Episode 82 - Solo Dennis

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·24m 50s·analyzed·Feb 25, 2019

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Solo Dennis episode: TNA purchase, American Pinball trademarks, pinball/gaming news

Summary

Dennis hosts a solo episode of Eclectic Gamers Podcast covering personal updates (job change, house burglary, purchase of Total Nuclear Annihilation pinball machine), pinball news (American Pinball trademark filings, Chicago Gaming Monster Bash Remake decal issues, Stern Spike schematics release), and video game news (Nintendo Direct announcements, Activision Blizzard layoffs, Fortnite Live lawsuit).

Key Claims

American Pinball has filed four trademarks (Poker Run, Robin Hood, Valkyries, Sherlock Holmes) likely as a shell game to obscure which title they're actually developing next
medium confidence · Dennis discusses trademark filings and speculation that American Pinball uses this strategy based on past precedent with Houdini/Oktoberfest
Chicago Gaming Monster Bash Remake had decal cracking issues caused by wrapping decals around cabinet corners combined with cold temperature contraction, affecting approximately 1% of units
high confidence · Dennis reports on the issue and its resolution, noting this was a result of a design choice from Attack from Mars that will no longer be used
Stern is releasing Spike board schematics before March 2019, addressing long-standing community frustration about lack of technical documentation
high confidence · Dennis mentions schematics are imminent, noting this was a major gap since the Sam-to-Spike board transition
Zacharia Pinball mobile app was removed from Google Play Store due to sexual content flagging (nipples on Farfalla backglass artwork)
high confidence · Dennis reports this was confirmed by Jake Danzig; existing installations remain functional but reinstalls unavailable
Activision Blizzard laid off over 800 employees (8% of workforce) despite record $7.5 billion in sales and $1.5 billion profit
high confidence · Dennis reports this as confirmed news from Tony's notes, with CEO Bobby Kotick characterizing it as a top-10 difficult decision

Notable Quotes

“I think Sherlock Holmes is the best pick for them... It's really recognizable and it's a famous literary character. And because it's in the public domain for the stories, it's not going to be based obviously on the television series or the Robert Downey Jr. movies.”
Dennis @ ~13:00 — Analyzes American Pinball trademark filings, providing industry-informed speculation on which theme is most likely to be developed
“The reason for the cracking had to do, it was a twofold issue, it seems. One was the fact that the temperature got really, really cold. And the other was that the decals were wrapped around the corners of the cab.”
Dennis @ ~25:00 — Explains the root cause of Monster Bash Remake decal issues and confirms this design choice will be discontinued
“A big frustration that people have always had since the shift from Sam to Spike is that there haven't been any schematics to work on them... So the release is imminent.”
Dennis @ ~30:00 — Reports on major technical documentation gap being resolved for Spike-era Stern machines
“They don't actually have the app purchasers in their own database. So they apparently don't have any access to the now-removed-for-sexual-content purchasers in any sort of list.”
Dennis @ ~36:00 — Explains why Zacharia Pinball cannot offer compensation to original app purchasers after Google Play removal
“$1.5 billion in profit, and obviously it wasn't a priority to protect jobs. So I don't know. I work in the nonprofit field, so we just have a different philosophy.”
Dennis @ ~62:00 — Editorial commentary on Activision Blizzard layoffs; reflects on contrasting business philosophies

Entities

DennispersonTonypersonJake DanzigpersonBobby KotickpersonReggie Fils-AimépersonDoug BowserpersonTotal Nuclear Annihilationgame Loser Kid Pinball Podcastorganization

