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Episode 18 - American Pinball?!?

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 49m·analyzed·Sep 26, 2016
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

Hosts skeptically analyze mysterious American Pinball startup's claims to rescue J-Pop's failed Zidware company.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss the sudden emergence of American Pinball, a new startup claiming to manufacture pinball machines with designer J-Pop and planning to fulfill failed Zidware pre-orders (Magic Girl). They extensively detail the suspicious elements: no G2E listing despite claimed attendance, vague website positioning as a contract manufacturer, lack of communication with affected buyers, and the business illogic of a new company taking on Zidware's million-dollar baggage. Both hosts remain deeply skeptical, unable to determine if this is a legitimate venture, a troll, or an elaborate PR stunt.

Key Claims

  • American Pinball announced a Houdini-themed pinball machine priced around $7,000, designed by J-Pop

    medium confidence · Leaked press release on Pinside; website shows Houdini theming but limited details. Dennis unable to verify through other sources.

  • American Pinball claims they will make Magic Girl pre-order buyers whole by end of year

    medium confidence · Facebook page statement; some Magic Girl buyers report being contacted saying machines will be available at Pinball Expo in October

  • American Pinball is not listed as exhibitor on G2E 2016 official website, despite claiming attendance

    high confidence · Dennis verified G2E website directly; no American Pinball listing found. Searching 'pinball' on G2E site returns only one historical reference to a Bally marketer.

  • A person associated with American Pinball is the son of Ametron Electronics founder; Ametron is a G2E exhibitor

    medium confidence · Dennis found LinkedIn profile confirming employment at Ametron; speculates booth-sharing or manufacturing partnership arrangement.

  • Ametron Corporation manufactures circuit boards and offers full-end manufacturing solutions including gambling devices

    high confidence · Dennis reviewed six-minute promotional video on G2E website and YouTube showing Ametron's manufacturing capabilities.

  • J-Pop's failed Zidware ventures involve pre-orders for Magic Girl, a zombie-themed game, and an Alice in Wonderland game totaling over one million dollars received

    high confidence · Dennis references historical knowledge of Zidware situation; only Magic Girl bailout announced (approximately 24 pre-orders), other games unaddressed.

  • Magic Girl cabinets with artwork have been photographed and released by American Pinball

    medium confidence · Dennis mentions picture release of 'a couple dozen empty cabinets with Magic Girl art on the sides'

  • American Pinball's website presents the company as a contract manufacturer for custom pinball designs rather than a traditional design house

Notable Quotes

  • “I just kind of stared at the news, dumbfounded. It was a complete surprise to me.”

    Dennis @ ~7:20 — Expresses the shock and unexpectedness of American Pinball's emergence in the pinball community

  • “If it's a trolling effort, it's pretty well executed. So kudos to whoever is doing that, if that is indeed the case.”

    Dennis @ ~8:00 — Acknowledges the sophistication of the announcement if it is indeed a hoax

  • “I have a hard time believing that this is what it is or what it seems to be. Or it just seems so insane to me that I cannot fathom.”

    Tony @ ~14:30 — Articulates fundamental skepticism about the legitimacy of American Pinball's stated business model

  • “I don't understand why you would partner with J-Pop... you have to have known, or you think you would have to have known about all this Zidware baggage that comes along with it.”

    Tony @ ~17:00 — Identifies the core logical problem with the business arrangement from a rational standpoint

  • “The only reason I can see somebody actually even going for this... they intentionally are going for this damaged product and intentionally planning on making everything right... they can just stand up and go, we did it... we made this right.”

    Tony @ ~20:30 — Proposes the only theoretical business model that might justify the decision: extreme PR play/salvage operation

  • “But then why didn't they present it that way? Why didn't they say that they were doing the magic girl thing until Pinside started blowing up and getting furious?”

    Dennis @ ~28:00 — Points out the defensive, reactive nature of American Pinball's messaging undermines credibility

  • “We haven't seen a single playfield yet we haven't seen anything yet that I'm not willing to say is completely something that would be within the capability of somebody doing just out of evil.”

    Tony @ ~29:00 — Emphasizes the complete lack of physical evidence or prototypes backing the claims

Entities

American PinballcompanyJ-PoppersonZidwarecompanyAmetron ElectronicscompanyPinball ExpoeventG2E 2016eventPinsideorganization

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Fundamental skepticism about economic viability of new startup simultaneously financing $1M+ bailout of failed pre-orders while launching production

    high · Tony and Dennis agree business model makes no financial sense even with altruistic framing; no sufficient revenue projection can justify the debt burden

  • ?

    community_signal: American Pinball announcement triggered hostile Pinside thread responses; multiple Facebook one-star reviews allegedly flooding in response to J-Pop connection

    medium · Dennis: 'they started getting like 18 one-star reviews on Facebook because Pinside was flooding onto the site telling everyone to stay away'

  • ?

    event_signal: American Pinball allegedly contacted Pinball Expo requesting exhibition space less than one month before event, same day press release leaked; raises coordination questions

    medium · Dennis: 'why didn't they say anything beforehand? If they're making the Magic Girl buyers whole, why didn't the Magic Girl buyers know that this was in the works?'

  • ?

    leak_detection: Press release for American Pinball/Houdini announced via Pinside forum leak; Dennis unable to verify through official channels despite same-day website updates

    high · Dennis: 'someone releases content on Pinside saying that there's a press release... I have still outside of it appearing on pin side have not been able to find the press release anywhere else'

  • $

    market_signal: American Pinball's PR strategy appears reactive and defensive; only disclosed Magic Girl bailout after Pinside community backlash rather than in initial announcement

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.330

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is September 25th, 2016. It's episode 18, the There Was No Farm and There's a Lot of Pinball edition. Welcome back, Tony. I'm Dennis, everyone, and Tony, I thought there was a farm, but, you know, I often, I misunderstand. I misunderstand what's going on. Yeah, you misunderstood what was going on. All those big guys with sacks and baths and my headache. Yeah, you understood, I'm sure. Well, the important thing is that you are well and that you are with us. I am. Because this podcast would have fallen apart without you, despite the firm hand of my guidance. So, what have you been doing while I've been trying to hike home from someplace far up north for the last two weeks?
1:09
Well, I thought, let's have a t-shirt contest. I don't know why I thought that. Oh, actually, I do know why. I had a couple of spare t-shirts from the t-shirt order we tried with the new logo we had designed for that sort of thing. and I thought was, hey, how about I try and get us some more iTunes reviews? So the good news is I was successful. We got more iTunes reviews. The bad news was I only had two shirt sizes. I had a large and an extra large. And so the entries were all in for the large. No one apparently wanted the extra large, which I thought was funny because when I had the planned orders of individuals that were committed to getting shirts ahead of time, that was the plurality of the order. I had more extra larges than anything else. So I thought, oh, that's what people wear now. Apparently not our listeners. So what we did is I ran the larges into random.org's list randomizer to do the drawing. So whatever the number one name was, got the large shirt. And that was Eric Eckhorst. So congratulations to Eric. And then because there was no Excel entry, I took the second name on the list, which was Dylan Mikalski, and offered him the extra large shirt. and he said sure, he'd tolerate it. And so the shirts are spoken for. And if we ever do that again, I'm going to do it before we order shirts so people can just pick their sizes and solve that problem. But we did increase the volume of our review count. Not actually, not everyone who's reviewed us actually entered for the shirt. So we really do appreciate anyone who bothered to give us a review, especially if you knew you couldn't even wear one of the shirt sizes we had. It does help with the searches on iTunes. I even tested it and saw we were popping up more of you. Search pinball. You used to not see us at all. We show up now, as we should. As we should. We're at least, like, eighth best pinball podcast, if I do say so myself.

high confidence · Dennis analyzed website content showing messaging about clients bringing ideas/licenses to American Pinball for manufacturing, compared to a T-shirt printing service model.

  • J-Pop stated in Coast to Coast Pinball interview last year that producing machines was still his intent but he saw no clear path

    medium confidence · Dennis references past interview; context suggests this was pre-American Pinball announcement

  • Mike from Pinball Expo reported being contacted by someone claiming to represent American Pinball requesting exhibition space less than one month before event

    medium confidence · Reference to locked Pinside thread with Mike's statement; timing suspicious given leak appeared same day as contact.

  • “If it is nothing more than a big trolling, it's going to go down as one of the best executed ones, at least in pinball, that we've ever seen.”

    Tony @ ~30:00 — Acknowledges the sophistication of the operation regardless of outcome

    • Magic Girlgame
    Houdinigame
    Coast to Coast Pinballmedia
    Dennisperson
    Tonyperson
    Dennis Nordhamperson
    Steve Ritchieperson
    Pat Lawlorperson
    Borgperson
    Spooky Pinballcompany

    high · Dennis: 'They didn't come out of the gate and say... They only reacted regarding the Magic Girl thing after everyone started attacking them'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: J-Pop's involvement with new startup raises questions about civil litigation status regarding Zidware and why he didn't communicate directly with pre-order holders

    medium · Dennis: 'My understanding is there is civil litigation... I would think he'd be keeping people in the loop so that he wouldn't have to spend money on trying to defend against the lawsuit'

  • $

    market_signal: American Pinball positioning as boutique manufacturer at $7,000 price point while claiming to absorb over $1M in failed pre-order fulfillment costs

    high · Tony: 'how many machines are you going to have to sell before you even get back to zero?... I don't see how when you are clearly by your own language saying that you're a boutique company at $7,000 a pin that you're going to sell enough volume'

  • ?

    announcement: Houdini pinball machine announced at $7,000 price point with J-Pop as designer; alleged to be American Pinball's flagship title

    medium · Leaked press release on Pinside; website features Houdini theming; exact specifications and playfield details remain unconfirmed

  • ?

    rumor_hype: American Pinball's G2E attendance claimed but unverifiable; no official exhibitor listing found despite detailed website search

    high · Dennis: 'I go to G2E's 2016 website. I don't see American Pinball listed as an exhibitor. I don't see American Pinball mentioned anywhere on the site.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Pinball community sentiment toward American Pinball rapidly negative; connection to J-Pop/Zidware automatically triggered distrust despite novelty of new manufacturer option

    high · Dennis/Tony reference 18 one-star reviews, toxic threads, general hostility; both hosts acknowledge community toxicity around J-Pop as legitimate barrier

  • ?

    technology_signal: Ametron Corporation's full-end manufacturing capabilities suggest potential new manufacturing infrastructure for pinball industry; technical feasibility confirmed via video review

    medium · Dennis: 'I watched the six-minute promo video that Ametron has on the G2E website... they mostly make circuit boards, but they also will do full-end solution construction... they're building gambling devices'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Multiple red flags prevent confirmation of American Pinball's legitimacy: no G2E listing, reactive messaging, lack of physical prototypes, vague website positioning

    high · Cumulative: G2E absence, website redesign timing, no playfield images, no communication with affected parties until forum blow-up, comparison to elaborate troll

