is this whole new system that a lot of companies are using where you pay for the game and you get access to it at alpha state or beta state but sometimes it barely even can be considered alpha it's so rough and you can play it while they develop it and add new features and you play some more and they add some new features and they make some changes and it's being very popular.
    37:06
    There's a lot of companies that seem to be using it as a ways, like we were talking about last week with the last show with the pre-orders for pinball machines where it's like, well, we can't afford to keep making this game, but if you guys want to buy and play the alpha, we'll be able to keep making the game. Otherwise we can't. And I'm not a fan. I'm just not a fan of that situation. Now, I know several very good games have been early access. I've purchased and played several really good games that were amazing when they were in early access. And by the time they hit actual release, we're just off the charts. But there's also been lots and lots of games that get worse or they don't. They're not closed. They're not. gone but there's pretty much no more development going on and you all the money people sunk into them they just kind of disappears and whittles away and the game just sits there and i just i think in the grand scheme of things that this is not really the way we want video games to be going because they're treating purchasers and owners as beta testers and even alpha testers and having putting all that. So instead of having to put money out for beta testers and quality control and quality assurance testing on games, they just throw whatever they have at the people who paid them money to get into it and then keep going from there. Yeah, I see. I see your concerns on that. To me, it's and I've seen it. It's cropping up a lot of places. Project Greenlight is the most famous. even on the Xbox One, they have a game preview, which is what they title their equivalent to Project Greenlight, and I'm sure some other infrastructure has these options in terms of possibly other consoles and such, I'm guessing. But I find it's interesting. I think it's an interesting way to raise funds before a game is complete. I qualify it that way rather than necessarily coming down against it, because I can see it in a couple of ways. I mean, if I'm comparing it to Kickstarter, then there's the instance of saying, well, you're actually at least getting something for sure when it's a green light, when you're doing an early access to a game, even if it's a terrible alpha quality versus nothing at all. So I can see that being an advantage, I suppose, to the idea. But as a gamer, I'm not attracted to the model at all. And I have never participated in any sort of early access video game outside of paid early access. I've done betas and such like that before. And the reason why I'm not really interested is, one, there's never been a game that's come out that I was so excited for that I couldn't wait until it was finished to play it.
    40:13
    I just – I can't think of one where I have been that excited and I just – oh, I got to – I just – I got to do it now. I got to play it now. And then the other aspect is, for me, if I was to play a game that wasn't ready and I wanted it to be ready, it could really turn me off to wanting to buy the final product, especially if it's really rough. So if it's like, I mean, as a completely non-early access example, when I played Battlefield 3 on the Xbox 360, that game had a lot of trouble running on that architecture. And so one of the problems that wasn't something that I encountered in previous iterations of the game or in later iterations on the newer hardware was it would lock up quite often. I mean, not as terrible, fearful early access often, but it would not be unusual for me to experience every four hours having a lockup during a game if I try and average it all out. And that was extremely frustrating. Now, if that was happening every other match, I would have been furious and I wouldn't have wanted to own the game.
    41:20
    And you've seen that on some games that have come out as final products, and they're so buggy. Batman Arkham Knight on the PC was a great example of that, where it was just a mess and it turned people off of that. I don't want to be turned off of something because I was playing some early alpha iteration. And so I just, as a gamer, I don't want to do it, so I don't. But I can see some reasons why some gamers might be attracted to funding through this model versus if it was this or Kickstarter. But I see no reason from a gamer perspective why you would want this versus traditional financing just because there's no – I don't see – the only advantage is you get to play it earlier than what you would otherwise. And I just don't see that as an advantage if the game's not really done. To me, that's not an advantage. yeah it's not an advantage at all i mean i've played a couple games in uh early access or in beta that i mean i never wanted to play again because the they just left such a bad taste in my mouth uh one of the i mean i've played a couple games that where i had kick-started the game and i got early access and i played it and i wish i hadn't uh i one of them i went back and played it after it was actually released, and everything I hated was fixed and was actually a good game. So, I mean, that's a thing. But it was over a year and a half, almost two years, before I went back and played it again. I mean, after the release, just because it left such a bad taste in my mouth from the early access. And actually, until I played it again, I considered it one of my bigger failures in Kickstarter. But it's actually pretty fun now that I've played it again. The other, I have had one very, very good experience with an early access, and that was Kerbal Space Program.
