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Episode 185 - Time of the ORC

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 21m·analyzed·Jan 23, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers 2022 review: modest growth, Spooky facility expansion, limited pinball news.

Summary

In this episode of Eclectic Gamers Podcast (185), hosts Tony and Dennis discuss their polar plunge charity fundraising efforts, 2022 podcast statistics showing modest 4.5% growth with Columbus, Ohio and Pensacola, Florida as top listening cities, and limited pinball news including Spooky Pinball facility expansion and Scooby-Doo production start. The episode opens with personal updates and tangential discussion of The Last of Us and Halo television adaptations before transitioning to podcast metrics and a light pinball segment.

Key Claims

  • Eclectic Gamers Podcast had 38,700+ plays in 2022, a 4.5% increase from 2021

    high confidence · Dennis provided formal annual statistics for the podcast, citing exact play counts from their analytics platform (SoundCloud)

  • Columbus, Ohio is the #1 city for Eclectic Gamers listener origin in 2022, moving up from #2 in 2021

    high confidence · Dennis presented city-level analytics data from 2022 statistics snapshot

  • Spooky Pinball is doubling their facility size without expanding staff at this time

    high confidence · Dennis stated Spooky made an official announcement about facility expansion while specifying no staff expansion plans currently

  • Spooky Pinball has begun production of Scooby-Doo Pinball

    high confidence · Dennis announced that Spooky has 'started production' with photos shown, indicating official confirmation

  • Most popular episodes correlate with major game reveals (Weird Al, Fathom Revisited, Rush, Toy Story 4)

    high confidence · Dennis analyzed top 5 episodes and noted pattern: 'When there are reveals, at least major game reveals, those tend to be the best performing episodes'

Notable Quotes

  • “There was this high-pitched, keening scream that circled all over the country. And that was the souls of all the Halo fans dying as they saw what a good television adaptation of a video game could be like.”

    Tony @ early segment — Commentary on contrast between successful Last of Us adaptation and poorly-received Halo series; reflects industry-wide interest in game-to-screen adaptations

  • “I'm already doing two podcasts that cover pinball. I feel like I'm oversaturated, as is, in the hobby.”

    Dennis @ watches segment — Explains personal decision to diversify content into watches rather than pinball-only YouTube channel to avoid market saturation

  • “When there are reveals, at least major game reveals, those tend to be the best performing episodes”

    Dennis @ statistics analysis section — Identifies audience engagement driver: game reveal announcements significantly outperform other episode types

  • “Your cabinet was sitting on a park bench smoking a cigarette with a pile of cigarettes beneath it, just staring at the ground, not talking to anybody as they jogged past.”

    Dennis @ firepower sale discussion — Colorful description of the deteriorated condition of Tony's Firepower pinball machine before selling it

  • “This is a snapshot of exactly this isn't like counting 2022 episodes with like listens that have happened so far in 2023. This is January through December 31st, 2022 and where things stood.”

    Dennis @ statistics intro — Clarifies methodology for podcast statistics: clean calendar year 2022 snapshot, not ongoing tallies

Entities

Eclectic Gamers PodcastorganizationTonypersonDennispersonSpooky PinballcompanyScooby-DoogameFirepowergameWeird AlgameFathom RevisitedgameRushgame

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Spooky Pinball facility expansion without immediate staff increase suggests growth in production capacity but measured hiring approach

    high · Dennis: 'They have specified they do not at this time have any intention to expand their staff, but they're getting another building'

  • ?

    community_signal: Eclectic Gamers podcast maintaining consistent listener base with geographic concentration in Columbus, Ohio and Pensacola, Florida

    high · Dennis presented detailed city and country listening analytics showing consistent top-5 distribution year-over-year

  • ?

    event_signal: Pinball Awards event scheduled at Flippin' Out Theater in Evansville, Indiana with favorable weather forecast

    high · Dennis: 'we're both planning to try and attend for the Pinball Awards at the Flippin' Out Theater in Evansville, Indiana'

  • $

    market_signal: Secondary market pinball sales showing price declines and market dynamics paralleling luxury watch market volatility

    medium · Dennis discussed live stream on watches channel where 'we really focused on a lot of luxury watches in an index' and 'a lot of pinheads who show up' participated in discussion of 'price declines in the secondhand market'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Game reveal episodes significantly outperform other content types, indicating strong community appetite for new announcement coverage

    high · Dennis: 'When there are reveals, at least major game reveals, those tend to be the best performing episodes... people are just wanting to sort of vacuum up everyone's opinion... first reactions'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.246