Signals

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business_signal: Zacharia Pinball Google Play app removal due to content flagging; database access issue prevents compensation to original purchasers; new app in development
high · Dennis reports app pulled for sexual content (nipples on backglass), Zacharia lacks customer list from Google Play Store, existing installations remain functional but uninstall/reinstall cycle blocks access
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community_signal: Activision Blizzard laid off 800+ employees (8% workforce) despite record $7.5B revenue and $1.5B profit in 2018, sparking industry and fan outrage
high · Dennis reports confirmed layoffs with CEO characterization as top-10 difficult decision; expresses skepticism of sincerity and contrasts with nonprofit philosophy
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licensing_signal: Fortnite Live unauthorized event lawsuit; Epic Games initiating legal action against Exciting Events for unauthorized use of Fortnite IP and false advertising
high · Dennis reports Epic Games lawsuit against event organizers; 2500 tickets sold for inadequate attractions (climbing wall, archery, go-karts); limited staff and long wait times
$
market_signal: Pinberg 2019 tournament reached 1,000 capacity limit with all tickets sold in under one minute, indicating strong demand for competitive pinball events
high · Dennis reports Pinberg tickets sold out in under 60 seconds; he was unable to attend due to job transition but secured exception for Texas Pinball Festival
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product_concern: Chicago Gaming Monster Bash Remake had decal cracking due to wrapping design combined with cold weather contraction; affecting ~1% of units; design will be discontinued

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.074

0:00

Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. This is episode number 82. It is Sunday, February 24th, 2019, and I am Dennis. Tony is not going to be on the podcast today. I am going to fly solo. He has been working a great deal of overtime lately, coupled with the fact that he had to continue to do some mechanic work on a vehicle, and his availability was going to be late into the evening. I didn't think I was going to be recording late into the evening, but my power went out anyway, so I was not able to record until just now. So this episode is going to be brief and brutal and just me. So if you want to complain, you can always email us at CollectedGamersPodcast at gmail.com. So, intros. Well, Tony doesn't have an intro for you, so I'll give you some brief updates of my own. First, there is a pinball podcast I have been listening to lately. It's called Loser Kid Pinball Podcast. There is a link in the show notes. I find them quite entertaining. They're going into a lot of depth about pinball. It is every other week show, which, as I would, of course, agree, is the totally right course of action you should be doing to maintain a podcast. And so if you are interested in more pinball content, go ahead and check them out. In my life, I know a lot of you have probably already read on social media that my house had a burglary. This was shortly after the last episode, actually, and it was annoying. So I had a lot of people reach out and offer to help. I don't need any help. I have insurance. I'm fine monetarily. This is not a big deal. It's more annoying than anything. I have recovered almost everything. Well, recovered is wrong. I haven't recovered anything. I have replaced almost everything that I was using that was stolen, other than the window that they broke through. But long story short, they took a brick, chucked it through one of my windows, opened the window, and then looted the house. About, I'd say on the order of $4,000 to $4,500 worth of goods, mostly small electronics. So anyway, I'm moving past that as best I can, but thanks everyone for the well wishes. In other news, I am shifting jobs. So I know I've probably mentioned off and on a little bit about my work situation, which has been difficult in part because I was in a very short-staffed situation with my now former employer. I'm actually entering a period right now where I'm on vacation and using that vacation to sort of learn what the new job is going to be. But I will actually be starting that on March 1st officially, but unofficially I'm already working on it at this point. So I'm pretty excited about that. And I had been with my prior employer for almost 17 years. So this is a pretty big shakeup for me. But I think it's going to be interesting and give me some new challenges and hopefully not be as stressful as what I was doing ended up being. As part of that, I bought Total Nuclear Annihilation. And you're probably thinking, well, unless you've got a job in pinball, why would buying TNA have anything to do with a job change? That's because as part of my prior employer's relationship that they had with me per our personnel manual, I actually get a payout for any vacation and sick leave up to certain limits that I had accumulated and I was capped out on that. So I don't have that payment yet. It will be coming with my final paycheck at the end of the month, but it's a significant sum. So normally a game like TNA, which is beyond what I would be comfortable paying for, became plausible. and I sold Superman a little bit after the burglary actually. And so TNA has entered the lineup and I've only had it for a few days. I have streamed it on our Twitch channel, Eclectic underscore Gamers. So there are some archives of me not doing very well and people coming in and peer pressuring me to play it in co-op mode and AKA cheat, which I did one time and didn't do as well as I did on a single player game earlier.