    43:15
    But that's a special game. That game, I got that game in early access, very early access, before it was Steam Greenlight. I got that one and it was only available off of their website, and it was amazing. And I didn't think there was anything out there like it at the time, and I don't think there's anything out there like it now. And now that it's in full release, I still consider it one of the most amazing games that have ever been released.
    43:45
    It just does a very good job of taking complicated stuff and making it fun without dumping all of the complications, without dumping all of the difficulties, while still not having it be so difficult that it's just impossible to do. and I think the team there did an amazing job with it and that is the one early access game that I really, I was glad I played early access on it. I mean, if you look at my play times on Steam for it, now that it's on Steam, it's only a few hours, but before it was on Steam when I was in the early access, I mean, it was hundreds of hours. I was playing it constantly and now I haven't played it as much lately but it's still an amazing game that has amazing achievements. That's a game that I think the early access did a lot of good for. But I think more of those games are caught in the spotlight than they need to be, or maybe not spotlight. What it ends up being is there's a lot of people who have really big ideas for games, and they put out, oh, this is our plan. Yes, right now it's a stick figure running around a room, but when we're done, it's going to be this huge grand thing with these wonder, well, you get to do all these different things, and they don't always work out. Sometimes some things just don't ever work out. I mean, and I know we'll talk about it a little bit more later, but I mean, it's kind of like the Molyneux thing. I mean, with his plans with Black and White and every other game he's ever made, how grand everything was going to be and how nothing ever meets with his original vision. And I think that's just a common thing to game creators because they know what they want to do. And then the realities of what the hardware and the software will actually let them do pairs things down. And with some people, they'll still pare down to an amazing game, and then other times it just pares down and they can't get anything they want out of it, and it just kind of vanishes. Yeah, and it's something obviously that we've hit on when we did the pre-ordering talks, as you noted before we started this segment. But yeah, let's actually go ahead and transition to our second video game topic since it relates so well to your arguments that you just made, which is we wanted to go ahead and touch on the cancellation of Fable Legends and the likely closure of Lionhead Studios. So for those that aren't familiar, Lionhead Studios, which makes the Fable games, it's their most well-known IP, they were working on a game called Fable Legends. It was to be a free-to-play RPG. It was going to be available on Windows PCs and on the Xbox One. They were underway with a closed beta, and it was expected that an open beta, I believe, was going to be announced and activated in March. Maybe it was April, but very soon.
    46:47
    And Microsoft announced last week that they were pulling the plug. They were pulling the plug on Fable Legends and that people who were in the closed beta would get to continue to play it for a set period of time. I believe that they're turning off the servers in early April, but that they were also in what was described as discussions with Lionhead Studios about shutting Lionhead down. And my understanding is because Lionhead is a British company. There are certain labor law rules regarding how you shut down entities like that. So while the phrasing has been that they're in discussions about closing the company, it will almost definitely be closed. This is, I guess, a formality that's common in that country to do shutdowns is you have to announce it as a discussion, but that no one knows of anything that Lionhead could do to save themselves. It seems that Fable Legends was the only thing they were working on. So yeah, that's what I've heard from the British law is that it's a, the, the announcer, they're in discussions and the truth of the discussions is it's basically the government going, well, can they do anything to keep you from closing them? No. Well, can you pay them enough money to last so long while they look for jobs, okay, you can close them.
