Welcome to the Tony Makes Poor Life Choices podcast. Today is Sunday, July 10th. This is episode 171. I'm Tony. Oh, and I'm Dennis. But this is a podcast about you and your choices. So what poor choices have you been making? weave us a tale. Is it a good walking story? It is a good walking story. We have listeners who love this. I've got to scoot my chair. So, part of my daughter's cross-country practice for the summer included taking part in a 5K. And me being the good father when she was all like, Daddy, run the 5K with me. Was like, sure, why not? It's 5. Yeah, it's 5K. It's no big deal. Let's run the 5K in July with the humidity so high that the answer is, why aren't you wearing a wetsuit? Where's your snorkel? No, that was such a great idea. So I signed up for a 5K. And luckily, one of my coworkers, because they thought it would be hilarious, also signed up for the 5K and went with me. so yesterday was the 5k and I am it starts at 730 in the morning I pre-gamed the crap out of it which is my nice way of saying that I went down and I found all my painkillers that did not interact poorly and I took all of them before you before one hour before the race started so they would be kicked in when the race started so I'm I've got my I've got my ankle brace on for my bad ankle and I've got my shorts and t-shirt and I'm wearing my loser kid pinball or ball cap and I'm all ready for this. And luckily the clouds are in so it's not super bright. Yeah, yeah. So it's not burning down. It was dark yesterday. Unfortunately, the humidity is still a billion degrees and I am a fat guy. So it is just like laboring just standing there. And they're like, okay, it's 5K. So the 5K starts. and me and my co-worker, we're like, check, check, check, check, check, check, check, just walking along, making okay-ish time. We're feeling pretty good about it. And we're walking around, and we see the sign as we're coming down the stretch, and it's like, mile four. And it's like, we're on a 5K. Why is there a mile four sign? It's like, oh, the 10K runs 5K and then joins the 5K route. Oh, okay. And then as we get up to that sign and just a little past it, we see the mile one marker for the 5K. Oh. And it's like, oh. Oh. Oh, that's not good. And as we're passing the sign, the first 10Ker runs past us. We're sitting here, and it's just, foo. It's like, I just looked behind us like 10 minutes before. There's only like old people and some people with strollers and some dogs behind us. And this kid just, foo. It's like the flash, as far as my fat butt can tell, just shoots past. It's like, okay, well, that's a 10K. That's fine. We'll be whatever. He's an high school kid. He's just running. Oh, my God. I got laughed by like half of the people running the 10K. We're getting down there. I see my daughter running on the other side of the route. Was she running the 5K? She was running the 5K. Okay. And she ran. I told her, just run. Run like you're supposed to. Run with your team. Run like the wind. Don't even try to stay with me. Leave you behind. Just leave me behind. This is good like apocalyptic training. Yeah, it's fun. Just leave me behind. Go on your own. She's running on the route where there's a point where the paths are next to each other. She's running back. I'm like, oh, great. How far shall the turn around? She goes, oh, the turn around is still a long way. I'm like, oh, God. Okay. I am drenched in sweat. I look at my Fitbit. I'm like, oh, I'm doing pretty good. My heart rate's sitting at 130. My coworker's like, 99. I'm like, shut up. He's not even sweating. He's just walking with me, being nice. We're chatting and stuff, and I'm just like drowning in sweat. It's like, ah. So we're walking. We go around. And when eventually we get to the spot where we passed my daughter, like 15 or 20 minutes later, we get around to that point. And we see some people running the other way. It's like, oh, see, there's more 10Kers running. And it's like, I think they're going to pass us. And my coworker's like, no, they're not going to pass us. We're almost there. We're almost there. We get up to the point where we're about, oh, call it half a mile from the finish line. We can see where it is. Every single one of that group of 10-k's shot past us. It's just like, okay. And then here's my daughter jogging beside me where she ran back because she'd finished like 20 minutes before. And she's like, you need to sprint, Daddy. It's like. That was very encouraging of her. What do you think I'm doing? I'm walking very fast. She goes, you need to run. You need to sprint. There's only this short distance. Just sprint it out. Finish. Just sprint it out. I'm just like, this is because I make you clean your room, isn't it? I make you clean your room, and now you're going to make me run. I'm looking at my watch again. It's like, see, I'm back up to 150 beats