4:09

Not really any issues. It worked fine out of the box. I got it directly from Spooky. My number's in the upper 520s. And the only issue I heard from the Broken Token podcast, there were a run of these games, a number of them, I'm not quite sure how many, where there was some clear coat issues under the star posts. I had someone in the stream actually mention that to me and express concern. I have inspected mine. It doesn't have a lot of plays, so I don't know. it sounds like it manifests relatively soon. I've written to Spooky to see if they think I need the fix or if my number is outside of whatever the issue is. My understanding is Spooky knows what the issue is, though I didn't see where they disclosed what it was. So I'm guessing, given I got mine from the factory, that if it needed the wash, it's like a nylon washer fix. If I needed that, it would have been applied or sent with the washers at least, and that wasn't the case. And if it's past that run, I'm not paranoid enough to think that I should just tack those on anyway. I did have, I did notice today, thanks to my spot lamp with the extra light that I use for streaming, that there was a scratch, actually two very small scratches in the clear coat, kind of in the, what you might think of as the sharpie section, where the nine reactors are displayed on the playfield. Almost like an exacto, and it was very thin, but it doesn't seem to, I can see the art underneath, so it's just in the clear. So I just took some Novus to kind of smooth it out a little bit and didn't get rid of the scratch because as deep as it was, I'd really have to, I think, go down a ways and then just waxed it. I already waxed it anyway. I actually wax all play fields, even if they're clear coated for that reason to fill in any imperfections in the clear. But that's the only thing I've seen so far. It doesn't affect gameplay or anything. I can't really even notice it unless I have the spotlight on. Well, obviously we always want things to be totally, completely perfect. I've never owned a game like that but so I find out more on that but it a fun game I may give a better review later when Tony on because I know he is a big fan of Total Nuclear Annihilation from all the times we played it at Texas Pinball Festival So that's it for updates. That was a pinball update. We're going to move into pinball news. So first things first, Pinberg, did you get your tickets? I did not. Why? Because I'm not going. Thanks to my new job, I would not be possibly available in terms of vacation to do it. I got an exception for TPF, so I'll still be doing that. But Pinberg had moved up to 1,000 players for this year, and I believe it was in under a minute yet again that all of those tickets were sold out. So if you got one, congratulations. If you are on the wait list, I wish you the best of luck. So let's shift to some manufacturer news. American Pinball. They have revealed, well, let's just say people have unearthed that they have taken out four trademarks. This is sort of how it was discovered that they were doing Houdini back in the day, I believe, or maybe it was Oktoberfest. Regardless, people know where to go and look for the American Pinball trademarks, so they do it regularly. And now there are four. So the assumption, which I agree with many, is that American Pinball has taken out four trademarks to play a shell game so you can't figure out which one they're going to do and the four are poker run robin hood valkyries and sherlock holmes now which one is this okay all of these seem to be in the kind of wheelhouse of american pinball so my gut instinct is if i had to pick one it'd probably be sherlock holmes okay the whole steampunk chains on the pop bumpers thing with houdini is a little You might think that that style would apply to Sherlock Holmes and they wouldn't want to repeat that. But we've only seen two games from them. There's nothing that tells me that they wouldn't want to go in a similar artistic direction or even that they would take Sherlock in exactly that particular direction. It's really recognizable and it's a famous literary character. And because it's in the public domain for the stories, it's not going to be based obviously on the television series or the Robert Downey Jr. movies. then you've got things like Hound of the Baskervilles and all of that stuff that you could pull into for modes. So it lends itself really well. It's a popular literary character. I think it's the best pick for them. Robin Hood would probably be my second pick. Again, it's a well-known story. It's been retold dozens and dozens of times. You can do a lot of things involving Sherwood, Forrest, the various characters. I'm just thinking in terms of modes. So again, it lends itself as well. the Sherlock material seems to do better at the box office than the Robin Hood stuff does what was the last really successful Robin Hood movie I think it was the one with Kevin Costner the Russell Crowe one didn't do very well I think it was a bomb there's a new one that I don't even know it's still in theaters anymore and I'm assuming it's a bomb there's the Disney one but no one's gonna be paying for licenses to have a bunch of foxes running around with bows and arrows so that's not going to happen. So it's my second pick, but I put it as a distant second to Sherlock. Valkyries, I think, makes sense for American pinball in terms of I think they'd want to do it, but I also think given their art issues they've had that they're just going to run into a lot of trouble portraying Valkyries and not having it come across as crass. I just have no faith in it. So another thing is, while I'm really into mythology, I'm more on the Greco-Roman mythology than Norse mythology, which is what Valkyries come from. It's not been a direction that pinball's gone in