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, January 22nd. This is episode 185. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And things are going pretty well. It snowed. It did, but the roads look great. Yeah, it was like 40 yesterday, and there wasn't enough snow to get it cold. It was just enough to make everything pretty. Yeah, and I know we've been, currently we're both planning to try and attend for the Pinball Awards at the Flippin' Out Theater in Evansville, Indiana. So I've been watching the extended forecast, which is looking fine. So I don't think weather will be an obstacle. This is fine. It's fine. And, of course, we can't look so far ahead to know what the weather will be like for your polar plunge. But, wow, you listeners really stepped up. Yeah, you did. There was quite a response.
1:07
I'm well over my goal. Thank you very much. I had it somewhere. I lost it. I was going to copy all the things over, and I never ended up doing it. Oh, the names. The names over. But I can get it. You can get it now. or you can do it on the next episode because we still got a lot of time. Yeah, I'll do it on the next episode. Yeah, because I meant to copy them all over to my notes and then I didn't. You've been thinking about expanding your stretch goal. I've been thinking about making a stretch goal. The way this falls, we'll have this episode and then we'll have one more episode. And then two weeks after that, we record the day after the plunge. If you don't have the pneumonias. If I don't have the pneumonias. Well, in that case, Dennis will still record it. I'll just be dead. You know, it's fine. You'll be dead. Yes. That's what my spouse thinks is going to happen. But I told her there's EMTs there. It's fine. Yeah. It's for a good cause.
2:08
I mean, if I help people out and my heart stops, it's okay. That's to shock you back. It'll shock me back. Then I get to say that I have a shocking personality. Yes.
Toy Story 4game
Special Olympics Kansasorganization
Flippin' Out Theaterorganization
The Last of Usproduct
Haloproduct
Columbus, Ohioevent
2:22
Very clever. But, yeah, no, I've been thinking about a couple of possible stretch goal ideas to help push that on a little farther. If you have an idea for a stretch goal, send it in. Yes, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. I'll hold to put any of those until that last episode so we can push over the last hump, as it were. So stay tuned. But if you want to give now, I am including the link in the show notes, again, just like last episode, so people can quickly go and donate. Just because it shows on the site that he's hit his target amount, it does allow you to still go. And Special Olympics Kansas is still – the overall polar plunge is well short of its total target goal. It is. Because I think they're targeting like $65,000, and I don't believe they're even halfway there. I don't think so. Not when I checked a few days ago. So think of the athletes, folks, and give deep.
3:15
Reach in those pockets. Well, do it digital. We don't actually want quarters and stuff sent in because that's – Mail takes too long. Yeah, it's tedious. And with what they charge per weight anymore, it would be probably more expensive to mail it than just to – Yeah, that's a good point. So other than that, what's been going on over the last couple weeks? Not – nothing really worth talking about. It has been, I've been playing the same games. I've been watching the same shows for the most part. I've been, I'm in the final push. I'm almost done with my Dark Tower reread. I would have been done, but I've only been reading like during lunch breaks at work. So I've only been reading short snippets at a time.
4:00
One thing, one thing that did come up. I don't know. You listeners, you might have been able to hear it last week. There was this high-pitched, keening scream that circled all over the country.
4:17
And that was the souls of all the Halo fans dying as they saw what a good television adaptation of a video game could be like. I heard about this, yes. Yes.
4:31
Because the first episode of The Last of Us was everything a video game adaptation could want to be. Okay. So you've seen it. I've seen it. And you like it. I like it. Nice. It was really good. It was really – I'm not one of the deep lore people of that game series. Have you played that series? I've played the first one. Okay. I did not complete it because I'm a loser and I don't complete games. But I've played the first one.
5:05
Okay. No, I do not have the giant list of completions like you do when it comes to games because I have a very bad course of while playing a game going, this is great fun. I've been – oh, shiny.
5:18
That's my – there's a reason my Steam completion list is lots and lots of games played. Not very many of them fully completed because I get distracted by The Shining.
5:31
So, but, no, I, even without it being a video game time, it was a really well done show. And somehow, Pedro Pascal is now in like two major nerd things airing at the same time. Yes. Good luck for his time schedule trying to get everything done. It's a good thing with Mando. he doesn't actually have to be there 99% of the time. That's right. Because they can put anybody in the scene. That's right. We don't know. He just has to do the voiceover. Just emote. Just copy. Emote like how he would emote. Just copy. Yeah. He just goes into the little voice actor booth one time, does all 10 episodes, and he's done. Yeah. And then he has to show up maybe five or six times when he takes his helmet off. Yeah, because they're probably going to let him do that a little bit more. Yeah. He still takes his helmet off less than Master Chief did. Yes. there was an entire episode because i watched all of halo because it was such a train i gave up i know i was like i'm gonna i want to relish this i haven't seen a tv series be this especially one that got to have a green lit for a second season that was this bad and just just to watch the like the corporate hollywood decision making that you would thought we would move past from the 1980s is like every assumption like people can't sympathize with anything of it there's not a human there and you know let's have this sub this weird subplot which because it involves you know a younger person and so you know because you need to be able to identify with a younger master she's too old you can't identify with him and then let's change his personality and just all of this stuff and there was one episode where he didn't wear the helmet at all and it was one of my favorite episodes because there was a part where they had the helmet like on a shelf and they like 360 zoom and panned michael bay style around the helmet because it's so iconic like oh we got a show yeah people might be disconnecting that this is halo so let's show the helmet just on a shelf and focus on it like as a instead of how uh steven spielberg sometimes like in a in a sex scene would pan the camera to a fireplace. Right. This was, okay, well, we're kind of getting non-Halo-y, so let's pan to a helmet. Not on any person, though. We've got to see all those actors. Right. Otherwise, we can't sympathize with them. So, anyway. I will never understand the people coming in and going, wow, this is a hugely popular thing, and there's millions and millions and millions and millions of people who love this, and the story is loved, and it's great. Well, let's throw all that away, because there's no way people will like that.
8:09
It was, you know, we'll see if they make changes based off of it. But, again, it was still very successful. And it was greenlit. You know, it just depends. If they bring in new writers, I think that would be what it would take. They need to bring in new writers, and it can't be – there needs to be some creative control in the hands of an actual creative on that. It just feels very corporate.
8:31
But nice to hear that The Last of Us is not like that. Yeah, I enjoyed it. I mean, it could be like that. It was one episode. It was like a two-hour episode. So many hours. It was great. I enjoyed it. Excellent. Well, I have not been doing a whole lot, but before I get into what I've been doing, let me thank our latest Patreons. Oh, I did get a query about this. Someone wanted to know about, well, what if you don't want to be thanked on the podcast? Well, and that's fine. All you have to do is send a message. Once you're in Patreon, there's a little messenger tool. You can use that or you can send an email and just say, hey, yeah, I just joined Patreon. Please don't read my name out because some people don't like that. So anyway, we're up to 45 total, and I want to thank Carrie who joined in at our basic support level. Awesome. We're still 15 away, Tony, from the next 5K threat. So I told you it was going to be a while because we've slowed way up on the number of people willing to join Patreon. But if you are interested, if you want to push the limits of Tony, you can always go to patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. And there are several support to your options available. And we thank you very much. See, for me, 2022 was the year of the 5K. And I am attempting to make 2023 not the year of the 5K. I'm trying to find something else. So I'm polar plunging. I don't know. I'll find something else to do. Your daughter, though, it's so important to her. I know it is so important. She doesn't care you pull or plunge. I know. It is. She's not a water baby. She's a runner baby. I 5K'd with her twice. Yes. So that's 10 whole K. That's 10 whole K, and I'm going to take some time off. Yes. Until I'm forced to. Yes. Or I get enough puppy dog eyes that I just can't stand it, and I'm forced to. You know, whatever happens. Yes. but being forced to from at least from the podcast perspective it's going to be it looks like it's going to be a don't worry you're going to get plenty of rest good so uh aside from the patreon stuff i did sell my firepower i had that listed oh gosh i think i listed it over a month ago i'd been meaning to sell that for quite a while because i have sinbad now and i wanted to move firepower along i looked at my records because i was like when did i get that i've had that's I've been in it for a long time. 2016 was when I got that game. So I picked it up quite a while ago. And I think the new buyer came a couple days ago. It looks like he's undergoing a refurbishment or a full restoration. I'm not quite sure, but he's got some pretty ambitious plans for it. He actually sent me a message the other day talking about some of the stuff he was figuring out, trying to get all the mechs.
11:12