    48:11
    So, yeah. So anyway, so given that issue, obviously it's generally pretty disappointing whenever a developer is going out of business. Pretty sad for video game fans, even if they're not huge fans of whatever game was underway. What are your thoughts? I'm not a big Lionhead fan, myself. Fable is really the only main console thing they're known for. The only other IP I know of that they used more than once was the black and white real-time strategy games. I've played three Fable games myself. Fable 2 and Fable 3 were the true ones, the real, what people think of when they think of Fable as sort of a Western RPG with a whimsical style. And as you had noted, when Peter was their head guy, sort of over-promised features versus what was in release. But generally what was in release was well-received. I've also played, my third Fable game was a game called Fable Heroes, but that's more of a beat-em-up than an actual RPG.
    49:13
    I don't know if you really have any experience with Lionhead. It's not a particularly old studio, but what are your thoughts in terms of it as a loss, I guess? I have limited experience with Lionhead. I haven't played any Fable games. I played Black and White, the original Black and White, back in the day. And I think that's the only game from Lionhead I've played. but based upon a lot of the announcements and that we've seen out of Microsoft over the course of the last few weeks to month, I think the closing of lion head and they closed another studio press play at the same time. I think what we're seeing is the start of a major direction change for Microsoft. And I think that it's, they're wiping out these things. They, uh, They announced Quantum Break is going to be a launch day release on Windows 10 in addition to Xbox One. And between that, some other stuff that I've heard and a lot of stuff that I've seen online, it seems to be that Microsoft might be losing faith in the Xbox One as a platform. And they seem to be starting to look beyond it. and they're looking at the Windows 10 for moving ahead, and they're looking a lot at pushing their universal Windows platform, which uses a Windows 10 as a base. And I know there's already been talk about new variants of consoles with more upgradeability and just a whole host of things. I think Microsoft is searching for a direction because PlayStation has obviously won this iteration of the console war.
    51:03
    I think that's it in part. I wouldn't go so far in terms of what I've read thinking that Microsoft has lost faith in Xbox One specifically as a console. And the reason is from a sales perspective, comparatively to Sony, they are – it's an issue. Their sales are estimated to be a little over half of what the PlayStation 4 has done. So from that metric, it's not very impressive performance. And most of that likely stems from the initial starting price point and the terrible PR nightmare they got themselves into with their initial announcements, which even though they backed away from, a lot of gamers didn't forgive them for. And perhaps that was right for them not to have done so. It just depends on your perspective. However, compared to where they were at with the 360 and the same lifecycle in terms of year on year, the Xbox One is doing a lot better for them than the 360 did. They're selling more units than they did at every step of the way, as far as I understand from the numbers that have been released. So it's hard to say that the Xbox One has been a disappointment. I suppose they may be disappointed that they're not as competitive with Sony as they were against the PS3. But they had – it's different. So, I mean, yeah, if I were them, I would be concerned that they weren't doing so well. and I do see this loss of Lionhead as a blow to their first and second party developer lineup which in my view at least in terms of quantity Microsoft is the weakest of the three of Sony Nintendo and Microsoft the three dominant console people Nintendo's got the biggest selection of first party IPs to work with and I think Sony's second at least when you throw in their second party developers and Microsoft may have some very good quality ones but quantity wise I just don't think they measure up. But the direction with the Windows 10 thing doesn't surprise me as much because they're new. I probably shouldn't still call him new, but they're newer CEO that they've had now This has been his direction since he took over The idea that Microsoft needs to emphasize its software that they going to push their software And it not going to be like how it was under the old leadership where let try and make everyone use Windows Phone and do all of that Instead, it's let's put Office on the iPhone. Let's put Office on the Android. Let's get our stuff, any of our stuff, wherever we can, even if it's on competitors' products. And so with the announcement, which obviously we're not doing as the topic, but Microsoft's announcements this week regarding opening up and allowing their Xbox One to be allowed for cross-platform play for PC games and any console developer that wants to participate, including Sony. Part of that makes sense because Microsoft is in a weaker position in terms of player counts on the Xbox One compared to the PlayStation 4, even though, interestingly, they actually, from what I read, had a higher number of people of accounts on Xbox Live than PlayStation does for the PlayStation Network. So obviously, when you go back to the 360, they're still drawing upon a lot of people that use that. But this all fits very much with the whole strategy they're doing with phones and everything else, which is, you know, they may still make a phone, for example, which I could see them getting out of that because I can't imagine that's been very successful in terms of what they wanted in sales counts.