quite a while. There was that Wrath of Olympus boutique project, but it didn't get the sales numbers that the people behind it really wanted. And so that isn't a good vote of confidence that Valkyries would fare much better. Not to mention, I don't think the Valkyries have a mythos that is as interesting as doing something oriented around the Greek gods, but I'm biased on that. So then what do you have to go back to for Mythology Medusa from Bally of 81? I mean, that's where my mind's going on it. So it can work. All of these can work, but I just, I think that's a red herring. And I think Poker Run is a terrible pick. A card game wouldn't be a bad option. And historically, card games were great pinball themes. Gottlieb had a number of them in the EM era that were very, very successful, if I remember the interview with Wayne Nyans correctly. That said, Poker Run, I believe, is a game where people are racing a variety of vehicles, watercraft, dirt bikes, cars, whatever. And they go around, they build poker hands, gathering cards. And I think racing-themed pinball machines don't do well. And I don't just mean full throttle. I think most of them don't do well. Even good ones like Mustang don't sell very well. So I just think from a successful sales standpoint, it's not the right option. Most people are going to read Poker Run and not even know what it is. They're going to think it has something to just do with playing poker, like a new world poker tour. That would be smarter than this. Anything with racing vehicles, I think, is a mistake. But anyway, I guess we'll find out. Oh, I don't know, because Oktoberfest isn't out yet. I'm hearing that they're going to have machines available for play at Texas. So surely the plan is that Oktoberfest is shipped and sold to people this year. So I wouldn't be surprised if they may unveil a new concept out at Expo. So we'll just have to keep our eyes and ears open and see what happens with that. Another manufacturer, Chicago Gaming. Monster Bash Remake. Okay. We talked a little bit ago about the play fields and some issues with the art on the LE version. Now there's Decalgate. So apparently some of the decals have been cracking. And the reason for the cracking had to do, it was a twofold issue, it seems. One was the fact that the temperature got really, really cold. And the other was that the decals were wrapped around the corners of the cab. So the cold weather, I guess, contracted the decals and then they cracked. People thought maybe it had something to do with the cabinets. They've insisted it's not a cabinet problem. It was how they were applying the decals Why were they wrapping the decals I guess that dates back to Attack from Mars where they were having some other issues with decals and they used wrapping as a solution But they will not be wrapping the decals anymore because the fact that they wrapped them is why they cracked. If they had not wrapped them, then the cold weather would not have been a problem on them. So I guess if you were waiting or you had a... It sounds like this was a very low issue in terms of percentages, single digit, I think they said 1%. So a pretty sparse encounter for them. I don't know exactly what their solution is for people. I'm assuming decal sets, which I remember putting decals on a virtual cabin. That was not fun. But I guess if it's a problem for you, FYI, but the later runs are obviously going to avoid it entirely. And any that were shipped out in warmer weather shouldn't have the problem anyway. So just keep it climate controlled. Don't store that out in the freezer. Final bit of pinball news is Stern, Spike, the Spike board set. I wrote an article about that a few months ago, actually. Well, now there's schematics, so my article could have been a lot better and is now woefully outdated. So a big frustration that people have always had since the shift from Sam to Spike is that there haven't been any schematics to work on them, and especially given that there's so much surface-mounted technology, a lot of people have been very concerned that not only is it difficult from an equipment standpoint and a skill set standpoint to actually work on the boards, they have no idea how to fix them anyway. So I'm not entirely clear if the schematics are out right this moment as I record. It sounded like they're supposed to be out before March. So the release is imminent. If you've been desperate for some stern schematics on Spike, just keep your eyes out and we should see that come out soon. So let's go into the video game segment. I only had one piece of news, but I can actually see Tony's notes. So he has a few others. So let me go through what I have first, and that is Zacharia Pinball, the software version. So thanks to Jake Danzig, he informed me of this. The app version, the mobile app version, has been pulled from Google Play. Zacharia announced that this happened due to the nipples that are in the Farfalla back glass got the game tagged for having sexual content. So if you have the Zacharia app from the Google Play Store installed on your phone, it will still work. But if you uninstall it, you cannot install it again. If you go to a new unit, a new phone, and go to the App Store, it's not going to be available for you. It's gone. So only if you have it actually installed can you still access it. They, they being Zacharia, are working on a new app. They were already working on a new app before this whole thing happened, but they don't actually have the app purchasers in their own database. So they apparently don't have any access to the now-removed-for-sexual-content purchasers in any sort of list. So long story short on that is everyone who bought the old app will have to buy the new app. They don't have any way to confirm who owned the old app on the Google Play Store.