You've seen it. You've played it. It was very much what I would use the phrase, player's grade. I think that's a very good phrase. And for those that don't know what that means, it means it's a beater. It's a game that it should be fully functional so you can score and do all the things, but it ain't pretty. Right. And the biggest thing with that game is that cabinet had been through a lot. So it would be interesting to see if he ends up actually able to sort of – like, we shored up the cabinet to make it more so than my dad and I did, but the cabinet was rough. Yeah. In my mind, if I wanted to do anything, I never thought about stenciling the front of it because the art was painted black just around the coin door. And I was like, I'd want a whole new cabinet at this point if I was going to fix the art because it was rough. Your cabinet was sitting on a bench. I think it had water damage at one point. It was sitting on a park bench smoking a cigarette with a pile of cigarettes beneath it, just staring at the ground, not talking to anybody as they jogged past. That was your cabinet. Yeah, basically, with less fire. Right, right. But it's seen some stuff. So did that. And then I'm going to have a link in the show notes if anyone wants to check it out. But you were kind enough to very almost spontaneously join me. There was like two hours notice. That was fine. Yeah. I was like, Tony might still be awake. He might need something to bore him to sleep. So he joined on my Watches with Dennis YouTube channel, and we did a live stream. Actually, we had a number of people in the chat, like over 20, I think. talking about the price declines in the secondhand market of that hobby, which, as we saw, there are a lot of parallels to what we've been seeing a bit in this hobby, though the dollar amounts are very, very different. Because we really focused on a lot of luxury watches in an index. And that, for those that don't know, and I won't bore you all with it, it runs the gamut. That index that we used for our analysis ranged from watches that trade under $1,000, just under $1,000, to watch is that were, I don't remember what the most expensive was, maybe close to 200,000. Yeah, it was up to 180 or so. So, so I mean, quite a broad range. So anyway, it, it got a lot of discussion. There were a lot of pinheads who show up because I think some of the people who watch just, I don't know if they want to hear me talk more. Cause I'm like, I do that because I thought I was talking about pinball too much. Otherwise I could have set up a pinball YouTube and then, you know, but then you're competing, you're competing quote unquote with the eyeballs of Straight Down the Middle and Cary Hardy and all the other big pinball YouTubers, Todd Tuckey. And it's like, I'm already doing two podcasts that cover pinball. I feel like I'm oversaturated, as is, in the hobby. You need to have more than one hobby. You don't want to be just a one-item person. Well, I wouldn't force myself into a new hobby, but I figured at some point I should probably content create in a different category. right otherwise it's just like it reminds me of those i always think of it as a 70s thing but you've probably seen in the movies and stuff those maybe even in people's houses where they like have the portraits and they're all each a different color like there's the red a sketched portrait and the blue and i don't know if it's like a warhol thing or what but i'm just like so they're just different colors of the same picture basically i don't get it yeah that but that's what it was you were you wanted you wanted you want to do something else creative you wanted to move into a slightly different thing so your choices were like was like watches which is your hobby or uh you could have become an overwatch video producer you could have fired up uh uh at only fans or done like a wiki feat yeah but i don't have a hot tub so i mean there would be challenges for for broad-based expansion into the twitch hot tub stream now now you could always a thought, you could become a VTuber.
15:07
Yes. My fursona. Yeah, you could find your fursona. By the way, Yes. What's the update on that? It's amazing.
15:16
My daughter is drawing some art for us. It is seriously, the art for you is amazing. I will talk more about it off air because I want to keep the secret. But seriously, I like fell in love with it. It was so good. By the time I stopped laughing at just how perfectly fit it was, it's great. I can't wait. That might be something when we get closer. That might be a Patreon thing we might show people at some stage when it's ready.
15:52
So before moving into our segments, we've got – spoiler alert. We're going to have all three segments again. Tabletop is back. We've got tabletop stuff that needs to be talked about. And pinball is actually pretty light. But before going to any of that, normally the last episode would have been when we would have provided our annual stat review on Eclectic Gamers podcast. So this is something I think we've done every year all the way back. And that's where we just, for those that are curious about the sausage making, give you some just basic information about how our show performed in 2022. and again if you're not into that normally we get through this in about 10 minutes but i i do it in the intro because i don't think it fits in any particular gaming category because it's all about the show so normally i would do that the very first episode of january uh but i did not we had other things so i've actually incorporated it here so here it is let us begin this is the annual stats for 2020 so this is a snapshot of exactly this isn't like counting 2022 episodes with like listens that have happened so far in 2023. This is January through December 31st, 2022 and where things stood. So for 2022, we had about a little over 38,700 plays across all of our episodes, including older than 2022 ones. That is an increase from 2021, but it's only about 4.5%. And I note that because in 2021, we had a huge spike versus 2020, like double digit percentage increase. So we're up, but not up by a lot. Our top five countries in 2022 are almost identical as they were in 2021. USA, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom are one through four, and they were last time. However, Sweden is no longer fifth. It's sixth now. Singapore moved up into the number five spot to listen in terms of listens, origin listens. so in terms of cities uh these are the top five cities that play the show um for 2022 so columbus ohio was our number one they were number two last year uh pensacola florida is our number two they weren't in the top five last time melbourne australia is our number three they were also number three last year or i should say 2021 uh seattle washington uh is number four they're new to the top five. I was always a little surprised that they weren't in the top five at least last year because there's such a mecca of pinball. Statistically, you think people are hungry for the content. I wonder how much of this is affected by VPNs. I mean, the player wouldn't know. So yeah, if someone's regularly using a VPN, is that what you're kind of thinking, like with Singapore in particular or something? Yeah, Singapore and like with Singapore or like even on the cities like Columbus or something like that.
18:51
I mean, Ohio's got a number of – I want to think we had another city in Ohio. I don't know. Maybe. I don't – how many people – I don't know how people use VPNs. Like do they just keep it on constantly? I do. Okay. Most people would get their podcasts through their phones though. Do their phones go through a VPN? A lot of people do. Okay. I got a VPN specifically for my phone. Okay. I just happen to also have it on at home as well. Okay. Yes, that could definitely be. That's a major source. There's no way for us to know whether or not that's the case. All we get are the analytics that SoundCloud knows the download came from. Right. They won't know any sort of forwarding IP address. And fifth on our list is Chicago. They were fifth in 2021. so website references so these are the external sources most people who get the show get it through an rss feed subscribe on their podcatcher and capture it so there are websites though some people go and play these things directly through their computer or or go and download them through their computer or go to a website on their phone and download it so our number one source was actually the egp website which i think this is a first i think this is the first time people actually going to our WordPress website to play episodes was number one, but it is now. Pensight is number two. That's not surprising to me. Google, like Google searching, is number three. Facebook appears to be number four. Facebook's tricky because it actually fragments, like Facebook mobile is one thing and so I tried to add them all up and it seemed to fall into fourth And Tilt forums where i also uh list all the episodes i was surprised that it was i was surprised it made top five but it did um i think we had unknown sources was like our number one source last uh in 2021 so it just was sort of like some hodgepodge of stuff or i couldn't figure it out uh the um top five pod catchers for those that are really curious and now we're really in the weeds these are the same top five in the same order as they were in 2021 so the iphone uh player the apple core media that's the number one player podcast addicts number two pod bean uh is number three overcast is number four and pot and pocket cast is number five and that was how it was last time and that's basically the order of popularity of those so again i don't think i don't think it's interesting uh the reason why uh well i don't find that particularly interesting i like to say it is sometimes people uh who listen through the computer don't know there are pod catchers so i always like to once a year sort of list here are like popular ones you can go and get because they make managing podcasts so like they do i i would not be able to stand just going to websites and playing i'll i do that sometimes on a one-off but even then usually i just subscribe to listen to the one episode through my pod catcher and then just delete it yeah um but but about the only thing i use for that is like if we do something in the podcast in particular, we talk about something that I want to play for my daughters or my wife or something for them, I'll just go to our SoundCloud and just play just that segment. None of them care about listening to the whole thing. The only problem for me is when I try and go back, it's tricky because on all the podcasts, I don't listen to any podcast at 1X. And so knowing where it is in the timestamp is like – I mean, if it's our show, it's easier because I do the edit. So I usually have a vague understanding of like, oh, yeah, no, that was about 50 minutes in. So I go and – and so the final things I'm going to do, which we always talk about, are our most and least popular 2022 episodes. I think I still say 2021 in our internal notes, Tony, but ignore that. I just copied and pasted the headings from the last time.
22:49