    • 3:02
    So, anyway, so I did that. And then outside of the podcast stuff, not a whole ton. I was at the monthly Pizza West tournament. You were still dealing with the farm, so you weren't at that. But I placed 10th, which meant I got about halfway through the field and won my money back, which was always nice. I haven't done that in a while.
    3:22
    Video game-wise- You've had a real bad run of luck at tournaments lately. You've been really unlucky. My 403 tournament was a disaster earlier in the month, and we don't talk about that. That had to do with seeding, though, in part, because I, you know, it's like everyone but me and one other got a bye, basically, and I lost that round, and then I lost immediately again, which made me the loser, like in the purest, true vanilla extract of the word. So, yeah, I've had it, and I've not been doing that well at Pizza West this year compared to the latter half of last year where I typically won my money back, but I just think the caliber of players improved, or I've really degraded, age is catching up with me. so there you've gone through your glory years of of of your ability and you're now i peaked and now i yep now i gotta have that graceful uh slump as i start playing for all the really bad teams just to keep getting that paycheck so uh video games i've been playing a lot of battlefield 4 this is really just so i don't degrade too much in everything and so i I can get myself back into fighting shape for when Battlefield 1 drops at the end of October. I don't know if you actually listened to the last podcast when I had Mike on, but we talked quite a bit about Battlefield 1, should you be interested. Yes, I listened to it once I returned from the farm. Excellent. And the only other news I have about me is I got a new pinball machine. I bought a Firepower. They've been in the works for months, actually. And so I'm back up to having four machines. I actually did not, it was out of commission for about a week. The front end of the cabinet was sagging, and I knew that when I got it. So I bought a dowel rod and glued that to the cabinet lip, which was basically part of the cabinet had broken off. So that replaced that, stored that up. Playfield's in pretty good shape. I had to deal with some sunken inserts. Looks like one of the flippers is a little uncooperative on its return. I was very confused. It appears that someone at some point put in a Bally flipper install on the bottom instead of a Williams. So once I figured out what springs I needed, that should probably solve that problem. I cleaned the coil and everything else, and it seems to be firing fine. So anyway, that's pretty much it for now. I'll probably fix it up some more as I can. But on occasion, there are runs of replacement plastics. Those are all out of stock right now. So it does have a few broken plastics. Nothing that hasn't been patchable So it looks okay from a distance Maybe you look up close you can see it's definitely got the originals on it But that's it What's been going on with you outside of the farm?
    6:07
    I've mainly been just working around the house And working at work I did pick up a new game on a Steam sale last weekend We'll talk about that more in the video game section I picked up Mad Max And actually gave it a try and it's not nearly as horrible as all the reviews I read when it first came out. So either they did a good job of patching it up, or I'm not nearly as critical as some people are. And that's literally everything I've done in the last two weeks. It's not been exciting. Unless you want to count that I've burned through... I am up to book 10 of The Wheel of Time, and I think I was on like book 8 last time I mentioned it, or bookstores. Yeah, that sounds right. So,
    6:56
    the wheel of time keeps on turning, and it takes a while to turn through all those pages. The wheel weaves as the wheel wills.
    7:06
    Okay, well, I guess let's go ahead and go into our first segment, which will probably be our most massive segment of this episode, and that's pinball, because holy cow, has there been a lot that has happened. Two weeks ago, it was dead. I had next to nothing to talk about other than what very preliminary stuff we knew about Batman 66. And I've got three news items at least that deserve to have at least some time spent on them. So I guess we should probably start with the most recent one and undoubtedly the most controversial. And that is, apparently there is, or supposedly apparently, there is a new pinball company in play now called American Pinball.
    7:45
    Yeah, that's a way to call it. I mean, I'm not sure on this. I know they're doing a lot of updates for their website, like some that dropped just this morning as far as I can tell. Yeah. But it's definitely a system that seems, I really don't know. When I first read about this, I just kind of stared at the news, dumbfounded. It was a complete surprise to me. And it seems like, well, let's start out. American Pinball is putting out a pinball machine, and it is designed by none other than J-Pop, which seems to be a really shocking thing for a startup to do, because it seems like, you know what, instead of starting off low and climbing, we're going to dig ourselves a big old pit, and we're going to jump down there, then we'll try and climb out. Yeah, I guess I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to try and summarize. I'm pulling information from multiple sources. And as Tony noted, this stuff is dropping in real time. So we don't know what's true. We don't know what isn't true. We don't know how much of this might be a trolling effort. We don't know how authentic this all is. If it's a trolling effort, it's pretty well executed. So kudos to whoever is doing that, if that is indeed the case. but there are certain aspects of it that don't make a lot of sense either which is why we're so hesitant to all of a sudden just say this is definitely something that is happening and so source wise I'm getting a lot of information from the American Pinball Facebook page obviously the website now actually has some content yesterday last I looked it was still just join a mailing list and now they actually have write ups on there on what their company is about and then there were at least four threads running on Pinside that were having discussions about this. So I did actually dive into those to try and figure out. Did you put on your fireproof suit before you did that? Oh, gosh. I actually do regularly follow the old J-Pop thread because normally it doesn't have a – it's a very long thread. Don't start at the beginning. But if you ever want to follow a thread, normally that one doesn't have that many posts in a given month. But, yes, other than that. And there's a lot of, I mean, it's sort of interesting because there's not a whole lot of interpersonal attacking. A little bit. It is Pennside. They always have that. But, yeah, you need to because there's such a toxicity around J-pop. And for those that aren't familiar, J-pop is a common, I guess you could say, acronym for John Papaduke, who is a famous pinball designer from the sort of Bally Williams era. He is responsible, is seen as lead design for a number of the top 20 solid state pins that are on Pinzide, Tales of the Arabian Nights, Theater of Magic, Circus Voltaire. Those are three of his most famous machines that he worked on. I don't want to go into the whole history about what happened, but he had a company, his own group, Zidware. They were promising that they were going to make certain high-end boutique pinball machines. and none of those machines has been delivered. A lot of people felt it was something of a scheme where he started asking for money for the second machine to supposedly fund the completion of the first and then there was a third machine to help fund the completion of one and two. And no one has received any product. That's kind of the point. And so things have just sort of stalled since then. My understanding is there is civil litigation. I don't know how far along it is or anything like that. That's kind of what the thread indicates, but I don't follow it that closely. So, American Pinball. We had already seen some stuff about a group that was saying their name was American Pinball. They were renting space, I guess, that was associated with Zidware. So people were kind of curious about what was going on with that. This was a few months ago. Then all of a sudden someone releases content on Pinside saying that there's a press release and that American Pinball is making a pinball machine. It's going to be Houdini is the theme. It's going to be priced around $7,000.
    11:59
    And then on the Facebook page for American Pinball, they do indicate that J-Pop is the designer on the game. Then they also say on the Facebook page later, after this but later on, the Magic Girl, which was the name of the first machine that J-Pop was trying to do as Zidware, that they were going to make the buyers of Magic Girl whole by the end of the year. Now, I wasn't clear of all of them supposedly were going to get the machines by the end of the year or that they, by the end of the year, would start getting some people their machines. But there have been people indicating they've heard, been contacted, I believe through email or maybe Facebook in some way, that American Pinball has told some of them, like, buy Pinball Expo in October. You will have your machine. And they released a picture of a couple dozen empty cabinets with Magic Girl art on the sides. So, that's this in a nutshell. Now, before we saw the thing on Houdini and all of that, their Facebook page also said that they were going to be participating at the Global Gaming Expo, also known as G2E. It's kind of a gambling convention in Vegas. And that they'd be there, I guess, to show off the machine. And this is where we get into the parts where I'm confused. I'm confused about all of this. We are simple. We're not journalists. We're simple podcasters, and we're going to do the best that we can here. But here's my issue. So I go to G2E's 2016 website. I don't see American Pinball listed as an exhibitor. I don't see American Pinball mentioned anywhere on the site. In fact, if you search their entire website for the word pinball, you get one hit regarding one man who was once a marketer with Bally. It doesn't have anything to do with American Pinball. So that's where I still hesitate and so unsure as being able to say, you know, this is all completely verified and not merely a trolling effort. This doesn't mean it's a trolling effort. It just raises a lot of interesting questions. For example, someone on Pinside indicated that one of the names associated with American Pinball is the son of the man who founded Ametron Electronics. And I believe I found through LinkedIn that this sun does work for Ametron Electronics, or the Ametron Corporation, I believe, is what they're actually known as, you know, what they're incorporated as. Ametron Corporation is an exhibitor at G2E. So perhaps it's a booth sharing arrangement. Perhaps Ametron is doing the build for the pinball machine. And the reason why I mention that is I watched the six-minute promo video that Ametron has on the G2E website. It's available through YouTube as well. It's not particularly interesting, but they mostly make circuit boards, but they also will do full-end solution construction. And it shows in the video them building gambling devices, like slot machines or touchscreen sort of stuff, like gaming. So you could say, all right, well, they may be associated mostly with doing, like, circuitry solutions, but they're willing to actually be a manufacturer. The website for American Pinball, as of today, when you go there, while the art all over the place is very Houdini themed, all of the information is about how you can go to American Pinball with your idea, and they will build you your pinball machine. That seems to be their shtick, that they're saying that they're going to be, they're the boutique manufacturer, you come with the idea, I guess you come with a license, maybe they help you with a license. There's some discussion of the licensure stuff, but again, I just read this just before we went to air, trying to lock it all down as best I could. And it seems less that they're a pinball design and manufacturing company and more like they're billing themselves as a pinball manufacturing company where you come to them like a, again, siding pin side, and I don't know who said it, but comparing it to, is it like a site where you go to them and you give them the design and they print your T-shirts like what we did with our podcast T-shirts? I don't know. That kind of seems to be how the websites are selling themselves. The Facebook stuff, though, is all very oriented to them being what sounds like a more traditional pinball manufacturer, though they self-admittedly want to be on the boutique high-end side of things, which $7,000 price point, that would fit with that sort of line of thinking. I don't know really anything about Houdini other than Little Eclipse of Art I don't know if it's a reskin of one of J-Pop's failed concepts if it's a reuse of some other past design if it's wholly original I don't know also on Pinside and it was one of the threads that has now been locked but it's the man, Mike who puts together Pinball Expo in Chicago in October he indicated that someone who said they were with American Pinball had reached out to him asking about having the ability to show something at Expo. So there's all this stuff flooding in. I know I'm doing a terrible job explaining it. Oh, well, it's EGP. You know what you get when you listen to us. So, Tony, I guess broadly speaking, now that I have laden people with as much background and is trying to give it as much of a narrative as I could, what are your thoughts? First, that was an amazing info dump I mean, that was That was definite wall-o-tech TLDR Sorry about that, everyone But It's such a complicated situation There's nothing else you can really do But to talk about it I don't know if it's even explainable I think I have a hard time believing That this is What it is or what it seems to be. Or it just seems so insane to me that I cannot fathom. Maybe it is. Maybe it's exactly what it seems to be. Maybe somebody's going to make good with J-Pop's mistakes and problems. Maybe they're going to actually do it. but it just seems like a massive troll, almost.