per minute on my heart. My coworker's like, yeah, we're going uphill a little bit. I'm up to 102. I'm like, shut up. so I take off running. My daughter's like, she looks like she's walking like relatively fast. And I'm like running like full as hard as I can. I'm like, Oh, I've got the dumbest looking picture of me. I'll put it up later. Running. It is so terrible. My wife took it as I crossed the finish line and it looks like something now. It looks like something out of like a Paul Blart movie running across the finish line. It's terrible. Oh, gosh. So yeah, I made poor choices and it felt good. Sure, it made my daughter happy. That was important. So maybe it was a good choice after all. Yeah. I mean, I couldn't walk most of the rest of the day because when the painkillers wore off that ankle, I could barely move. But that's okay. I'm feeling better today. And we're recording extra early. We're recording extra early. I've got nothing terrible going this week. it's not like I'm going in for what might be a root canal tomorrow because they told me they won't know until we get in. They said it's 50-50 if it's going to have to end up being a root canal or if they'll be able to just fix the tooth problem without it. So that's great. That's like a surprise. That'll be like a special surprise and then stuff going every day. And then, yeah, it's just. That's a lot. It's a lot. But thank you for sharing the adventure. I felt like I was there. I am tired now. I was thinking about biking today, and now I'm not sure I will because I am tired. See, I thought about asking you if you wanted to run the 5K with me, and then I realized how much you actually do, and I figured you would have just been running with my daughter because there's no way you would have been walking with me. No, I would have walked. Because it would have been. I'm not going to say. I'm not going to embarrass anybody by telling you how quickly I finished, But I will say I said it personal best and I placed in my age group. Nice. It was last place, but it's still a place. No, no. I actually, because I almost never run. When I say I go and would take a walk, I don't even jog it. I have no long-distance stamina at speed. I'm like a dwarf. Yeah. You know, very dangerous over short distances. But I can go long distances as long as I walk, absolutely. So after our last episode, I had a work conference that I had been gearing up for out in central Kansas. So we did that, and it, of course, just turned into, and the irony, of course, because it was a public health conference, of people just falling left and right to COVID while it was going. It started with the – so my conference that I plan is normally two days. Well, a day and a half is more accurate. It takes place on two days. However, one of our partner organizations wanted to do a pre-conference. So I went out there on Sunday after we did our recording, which we did remotely. I did the editing. I had my niece's birthday and then I got on the road like at before five and it's like a two and a half hour trip. So but on Sunday, so I get out there Sunday. We do the pre-conference Monday, Tuesday morning. One of the pre-conference attendees indicated that they had just tested positive for covid. They had been there thinking that they had a cold and they hadn't tested while they had the symptoms. so I wasn't near that individual myself but obviously there were others that they had they'd been work groups and stuff so we did have the lists of those so we're able to like inform the close contacts and everything and they did wear a mask at least they at least some of the time they did have a mask on during the event we just we didn't mandate that but because they weren't feeling well they did put one on so there was that and then I thought okay well I'm probably laying the clear on that because I wasn't in that room most of that day, but you never know. It's so contagious. So we get done with the conference and then I had a meeting the next day in Topeka and one of the people that was at my conference, she was remote virtual then on that meeting, not in person and sounded horrible, horrible. So like, so anyway uh the then the next day she was like she had done her test and she's like okay at first i thought i was just getting a science infection because she had already had covid and been vaccinated but you know right it's the variants are the variants and she's like so she called me that night for a list of the attendees so she could follow up with the one she'd been in close contact with calling me because one i had the list and two we had gone out drinking and she drove and so a whole group of us went out for dinner and drinks and so i was in the same vehicle with her so she's like uh well given that we were about seven inches apart in the car you need to know that that i have covid so that was nice