But the shows are updated. So we'll start with the good news. So what was the most popular stuff we did? Our most popular episode of the year was episode 163 titled The Year of the 2.0. For those that don't remember because my titles aren't always all that revealing because I just make those up while I'm editing. That was the show where we covered the gameplay reveals of both Weird Al and Fathom Revisited. So we had two game announcements that probably helped drive some of that. We also talked about a bunch of the 2.0 kits that were revealed and announced for Pinball, hence the title. And on the video game side, that was the one where there was a discussion about Gran Turismo 7, the problems that Amazon's New World game were going through. Elden Ring, that was where you talked about how they broke the sales records. and that was also one where we were wrapping up some of the doctor disrespect settlement info that's the one where the we we covered that there was a settlement between him and twitch so that was our most popular episode of the year uh second most popular was episode the next one episode 164 that was our 2022 tpf uh debrief that was the title and that's what the whole subject was i always like those episodes yeah yeah people apparently people embrace of course we get we do cover a lot of our first impressions on games hands-on impressions because i was like the first time we got to play Weird Al, for example. Right. And that TPF debrief we did back home. So I remember when we did Chicago, we actually recorded it in the hotel room because it wasn't worth going back to the convention. They weren't even open yet. Yeah. It was like, you know. The tournament was going. Yeah. It was like, oh, we can't get in for a couple hours. Let's go ahead and record our, yeah. We'll throw a little more shade on next, by the way. Shade.
24:36
Smoke. smog's now hotkeyed on a button so folks thanks thanks to the support of patreon we are now able to give you that and tony can spare his vocal cords the uh so third most popular episode was 158 i titled those titled that episode rush those stats that was the episode where that's the title would suggest we talked about the reveal of rush rush pinball by stern and that was the in the video games the big item in that one was uh the end of e3 where you you had talked about the then at that time the announcement that e3 was was not happening right so episode number four in terms of popularity was episode 170 which i titled kojima story 4 so again you're seeing a theme here on the pinball side this is another game reveal this was where we talked about toy story 4's reveal and this was also on the video game one where you went into to detail about kojima having announced that he was working on an xbox game and all of the kojima fans were pissed because they were playstation fanboys and then the fifth most popular episode for the year was episode 161 which was titled shall we play a game 2.0 pinball was just us playing uh another game that matt roberts had sent in for us uh which like took the whole pinball section uh and then on the video games that was one of the huge legal drama dumps you did on activision there were a lot but this was like this was the one where there was the the california doing the right investigation this was the the big huge where there were multiple uh investigations happening being announced so so those are our five most popular episodes now the five least popular episodes um were are i'll go in reverse order so now instead of being like best to fifth best this is going to be fifth worst to the worst so our fifth least popular episode of last year was episode 181 which was titled pro versus preem and uh that was where uh we talked about the drain reveal uh which is nick's uh third party uh game with with module for for multimorphic uh p3 system and then also that's the one where we went through and in terms of a listener request to we went through all of kern's current stern's current production games and said whether we would go with a pro or a premium if like money was no like which was the better game and then on the video game side episode 181 was the one where uh you covered uh pokemon scarlet and violet and also uh squares insider trading scandal i think that was the first the first insider trading scandal if i to be more specific All right, so fourth least popular episode was episode 168 titled Check Back Soon. That was very light on the pinball news section. We talked a little bit about Dutch pinball, multimorphic, and there was a discussion about some – at the time, it was the cryptic indication of something's going to happen with the Deep Root assets. It turned out to be the whole Turner logic thing, but there was teasing going on on Penn's side about that something was happening, which turned out, at least thus far, to be pretty much a lot of nothing.
27:49
Then on the video game side, of course, more Activision troubles were discussed. This was, though, where we spent a lot of time. You had a whole chunk of the segment going into all these video games that are getting either movies or TV shows. Yeah, they did like a massive announcement where everybody was announcing their new shows and stuff. Yeah, but looking back at it, it was a really light episode. I don't know. My guess would be this was an episode that didn't even hit an hour. Yeah, that episode was light on everything.
28:19
Third least popular episode was episode 180 titled Rocket Man. The pinball, yet again, was ultra light. All we did in that was we talked about the idea of a pinball machine and whether it was better to do it around a single movie or game or do a whole series. Like, do you do Harry Potter, Sorcerer's Stone, or do you do Harry Potter, the whole series, as a single game? And then on the video game side, there was a lot of news, but it was mostly about Square. Right. That was right after they did their giant call with their investors. our second worst performing episode of the year was episode 166 titled twitching for full metal sonic and that was the one where we talked on pinball uh where we announced ryan mcquade was joining american pinball we also talked a little bit about cease and desist that hit a dragon's lair pinball project that was uh i guess trying to raise funds and then on video games that was the one where you went over the twitch revenue splits and they were making big changes oh yeah about that and then also this was where uh overwatch 2's beta had just started so you had some information based off of like the going on about the beta and then uh the worst episode and this is typically the worst episode every time i do these uh so it's going to be a little bit of a deflation it's episode 183 which was the 2022 year-end review and again because of how that snapshot works that that episode had dropped december 24th so it didn't even have like a full week of stats. So as usual, our year-end review usually shows up dead last on the list, but it's not really a fair comparison. But again, those are the metrics, so we do the metrics. Basically, when we're the light of pinball, our numbers are much worse. Which makes sense for our core audience. Another thing I think makes sense is looking over at the best ofs. When there are reveals, at least major game reveals, those tend to be the best performing episodes which is also not a surprise which i think people are just wanting to sort of vacuum up everyone's opinion you know first reactions because they're not even reviews at that point no one's handled the game right it's all just reactions so anyway i hope some folks found that interesting so let's now formally transition into the pinball segment this uh this one might show in our our least five popular episodes this year because there There ain't much pinball. There aren't much pinball news to talk about.
30:48
Spooky Pinball has announced and shown photos. They have started production of Scooby-Doo Pinball, so they are building those. And they also had an announcement that they are doubling their facility size. Now, I do want to qualify that. They have specified they do not at this time have any intention to expand their staff, but they're getting another building. It sounds like one building they're going to use for storing games ready to ship out and kind of use it as their shipping hub. And then all the manufacturing will happen, I believe, in the new building is the problem. Probably just give them more room to spread out. Yeah, yeah. Well, again, hold on to all those games that aren't being sold because they're not selling out. They're still not sold out. Yes, you noted they're still not sold out. But, hey, I mean, maybe they didn't plan to this time. I don't know. They keep up in the production count, so I understand that they need some more space. another the only other little item here and i i can't even i even read an article on it so i can give you no details uh i'll just announce that it has been indicated that pinball brothers has issued their very first code update for queen pinball so oh yeah queen pinball exists i didn't know if anyone had it yet i didn't know i didn't i didn't think much on it so i guess if you do fyi you may want to go and see about a rules update because it sounds like there is now one out there and available, but I have no major details to give you. So what we're going to do for the pinball segment, and this won't take very long either, but I figured we'll have some fun. The Pinball Industry Awards is happening next weekend, actually almost a week from today, six days from now. Correct. And so I thought, hey, you and I both voted the judge's ballot on the Pinball Industry Awards. Oh, excuse me. It's not called the Pinball Industry Awards. Sorry. Old habits, the Pinball Awards. so I thought we won't do the excellent stuff, the writing categories but I figured let's talk about what our picks are and our logic for how we voted our ballots because hey, we don't know yet who won, well I do because I work on the governance committee but it's not publicly known yet who won but of course we had what we thought would win and I thought this would be interesting because at least from my perspective I have never voted as diverse of a ballot as I have this year. I did vote a pretty diverse ballot. Some of it might even be surprising.
33:06
We'll walk through that because I think as a mini-teaser, mini-spoiler, I think I voted six different games. I've never voted six different games. I don't think I went that far.
33:19