    18:18
    I mean, when I first read it, before they started adding all this other information, and before all this other stuff started coming out, I just thought it was a massive trolling. I thought somebody was pulling a joke and just being evil, because, quite frankly, once people get on the Internet, a lot of people turn out to be really evil. Right. well yeah and and that's how i mean i think that's how a lot of people started with okay well first it's a a leaked copy of a press release which as of as of now i have still outside of it appearing on pin side have not been able to find the press release anywhere else okay you could say well it was leaked so that makes sense okay well why on the same day that it's leaked is it now that american pinball has contacted expo which is a month out less than a month out is half a month out, wanting space at this point. Why didn't they say anything beforehand? If they're making the Magic Girl buyers whole, why didn't the Magic Girl buyers know that this was in the works? They didn't know. They're now saying they're getting contacted by someone who's claiming to be American Pinball, but I don't understand why they didn't know ahead of time, because I thought that there was civil litigation moving. And if J-Pop was still trying to produce the machines, which I know when he was interviewed last year on Coast to Coast Pinball, he said that was still his intent, but he saw no clear path on how to achieve it, I would think he'd be keeping people in the loop so that he wouldn't have to spend money on trying to defend against the lawsuit. So I just, the way they're, I mean, I'm like you. This could all be true, but it doesn't make any sense. You know, maybe I've worked in government and nonprofit for too long and I just don't know how corporate America works, but it just seems really dumb. I don't understand. If you were a new pinball company, I don't understand why you would partner with J-Pop. I guess. I mean, I could in the sense that you say, okay, I want to be a boutique pinball manufacturer. I'm going to put on, oh, I'm going to be a boutique pinball manufacturer. That's my fancy pants voice. And, okay, what name can we get? Well, let's see. Steve Ritchie? No, he's over with Stern. Borg? He's over with Stern. Lawler? No, he's over with JJP. Okay, so you start like, who's available? And then you go, okay, now who's got a bunch of top-rated games? And we'll go off the Pennside list. Oh, well, J-Pop. He's got a bunch of games that are in the top 20. I mean, last I looked, you know, a few episodes ago, three of his games are. So I guess, I mean, I could see why you would want a designer with that pedigree. But you have to have known, or you think you would have to have known about all this Zidware baggage that comes along with it. And so what the site says, the Facebook site for American Pinball, is that they are going to make the Magic Girl buyers who are buying into the Zidware whole. Why? I mean, don't get me wrong. It would be great for them to be made whole. But what company goes in and says, you know, J-Pop, you're such a valuable designer. I want you so badly. I'm willing to bail you out. I mean, the numbers in total, and it's not just Magic Girl. There's also the zombie-themed game, and there's the Alice in Wonderland-themed game that he took money on. It's in excess of a million dollars that he received. Now, Magic Girl is just a small section of that, and we have not seen anything about how the zombies or the Alice people are going to be dealt with, if at all. So we don't know, because Magic Girl was only committed by, like, 24 people or something. It was a small run. so bailing out on just magic girl is it's doable but i don't know that saves you i don't know that doesn't wash your sin away because there's still so many other people that are burned on the other games so i don't see how it works unless you do all of it and then i don't see how you as a company go his name is worth so much that i want him this badly that i'm going to take that baggage on and bail him out financially. I mean, to me, I don't see why you do that when you could just get a contract designer like Dennis Nordham to come in and give you some designs. You know, he doesn't come with a bunch of baggage. He's basically, I don't mean it in a derogatory way, but he's a pinball merc. He's a gun for hire. You don't need to put him on staff. He'll come and he'll do designs. His designs are popular. He's an established name. He does good work. what's the problem? I just, I'm completely flabbergasted that a company would ever say, hey, this is a really smart business idea. Let's bring in a tainted name and try and save it by bailing out his failed company. Because there's no, I mean, are they going to own the IP? I don't, I mean, I'm trying to see the, I mean, it's just like taking on a whole bunch of debt. And I'm trying to see, you know, when a company normally does that, buys up another company, takes on all their debt and stuff, there's usually something there, some intellectual property that they really want.
    23:19
    I can see the desire to having a designer of the caliber of J-Pop, except his name, you have to be really confident that you can salvage his name. I mean, it's just, this is not a company aimed at operators. It's aimed at the boutique market. It was the boutique buyer community that got burned by him. I don't, you know, it's like, what sort of an analogy can I use? To me, it's kind of like when the new console generation was starting and Microsoft shot itself in the foot with its always-on DRM Xbox One stuff, which they all backpedaled on, but there were a bunch of people that still haven't forgiven them. They went to Sony and said, no, Microsoft, that you even contemplated it, was wrong, and I can't forgive you. They won a lot of people back by, but they never actually, by the time it went to manufacturer, they hadn't actually burned anyone yet. That was the announced idea, and then they backpedaled when the backlash was so big. These people bought these games years ago, and they've gotten nothing, and now it's going to maybe be... I don't know why anyone would... You'd have to be convinced, and I have trouble believing that you're a very sane businessman if you allowed yourself to be convinced. I mean, I don't know. The only thing I can think of, and this is way, way out there, kind of a long, shoddy, insanity thing, is we're looking at a group that has enough financial, muscular backing and enough desire to put itself into play as hard as they can that they intentionally are going for this damaged product and intentionally planning on making everything right and doing it in a quick enough pattern that when it's done, they can just stand up and go, we did it. You want work? We're ready. Look at what we just kicked out. Look at what we just did. We made this right. We put good stuff out, and we did it because it was the right thing to do. And if you need stuff done, come to us because we've just proven how solid we are and the type of people we are. And that's the only reason I can see somebody actually even going for this. I mean, to start yourself so badly injured, it has to be something designed around the whole play of coming out on top as looking like an actual big player, a priority guy. and somebody that was able to just completely and utterly salvage what seems to be an unsalvageable situation. Because if they successfully pulled it off, if they successfully dumped Magic Girls and the games aren't crap, and dropped their Houdini, and if they successfully dropped the Alice in Wonderland and Zombies on all those people who paid off, even if they don't ever make another game, for to be sold. They just get the people who were ripped off covered. They can stand on top of the pile and just say, come at me, bro. That's what they'll have. And that is the only possible reason I can see them is that they think they can do this, make everything right, and be standing on the top of everything as a shining knight, a symbol of just what they are to try and drum up enough business to make up everything that that hole cost them.
    27:06
    That's literally the only reason I can come up, is if it's just the biggest PR stab move ever. I would agree that it would be an incredible PR coup to bail all of that out. But I again and maybe it just because I don have experience in this industry but I don understand the back end of it I don see how it ever worth the price I mean, I kind of get it from like a, yo, bro, look at me. I'm awesome. I am the pinball white knight. Prepare yourself sort of thing. But I don't see how when you are clearly by your own language, American pinball, saying that you're a boutique company, you're pricing at $7,000 a pin, that you're going to sell enough volume. I mean, how many machines are you going to have to sell before you even get back to zero? And that's not count. I mean, I'm just thinking the BOM, the bill of materials. I'm not even thinking the labor and everything else that it must take for all the employees, all the time to build up a new. I mean, look at Spooky and how careful and cautious, and we're going to talk a bit about Spooky later on in the show, but look at how careful and cautious that they are being. I'm just, I'm trying, you would have to have some mega cash to throw around. But if your goal is to make money, I don't see why you would ever do it. It seems so reckless. There's so many safer ways to make money in pinball than to do it this way. So I could see it more from an altruistic argument, like, but then why didn't they present it that way? Why didn't they say that they were doing the magic girl thing until Pinside started blowing up and getting furious, and they started getting like 18 one-star reviews on Facebook because Pinside was flooding onto the site telling everyone to stay away, that they're working with J-Pop. They didn't come out of the gate and say, hey, we're American Pinball. We're going to be doing a Houdini pin. Yes, J-Pop's involved. Guess what? We're making all you Magic Girl fans whole. We're going to make you whole. They didn't do that. They only reacted regarding the Magic Girl thing after everyone started attacking them. They were keeping it in the dark, including, apparently, from everyone who was supposedly supposed to get a magic girl. So it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense how they're going about, even if they made all these business decisions, which don't make sense. The order in which they are doing everything, the way they're announcing it, the way they're handling the PR campaign so far seems stupid to me. But I'm not a marketing person. I don't know. It's not selling me, I'll tell you that, that I'm just one person. well yeah and like I said I didn't think say that that's what's happening not what I think is happening it's just literally the only thing I could think of that would make any of the rest of it make sense and even then it's a stretch I just think if this is what it is it's a terrible terrible ploy and I think it's we haven't seen a single play field yet we haven't seen anything yet that I'm not willing to say is completely something that would be within the capability of somebody doing just out of evil. I don't know of anybody who's seen anything physical, just pictures and other things. I don't know. It could be a troll. It could be real. It could be just amazing altruism. We don't know. And I think that more than anything, this is something that's going to be dominating pinball news probably for the rest of the year until this whole thing blows up. At the bare minimum, until G2E, which is, you know, tomorrow,
    30:51
    or until Expo, since there's a lot of people saying they're supposed to be talking to them at Expo. But I think no matter what, this is a definite change to the whole pinball industry, no matter what this ends up being, just news-wise for the next month or two. Because even if this all turns out to be just utter crap and it's a giant trolling effort, people are going to be talking about it for a long time. Oh, sure. I mean, if it is nothing more than a big trolling, it's going to go down as one of the best executed ones, at least in pinball, that we've ever seen, just because so many pieces have been working together. Obviously not working together to the smoothness that makes you think, oh, it's not a troll, because everyone's really ultra-suspicious. Though, given the properties and names involved, it's almost impossible to not be suspicious. I mean, honestly, the only way you would not have suspicion at this stage, I think, would have been if you had had a JJP or Stern say, we're doing the bailout. Right. Now, and see, and that's the other thing, is I don't understand why they'd press release anything if this was, if they were going for all this. I would think the very first thing that anybody would have heard would be when one of the litigators leaked something from the lawsuits where somebody's coming forth and saying something. Or when they sat down and made their big announcement and showed completed machines. It's like, here's every completed Magic Girl ready to ship. We're in contact with the stuff. here's the line with all the half completed zombies here's the plans that we're going to be dropping the Alice in Wonderland we're this far along, we've got this done everything's set but that's not what happened and I don't think that's going to happen I honestly there's a limited number of Magic Girls if they put out Magic Girl trying to make things better okay, that's fine I don't see how they could possibly put out the other two also, but I don't see how any of this works anyway. So I think this is definitely going to be something that we're going to be talking about. And the way things have been dropping, there's probably going to be a whole