    54:23
    But trying to get their software wherever they can, because that spreads their reach and they're going to make money doing it. I think this with gaming as part of that, I think the thing about upgrading the Xbox Ones that you mentioned, that'll probably be one we can tackle in another topic because I still don't understand what's going on with that idea. That seems like it runs counter to what a console is supposed to offer you. But they're clearly trying to think outside the box for a variety of reasons and make the best out of a choppy, sloppy release for their current generation console compared to the very smooth launch that I think Sony experienced, which really exploited Microsoft's bumbling for the new generation. but I don't think that the company itself has actually lost face in the X lost faith in the Xbox brand or that they're planning to abandon the console I just think they're seeing their best way of trying to grow their user base is not to try and shoehorn people and say you have to play on Xbox one now they're going to try and shoehorn people and say you're going to have to buy things through the Windows Store instead of Steam which is one of the complaints I started seeing about the quantum break announcement was why isn't this on Steam we want to buy it on Steam and they haven't been that far yet, but who knows? Maybe they will eventually.
    55:36
    Yeah, they might. I'm not sure on that. I think them concentrating on software is a good – I think it's a good plan to try and make up the differences they've had. I think the hardware upgradeability, I think what they're looking for is they're looking for a way to do, to kind of shorten the console age, the standard, you know, seven years or so that a console generation runs, and having, by creating like half steps. And I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that the, how they are perceived as the 360 looking worse than the PlayStation 4. I'm sorry, the Xbox One looking worse than the PlayStation 4. And whether it's true or not, based upon the actual games, I know when they first launched, that was the big thing. And you still hear it when people talk about games. It's like, well, this looks so much better on the PlayStation, and this looks so much better here. But I think it's definitely going to be something interesting we're going to see. I think spreading their brand and concentrating on software and stopping trying to force everybody just to make everything Microsoft. Microsoft is not Apple, and I think for a while they were trying to be Apple, and now that they seem to be moving back into the kind of more software-oriented company, I think it could be very good for them. I agree, but this closure in that context does concern me because I think they really need to have a better game development lineup. These closures they announced, they were not strong companies. Nonetheless, I would really like to see them have something, especially like in the second-party realm, where they have some development studio that's maybe given pretty good leeway, but might be things that not just for Xbox One, but they could also use to push their Windows. Most gamers are playing on Windows anyway, but they want to do that and have that cross play as a big attraction for the console people and the PC people. Personally, I've echoed this outside of the podcast several times. I think Microsoft should buy Capcom. I think Capcom's weak as a company. I don't think Sony's in a position to buy it, and Nintendo doesn't need it. So I think that would be something where Microsoft could try and go for a genre that they're not well represented in because Capcom makes a lot of survival horror and fighting games. And that's not – Microsoft's more bro shooters is where they're strong. And I just think something like that. So I want them to have – they need to have some exclusivity. Even if it's PC slash Xbox exclusivity, they need some console exclusivity in my view to be attractive to people. So people will be like, oh, I want to play that game. and that's you know one of the things that worked for them when they launched the xbox one dead rising 3 they made a deal with capcom it was xbox exclusive and likewise sony made a deal with capcom and street fighter 5 is playstation exclusive on the console side but those sort of things i just that worries me a little bit i want them to encourage development on the game side not just application software and they're saying they're still very interested in wanting to diversify on the genres and stuff. So I think they have plans. I just would like to see them announce something other than just a bunch of closures because it's kind of sad. It is sad. And with that, I think we'll step over to our final segment for the night, which is tabletop. And in tabletop, I haven't, because of my plague, I haven't really had a chance to go play a whole lot of anything lately. So I thought I would talk about the one game I have played a lot of, which is Star Realms. Star Realms is a deck building game. You and me have played it.