Let's start off with the first category which was Best Art, Cabinet, and Backglass. Tony, I'd like to know what you ended up picking. Here's the surprise. Spoiler surprise. Weird Al. Really? yeah they're the limited the le the special weird elevation cabinet the orange one the orange yeah i i liked it and i like their back glass art that was basically why i did it no i could see okay yeah i mean it's like it's hand-drawn i could i could see it no it's and i think part of it was whatever when i when i voted was also the palette cleanse just after seeing like the 60th anniversary and how bad the bond art was well um you know bond is and bond was available as a voting option um uh yeah no i um i actually went fathom revisited see i almost did it was very close that was that was my that was my first thought but you'll see i changed it you'll see why here in a minute okay and my and i actually struggled a little bit with that because again it's like well but this is a this is a remake but then they did a special thing like with the lighting and stuff involving the cab art and i thought you know what no i i think they've done enough that it it was an option to pick so i picked it so i did fathom uh all right so you were already teasing that i'd understand soon is it because of the next category best art playfield yes did you pick where down there i picked fathom revisited okay so did i yeah okay so i i always like the fathom art so weird well that was the thing is when i initially for for the first one the best cabinet and back glass, Fathom was my first thought. And I was thinking, I was like, you know, I really like the back glass. The cabinet's kind of plain. But for me on Fathom, it's really the play field. The play field is just, has a feel. That's why I went that way. Okay. Yeah. I love that play field as well. The play field art package. So the next category was best lighting effects. So what'd you think? Toy Story 4. I picked it as well. I mean, it's quite a show. It's a great light show. Yeah. It's quite the visual spectacle. All right. So you've already picked three different games. I have. And I've picked two so far. But we're going to see. All right. Best theme integration. So this is actually incorporating the theme into the game for those that – it's what's on the 10, so to speak. Right. We're not voting like what's the best theme that they did. It's about actually putting it in as a package into the game. I went with Rush. Okay. I actually went with Alien from Pinball Brothers. Again, I paused a little bit because it's like, well, Highway already did Alien. Yeah. But they do have the new LV version and stuff. And I mean, I've never enjoyed shooting. I've only played the Highway version. Never enjoyed shooting Alien. But like immersion-wise, I thought, especially I was so skeptical when they didn't have Sigourney in. But the way they incorporate the movie modes and stuff and the xenomorph and the atmosphere of it, I just thought it was really, really strong. It's a good argument. And for – so with Rush, was it just like you felt like the song choices and the way the albums are integrated? I liked the song choices and I liked how they integrate the albums and stuff. I mean, I know I've talked a lot of crud on Rush, but it has good – it's got good stuff. Sure. Well, I mean, that's why we're voting by categories. Right. And, of course, we're asked to be as objective as possible on the pinball awards to not just pick our favorites, but actually as judges. Actually, it's asked this of the public that voted it as well, is try and really choose objectively what do you think is the strongest in some particular area.
37:00
So now you're actually up to four different games, and I'm up to three. So are you sure you didn't vote six? I mean, I guess we'll find out. Best toys.
37:10
James Bond. oh i could see that so oh i i actually well let me ask you because mine's going to be weird uh what so i'm i'm guessing le is what your premium le is what you're thinking of was it the jetpack dude is that the is that the thing that was the jetpack dude the the car with the ejector seat because i just love that little oh i yes that's i just i just love it i love it and and and jetpack guy and everything i just for me of all the games that came out this year that one had the toys that were the most interesting not necessarily work the best necessarily i've heard some issues with rocket man but i really just thought that they looked cool and they were good ideas i get it Yeah, actually, that was my second – that was, I think, my second-place pick. I picked Super Hoop from Quetzal. Wow. Because they have the basketball integration, and they have the little hoop with the bucket, and it actually has a magnet on the backboard so that it can do things to hold the ball and stuff. And it just – as a toy – again, I've not been able to play this game. I had to go and look at it, and I was like, as a toy, looking at everything else, it felt the – I mean, nothing felt wholly unique per se, but just as a toy concept, I thought that one actually sounds like the coolest one to experience simply from a toy perspective. So I went with Super Hoop. So I'm now up to four different games, and you're up to five. Yeah. Wow. You really did vote. I did. So best innovation was the next category.
38:55
Declined to vote. I declined also. and to be frank it's because i was not impressed with i didn't think there was innovation agreed that was my i i try i really tried i yeah i i was the same i'm looking at the list and i was like there's nothing new or innovative in any of these games it's like uh i i got close on weird al um you know the the the lift ramp reminded me too much of uh batman the dark knight so i was like That's been done. The hamster wheel, to me, was just a toy. It's not something spinning. It just wasn't. I'm thinking innovation, not toys now. Right. But they do have the magnet assist, I think, to help you get up one of the ramps back there. So that almost got me. But, again, I'm kind of magneted out where I'm like, is it really? Like, how different is that from Hyper Loops using magnets to make the ball go do something it wouldn't normally do? It's not. So, to me, it's not. uh you know super hoop again it had an interesting toy but it wasn't really and like again magnets holding a ball in place that is not new uh rush using the thing straight out of lord of the rings is not new a bunch of scoops is not new yep um bond on a wand is straight out of rescue 911 it's not new i you know i just i couldn't i didn't like you i could not think of a single actual real innovation in 2022 so i thought i had to decline yeah i could have made a decision, but it wouldn't have been it would have just been me being forced to pick one of them. And decline is an option for a reason. So, okay. Interesting. I did not know we were going to align on that one, but we did.
40:34
Alright. Best playfield layout. I debated a couple of them. And in the end, I ended up going with Rush. Really? I know it surprised It surprises me a lot. I went Toy Story 4, so let me throw mine out there. That's what I was debating between Toy Story 24 and Rush. Okay. And in the end I decided that I like Rush just a tiny short and curly lot more Okay Just a little bit more My debate was not between Toy Story 4 and Rush I actually think the layout is the worst part of Rush. Yeah. Like, I mean, I'm not the biggest Rush band fan, but, like, the theme integration's solid. The rules are well thought out. I just feel like I'm in the scoops all the time, though. It's like they're just, it's like, it's almost a Halloween effect, but not to that extent. It's not, don't get me wrong, it still shoots, it shoots well. Right. It shoots well, so let me – don't send hate mail to the collective. I'm not saying it is Halloween from Stern. But what I am saying is that the ball, especially if you're like me and you're not a great player, you're in the scoops an awful lot, and I just find it frustrating.
41:40
I was actually torn between James Bond and Toy Story, and the issue that pushed me over is I – it would have helped if I had had some hands-on time with Bond. But I went and I pulled video because I'm like, I've got to be as objective as I can. And while I like the look of the left-hand side of Bond, the right-hand side of Bond doesn't look super fun to me to shoot. Whereas I actually – well, I don't care for the rules of Toy Story. Shooting it, I've actually liked almost all of the layout. I guess the shot around in the pops area is kind of meh. So again, this isn't a year that – well, we'll go into that, I guess, at the end. But just nothing really, really clicked. But I didn't want to decline this one. I was like, if I were to pick just on layout, I'm like, I think I would say Toy Story. I think that Lawler did a good layout. See, and that was my big debate run there because I enjoy shooting Toy Story. And, I mean, again, as much shade as I throw on Rush, I don't mind shooting Rush. I think Bond has promise, but I just, I've not played it and I can't tell. I mean, I can tell by watching that it looks like it's good, but I know games that people say are great shooters that, for me, is just brick city because it just doesn't click. And I was unable to take that lead. Right, right.
43:04
Best rules? Rush. That's what I picked also. I think that's – no, I'm not going to say it's going to be universal. Everyone, of course, has their own taste. But that going in, I thought – I mean – I would have been surprised. I don't think very – my guess would always be surely most people are going to think Rush, right? Part of it is it's the most baked set of rules. Right. Because it's like one of the oldest games in the list. It was early in the year when it came out.
43:33
I think it's – and I've commented on this before. I don't think it's the most approachable game initially.
43:40
And in deference to one of the coders, Raymond Davidson with Stern, that may be more because of all my experiences on the Pro. and the pro does not communicate as well as the premium does uh i think though with a little bit of guidance yeah it's easy to understand what to do i just don't love shooting that layout though so yeah is my problem it's okay i don't hate it but it's uh but the rules i think are very very strong you know uh i didn't and i didn't have anything close on this one i was like toy stories rules i don't know they're way too uh early 90s to to work and with and of course i'm factoring and the price point. And then, same with everything else.
44:20
There's a lot of okay rule sets out there this year. But this was the standout. This was the only strong one, I felt. It was a standout.
44:28
Best accessory. You had one option or decline. Because there was only the Mando topper in the ballot. Because I didn't have the correct option, the correct option being this shouldn't be a category, I chose decline. I declined as well. And the reason is, again, what is best? How do you pick a best when there's only one in there? So, yeah, I'm almost like I don't think – and this is weird to say because I'm on the governance committee, but I must admit I didn't argue it. We were so busy trying to make all these changes to have a public vote. I did not try and change any categories. but on retrospect i i'm thinking i've never loved this category in the past but with no other option it feels goofy uh but bottom line is i don't think that that is a two thousand dollar accessory but that's it but that's the price tag so it's not best because uh because it feels too expensive so again just my take i'll be honest i'll i'll even be brutally honest if there had been anything else in there, I would have probably taken it because $2,000 for a topper is stupid. Okay. Best music? Rush. I picked Rush also, but I think Weird Al could really potentially do very well. That was my second pick. I don't really listen to either of them. I listen to both,