of her to it was to tell you we're Public health is very open about disease exposures. You need to start practicing safe driving. So you have to have rubber between all the seats, everybody who sits. You need a big latex barrier in the car around everybody. So I had gone ahead and tested that Thursday morning before I went to Topeka anyway, even though I felt reasonably okay. My throat was sore, but I had spoken so much, I figured my voice was probably shot. It felt better the day after. Right. So I was negative. I tested again on the 4th of July, was negative, went out, did all that. And that's it. That's my only interesting thing. I got on my bike finally after a few years because I get to the point where I'm like, you have to maintain it and stuff versus just going out and walking. Right. So that was like, I just, I want to go further and I feasibly just can't like going. My maximum walk time is about two hours that I could possibly tolerate. And that's like six miles. Right. And so, but I can go further for less time on a bike. So I can just get to see different stuff. So that's been, so I've been doing Mill Creek done like three times recently, just out to the, you remember it, the pond where it's bifurcated with the trail. So not super far up the trail. No, that's the route we always used to ride. Yeah, but I'm not going all the way out to like Shawnee Park where they ride the horses and stuff. I don't need to see their bourgeois ponies when I cover pinball with its bourgeois games. So let's go ahead and start with Jersey Jack Pinball. It's been a while since we've started with Jersey Jack Pinball. In fact, I think it's been one whole episode since we've talked about Toy Story 4. But the reason why we're going to go ahead and discuss them briefly here today is we had an email to EclecticGamersPodcast at gmail.com. And this is what the email says. And it comes from Tim L. So thank you for writing in, Tim. Tim wrote, gentlemen, I always enjoy the show. I know everyone is saying JJP should have passed on the – I was going to say TS4, but he does T dollar sign for license. So I like that. However, do you think they locked in the license before the movie was ever released? They might have been sitting around the conference room table thinking it was going to be a huge hit. Thanks. Well, I think it's a valid question. And you know what? I I'm going to guess I'm going to guess. Yes, I hadn't thought about this, Tim. But now that you bring it up, that would make the most sense as to like, why would you do this? I mean, again, when I it's all relative. We had heard. I felt we had heard before the movie was out that it was going to be Toy Story like that rumor. The leak. We shouldn't even say it's a rumor. The leak from Jersey Jack, which has like been 100 percent accurate, right? Had been saying Toy Story for years. However, given when we how the production has been with JJP and what they say their goals have been versus where they've actually landed. It does seem like they could have very well been planning all of this before the movie was out and they didn't know anything about it. Right, which would have been good. But then at the same time, it would have made more sense. It would have made more sense if they released the game shortly after the movie came out. Right. But let's face it. Jersey Jack cannot release a game in a decent amount of time with a gun to their head. they've never shown the ability to do it. So I just don't think, I think you could very well be completely right that they thought it was a great idea. It could have been a great idea and it might've been great if they had to drop when the thing came out. But three years later, it's just not so great. Yeah. That's a, that's a fair point. It's yeah. So I'll agree with Tim that it does make sense that they may very well have just banked on this like how it was in the 90s where you had gambles that would pay off like Terminator 2 getting a pinball machine and gambles that didn't like Johnny Mnemonic. So where they just didn't know. They just didn't know by the time they made the agreement how good or bad the movie would be received. And to be fair to Toy Story 4, it wasn't a flop. It just isn't the other three. And now compared to Lightyear, it probably will be remembered more fondly. That's very true. Again, Lightyear hasn't done terrible, but compared to a Gru, apparently it's not doing well. To the Gentle Minions, it's not doing well. The Gentle Minions. So thank you, Tim, for writing in on that. So let's move on to American Pinball. American Pinball! That's right. There's been a lot of stuff going on. So, in fact, actually, let me start with another podcast. Okay. The Super Awesome Pinball Show. So they're back. I hadn't been subscribed to them after they ended, but they've come back at some point. I was vaguely aware of it, but