bunch of new information. This is all going to be bad by the time this episode comes out and anybody hears it anyway. Yeah, I guess in a way I'm kind of glad that we're getting relatively breaking news. I mean, as a biweekly, we're very subject to it. We adhere to our schedule. That's what we do for our consistency. And so it's always neat to have happening news. Normally news and pinball does not move this fast. We kick ourselves because the announcement comes out on Monday and we do our show on Sunday. But in this case, all the information is evolving quite a bit. I mean, I think Expo will be the big breaking point. I don't know yet if any pinball people are going to make it to G2E. Obviously, there are collectors who are in Vegas. I don't know what G2E's policy is. It's really weird to have the idea of a pinball machine at a gambling expo. Well, you know, it wouldn't have been weird back in the 60s. But, you know, it's just not. I think as of expo, there will be a better sense as to whether or not the company is legit, and there will be a better sense as to whether or not they have a plan that actually makes any sort of meaningful sense, or if they're a legit company but their plan makes no sense, and that this is just some more pie-in-the-sky stuff, which, and that's being generous. A lot of people will see it as a con because that's what Zidware is viewed and Skit B. And that this is, I mean, that's the light this is going to be viewed in. And there are people that will never preorder from American Pinball. They'll always want to only be able to pay and pick up the machine right away sort of thing. So, again, they're needing all this money up front. And just, I mean, it's so hard. It's so hard. You look at Jersey Jack. They had to take the preorders on Wizard of Oz. they had to take the pre-orders on Hobbit, and they still had to get bailed out during the Hobbit build by having outside investors come in. It's, I mean, it's a, I just, I don't understand. If you had really deep pockets, I can envision it being subsidized. I just don't envision why. I don't understand why you would ever do it. And I'm sure we're going to get more information coming out over the course of the next, well, I mean, G2E. I mean, we'll probably have, there'll probably be information out by the middle of this week. I don't know. So, yeah, I think this is just something we're going to have to keep an eye on and see where it grows from here. Who knows? Maybe it'll, I don't know. Yeah, the whole thing is extremely confusing. And speaking of confusing, I think I might have said Aimstar at some point there. What I meant was Aimtron. The Aimtron Corporation is at G2E.
    35:43
    The association is with Aimtron Electronics, not Aimstar. I think I was thinking Ameristar, which is a casino in the area. So it just gets stuck in my head. But anyway, enough about American Pinball, even though that is fascinating and the latest, ultimate latest news. Let's move to the pinball news from last week, or excuse me, last podcast, but had gained further information right after we went to air. And that is Batman 66. Again, we knew about Batman 66 while you were off in Farmville, but we didn't know a lot. We didn't know the pricing, and so the pricing is now known. We knew there was going to be the three-tier model, a premium and LE, and then a new thing called the Super LE. The premiums, the MSRP is $8,600. That's $1,000 more than the Ghostbusters premium MSRP was. The LE model is $10,000. That's $1,200 more than Ghostbusters LE. and the super limited edition is $15,000, and it's that limit of $30,000. Now, additionally, while they initially indicated that the super LEs were going to be invite-only, Stern created an application process allowing people to submit an application plus a video to request the right to purchase a super limited edition version of the machine. The application I thought was interesting because it also indicated that Stern has the right to buy back the Super Limited Edition if you want to sell it within the first 18 months, which is a first for pinball. So, Tony, thoughts on the price, thoughts on the application process, thoughts on Batman in general? Well, the price is, we'll see what happens with Ellie in premium pricing. if that's a more permanent change that they are putting into play due to the LCD and the differences needed in, you know, coding and doing video and all that stuff for the LCD.
    37:52
    I could see them putting that as a permanent change to the other two. I think the special limited edition price is just, it's a 30th anniversary edition. It's something they're going over the top with, and I'm not worried about it being some, I'm not one of those people who's panicked. Oh, they're getting rid of pros, and this is going to be the whole new pricing model. There's always going to be a $15,000 machine, and there's always going to be this, and there's always going to be that.
    38:19
    No, I could see the LE and premium pricing being nudged up, but I think they sell so many pros, and I think the pro pricing is probably just about where it should be for what it is.
    38:32
    When it comes to the application, I think it's a PR gimmick. And that's all it really is. I'm positive that they have probably at least 20 of these 30 machines they already have people picked out to offer it to.
    38:50
    And I think more likely than not is what it is, is they will do offers. And if those people don't want those machines, the applications might be used to get or to take care of any machines that were not picked up by the people they were originally going to offer to. maybe I'm wrong, maybe they are going to do all 30 the application way, but it seems a little silly to me that that's how they're going to handle these 30 special editions. It's like, okay, you have to have $15,000 and be willing to show us how much you love us type stuff.
    39:29
    The buyback provision is one of those things. A lot of people, a lot of places do buyback provisions with stuff. It's real common in, like, real estate.
    39:40
    Most famously, I know, like, Ferrari does a buyback. So if you sell your Ferrari within the first two years, the dealers will buy it back from you. So I don't think that's crazy for the SLEs. I mean, it just seems like it's a super big, super special thing, and they're trying to target exactly where those are. and if you decide to sell your SLE off, they would rather have it back and send it to somebody else who went through or who was on the SLE list. I don't have a real problem with the buyback provision. I don't have a problem with the SLE pricing. I just think the application thing is kind of silly, but I'm sure lots of people have done it. I know you've put yours in.
    40:27
    Yeah. Yeah, we'll get to that. So, pricing, I don't care about the SLE price. I don't care if SLEs have become a commonplace thing or they, I mean, I agree with you. I lean towards that this is part of the 30th anniversary special sort of promotional idea and that we're not going to see an SLE on every model. If there was an SLE on every model, I wouldn't care. It's just, it's not targeted for someone like me. And so I don't care about the price because it's a whole new tier. I'm sure there are people that are deeply upset who feel they have to own the best, they have to own the most collectible, and that they cannot just go out and buy an SLE like they can buy an LE probably offends them. And if they can't own the best, they might not own anything at all. I can't imagine, ultimately, this costs them anything in the way of sales. I don't see how it would. Yeah, that's nuts. I just, I mean, I kind of, I get it. If you want something, it's like, well, I want the most ultra-rare. The thing is, the limiteds were limited. And so that you were able to put a deposit down six months before the theme was announced, I guess kudos to you for being semi-clever in your technique. But there are plenty of collectible hobbies where things are super ultra-rare. And a lot of times they're super ultra-rare because they're mistakes. Like I'm thinking in coin collecting where all the most valuable coins of modern coinage are because there were mistakes. and you can't just go and get on a list for that stuff. So I don't have a lot of sympathy with that argument, but again, I'm not that type of collector, so I would never be sympathetic anyway because it just doesn't fit my mindset.
    42:11
    The nature of the price shift, I think, is a more interesting discussion. My personal sense is that this is a new pricing norm, but I'm only basing this off of that Stern made the decision to keep calling these premiums and LEs, just like all the prior titles.
    42:31
    And so, since they didn't name them, like, ultra-premium and cool LE, you know, they kept the same exact phrasing and dropped the... I mean, I agree with you. The pros are going to be back. The pros... Batman 66 wasn't seen as a good operator license, and I wouldn't think it would be. And so, they're just not doing that this time. I get it. But, you know, whereas, like, Spider-Man VE, because it's Spider-Man VE, it's not called premium, it's not called pro, they could put it at a price that didn't have to be the premium price or the pro price. They could have done any price they want. I think it's odd to use your branding, your category branding, and upscale the price and expect someone like me to think that you're ever going to drop it back down again. It doesn't mean it won't happen. I could see them saying, hey, we got LCD screen now, so that's your justification right there, even though I personally do not subscribe to the idea that acquiring a whole bunch of laptop-sized LCD screens is somehow more expensive than dot matrix displays. But you could... Well, my thought there is just it's going to require a change in coding and a change in... probably a change in how they do licensing purchases also for licensed stuff. you're going to have to change your licensing because you're going to have to get actual full-on video clips and this and that. So I'm not saying that is the reason why. It's just I can see arguments for it, whether I fully agree with them or not.
    44:04
    I mean, I guess. I'd say I guess. I mean, they had the full video clips for Iron Man and Game of Thrones. They just converted them to dots, but it's still straight out of the movie and shows. so they were already doing it very true and the programming of how the machines work is the same it's still switches and optos and all of that I mean I guess I could see it if someone was going to say well we're going to do all not just hand drawn art for the play field and back glass but we're going to do hand drawn animation we're actually going to make our own cartoons I mean it would have to be that and no one's asking for that well there probably is someone asking I'm not asking for that So I don't care. I don't buy it. It's a licensing change issue. I can see how you can spin it, and people who don't know any better are going to go, oh, look, more tech. It must be more expensive. And it's like, no, this is where the rest of the world moved already. You could, I mean, they could still do dots and just switch to LCD screens and, in my opinion, save us money. But, you know, whatever. I mean, that's how I do it on a virtual cab is I use an LCD screen, and I emulate the dots, and it looks fine. But, you know, it could be. There could be more costs in there. I'm skeptical. But, okay, it's possible. Will pro pricing change, though? Because there is no pro on the Batman 66. But we don't know. So I think it's possible, even if I am right in my guess that it is a new pricing norm, like this is the new premium price, this is the new LE price, that wouldn't necessarily mean that they have to have a new pro price. and so if it followed the pattern that we're seeing with Batman 66 on the premium and LE you would expect to see a pro price increase but it wouldn't be like $1,000 more I guess it'd probably be between $400 and $700 just based off of how the LEs went up $1,200 the premiums went up $1,000 again these are all MSRP I don't know what the actual acquisition price changes were I'm assuming that they're proportional but I don't know So anyway, I'm hedging that the pro price would actually increase because the pro units are geared towards the operator market. And everything else that Stern has been doing here has seemed to be experimentation on how well they can squeeze that ultra boutique style collector market. And they sell more. I believe they've repeatedly stated that they sell far more pros than any other unit type. And I don't think CERN wants to lose the low, you know, this feels weird to say because of how expensive Pimlum machines are, but they don't want to lose the low spend market. They are the cheapest game in town on that, and I think they want to stay that way. So why not try and still have your stripped down cheap operator-friendly pro versions and push your super LEs or more advanced LE versions and just maybe continue to exploit the difference between those units rather than just raise the bar, so to speak, on all of them and raise the price on all of them.
    47:08
    Because I think they must be thinking at some point they're going to start losing. They're not going to make enough on the higher prices versus the number of people they've pushed out. But I don't know. Yeah, it could be. And then also, I mean, they are doing this machine in collaboration with Kapow. So it could also be a reasoning behind the price increase here. I think the big thing to see is going to be the next game announcement, is when it's going to become where we'll tell for sure. I mean, obviously, we'll know for sure if it's a permanent change or not with the next actual game announcement.
    47:46