    59:36
    I play it quite extensively. It is probably my favorite deck building game that's not a cooperative deck building game. Star Realms is a straight combat game where you and your opponent just duke it out. it's available in a lot of different forms uh there's the physical card game and which has a fair number of expansions with it and a new major standalone expansion that just came out at the start of the year but they've also got a digital version of the game which is quickly catching up with the number of expansions that you can play and the thing i like about the digital version of the game is you purchase it on one platform and you have it on everything.
    60:29
    It's now been activated on Steam Greenlight. But if you had purchased it beforehand, you had all your stuff activated already on Steam. You just had to set it up.
    60:44
    But you can play it on Android, iOS, on your computer, any of those. and it's the same game, and you can even carry it. I mean, I'll play games on my phone during the day, and then I'll get home and I'll fire up the version on the computer and I'll kick out the games there. I'll kick out several play games there. Now, the big thing I like about this game is this game was designed to be easy, to be fast, and to be very portable, even in the physical version. It is literally just a box, a normal card deck size box. Well, it's a little bigger than that, but, I mean, it's about like what you'd have if you were carrying some magic cards or something around with you. But that's enough for two players to play, and it's a very fast game.
    61:37
    And it's something that the way it rolls together, if you like the deck building genre, is very enjoyable, at least to me. which is probably the reason why it's one of the games I play most often. I mean, it's not uncommon for me to have 35-plus games active in the digital version of it. And I know when I go to the board game nights, it's not unusual if I can find the people to play for me to play a fair number of games then, too. Yeah, I remember playing this, and I enjoyed it. What do you think makes it so unique compared to other card combat games? Is it the speed? Is that the main thing or the ease of understanding? Because some of the other card games we've played, I've had trouble in my mind keeping everything straight, at least through the first couple playthroughs, whereas this one wasn't so difficult for me. But what do you think makes this one sort of shine compared to other card combat games? Well, I think a lot of it's the speed, and a lot of it is most of the other big deck builders where you're playing against the other players like your Ascension or Dominions, while you're playing against the other players, you can't actually hurt them in any way. What you're actually doing while playing against the other players is you are basically chasing them for resources. You're trying to build up more victory points than they are, than they do, faster than they can. This is an actual combat game where each of you has a health pool, and you are playing to eliminate your opponent's health pool. So you are in direct combat at all times. You're not going, oh, if I do this and I get these points, I can get that. That's worth four victory points, and I'll buy this. I'll use my trade to get this item.
    63:37
    And when that way, when I drop it into play, that'll give me a victory point. And it's not, it's much more direct. Most of these deck builders are very, they kind of come at you sideways in your combat. I know like Eminent Domain is another one I've played a fair amount of. And it's a deck builder, but it's very much about exploring and building resources on planets. And it's not something – and the whole goal is you're playing against all the other players, but everything comes from victory points you get from colonizing and settling planets or capturing planets. But you can't capture planets from your opponents. You can't attack your opponents. You can't get victory points from your opponents. So it's very much a me versus the deck, and then just whoever does the best against the deck wins.