I hadn't been listening because I don't listen to as many podcasts anymore now that I don't drive as much. Right. But my Revolutions podcast finally finished the Russian Revolution and has ended the show. So I've unsubscribed from that now. And I went ahead and added this back into the loop because I was hearing a lot of discussion about this interview. And the interview is pretty interesting. So we had a couple people on from American Pinball, but I want to focus on David Fix, who has been shaking a lot of things up with American Pinball ever since he came into his position there. Anyway, during the interview, they touched on a number of things. But one of the items I want to bring up here is Dave – I should say David. I don't know if he goes by Dave – stated that they have significant demand for that Legends of Valhalla game that we tried at Expo. And so a classic edition will be built to join the deluxe edition. The reason why I want to have a brief conversation with you about this Tony is I found this really interesting because my sources in the chain of distributors that I associate with have indicated that the deluxe model is not in high demand with them Like if you want one it sounds like you can get one So for David Fix on the interview to indicate I don remember if he said a count I wanted to, and people can write in and correct me if I'm wrong. I want to think he said in the interview, like, they have a list of approximately 600 people interested in a classic edition. As a reminder, the deluxe edition was capped at, I believe, 500 units. So what do you – do you think David's statement is accurate that there is a huge list? Is this – am I over-interpreting his statement of the word list? And this is just like he's had a few hundred people say that they like the game and they would be interested in a classic because – ostensibly because it's going to be a cheaper model and they won't commit to the deluxe because it's not as cheap? Or is this – Do we know that the classic will be a cheaper model? I would assume it's got to be cheaper than an LE. Or is this like just puffery, like saying, oh, yeah, no, no, this game's doing great. Because really, I think in terms of new games, Legends of Valhalla is the only game that's come out since David Fix has joined. And it wasn't an AP-developed game. It came from, I think, Riot. I think Riot is the name of the company. Again, correct me if I am wrong, folks. You can write in and collect at gamerspodcast.gmail.com. I was just surprised to hear this because everything that I had been hearing – and I've been hearing a lot. We don't talk – I don't talk to people about Legends of Valhalla very much. But from what conversations I have had with various individuals, it's just not – it's not like it's a bad game, but it's also not flying off shelves. So I was – I actually was talking with someone else before I had heard this interview, and I had speculated that they won't do a classic edition. I just don't think there's been enough demand for the deluxe to do classics. But apparently David Fix is indicating they are going to gear up and do it. So I was surprised. I don't know if you had any thoughts on this. A lot of these conversations didn't involve you. Yeah, no, it's interesting to me. I know I haven't talked to a whole lot of people who have been clamoring for this game, even the ones who've played it most of the time. It was all right. But it's not like people were saying, oh, yeah, no, I'm on the waiting list for one or anything. So I just don't know. I don't have any real insight. It seems strange to me that they haven't sold out unless it's one of those situations where they've sold out because they've sold everything to distributors and they still have people coming to them direct wanting games. And maybe that's the case. It's just, again, it's, I was a little surprised to hear that in the interview. The interview has a lot of other interesting nuggets. So if you like your nuggies, go ahead and listen to Super Awesome Pinball. Now, I do have some other information about American Pinball, which I had not heard on that episode. I hadn't heard it anywhere yet, but it may be there. And it's not, this is not rumor corner because this is, this is truth segment as part of our American Pinball. Okay, so they have taken two new trademarks, word marks, have been reserved by American Pinball through the United States Patent and Trademark Office. I was going to link them. However, the way that search engine works is you have to log in and out, and the links don't stay valid. So here are the two titles that they have trademarked for. One is Galactic Tank Force. And for those that want to look this up and confirm what I'm saying, its serial number is 974-820-86. And Galactic Star Force, serial number 974-820-56. Now, I have two questions. A lot of reports that