    But I don't know. With the prices that JJP is selling at and the prices that seem to be the market is willing to accept at this time, them doing a price increase on, I can see it happening. I mean, that's what they're doing, especially depending upon how they are adjusting their machine output and their factory force setups for everything over the course, changing from LCDs to LCDs, if that's happening to make any changes to how they're doing things. I'm not, I don't know I can't bring myself to really put a huge guess on if this is going to be a one-off or a permanent I hope it's a one-off I think I can see them doing it permanently it's just I don't know there's, you know pinball's just crazy right now yeah, it's hard to say Yeah, no, I thought the involvement, the collaboration with Kapow could be a cost that they have to embed in this. I mean, I would even, I want to think that. I want to. I want to lean that way. I just, I don't understand why they used the premium LE branding if they didn't mean to set this as the new standard. But they've given some indication that this is one time. So Stern's actually been suggesting that the new prices won't be as high as the Batman series. That doesn't mean there won't be new price increases, but they won't be as high as what we're seeing out of Batman. I don't know. I would be cautious, though. I think a lot of people have been suspecting that the LCD specifically was going to be seen by CERN as an excellent excuse to raise prices. And it's getting a little frustrating because the prices have been going up quite a bit since 2010 anyway. So while they probably held their prices steady for longer than they should have now, it just sort of seems like the numbers keep creeping up on almost every release. So it's a little concerning, obviously, for those that are pocketbook sensitive. Let's go ahead and talk a little bit about the application, though, since you did bring it up in the context of I did. I did note on the last episode that I didn't care that they were doing invite only SLE model. I don't care about that. I don't even care that they decided that people should have to decide if they were going to buy or not before even seeing the machine. I find it ridiculous, but I don't care. Because, again, I'm not the person that they're targeting with that. But the app, this application thing, that's dumb. It'd be dumb.
    50:35
    Okay. The buyback provision, your context regarding Ferrari and stuff, I think is very interesting. I'm a little confused on how they plan to enforce it. With cars, it's a lot easier because registrations are tracked.
    50:52
    This seems somewhat unenforceable. I mean, I guess they could troll Craigslist and see if they're trying to sell it. But it's never, to my knowledge, been done in pinball. So I find it somewhat offensive that they felt the need to bring it up. Well, I mean, seeing as I think it's less of a... I think it's more of a, we are creating these 30 super special ones, and we want to control them because, I mean, not control them. I guess that makes it sound really evil. But I think it's like, just like, you know, when Ferrari kicks out a limited edition Ferrari, that's something that they're all about protecting and keeping exactly where it goes to.
    51:32
    And it depends upon how they do the buyback provisions. will be how enforceable it is. I mean, I know like with real estate and such, with the buyback provisions, it's basically a, there's a list of rules that have to be followed. The same thing with the cars. It's not like you can trash a car and then go, oh yeah, you said you were going to buy this back for whatever percentage of the thing it is. and until we actually see the buyback provisions I don't know we won't be able to tell yeah I just think it's tacky I don't see the point they didn't do it with the LE models well no but the LE see the thing my thought here is these 30S LE's are not about Batman 66 so much as they are about Stern so they're more of a specialty thing that Stern's going to want to know where they are because it's about their 30th anniversary. They chose to do it on the Batman 66 platform as a special edition. Then I don't understand why they don't do what they initially said and then pick 30 people that they trust, that they want to have buy the machines and if any of them sell them, I guess sooner than they think is appropriate, they never get invited again. I think they have. I think they've already got names picked. I think the whole application thing is PR fun and as a way of handling any machines that the people they have picked don't want. Oh, so you actually think that it's conceivable that no one who submits an application would get an SLE? I think it's conceivable. Yeah. I hadn't contemplated that. That's interesting. It's a good point. I'd have to go back through the application thing, but at no point did I see anything anywhere in it that stated that any of them would be picked out of the application,
    53:48
    the people who put in applications. Yeah, that's a good point. Let's go ahead and shift a little bit more away from the buyback element, because, again, that one's never going to directly impact me, so it's not a big deal. What if your application gets picked, though? They would be extremely foolish to pick the application. But we're almost to that point. We're almost to that point. But before we jump into that, I wanted to talk about how, for me, I could see doing an application like this if you wanted to run a contest to try and win a machine. Be it necessarily or regularly or pre- I don't really care. but asking for these videos promoting how much you love Stern and how much you love Batman and showing off what your lineup is and asking if you've ever met Gary Stern I don't have a problem with that if it's like a real contest and you get a bunch of marketing tools like we did with the t-shirt thing here you can win free t-shirts there's no cost to you to enter we get iTunes reviews out of it which we want we didn even say how good of a review you had to give us you could have given us a bad review I don know why you want to wear one of our shirts if you hate us but you could have But that not what this is You jump through all of these hoops and explain, I mean, grovel, I guess. You grovel, and then they will bless thee with the right to give them $15,000. I use the word tacky-o around with the buyback provision. And I just, that's how it feels to me, is that's what this is. It's just a tack, I don't, it doesn't, if it was a contest to win something, then I see the fun and all that. But this is a contest to give them money. It's not like you get a discount. At least they didn't advertise you get a discount. And if you did, they should have. Because then they would have been like, oh, cool, I get a coupon. The SLE, I could win the right to buy an SLE at LE pricing. Holy cow, that's awesome. I love Batman. Instead, it's like, here, do all this stuff. and then maybe you can play and rub elbows with the big boys and still give me your $15,000 retail. I just, I think it was a misstep. I don't see the upswing to doing the application this way. I don't get how it makes them look good. I don't see it being anything other than a PR thing. I think it's purely PR. I mean, I pulled the application up, and I see it as being just a way to get video and stuff that can be used for promotion. And to say they're running a big contest, I don't think it's anything special. And also, I noticed on here that the buyback, it looks like it's first right option. So if you bought, so it's like you spent your $15,000, you bought your Batman 66 SLE, and you decided that, you know, I think I'm going to sell that, and I think I can get $20,000 for it. You would offer it to Stern first and say, I'm selling this for $20,000.
    56:53
    And Stern would say, yeah, okay, we'll give you $20,000. Or Stern would say, no. And then you go, okay. But the thing is, is if you sell it for less than $20,000, you would have to offer it to Stern again because they've got the first option to buy the game back. I think it's good to read that level of negotiation into it. Yeah.
    57:20
    Because I don't see the value of having a buyback provision. I think the buyback provision is to stop people from flipping the machine too early, which means, I think in the final contract language, they're going to say their buyback provision is if you want to sell it, they have the right to first buy it back at X rate, and X rate will be some depreciated value. Yeah. I think it would be fair, fair in the sense of true, not like ridiculous depreciation, but designed so that you can't take their product. They seem to be trying to prevent people from taking their product and selling it for more than they sell it for, which I completely understand. It's just I – that's why I think the prices are going up. They're trying to price out the secondary market, which I understand. From a business standpoint, it makes strategic sense. I don't know about doing things like this to control it. It seems like more bad than it's worth. If they did this to everything except for the SLEs, I'd be more worried. Because, see, the way I'm looking at it is I know at one of my former jobs I had years and years ago, we had a right of first refusal to some land,
    58:23
    and every time any other company made an offer on that land, the people who owned it, before they could say stuff, somebody came up and was like, you know what, we want this land. We'll give you $9 million for it. They would come to us and say, this company is going to pay $9 million for that land. unless you want to pay $9 million for that land, in which case you would pay the $9 million and then we would have that land. Or you would say, no, no, we don't think it's worth that, and they would sell it to the other company. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I can see why they would decide to do it. I just don't. With just these three, I don't even know if it was worth the discussion they're having about it to do it. I don't know. That's what the discussion we're having about it. Oh, probably not. It's never going to directly affect me. It's just I find it curious. I find it curious that they didn't try and extend it across all of the LEs. I find it curious that they haven't announced exactly what the buyback stuff will be. Again, with it just being $30, though, that's not as curious to me. Yeah. Anyway, this, I probably would have completely, I'm sure I would have seen something eventually, but I probably would have overlooked all of this. but it was getting discussed a lot on social media. And so you kept referencing my application. We need to clarify. I do not have an application. So that's why I know I'm not going to win the opportunity to give $15,000 of my dollars to Stern. Because I did not actually submit a paper application. Now, I did create a video, but I don't think Stern will like it. So, I mean, they might literally like thumbs up it to act cool, but I don't think they would actually truly like it. I didn't submit it to Stern. I didn't give it to them because they own all the videos, incidentally. They get to own the video, which made sense from a PR standpoint. But I did not give them a copy of the video to own. What happened was I noted that Don from the Pinball Podcast, who guest-hosted here back on Episode 15, he, on one of the social media platforms, had been expressing a lot of concerns with the application, criticizing a lot of the elements of it. And that day was the day I saw your farm video that you put up on our Facebook page. And so I had initially been planning to try and record a response, but I didn't have a good dictator military uniform to put on and dress up as, and I was really tired when I got home from work. So instead I thought, oh, I should do a video, kind of like an application video, to Stern. And so I just recorded a little video, showed off a few of my pins, and I put it on the EGP YouTube channel. We have a YouTube channel now, which people can see from our website, where we can throw content. We only have a couple videos up there right now, including this. But I just put it on there, put it on Facebook, and I tagged Don so he could see it, because it was all in reference to what he had been complaining about that day. And that was it. I wasn't doing anything else with the video. It was later that night he sent me a message and said, oh, you got picked up on Fun With Bonus, apparently carried the video as part of a piece, a little summary of people trolling Stern, which I hadn't thought of myself so much as a troll, as a kind-hearted videographer, but I guess it was a bit trollish if I think about it. So, but it made me feel bad because there were a lot more views. I only expected like, you know, maybe a dozen, two dozen people to see it. And now I really wish I had tried harder. Because I had a whole lot of really fun ideas that I had contemplated. But again, it was just, I got too lazy. So like I wanted to do something like I was going to say how, here's my video. And then at the end of it, I was going to say how it was all about the Benjamins. But I was actually, because I do, I used to collect coins. I still have a small coin collection. And so I actually, before there were JFK 50-cent pieces, there were Benjamin Franklin 50-cent pieces. And so I was going to just start throwing these Benjamin Franklin 50-cent pieces on the table. Just hearing them bounce. I have like three bucks worth. But they're all individual. I've sealed them all off, you know, so they don't continue to tarnish. And I was like, I don't want to rip all those open just for this. So I said, no, I'm not going to do that. You have to hurt for your craft. You have to be willing to go to the extreme.
    63:05
    I just thought, I thought, I had some of that. I had a couple other ideas that I thought would be really funny. But anyway, as of Friday, I went ahead to YouTube and I loaded the stats because I was like, I only put it on our Facebook page. That was it. And 14% of the views have come from Facebook. But 34% came from Fun With Bonus. 23% came from Pinside. So I guess someone shared the video there. and 15% came from a site called pinballinfo.com, which I didn't even know existed. So, okay, what all of that told me was that people are very hungry for content that makes fun of Stern's stupid applications. So if you're out there and you haven't made a video, you should make one. But you don't have to do the paper application if you're just doing a stupid video.