    64:32
    Right. Okay. Now I'm going to be extra mean and say, if you had to pick, in the case of Star Realms, do you think the physical version or the digital version is better? I think that they both have their place, but in the long run, I think for actual straight playability, actually, that's not true. The playability, they're both very easy to play. I think the digital is probably my preferred way to play, but the reason that is is because it's just so easy. I can sit down during my lunch break and knock out 30 games. I can knock out my turn on 30 games because it's a completely asynchronous game. So I play my turns and then I put my phone in my pocket. And when I get a break, I can pull it out and play my turns and then put my phone in my pocket. I don't have to get anybody together. I don't have to wait till we can sit down and play. And if I don't want to knock all my turns out right now, I don't have to knock all my turns out. I mean, I'll play, and whenever you get around to playing your turn, you'll play, and it'll kick it back to me. And it's got a – as long as you play your turn within 48 hours, it is – it keeps going. Now, it also has a – in the digital version, if you're looking for a quicker game, it has a three-minute turn game where you can choose and search for an opponent doing three-minute turns. And then when you play, you have three minutes to play your turn. It goes to your – when that's done, it goes to your opponent. they have three minutes to play their turn, it comes back to you. So if you're looking to get a single game done faster, you can do it that way. But I just love the ease of just sitting down at lunch, and that's what I do most of the time at lunch is I'll sit down and I will play my current turns with as many as are available. Like I said, I normally run 30-plus games at a time. Right. Well, yeah, that makes sense to me. being an asynchronous game, that's not particularly common for a lot of, at least not for a lot of games. And obviously for our topic that we do here, you know, pinball doesn't work that way. Most video games even don't work that way. The last asynchronous game I played actually was with you years ago when we spent one year playing Civilization IV through an asynchronous format. That was a great game. And see, in a lot of ways, this is kind of like that, where it was a play-by-email type game. It is a you play your turn, it sends to the other guy, they play their turn, it comes back to you. And it's definitely something that you don't see very often, but I think it's the perfect way to play a deck-building game like this, where if you don't have four people there or two people there or three people there or however many people want to play, you can just knock it out real quick. And like I said, just during your break or I've got five minutes, I'll play a couple of games. Makes sense to me. Well, I think we tackled all of our topics for this episode. For our listeners, let me remind everyone that you can find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash Eclectic Gamers Podcast. You can also email the show at Eclectic Gamers Podcast at gmail.com. As we mentioned earlier, we are going to the Texas Pinball Festival later this week. I'm assuming that episode five, whether we record it there or record it after the fact, will probably be our first one topic only episode and that it will be focused exclusively on pinball. So heads up to people who aren't interested and skip our pinball portion or to people who only want to hear the pinball talks. But that's what I think we're going to do, because obviously that's what we're going to live and breathe for three days down south. I don't know about you. I was intending on living and breathing the food trucks. I mean, there's a lot of talk, a lot of positive talk about the food trucks. However, I also think you told me a month ago that you really wanted to hit an In-N-Out burger. So I do want to hit an In-N-Out burger. I haven't had an In-N-Out burger in one, two, six. I think it's been six years since I was somewhere where I could get an In-N-Out. Well, I did check and the In-N-Out burger in Frisco is open on Sundays. I did make sure of that. I wasn't sure if they were one of those that closed one day a week. So we can hit In-N-Out Burger when we leave after the close of the festival at 2.30 on our way out. So you don't have to miss out on your food trucks.
    69:09
    And we do have friends in Dallas, so we'll probably see about getting together somewhere local and having lunch with them, of course. And I don't know if they'll want to eat at a food truck, but there's always dinner on Saturday at the very least and whatever we're going to eat Friday. So hopefully and hopefully I finally kick the last of this plague. I've still just got a few little things. I'm getting a little better. I've got that that that plaguey dry cough that always tends to linger after a big round of sickness. But that seems to be about it. Well, you know, there are four of us right now together. And all of you, except me, have been sick over the last two weeks. my brother-in-law, he sounded awful on his birthday last week when I saw him on Thursday. So he was going to go back to the doctor because he'd been sick over a week already. So I'm hoping everyone is feeling decent. Otherwise, they're not going to have very much fun. But it sounds like everyone was past their contagious stage at least. And I'm also hoping that I don't get ill too late after that. I think I had whatever I was getting back in December because I haven't been six cents then, but we'll see. Well, yeah, we have to always remember Con Crud. I mean, we're going to Con.
    70:23
    The pinball festival is a convention, man, and Con Crud has a way of getting around. Yep, yep. We should have some hand sanitizer with us, so maybe that'll help. I don't know. 400 plus pinball machines, there's probably going to be a lot of germy hands for them food trucks. Well, I guess I'll see you in a few days, and to all our listeners, I will say goodbye. Have fun, everyone. you