I've been hearing are the first Dennis Nordman, and it's been the case for a while, the first Dennis Nordman American Pinball game to be coming out will be unlicensed. This would square with that. Yes, that would. And my second – so do you think this is one of them, I guess, or both of them are his? And the second question I would have is where is galactic naval force? We've got tank force. We've got star force. Where's naval force? That's pretty much what the star force would be. Okay. Where's galactic air force? I mean – Where's galactic submarine force? Let me have a third. I want a third. There's a tank force and a star force. That's like air and land. Where is sea? If you're talking about Galactic, how much C do you need? I don't know. I like cheesy sci-fi stuff. So you might be in. I could be in. Are you more intrigued by the Star Force or the Tank Force? Because you used to play World of Tanks, but you also used to play Wing Commander. Right. My guess is they're going to be art rethemes of the exact same table. That would make sense. And given the – I would struggle to think that unless they've already planned like a duology. Right. Why would we do like different names but very similar. So yeah, okay. I could definitely see that. Let's have a tanky art package and let's have a Starzy art package. In which case I would always take the space one. I would agree. I tend to agree. My daughter would prefer the tanky one but I would prefer the space one. Space. Space. Okay. Well, so I guess one or both of these will perhaps be the next. I didn't see any other new trademark stuff under American Pinball. I will say, I guess somewhat to my disappointed surprise, they have allowed the trademark for Sherlock Holmes to expire, which I thought was of all the unlicensed stuff they've ever talked about. That was the one, aside from Houdini, really, that I thought actually had good potential as an unlicensed. Like the name recognitions there, if you executed on the rules really well, I could see people being into that. I still come down to thinking, as cool as Galactic Tank Force and Galactic Star Force sound, that unlicensed games are not a good move. I don't think it's a good business move. I don't think they sell well. Well, I think that's – And I think American Pinball has had several games like this that have proven my point. Right. I think even a good unlicensed game won't sell as well as a bad licensed game. It's been proven. Yeah, and that's what it comes down to. And I think you can – you build in the license cost into the game and you know you can make more. It's almost like foolproof you could make more. Right. There's a reason, I believe, why. I mean, look at the very controversial Halloween and Ultraman from Spooky. Those still sold out right away. Right. And they are... Polarizing. Yeah. They're polarizing. Polarizing is a good way to say it. Sure. And you can have successful unlicensed games, but the most successful one in recent memory is probably Total Nuclear Annihilation. And that had a multi-year going around shows. People had experience with it. Scott Danesi is well-known. And it's still 550 units. So let's not act like it went gangbusters. Right. But it had a lot of stuff going for it. It was a game with a kind of style that we'd not seen in a long time. It has an amazing music package. It had a lot of special stuff going for it. But, yeah, it's still not – there's not like 15,000 of them out there. There's not like, oh, we're going to have 1,000 LEs and 2,000 normal ones and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah for $15,000 each. Right. I mean, they've been talking TNA 2.0 for years. It still ain't out. Right. So, anyway, it is what it is. But there you go. There's some information. We haven't even got to Rumor Corner yet. We're not live. There's so much pinball. There is. There's more than we've had really recently. So let's go to another company. I don't think we – no, we talked about them a little over a month ago, I think. Multimorphic. Last time we discussed them, it was regarding their announcement. Announcement's a strong word. I think they informed their preorderers that they were running about two weeks behind on production. I have been seeing reports from people I know or people posting online getting their Weird Al modules. haven't been hearing so much about people who have the P3 machine on order, the platform on order, you know, versus that. It's been more people. Actually, it's all been people in the case of those that I know who have already got their platform and we're just waiting for the module. Right. But they're definitely building them because people are receiving modules. So I've seen that happening recently, but we actually had a little discussion a few days ago because I remembered our coverage a month or so ago about them being slightly behind. So