15:49

And I don't know what their original plan was, if they were going to give a discount to people who owned the old one, if they were going to just give it, give the new one to the old one. They indicated that if they had the list of people who bought the game on Google Play, they would have done something more than nothing. They said that in this statement. I'm not clear why they don't have the names. I don't know if that's normal, if it's always just internal and you don't get access on the Google Play Store and that was just inevitable, or if it was something that Zacharia didn't do because they thought they'd be able to refer back to Google and now that the sexual content issue pulled their product, they lost access to that list that they normally would have been able to rely upon. Regardless, it's obviously unfortunate for those of you that want to experience Zocaria pinball games in a virtual environment because it's the best game, it's the best way to get to it, and at least on the PC version, it's a very good simulation, I think. I think it's better than pinball arcade in terms of physics. Whether or not it's better than pinball FX3, I'd have to spend more time on FX3, but I actually spend most of my time on at this point when I play on the computer because I don't own any of them myself. So it's what works for me. So that's all I had on video game news from me. But let me touch on some of these things that Tony wanted to talk about. And I'm going to do a terrible job of this because I didn't research any of these. So this is going to come straight from the notes that he's got for me. So wish me luck. But I don't really care what you think. All right. So we got some news from Nintendo. They had a Nintendo Direct. That's one of their pieces, sort of like a news thing that they do, PR thing that happens occasionally where they announce a lot of stuff. So from that Nintendo Direct, Super Mario Maker 2. It's on the way and it includes the ability to put slopes in the levels, which was something that was lacking in the first Super Mario Maker. Mario Maker is the one game I know of that was on the Wii U that desperately needed to be on the Switch. And apparently this is not a port. This is a new version entirely. So that's pretty exciting news. I've actually never played Mario Maker, but it's one of those games that I would load on Twitch and watch because I just think it's really interesting. You see some very challenging puzzles that get made and people who try and do like 100 live challenges to get through 20 or 10 really hard levels and have to figure them out in time. It's pretty interesting. And obviously there's a lot of creativity that can go into that because the players get to design the levels.