    63:51
    In our show notes, I do have a link to the video that I made. I also have a link to Jeff's video. Jeff is co-host of the Pinball Podcast. He was also in the Fun with Bonus piece. I really liked his video a lot. I thought it was a lot more clever than mine. He utilized starving children, which I thought was brilliant. And I should have starved something in order to have more sympathy points. But the only thing available was I was hungry when I got home. And I don't think people would look at me and go, yeah, you definitely need another sandwich. So we did not go with that. But, okay, so given all of this, I guess, just sort of to wrap up this section on Batman, I'd like to sort of make it more Stern-focused broadly and kind of ask you, Tony, given what we're seeing with Batman, where do you think Stern is going? Like, in terms of the market, where do you think Stern's going now? Or are they going anywhere new? I don't think they're going anywhere new. I think Stern's going to continue being the grand old lady that she's been. I think they might increase their prices with what their prices are setting with, like, JGP and their competition and stuff. But I don't think they're really going to do anything. I think the major change is going to be the LCD edition. And I don't see them doing anything more severe than that to change up what is currently working very well for them. I mean, there's no reason for them to. Yeah, my sense is that I think Stern may be pivoting a little. I think the pivot already started before Batman, but what I think is Stern is trying harder now to exploit the collector market. Now, I think this has been pretty obvious. The question is, will it work? And I think it will because I think the demand still exists for more on the high-end collector side. Now, and as I noted when we were talking about the pro and what potential pro pricing versus what the potential pricing for the premiums that aren't Batman and such are moving forward. The question that I think it raises for a lot of us, a lot of people who are kind of like me, is will it squeeze out lower income collectors? And my response is, much like we were talking about the pro, not necessarily.
    66:06
    Not everyone who collects pinball collects for different reasons. Not everyone collects for scarcity. Do I have a pinball collection? I do. Do I collect rare pins? I don't specifically try to. I think I've gone through what ones I have run numbers on. I don't think I've ever owned a pin that didn't have at least 1,000 units made. So I would say I do not collect rare pins. But I don't go after them specifically because of rarity. I get pinball machines because they have gameplay elements that I want. That's how I acquire at this point. So for me, when I have people come over, I don't have them come over to gush at the value of the collection. I want them to play the games. And so I try and get games that I think people will enjoy qualifying it with that I have to enjoy the game as well, or else I won't buy. But so in that regard, it comes down to what happens with the pro model. I'm certain Stern's going to keep making pros. So it's just a question of if that price point's going to change and if it's going to change by how much. Every person who buys, even if they aren't just pro buyers, but every person who buys has a range where they'll tap out. There's at some point where everyone will say, that is too much for new in box. I'm going to stick with the used market. I think a lot of people who buy new, and perhaps especially those who have been more LE focused, have been comforted by the notion that they can probably get next to all of their money back that they paid. There's no depreciation. They'll get back all their money if they sell. But they have the potential to make money if they get the next Tron LE. And then they can flip it and they'll get a whole bunch of money. Or if they get an America's Most Haunted, it's going to be worth more even if they open it. So it's kind of like it's the gamble of trying to buy the machine that will be ultimately really valuable. But it's not like the burns have been very bad. Whereas, oh, I got a real bad dog. Like I got Avengers LE, which is not seen as a very popular LE, but it's not like Avengers LE sells for $2,500. I mean, you're still going to get most of your money back. So I don't expect to see prices collapse, but what I think is ultimately going to happen with this sort of trending is we're going to see the older stuff, the older pens, probably isn't going to increase at the rapid rate we've seen over the last five or six years. and the newer stuff may finally stop selling used at new or near new in box pricing. It might actually start to fall a little bit. Nothing is ever going to collapse. I think pinball holds its value and will continue to hold its value better than a lot of other things. I think we might be finally getting towards the days where if you bought a pro machine and you stuck in some cliffy protectors that you get to have your whole new in box price back, that might finally be at an end and we'll start seeing some price drops on some of these on the less collectible side just because of pinball is becoming more and more popular but the number of people who can actually buy machines isn't increasing at the same volume as the popular there are reasons for that but I just I think that the market, not only the market is saturated per se but there are a lot of players in it now so I just don't think everything can keep going for near new in box pricing used just because there's too much variety out there and people aren't going to – it's not like there's not enough pins anymore, so to speak. Yeah, I won't disagree with that. I do think the used market is moving towards a plateau and a collapse.
    69:44
    The bubble is going to burst, as it were. It's just going to be a question of how much longer is it going to ride out. I've never understood the whole collecting pinball machines as an investment, but when it comes to hobbies, I've got hobbies of stuff that I haven't touched in two years, but I still have the stuff, and it's not worth anything. I have it because of the same reason I originally picked it up is because I loved it. I loved the theme. I loved whatever it was, and I will, you know, when I get more free time, I will move into it and do it again. But the whole investment portion of it, of the investment collectors, I've never understood that. I mean, I understand you can get good money that way, and it lets you rotate your collection with a certain amount of seed money, as it were. Then you can just go, well, I sold this for this, and then that's, you know, the next game I'm going to replace it with was $500 less than that, so I'm out nothing more than I already had. I've actually made $500 on this sale. I understand it. It's just not how I approach hobbies. So to me, I wouldn't be buying games like that if I could afford games at this time. I would be buying games that are fun and are on my short list of, hey, that game's awesome for whatever reason. Whatever reason I like that game, I would be going for a game. And if I can resell it for what I bought it for or close to what I bought it for, okay. But I'm not going to be going, well, I bought this game new in box and now I'm going to set it in my storage unit for 15 years without ever even opening the box so I can sell it for more money. That's just not how I think. Why would you spend, And I can't see why I would spend money to invest on something like that and then not play it or do anything with it. Right. And I don't think most people do. But I don't think there is a bubble. So I don't think a bubble will burst. I think that a plateau will be reached. I don't think we're going to see the days where Attack from Mars sells for $2,500 again, though. I think it just quits going up. I think Hollywood heat doesn't rise to a $2,000 pen, but it also doesn't fall back down to being a $500 pen. I think because while pinball's popularity may eventually plateau, the desire for getting new machines is going to subsume the desire for more and more people to want just the old stuff. There's still the tearing of people are going to want a machine. Old stuff is going to be more affordable than new stuff. That's kind of what's pushed some of those pins up a little bit, and that's still going to exist because there aren't more old pins, remakes aside, like Medieval Madness. There are just fewer because eventually people combine two to make a decent one of the version sort of thing. So there's always that that's affecting them. I just don't think, you know, like how Jurassic Park, for example, which I bought for just over $2,000. and had I gotten it two and a half years ago, I probably could have gotten it for $1,500. I don't think Jurassic Park is going to become a $3,000 game in two more years. But I also don't think it's going to fall back below $1,500. It just, I think they're going to, most of the pins are just going to sit at what they've reached and so plateau out. But I don't think of it as a bubble in the sense that, other than maybe a few of the top end games, just because most games haven't seen just tremendous, like, multifold increases in their cost. Only those A-list Williams games, I think, would be the most susceptible to be called out of bubble, where they've just rapidly gone up to higher than new in box pricing. But anything less than new in box pricing has the advantage of being less than new in box. So it becomes more affordable to people. But we'll have to see, because who knows. Yeah, I think that it's time to move on to our next pinball. topic, which would be Spooky has released some details on their newest game. Yes. We don't want to leave Spooky out. We did have Spooky news this week as well. Less to go over, thankfully, than these other two items, because we've already spent a lot of time on pinball. But the next machine, Spooky game number three, we still don't know what it is, but we do know that the run size has been increased to 500 units. Rob Zombie, I believe, was 300. the price it was six thousand dollars they are increasing that two hundred and fifty dollars so it's 62.50 and as i noted we do not know what theme they are running with yet though from what i've been reading online it seems to be some sort of licensed theme as i think you would expect so i guess tony you what any thoughts uh regarding spooky um i think they're doing a nice slow build not like a slow build of the machines but they're doing a nice slow build of their company and how it's going since I mean they sold Rob Zombie out really quick they learned a lot in their creation of America's Most Haunted and I think instead of trying to go just feet first in huge like some places do I kind of like this slow build they're doing I think it makes a very firm foundation for them and a place that as they're getting bigger and they keep increasing there, now that their new little factory's up and they keep increasing the machines they can build, I mean, I don't necessarily think that they're ever going to be like a stern or one of these really huge people, but I think that they are definitely going to be, I see nothing that makes me think they're not going to be just a solid small end producer who's always there and puts out solid games. I mean, I haven't had any issues with any of their games that I've played. Again, I haven't put a lot of time in on them. I've enjoyed the themes a lot, and I think the machines that they have put out have been pretty solid all in all. I think that they're going to be kind of a rock of the small-end niche producer, and that they're probably going to just keep doing what they're doing and be very successful at it. Yeah. Overall, I think this is broadly pretty good news. I'd say the indication was the price increased is to go towards improving quality.
    76:43
    I'm skeptical about whether or not the price increase at this time was smart for them because I think being on the lower end compared to a lot of the other boutique manufacturers is a plus. But this was a dramatic increase. And the biggest complaint I've seen from people about the first two spooky titles is the sort of homebrew feel, the homebrew look they still have. So if they can inject that $250 into getting a more professional product look to it, I think it will help because that seems to be the biggest criticism. And a lot of people really want to support them as a small little guy manufacturer trying to pull itself up by its bootstraps. So I think that's good.
    77:23