45:55
but I just feel like in the end, I went with Rush because I felt like it will resonate more. It resonates more with more people.
46:05
I feel like it's one of those things that just feels right for the type of places you would typically see the pinball machine.
46:17
Listening to Weird Al while sitting at a bar makes less sense than listening to Rush, I guess. That was just the music. What about best sound effects? I still did Rush. Okay. I actually went Cactus Canyon remake. Oh, that's actually, I didn't think about that. That one didn't even tick on my list. When I saw it, when I saw the name, it was there, but it didn't tick on my list when I thought about sound effects. Yeah, no, and I really thought back to gain the opportunity to play that at Texas, and I thought, wow, you know, these, the sound effects on this are, and I had to sit for a while because I'm like, again, sound effects, they're ever present, but it's not what I always initially, like, I initially think of music and I think of call outs. And then it's like, okay, so sound effects. I really have to think. And I waffled a lot on this, a lot. I was all over the board on sound effects. It was actually more of a process of elimination, like not liking the sling sounds, the slot machine sound effects that Toy Story used because J.J.P. always sticks in their slot machine stuff. So I'm like, all right, that one's ruled out.
47:20
And Rush was a contender. It didn't have any offensive sound effects. But I just thought, wait a moment. No, actually, with the little pew, pew, pew, and all the little cactus canyon stuff, I was like, you know what? No, I think I'm going to go with this. I think it's a very good choice, actually. That was my little velociraptor clever girl choice. So speaking more of audio, best call-outs? I went with Weird Al.
47:43
Definitely could see that. I went with Toy Story 4. It was between those two for me because you have Weird Al doing the Weird Al call-outs. and you also they did get um what tim allen to do call outs for toy story 4 i believe as buzz was yeah so it's like maybe and they and they did so that or they got somebody who sounded very good i don't remember no i thought they did like the way they do it is all the any like tom hanks stuff his brother tends to do the call outs for right uh but anyway i was just thinking about the call out packages those were the only two i was debating between yes and i thought they're both very good packages uh weird out definitely like i i would well i can't say definitely because i don't know how many call outs are in toy story but like multimorphic's been very proud to announce like they have 3 000 weird alcoves so that's a really good pick rush was eliminated immediately they though i hate those call outs it sounds like the band was in no way interested it reminds me of the criticism spooky got with alice cooper's nightmare castle because alice cooper sounded bored doing the call-outs. And that's how it sounds when I hear the Rush Cops. Oh, very much. He sounds bored. Yeah. And so it's like that one's out.
48:56
Cactus Canyon, I didn't credit that as a new thing, so I threw that out. It was between those two, but I went ahead and ended up going Toy Story. Animation, display, and effects. What did you pick as your best there? Toy Story. Yeah, me too. Again, it's JP DeWin. He's the master. He's continuing to show it. So and so the last one, best in show, what did you pick as pinball machine of the year? Rush. Me too. I mean, just objectively speaking, I've never, as I noted at the start of this, I've never voted such a diverse ballot. And you ended up one more than me. I was five. You were six. Yes. It's because of my super hoop. The super hoop. Because I did a super hoop. and we all voted at some points the same games, except I did Super Hoop and I did Cactus Canyon. You did Weird Al, though. Right. So that's why it's only a difference of one. Right. So very diverse. And I don't know if five's your most diverse ever. I mean, that's quite probably is. That's very much spreading the love, but if I could be a little more negative, I actually, to me, you could view it in a way of, wow, look at how close all this stuff is. I actually just felt 2022 was a very weak year. Yes. Very weak. and a lot of this stuff was by default and there were only a few. We talked about those and some of the nuanced categories. It wasn't for me close on Game of the Year.
50:21
Even though Rush didn't win most of my categories as a complete package, I felt it's far and away just superior to everything else that came out.
50:31
Whereas we could say, all right, well, Weird Al has a few strengths like call-outs and stuff and Toy Story has a few strengths like the light show and such. uh it's just on so many of these things like like toy i'm like i'm just you know not no innovation nothing yeah no i just and that's i mean it just it is what it is i i remain hopeful that 2023 will be a better year by default i would hope there should be in some ways it's weird though because we go back to 2021 and there were a lot of companies that didn't have anything out like JJP didn't have a game out.
51:10
This year, the only major 2022 year, the only major manufacturer that didn't have a game was AP, American Pinball, and Spooky were the two that didn't have a new game out. Whereas in 2023, Stern's going to have something. We're not Weird Al, sorry. Multimorphic, they're talking about having two games this year. surely American Pinball is finally going to drop a game surely JJP is going to drop another game because Toy Story ain't selling so they got to move on you know Spooky of course is going to have Scooby Doo we already know so that's where I'm like we should have more choice this year but we'll have to wait and see because I don't know but 2022 I thought was pretty disappointing it was especially for being a quote-unquote not pandemic year i know there's still supply chain issues now that's important to bear in mind but in a year where where a lot of people have gotten quote-unquote back to normal like all the events were back on schedule and everything like that um i you would have thought that it would have been stronger than 2021 which was still what we would call it 2020 and 2021 are pandemic years where they're just the effects of disease control had an impact on pinball coming out right this i mean supply chain issues doesn't change the fact that doesn't affect the designing of the game or or any of that those are still just ho-hum and it's because they're ho-hum that's it is these are all close we had a large amount of diversity but this is it wasn't diverse because It was, you know, Tyson v. Holyfield high-quality fight. This was two 60-year-old ladies with canes in the Walmart parking lot going at it this year. That's what it amounts to. Walmart combat. Yeah. Very sad. Walmart combat!
53:13
But anyway, we'll see what the official results are within a week, so it should be exciting. Let us now end with our recurring segment, Rumor Corner. Rumors.
53:25
rumor corner rumor corner rumor corner rumor corner dennis greasel's got the news before napa case is that right tony yeah okay so for this episode's rumor corner i've got this is a mix of rumors and speculation i'm hearing this from this is actually from diverse sourcing and some of it's going to touch on other rumors we've already discussed. But folks, you need to write in to click to gamerspodcast.gmail.com and give me some juicy rumors because we're doing the best that we can here. We only do an episode every other week. I mean, come on. So, but here's what I'm hearing.
54:08
I'm now hearing reports, rumors, and speculation that multiple companies may be planning to use Texas Pinball Festival of this year, end of March, for their first public gameplay events if not the reveals themselves and okay so that's not i don't think that's particularly shocking tony because we've already been talking about like surely right surely american pinball has got to have galactic tank force out by tpo right um there were we had rumors that uh that jjp for godfather and the uh cgc uh chicago gaming company for pulp fiction are ready to go like the games are done whether or not any are built remains nebulous but there were thoughts that those could there were rumors that we talked about that those could have dropped at the end of 2022 and they did not and texas would be a prime opportunity for first public gameplay even if they do the reveal a little bit right because nobody really does reveals right at right very rarely anymore do do people use a show for for a a reveal in that regard i mean uh spooky did for doing their teaser for Scooby, for example, but it wasn't a reveal with gameplay.
55:21
But in addition, so that's not a new rumor. So people are probably like, Dennis, why are you regurgitating rumors? And it's like, well, first of all, y'all, even the Patreon people don't pay enough for us to guarantee you're always getting a new rumor. But secondly, in addition to this, I'm now hearing about some companies that aren't those,
55:39
including companies that maybe haven't been known to have released a game at all yet that this may be a reveal or at least a gameplay experience, quote-unquote first-time gameplay experience. So this actually is starting to sound like it could be the most robust TPF in years because it seems like the last few have been where people thought a company might be ready and then they're just not ready to have a game there with a gameplay reveal. So it's usually, all right, you're playing whatever, like you'll play Bond because Marco's specialty is going to bring a bazillion of them. Correct. Multimorphic will have a strong showing because they're Texas-based, and they always have a very significant booth presence. Yes, they do. You'll get a – if they're ready for their – and I haven't heard on them. If they're ready on their new game, it would be ideal for them because they're able to so easily provide so many games to that show because of its proximity. If they're planning to do two a year – I mean, it's a good opportunity to get people interested if you're hoping to sell more systems to people that don't already own the system. Right. But I don't know. But it's been because like last year, the only to me, the only thing of note was we got it was a good opportunity for those. I hadn't played Rush to play Rush and Weird Al. Weird Al was the big one. Right. And that was about it. So it might be it's sounding like the rumors are it will be more substantive now. And it's just simply the way it's not about TPF per se. It's just the way the calendars are aligning, you know, games that didn't do very well. you know toy story uh games are companies that just didn't have anything out at all ap that some of that stuff's like the the planets are aligning for tpf because how long can you survive selling you know legends of valhalla's that came out at you know two expos ago and you still haven't even built 500 of them so you know you didn't make a lot right money because you didn't make a lot of games i'm gonna i'm gonna uh going out on a limb and saying octoberfest ain't flying off the shelf i mean they're probably still selling some but as you know once the you have the initial surge of hype and then of course it it anything older dies down right usually i mean there might be a case of a of a hidden gem that all of a sudden becomes like maybe guardians had a you know has a surge drops down in price and then when the code got good guardians becomes popular again But I don't think it ever matched the initial surge of sales. But anyway, are you rumor-tained? That's all I need to know. Yeah, sure. Okay. Well, why don't you entertain us with some video games? Are you video game-tained? Not yet. You haven't talked about it. I'm going to. Are you? Are you going to? I'm going to.