18:23

Another Nintendo Direct piece of news, Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening. That is now going to come out on Switch. I forget what it was out originally on but it is a fairly popular Zelda game It might have been originally a Game Boy game But anyway it coming out So FYI Let see Tetris 99 That was another piece of news I actually been hearing a lot of people talk about this. This is Tetris Battle Royale because we have to have Battle Royale, as Tony says. So I'm hearing a lot of people really, really like it quite a bit. So obviously in the wake of Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, it was inevitable, I suppose, that the classic puzzle game had to have battle royale mode and tony also wanted to note that in his mind the biggest thing was that there were zero announcements for anything related to the 3ds and i know when the switch was coming out tony felt that the switch would kill the 3ds and maybe this is a sign that the portable console means you don't need a portable portable or however we described the 3DS. So let's see another piece of Nintendo news. Bowser taking over. So Reggie, the president of Nintendo of America, he is actually going to retire on April 15th. I don't know why he chose Tax Day, but he did. And he's going to be replaced by a man named Doug Bowser, who I'm sure got the job just because of his last name. Bowser has been with Nintendo for a while, I believe, and he's currently functioning as the head of sales and marketing. So that's going to be a pretty big change because a lot of American Nintendo fans know Reggie. He's at a lot of the events. He's often the face of Nintendo America, which makes sense given he functions as president. So that's going to be a transition. And then there is a rumor. I've heard this is highly speculative, but there is a rumor that Xbox Game Pass is going to be coming to the Nintendo Switch. And well, actually, I'm going to let me finish this one. This wasn't the rumor I was thinking of. Again, I'm reading Tony's notes. Some Xbox games are going to be available on the Switch natively, such as Ori and The Blind Forest, and others will be playable via streaming. I don't think this is a highly speculative rumor. What was highly speculative that I did hear about is there's a lot of people thinking they've heard Nintendo is getting a killed-off Xbox franchise, and some people have jumped to thinking that that is scale-bound, which was a major Xbox exclusive that ended up getting shelved pretty publicly. I don't think Scalebound's ever happening. I think it is well and dead. But anyway, it is a rumor. So if you want to hold on to you and your bro dragons going around and having an RPG adventure, you can still dream, I suppose. So moving past Nintendo, let's move to another Battle Royale game, Fortnite. In this case, Fortnite Live. So Fortnite is the most popular game right now, I think if we go off of Twitch numbers and younger people in particular like to play it in part because it's violence isn't seen as quote unquote realistic. So parents often let them play it. So there was an event that was getting organized, a live event that was supposed to get kids and parents to come out and have some fun for a fee. The issue again, as Tony notes, it is that the event was a surprise to Epic Games, which those of you who have been listening to our show for a while no epic games are the makers of fortnight they didn't know about this the event was organized by a company called exciting events and they used images of fortnight and all that and it was like billed as a festival apparently this festival sold 2500 tickets and all it had was a small rock climbing wall a few archery targets and four go-karts i'm sorry i forget i'm reading this in real time um and so as tony likes to declare as if it wasn't bad enough they even had limited staff and people had to wait in line for hours uh apparently he has a big shock to you all epic games is not happy about this and has actually initiated a lawsuit against the organizers so i guess the moral of the story is don't hold live events with fortnite if you're not fortnite uh final piece of news is activision blizzard the layoffs we mentioned that that was an almost guaranteed rumor on our last episode and unfortunately those rumors were true not only were they true, Activision Blizzard laid off a lot of people, over 800 employees. It was 8% of the total workforce. And the reason why this is so shocking isn't just the volume of employees that were terminated. It was a record-breaking year for Activision. They had $7.5 billion in sales, $1.5 billion in profit, and they still fired 8% of the workforce. So obviously a lot of people, A lot of fans of the industry, a lot of gamers are disgusted by this because there's not, I mean, I don't know how you spin it. I don't know what Activision's plan to spin it. I remember reading the quote from Bobby, who is the president. I can't pronounce his last name. Kodak? Bobby's been in charge forever. Anyway, he said it was one of the top 10 hardest decisions he's ever made as CEO. And I just somehow really doubt he really cares at all. That's my personal impression. $1.5 billion in profit, and obviously it wasn't a priority to protect jobs. So I don't know. I work in the nonprofit field, so we just have a different philosophy. So that was a somewhat somber, sour note, but that covers everything. I know I went really, really fast, I suppose, as I look at the time on this, but really by myself, I have no one to play off of, and I don't really care to hear the sound of my own voice. But I did want to get the episode out. It was just a weird series of unfortunate events. I thought about doing something more elaborate, but when the power went out, what could I do? So we will be back in two weeks. It should be both me and Tony. If you want to reach out to us, I mentioned the email earlier in the episode, but you can also reach us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. You can also find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Twitch as eclectic underscore gamers. And until next time, I'm Dennis. See ya.