    As I've noted on past podcasts, I've noted that I would like to see Spooky move away from using the limited run count as a crutch to guarantee sales, like what they had to do with America's Most Haunted. And I think this volume increase is a good experiment for them. They sell out still. then I think it continues to show that they can loosen their hold on doing the false scarcity model in order to make sales, that their build quality and their license picks will be good enough. They won't just be relying on that pinball as an investment market where people want to buy the game, keep it in the box like you were noting, and then sell it for more than what they paid. So this continues the Matt trend, which I've wanted to see, so I think that's good. The theme obviously is going to matter. I'm hoping it's a bigger theme, a more popular broadly theme than Rob Zombie was. Rob Zombie as a theme definitely helped versus what America's Most Haunted was. So if they continue to grow in that regard, I think that's great. And so for me, I think Spooky has two main issues that they need to tackle to kind of get to the, and I'll air quote it, the next level. The first would be that there are, as I noted on the pricing thing, a lot of people still think the pins look homebrew. I thought Rob Zombie looked pretty good, especially compared to America's Most Haunted. I think it looked like a big step up on the play field, and the cab art was stellar. But it was still a cited factor from people who played the game more than I did. So the experience they're gaining as they build more and more pins, I think, is what's going to advance that. If not that, then hopefully the $250 more per machine will. And then the second next level thing I think is they need to get a killer layout going. I don't think I've ever seen any true excitement about any of the gameplay designs they've unveiled so far. I'm not saying that they need to tap a classic big name designer. They don't need to bring in a Lawler or anything. But I really think they need to get something where the big talk about isn't that, hey, look, this is a small manufacturer. or look at how they're able to actually manufacture and sell pins, which is great. I really want to see people say, you need to get Spooky Game number three because the gameplay is so awesome. Not the theme is so awesome, but the gameplay. I think that's the one element that I've not seen any real true excitement about yet, is that they have incredible gameplay. And that's what I want to see them be able to do, because I think that's what gets them to the next level. Yeah, I can definitely see what you're talking about, the gameplay. I mean, as you recall, I never got a chance to play Rob Zombie, so I can't say a thing on its gameplay. I did play America's Most Haunted. I've played it several times, and its gameplay is all right. But they don't have something that just stands out and screams as anything special. I mean, I don't see where they had anything that's really problematic. Nothing I've played has stuck for me. Well, that just doesn't work. That just doesn't feel good. but it's just there's nothing that screams out special. Right now they seem very solid middle-of-the-field type play fields where it's just there's nothing bad, there's nothing special, it's just there. And the big things that they're grabbing on is, A, people have already gotten to the point where they trust their name, they like their themes. And I think that, like you said, a really good theme combined with a play field that actually steps up a notch to, it doesn't even have to be a great play field or something super magical, but just something that makes enough of a grab that it really gets a hold of people is going to take things to a whole different level for them. And I don't know if they're ever going to be a big enough producer to get away from the whole limited number of production.
    81:29
    They've increased their production ability, but they're still not like a huge factory floor and they can just turn out thousands and thousands of machines. I don't know if they'll ever be a huge top-notch producer without making some major changes to what makes Spooky Pinball Spooky Pinball. But I can definitely see them filling the niche that they are currently filling. I mean, they are a solid, reliable, small producer that they're probably more reliable than most of the other producers out there right now on hitting their dates and doing all the exact stuff they say, when they say it, or close to when they say it, and they definitely have not fallen into the trap that some companies do of going, look at this bit of awesomeness that we haven actually started any design work on but this is what it going to be and it going to be awesome You going to love it You see it in a year And then four years later the machine is available Yeah. The thing with the run count for me that why I want them to hopefully eventually get to the point where they don't need to do that is if they have a killer theme, killer layout, killer game, we'll just say, that lots of people want, I hate for them to box themselves in by always thinking, well, we're only ever going to make 800 units, when they could make and sell 2,000 units, rather than just move on to the next game. I understand there is a desire for a company to want to get to the next product, and I understand that they, as a company with their size, it may not be feasible for them to keep four different possible games on the line where they'll do a batch of Rob Zombies, and then do a batch of Game number threes and then a batch of dominoes and that they don't want to shift to that but the while farth scarcity can mean people want to buy the game because they're very confident that it won't lose value if they actually have something that commands a lot of interest it can box them in where all you end up is a really high value on the secondary market and that was money they left on the table and i don't want them to get screwed by that so i think as they get as they get further and further along for them just to say, all right, we're going to do game number four. We're not going to tell you how many we're going to make. Maybe they only make 500, but they don't promise that it's only 500. That way, if the interest is there and they can do 600, do 600. No problem. So there's no downside to it if they can be assured that they'll hit whatever sales number they want to hit without telling people, oh, it's limited. Because they're not doing an LE version on game number three, but in a way, all their games are LE versions, because they're announcing their production run counts, and they're capping them. I think that they'll be more successful without doing that, because I think they've already built enough trust that they don't need that anymore. That's why I call it a crutch. I don't think they need to do that anymore, but if they're more comfortable with continuing to do that, that's fine. It just means some people who might want to get spooky games can't, because they can't get in on them new, and they don't want to pay how much they go for used because they go for too much used. So that's really all. That's the only issue on it. But I understand why they do it the way they do it. I just, I have faith that they'll be able to move past that. Speaking of moving past, you know, we spent over an hour on pinball. I think it's time we move past it. Yeah, I will not disagree with you on that fact. Okay, let's go into our second topic, video games. and I would like to start with a game that you actually talked about a long time ago, back in Episode 3, actually, and that's called Firewatch. The reason why I'm bringing up Firewatch is that it is now out on the Xbox One. It had already been out on PC and PS4 for quite a while, and this is not an Xbox podcast, but I think it's noteworthy because when it came out on the Xbox, they also released some new features for the game, And those features are not just on the Xbox. They're on all the versions. And so Firewatch now has a free play mode. So when you've finished playing the game, you can actually go back and keep playing it if you want to. And they've added a new commentary mode. And from what I understand, the commentary mode has over three hours of content, audio content, that you can actually listen to with over 80 tapes that you go around and play. I guess the new visual things in that mode is it's designed as a mode that you go and you play, Kind of like watching commentary mode on a DVD. It's going back after you've won the game and playing the commentary mode version of the game instead.
    86:14
    And I want to go ahead and note that we will, in the show notes, have a link to Podcast Unlocked. It's the 264th episode because the two creators of Firewatch were guest hosts or interviewees sort of on the entire episode there. And it's really, really interesting. So if you're really into Firewatch, I do suggest you go and check that out. But, Tony, I wanted to sort of ask, because you've actually played Firewatch. I still have not.
    86:43
    What do you think of the commentary concept and the free roam mode? I was a little curious. I mean, when I heard about the game originally, my first thought wasn't that it needed a free roam mode. So I don't know what that mode means to you. I think the free roam mode is There are some things in the game That you can miss completely Little hints and clues to stuff That can be missed And I just think free roam mode Would let you hunt down everything So you will have found everything Even if you didn't find it during your actual playthrough Oh, okay Like, I know I watched a video I watched this guy's Let's Play Who went all the way through and he found a couple things I didn't find and I found a few things he didn't find. So there's always a couple things in there that you can see or miss or things that were down. Well, you know, if you turn, you need to turn left, but if you turned right here instead, you would have found this other little thing.
    87:46
    On the, I think the commentary actually sounds really interesting because the story and the world and everything thrown together in Firewatch was so almost movie-like or almost, I mean, because it's all character-driven,
    88:07
    that having the commentary track type thing where you could find out and see what they were thinking and what their stuff was, I can see where it would be really interesting. There are some movies that I've watched commentary tracks to. I don't normally watch commentary tracks. They're not something I normally find all that interesting. Uh, sometimes there are things that are, uh, cool and sometimes there's commentary tracks on stuff that are kind of creepy. But for the most part, it's something that I'd have to really, really love a movie to want to be interested in the commentary tracks. And here's the thing is, is I really loved Firewatch. It was a lot of fun. Um, I haven't replayed it. I've thought about it. and going through making different choices and this and that. But that game, depending on how you make the choices, it's always going to be, it's going to end up the same. The only things that are going to change are going to be the kind of conversations and how everything works between you and the lady on the radio, how that turns out and how you interact is the only things that are going to change.
    89:25
    Okay. Yeah, the Freebrome thing, I always think it's sort of a good idea to give that as an option. It just reminds me of when Fallout 3 came out, and until they had a DLC pack that gave it, you actually couldn't play the game anymore after you finished the story, which made sense from a plot perspective, but was kind of frustrating from a sandbox game perspective. It's just, I don't normally associate narrative games with that sort of approach. But I think it's generally a good idea if there's anything that you want to explore to give that as an option to be able to take advantage of. So sort of the same thing with the commentary concept. It sounds like, after hearing the interview, it sounds like a really cool amount of effort they put in to give you a whole bunch of stuff. But, yeah, I think you have to kind of be really into the making sausage aspect to care that much about it or be really into this story in particular. One of the things that I actually thought was, that I could have known, but I didn't, ahead of time, was that I had not realized that these two, behind Firewatch, the writer of Firewatch in particular, was the writer behind Telltale Season 1 of The Walking Dead, which, now I'm very interested in Firewatch, because I think Season 1 Walking Dead Telltale was the second best Telltale game I've played. So, and it just, story-wise, worked really, really well. and I think most everyone would agree that it was season one of The Walking Dead that put Telltale's point-and-click adventure style back on the map. Before that, they had Jurassic Park, which seems a pretty terrible game, and since then, they've had a sort of tried-and-true approach doing these episodic stories using their engine, and their engine ain't great, but they hide behind the writing, and if they have good writing, you'll suffer through their engine problems. They have a new engine now, but I still remember the old one, dramatically. They have a new engine? I didn't realize they'd gotten a new engine. Yeah, I don't know with which game it first was unveiled, but, yeah, there's some sort of new engine. I think.
    91:27
    I want to think I heard that the new Batman game uses the new engine, but, you know, I might be mistaken. And I know the people behind Firewatch have been working with a new iteration of their software as well for something. I don't know what, though. Interesting. Yeah, we'll have to see what comes of that whole genre, more story-driven, less action-y. I don't want to say less action-y, but they're more almost like choose-your-own-adventure-style games with some gaming interaction. But it's more about the story than anything else. It kind of reminds me of the old Sierra Adventure games, except more story-focused rather than puzzle. Right. Yeah. Well, puzzle games are a thing of the past, I hope. I was never a big puzzle game guy.
    92:25
    Hey, Gems of War is a puzzle game. It's a matching puzzle game. It's still working. Level 71 now. But speaking of levels, you went ahead and got leveled up on Steam because you purchased Mad Max. Yep. I picked up Mad Max. There was a Steam sale last weekend where they had, like, everything, all the WB-related games and stuff like that were on sale, and I picked up Mad Max for $10. Wow. And, yeah, I've put, I'm over 17 hours into the game since I picked it up.
    93:04
    It's been a lot more fun than I expected. The best thing is easily the vehicular combat and just the driving and everything. That's fun. I think it's pretty well done all in all. the ground combat when you're out of your car is pretty standard uh kind of beat-em-uppy where you just you just wail away on a guy and keep a watch out for all the other guys around you and when you get a notification of an attack you try to parry it so you kind of just bounce from attacker to attacker. There's finishes like you can shiv a guy or when you're in the middle of punching a guy down, you can jam your shotgun into his gut and take him out and this and that. But it's pretty much just a standard beat-em-up type ground combat. It's nothing special.
    94:05