58:22
How'd you say that while you were still talking? It's magic. No surprise. Coming into video games.
58:31
It's that time of year. No surprise for all the shade we threw at it last year. Marvel's Avengers is shutting down. Avengers disassemble? They're disassembling the Avengers. They're going to put out their last update on the 31st of March, and they're ending all support on the 30th of September.
58:52
You'll still be able to play single player and the multiplayer component stuff, but, yeah. the support shutting down the paid marketplace is shutting down they're not putting out any new skins the last new skin was put out was hated and it's they're just like now we're just done we're done we we ran it we we gave it a year we give it a year and it's been utter crud so but it is also the season of layoffs oh yes i've been seeing tech sector big time tech sector has been hit hard google's laying off 12 000 amazon's laying off 18 000 microsoft laid off 10 000 including major layoffs at bethesda the coalition that's who makes gears of war uh and 343 uh and three uh reports coming out of 343 is that the halo infinite campaign team has been decimated And the head of the Halo Infinite campaign team is no longer with 343. I saw that. He has moved to Microsoft to take another project. He's left 343 and gone back to Microsoft because he originally was at Microsoft and then went to 343. Right. Okay. Because he was originally with Bungie. he was an original Halo guy that when Bungie left stayed with Microsoft went to 3043 to run Halo stuff and is now back at Microsoft so yeah no it's a tech sector layoffs are just huge across the board a lot of video games have been hit Ubisoft announced the cancellation of 4 games and they've pushed their Skull and Bones Pirates game back again I was going to say, that has been delayed so many times. It was supposed to be out in what, 2017? I think so. Since 2018, something like that. Now they're saying late 23 or early 24. They canceled four games, three of which hadn't been announced, only one of which was kind of basically announced. But since the announcement, Ubisoft stocks have fallen 19%, and then Ubisoft CEO Goulamant sent an email to staff that included the phrase, the ball is in your court to deliver this lineup on time and at an expected level of quality and show everyone what we are capable of achieving.
61:17
Ouch. The people didn't like that. His workers didn't like that. The Ubisoft Paris Division union has called for a strike on Friday January 27th stating that the ball is in our court but the money stays in his pockets Ouch.
61:38
Viva la France. I mean, yeah, it's France. Yeah, no, they know how to strike. They know how to strike. They're very good at it. That's right. They got the tricolor going on there. So he did in a company-wide Q&A walk back and apologize for that comment But at the same time in that Q&A The company reportedly rejected requests for pay increases in line with inflation And a proposal for a four-day work week So Ubisoft is not in a great place right now And one other group that's not in a great place right now Google Stadia has finally ended. We've known it was ending. We've talked about it multiple times in the past. The final day was the 19th, or the 18th, just earlier this week. But they did release a tool that will allow the Stadia controllers to work with other platforms via Bluetooth. I know some people really like those controllers. Yeah. So that's nice. And that is all I really have in video games today because I had to save room. Yes. We teach this at the start. for the continuation of last week's tabletop discussions. All right, last week we talked about the OGL changes from Wizards of the Coast and D&D. The backlash has continued and grown. A player-organized boycott has seen more than 40,000 people end their D&D beyond subscriptions. So many people were ending their D&D beyond subscriptions so quickly that the server to handle the termination of subscriptions crashed. Ouch. And people stopped being able to discontinue for a while. And when they did bring it back up, they had moved the link to make it more difficult to find, and it was now being hosted on a third-party website. Not the link itself, but the actual server was a different server.
63:35
Because they, yeah, but 40,000 people, that's... I had no idea it was so many. I'd heard about the site going down from demand, but I didn't look and see what the numbers were. Yeah, those are the numbers that are down something like 40,000.
63:49
The Wizards of the Coast put out a response because obviously this sent them into panic mode. and there are unconfirmed reports coming out of Wizards of the Coast team members that I don't, again, they're unconfirmed, but there are reports that part of the upcoming change to the new OGL, which they're back into research mode on, and they're definitely pushing the what came out before was a draft and things have changed, and of course they are because they've got to cover their rear somehow. But there is a lot of stuff coming out. There was rumors coming out from internally to the group that they are laying out like new subscription levels for T&D and beyond, some of which go up to $30 a month. Whoa.
64:44
What's the highest currently? Like what is it? Is it just one price? Like $9.99, I think. But the rumors are those have to do with the new D&D 1. so those might be like oh it's that a month but you get access to every book or what that comes out over the course but still 30 a month is insane i mean that's more than streaming services right so those again those are rumors that's for dnd1 we don't know but they did put out a response about the ogl concerns uh they say they are going to put out a survey that is going to be open for several weeks it's open currently for people to go in and give their thoughts in a survey form because they don't actually want to dialogue with their players because players just need to give over money and not oh wait no that's my opinion i'm sorry that's not actually what they said well you know opinions sometimes bleed into these podcasts yeah but uh they're doing it as a survey at least the feel i get is they're doing it as a survey instead of trying to have an actual dialogue with players because they don't want a dialogue with players.
65:49
But they also had a member of their D&D team put out a notice on D&D Beyond, a letter, as it were, that might have worked better if they had used somebody who was a member of their team who was actually on D&D Beyond more than a day before he put out the letter.
66:10
But that just covered a few talking about the changes, talking about the survey that they were going to do. And they did put out a list of things that they are not changing.
66:23
And that list is there, and they put it out. This is going to be pretty much direct quotes. We are committed to giving creators both input into and room to prepare for any update to the OGL. Brink wrote before highlighting it, tons of stuff won't be affected. What won't be affected? Your video content, whether you are a commentator, streamer, podcaster, or other video creator on platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok. you've always been covered by wizards of the coast fan content policy the ogl doesn't and won't touch any of this your accessories for your owned content no changes to the ogl will affect your ability to sell minis novels apparel dice and other items related to your creations characters and rules non-published works for instance contracted services you you use the ogl if you want to publish your works that reference fifth edition content through the srd that means commissioned work, paid DM services, consulting, and so on aren't affected by the OGL.
67:17
Virtual tabletop content, any updates to the OGL will still allow any creator to publish contents on virtual tabletops. It will still allow virtual tabletop publishers to use OGL content.
67:27
DMs Guild content, the content you release on DMs Guild is published under a community content agreement with DMs Guild, and this is not changing. Your OGL 1.0 content, nothing will impact any content you have published under OGL 1.0. 1.0 that will not that will always be licensed under ogl 1.0 we talked about that because i meant i remember mentioning on that episode that i'm not strong on the laws on this but i wasn't i couldn't understand how anything that had already been created could then be forced under the new content the new ogl which sounded like in the original phrase original drafting that it was they were saying you had to agree to these new terms and it was going to affect everything right and that's how the original draft sounded that's how they made it sound originally there will be no royalty or financial reporting requirements which is a major walk back from what was on the other yes and your ownership of your content you will continue to own your content with no license back requirements which is another major change because the original because the ogl adjustments uh were being seen as being them being able to publish your content make money off your content without giving you anything uh but the big thing coming from this is there is an OGL, there's still going to be an OGL change coming. And it is going to be in some form. It's obviously going to be different from what the draft was. I'm going out and thinking that the draft is what they wanted. But I wonder if the draft leak isn't akin to the old New Coke thing where they dropped, you know, New Coke and everybody hated New Coke. So they went, oh, we brought back the original formula. except for it wasn't the actual original formula because they dumped the cane sugar and went to corn syrup. But everyone liked it better. So if it's not a kind of marketing ploy to get through as much as they would like to get, if not necessarily everything that they wanted. but paizo who's it was originally a split off a break off of some original uh from using the 3.5 rules back in the day and have become their own thing they are one of the biggest competitors to dnd they have announced that they are leading a group creating a new open uh perpetual and irrevocable open RPG creative license called the Orc.