    But what I really liked and what it really got me thinking about as I was playing it was I would like to see a version of Fallout that had, you know, Fallout's ground combat, Fallout's story, and Fallout, all the normal, you know, the whole Americana Fallout universe type thing that had vehicular combat and vehicular, just the ability to make and mod vehicles and do this and that. Now, vehicles aren't something you ever see in Fallout other than just completely abandoned trash stuff, other than the occasional giant freaking airship and the occasional perfectly working aircraft. But ground vehicle-wise, there's never anything really. Yeah. But it really got me thinking that between this and all the recent news coming out about the re-release of Red Dead Redemption and this and that, that was that, you know, horses or motorcycles or just a vehicle type thing that you could put into a Fallout setting would be really awesome. Yeah, in a way, as you mentioned, it's interesting that Fallout never has user-controlled vehicles. I say that because so many sandbox open-world style games do. I mean, they don't all do it very well, but I guess maybe the thought is it feels more like a wasteland when you have to hoof it. Yeah, and I can see that. It's just, it's occasionally weird that sometimes it's like, well, yeah, these guys are super high tech. They still have these airplanes, but they don't have a motorcycle.
    95:52
    And there's no horses left. All the horses died. Well, they are single-hooved. It wasn't. So it's just one of those things that, like I said, Mad Max has been, the game looks beautiful.
    96:11
    Like, I was playing and just everything about how the game looks, looks really nice. I was like in a really bad, like, dust storm. And the sun was coming up or going down. And it tinted and it looked nice and it was pretty. And it's been, that's all good. the ground combat's boring, but the whole concept of taking that wasteland and combining it with something with a better story now don't get me wrong, it's not that the story on Mad Max is bad it's just very there's nothing real special about it, other than the fact that they have like the greatest villain names ever like the main bad guys is scrotus it's scabious scrotus and there's some that are get really bad well yeah and when i first came out i heard it was real buggy and i heard it had all sorts of issues and people were saying it was terrible and then i was reading a bunch of people i don't know a month or two ago i was online reading and people were talking well yeah i've played through the game four times and i like it and they're like oh yeah it's it's better and it's got this and that and then when I saw the sale for $10. It was just like, it's $10. I can spend $10 to try out a game that looks kind of interesting.
    97:36
    All right. Well, let's move into our final segment, Tabletop, which we only have one thing to talk about, a super secret game. We've got to keep it secret, keep it safe. Yeah, we finally got a chance to sit down with Secret Hitler. Our monthly game night was last night, and one of the attendees got their copy from the Kickstarter. And to start with, this game is beautiful. It comes in an amazing box for the Kickstarter backers, and every single thing about it is the highest quality and really well done. It was like a box within a box. It was like the inception of games, the inception of Hitler. I have no clue if the production models are going to be that nice. I would guess not. They haven't actually started putting out the production games yet. They're planning on it from what I read after they finish the Kickstarter rewards. But having played the game now, I deeply, deeply regret not backing the Kickstarter because this game is amazingly fun. Yeah, it was a blast to play. I guess to give a quick summary about kind of what the rule system is, you don't know, broadly speaking, you have a group of people, and everyone's assigned to a party. You're either a liberal or you're a fascist. And there are more liberals than there are fascists in the game. One of the fascists is Hitler.
    99:12
    Hitler does not know who anyone is. The liberals don't know who anyone is. But at the start of the game, the non-Hitler fascists know who each other are, and they know who Hitler is. So as the game goes about, the liberals are trying to win by enacting enough liberal policies that they fill out the board and they win the game. The fascists are trying to win by either filling out the board with fascist policies or getting Hitler elected as chancellor. And so every turn, there is a president, and the president rotates around the table, and that president picks a person who they want to be their chancellor. And the rest of the players get to vote whether they agree with that slate of officers or not. And either it's adopted, and then the president gets to draw three policies. They discard one of them. They give two policies to the chancellor, and the chancellor picks one to play.
    100:03
    So that's where it then becomes a social interaction game in the extreme, because when a person, when the chancellor plays the policy, you know, they might play a fascist policy, and I might go, you're a fascist, and they might say, well, the president gave me only two fascist policies. And the president might say, that's right, I did, because I drew three. So I had to give you only fascist policies, and the only option. But of course, everyone could be lying. We all could be lying. We don't know. And so when Tony and I were playing this, and we played it in a group of seven, And the first game went, and I was Secret Hitler, actually, in the first game. And my team did win, but it was very much the learning game. And so everyone was, by and large, pretty quiet, just trying to make sure they were following the rules and all of that. But as of the second game, it got loud, it got vicious, and it got heated. Because the lying started to happen in full force. Oh, yeah, it did. And the drama was turned all the way to Spinal Tap 11 values, and it was a blast. Yeah. Now, I will say this gave a huge, huge amount of fun playing with people you know, which at the same time makes it kind of hard because sometimes you run into things where you know you can tell when somebody's lying just simply through how long you've known them or this or that. yeah we had a couple people that had really bad tells for example yeah they and they've been told so they can work on they need to work on that they have it you know they got to work through their issues uh tony and i have a propensity to get loud to get loud because of our our volume will mean we're truthful so yeah i'm loud that's untruthful don't you hear that passion of course i have i have a tendency to get loud anyway it's just what i do when i get excited they can get into something.
    102:03
    Mike, who guest-hosted the last episode, he was one of the seven, and he would get really, really quiet, and that actually worked quite well for him. So he was Hitler one game, and I never suspected. I thought he might be a fascist, but I never thought he was Hitler. Yeah, no, I didn't think he was Hitler at all. He was somebody that I wasn't willing to say for sure was a liberal, but I thought there was a good chance of it, and we were wrong. Yeah, and I mean, because you can have a fascist play a liberal policy to try and, you know, throw off suspicion. And there's a lot of nuance that can go into it. Do you play the long game? It's risky because you play the long game too long, you'll hand a victory to the other side. Yeah. Or you can do, I mean, like I, in one of the rounds, I was a fascist. And the only thing, and there were, because we, the seven players were two fascists and a Hitler. and the other fascist got caught out like the second round of voting. It was almost immediately that the other one got caught out. And at that point, all I did as the fascist was try to pull as much heat onto me because I knew he was completely burned and he couldn't do anything at all. But I thought if there was enough heat pulled onto me to be a fascist and spread to a couple other people, which is all I did, is I was like, well, I'm liberal, but we just know he said that that's what that card said, and we know that he's put down a bunch of fascist cards. And I'll admit, I put down a fascist card. I was given two fascist cards. I had to do it. And I was fine with pulling all the heat just because Hitler wasn't even under threat yet. So there was like one person at the table who had any wondering, who even had any thought about who Hitler was and just thought they were a fascist, maybe. But nothing had happened yet. So all I was trying to do, because there was enough fascist policies in play for Hitler to win, get a Hitler win as the chancellor, that all I was trying to do was keep enough stuff thrown around that it would be seen as a good idea to make Hitler chancellor, because nobody knew it was Hitler. And it's like, well, you're the one person who doesn't have any real threat on you. You haven't really done anything that would make me think that you're a bad guy. And it worked out.
    104:39
    Yeah. So it's a lot of fun. I know you've seen with the Let's Play, you've seen the actual full 10-person cruise. Oh, yeah. I liked having seven. I think this game definitely benefits the more you have because it just gets a lot harder to figure out who's who. I would like to play in a 10-player game at this point. But my only concern is this is a great game with friends game. I don't know if it would work as well with a whole bunch of strangers or if it would work better. But it depends upon the strangers. I mean, because when you're with friends, no matter what you're saying or how much you're lying or what you're doing, it's not anything that's ever taken personally. It's just part of the game. but you never know when you're playing with strangers who takes what personally and who doesn't. Yeah, I mean, I guess the advantage to playing with strangers is you would go in not knowing anyone's tells or anything, and so it would make it harder in a lot of ways. But on the flip side, what I like about, personally, I think I'd probably be better with friends, and I'm going to base that off of even though you may know their tells, they probably know what you think their tells are they may try and manipulate on that you can tease them about their tells that was part of the thing he wouldn't when he was called out and it was true he wouldn't deny it strongly he would just sit there like his silence would save him and he listens to this podcast and so he knows I had the little Nicky in And then he was the, or the Austin Powers him, actually, and say, you were the Diet Coke of evil. You're Diet Coke. So he was the Diet Coke. And we had another guy, and he would blink rapidly. My sister was playing. She knows, you blink rapidly. You are a liar. You are a rapid-eye blinky, sir blinks a lot. So he became sir blinks a lot, and he realized, and he just got so embarrassed because he realized it's true. He was such a bad liar that he blinks when he does it, and now he knows. so he could try and fake that out in the future. Whereas if he was a stranger, we wouldn't have told him that. We would have kept the tell to ourselves. But anyway, it is a lot of fun. Is there a way people who didn't get in on the Kickstarter can play this game? Yeah, they do have on their website, which you can just Google it. It's just Secret Hitler.
    107:09
    They have a free print-and-play version of the game, so you can just print out all the tokens and everything you need, and you can play it. But also I know if you're playing with friends online using Skype, you can use Tabletop Simulator. It's set up in Tabletop Simulator so you can play. And they will be selling actual production runs hopefully before too long.
    107:35
    Hopefully before Christmas is what I'm kind of hoping. But while I doubt they'll be as nice as the Kickstarter runs were, it's a game that's worth having for me. it's definitely going into my collection of games. Oh, yeah. I really want to play this one again. And isn't it by the people who did Cards Against Humanity? Some of them, yeah. Some of them and a few others.
    108:02
    It's definitely a really good game. You know, I kind of almost want to take it to, wow, that's a thought.
    108:11
    A couple of the big pinball things would be fun. I was thinking like if we're taking it and doing a big thing at like next time we go to a convention or something.
    108:22
    That'd be fun. I remember when Jack was on, he talked about how at a lot of conventions and stuff they do werewolf. I could see how werewolf people, they would take to this. Yeah. Duck to water. Because that'd be, it'd just be kind of a fun thing because, you know, when you're at that, oh, I don't want to walk around stuff and everybody's just kind of sitting out around a table somewhere BS and having something you could just pop out. I mean, once you know how to play the game, the game plays quick, and it'd be... Yeah, and really, after that first game, everyone got really comfortable, right? After we were through the first game, there were very few blunders after the first one where everyone was ultra cautious. Because you look at the book and you think, oh, this might be a bit overwhelming. It proceeds pretty well. Yeah, it does. Most of the delays were when we got into ultra accusation mode in the later games. Yeah, we got to points where it was like, okay, can we vote now? Because we're basically just repeating the exact same arguments against each other for like a lifetime. Eyeballing each other, trying to see if they give away some sort of clue before you have a tiebreaker vote or something.
    109:26
    But, well, that's the show. Thanks, everyone, for listening. As a reminder, you can interact with us on Facebook. You can reach us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. You can always email us, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. We're on Twitter at eclectic underscore gamers and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And that's it. So thanks again for listening and we'll see you all in two weeks. See you later.