69:59
Because the time of the Elf is over. Yeah. I was trying to remember the quote. I think he actually said something. The age of man is over. The time of the Orc has come. Exactly.
70:18
Form ranks, you maggots. Form ranks. Spears in front, archers behind. They have pired now, by their own counting, with about 1,500 content creators for the forming of Ork.
70:40
I'm only going to read you a couple excerpts from their website that they put out on the forming of Ork. It's actually much longer. We'll include a link in the show notes to it. But this is their thoughts on the OGL changes. we believe that any interpretation that the ogl 1.0 were intended to be revocable or able to be deauthorized is incorrect and with good reason we were there paizo owner lisa stevens and paizo president jim butler were leaders on the dungeons and dragons team at wizards at the time brian lewis co-founder of azora law the intellectual property law firm that paizo uses was the attorney at Wizards who came up with the legal framework for the OGL itself. Paizo has also worked very closely on OGL-related issues with Brian Dancy, the visionary who conceived the OGL in the first place.
71:29
We believe, as we always have, that open gaming makes games better, improves profitability for all involved, and enriches the community of gamers who participate in this amazing hobby. And so we invite gamers from around the world to join us as we begin the next great chapter of Open Gaming with the release of a new open perpetual and irrevocable RPG creative license. The Orc will not be owned by Paizo nor will it be owned by any company who makes money publishing RPGs. Azura Law's ownership of the process and stewardship should provide a safe harbor against any company being bought, sold, or changing management in the future and attempting to rescind the rights or nullify sections of the license. Ultimately, we plan to find a non-profit with a history of open source values to own this license, such as the Linux Foundation. So they're going all in on creating this new license and shifting it to a nonprofit to protect it from having any changes put in place in the future.
72:32
So Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast have hurt themselves a lot more than I think they thought would have been the worst case scenario for this going forward. It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out over the coming year. Yeah, no, this is very interesting. There's a lot of nice burns in there from Paizo in terms of, you know, like, we were there 10,000 years ago.
73:01
Yeah, that's harsh when the people are going, no, no, we know what the OGL was supposed to be. We wrote it. Yeah, and obviously the damage of the unsubscriptions hitting the pocketbook of Hasbro, I'm sure, has got a lot of perhaps attention from upper management that wasn't maybe particularly necessarily concerned with what the wizard stuff was, leaving that to those particular managers. my guess blind guess is Wizards probably thought oh well no the new OGL and like the revenue sharing that's going to be the controversial thing but it's only going to affect like seven entities so other than the seven competitors no one's really going to care but then it turned out like everyone cares right well and it's interesting because from a numbers standpoint Wizards of the Coast has been one of the most profitable sections of Hasbro in the last several years. It's been a very profitable subdivision.
74:02
And part of this has come about because Wizards of the Coast has had some upper management changes where people left and people from Hasbro came in to take over. So I'm sure that's partially driving a lot of these changes and the hits that Magic got hit with last year that we didn't talk about, but Wizards has been kind of hemorrhaging their fandom in the last year. Well, you'll have to keep us updated on the future happenings because this isn't over. Oh, no. It is not going away anytime soon. I think it's going to be interesting to see how the surveys turn out, and it's going to be interesting to see how the orc turns out and at what point Wizard starts filing lawsuits. Yeah.
74:53
Again, there's so much nuance to it, it's difficult to say. I think it's too early to say anything. This has been a blow to Hasbro, but again, it's like the body of Hasbro was destroyed, but its spirit endured.
75:10
I fled into the East. Smoke. I will say, it is interesting that this has blown up so large because non-tabletop gaming related places are talking about this. This is hitting Newsweek. This is hitting Time Magazine. Well, I heard someone in our Discord posted something. I'll paraphrase it. Like, who would have thought my buying of Hasbro stock wasn't going to work out or something because their stock's down. Right. Yeah, it is. I mean, it has turned into a major thing, and it's definitely a body blow for them. Of their own making. The irony. It's just, again, this is a lot like the conversation we had about the Halo thing. It's like there's points where companies don't think about their fans and the people who actually give them the money that they make, and they just try to do things that they think will make more money while not realizing that the people who actually pay for stuff have feelings and thoughts on stuff and might possibly disagree with the routes they choose to go. And then they act shocked when there's blowback. It's like, but why are these people upset with us? there's a disconnect there that is going to eventually you would hope be bridged eventually somebody you would hope would have enough thoughts to go you know what maybe we should have somebody who helps run this who knows who has a business background or who has a creative background but also knows the fandom and knows the people who like this since that is the people that are paying us to continue to do this yeah it's a very much a sort of i get this more like golden eye boris i am invincible sort of vibe like they think that their their supporters their purchase their their customers won't ever pull the plug right you know again that kind of reminds me of pinball where especially in the pandemic and stuff it was like the expression I like to use is you can't lose for trying. So where anything, people are so hungry and you buy everything, good design, bad design, good price, bad price, everything sells. Everything wins. You can't lose. Everything, line go up. Line goes up. And now when times change, things go too far and people start to draw the line and say, you know what? I'm not all in every single time. And even if you're the biggest RPG tabletop gaming company in the world, it doesn't mean I don't have other choices and that you can just do whatever you want to me. And then if sizable numbers do it, all of a sudden it's like these companies or these company heads feel to me, feel like they're shocked. Like they thought, wait, no, we always get to sell. Like we have this number. This is our subscriber base. It doesn't get to go down. Right. like it was like it was involuntary and it's like oh you know what people can walk away it might be hard for them but you push their buttons enough they'll walk yeah you may you do enough stuff that they see is disagreeable you can't always get everybody who just forgets that they subscribe to something i i will say that wizards here i it was wise of them to like they again it's happened quick but they did catch on like i've seen others that are just like it's like turning a train and And something happens, and it takes them forever to try and reverse course and turn a direction. They clearly responded fairly, especially for a company as large as Hasbro, responded fairly quickly to try and alleviate the concerns. But given that they're still insisting on doing a new OGL, see, once you get this level of pissed, the only real answer in my mind normally, if you don't want to lose more customers or maybe get them back, is you have to cave. You basically have to tell the customers, we were wrong. You win. We give up. They're still trying to win. They're still trying to win something. Right. We'll win a – it's a – I'm mixing everything. We've done Lord of the Rings. We've done Goldeneye. Now let's talk invasion of the Ukraine where it's like Putin is like, maybe we don't need the war anymore. But I want in writing that I get to keep Crimea. Right. It's like you're still wanting something even though you lost, even though you're in the wrong. You still think you deserve something new, something better, something that wasn't yours to have. And they're still in that boat where it's like we need to have a new OGL. And I think their thinking is if we keep talking about people playing racist games and stuff, that that will be enough to get people to support us on the new OGL. but that's not because there's still there's still other pieces there that look like it's designed to take away creative freedom healthy creative freedom not not toxic creative right there is a growing uh uh call of i've seen in the forums and and and and and discords and and and twitters and everything to have a um to have a change to the ogl a very minor change to the ogl a minor change that says the ogl can never be gotten rid of or changed again period dot isn't the current one uh does say that it's perpetual yes but they want it was irrevocable exactly that's that's the only change that people there's a growing call to have that as the only acceptable change put into the OGL. And there's no way Wizards is doing that. No, I don't. I don't think so.
81:14
Well, we will report more, or you will, because this is your brainchild, the track and chart. But I think that's all we've got for this episode. That's what I've got. I will tell everyone. Thank you for listening. You can reach out to us, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com or you can go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. You can also go to patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers if you'd like to support us through that venue. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks. Maybe there'll be more Wizards news. Maybe there'll be more pinball news. Maybe there will always be something video games, so there will always be something there. There's always something happening. But until next time, my name is Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye. See ya.