I went ahead and I checked because I knew they had posted way back like in April for job openings on a couple job openings on Facebook. Well, I went ahead and went to Indeed.com, which is what I have used when I have tried to hire people. It's a big job site and Multimorphic is there and they are trying to secure at this stage and it was last, I checked this last on Friday and it had last been reviewed by the post, the company, two days before that. So it's a pretty recent listing, at least in terms of last review. And they have a listing for multiple pinball machine assemblers at this point. The listing on Indeed actually specified that they are hiring multiple candidates and also had flagged it as urgently hiring. However, it also listed that the pay for the position is $15 an hour. I don't envy anyone trying to hire in this current market. We're in weird times because, well, the stock market is in bear market territory at this point, and there's a lot of concerns about us going into recession. The job market remains tight, especially on lower-paying positions, low-to-unskilled positions. We've heard for over a year now how rough the service industry has had it. But when I was going out to Salina for my meeting, I stopped at Burger King to get dinner. They had reduced their hours. They had like an 8.5 by 11 printed little type-up sheet of paper, clearly just done inside. They don't have the staff. They don't have the staff to run the full hours that they're supposed to run. I can see from my back door when I'm taking the dogs out to go to the bathroom at Dairy Queen, and sometimes on days like a Tuesday night, that place is dark. they just closed they don't have the staff and so in terms of of Multimorphic they're in Round Rock Texas is the location that's within like a 30 minute drive of Austin so the discussion and we had this obviously off list before off list being the podcast because it's not really a list it's an audio medium about this So I just wanted to sort of bring it up here because I think it's an interesting conversation that would apply to far more than just multimorphic. But is $15 an hour even viable? Like I'm – based off of the proximity to Austin and what other kind of unskilled positions seem to be paying in the area, and we looked up a couple. You have a couple examples. I'm worried that they're not going to find folks. It's going to be tough to find at $15 an hour. $15 an hour, you know, seven, ten years ago was eh for a lot of more difficult starting positions. Anything outside of like fast food. Where I work currently for the government, we're starting at just over $20, almost $21 an hour is where we're starting people now. And we're having problems hunting jobs. And does that position require any training or education? We'll take you straight out of high school. The only thing we require is a high school diploma or a GED. Okay. But even there we have problems filling it. And I thought it was interesting when this had come up because not that long ago, back in June, I get a news update, a curated news update from various places all over the country, specifically dealing with both my job and governmental related stuff, like municipal governmental related stuff. And it had mentioned that in mid-June, the city of Austin, Texas, which they're just outside of. Yeah, it's like 20 miles, roughly 30-minute drive from my map questing, Google mapping. Their city council unanimously voted to raise the minimum wage of city employees to $22 an hour starting the next budget year, which starts in October, provided it can be worked into the budget for this year. But it is, I mean, that's, you know, $15 an hour here, or you can go drive a lawnmower for the Parks and Rec Department for $22 an hour. And the same thing, I was looking up just various things. There's Amazon warehouses down there. I think the lowest thing I saw in the Amazon warehouse was like 18. The lowest thing I saw at like the big fancy Bucky's place. Oh, the convenience store. Yeah, the Bucky's convenience store. I think their lowest position was just a straight cashier, and that was 15 or 16. But like anything in their food prep area started at 18. Anything in their car wash area started at 18. there is just all sorts of stuff where 15s even in the area we live in now I rarely see 15 or under 15 even at restaurants it's not unusual to see 17 at restaurants as a starting pay at this point yeah I did some areas our area searching in Kansas and I did see for example the lowest in in uh position at taco bell was 14 however just the supervisor they're not even a manager or assistant manager supervisor of the shift was 16 yeah so i was like okay so yeah i mean obviously they're still producing games i'm just i'm concerned given that they clearly want multiple people now per that listing at this price i'm not sure that they're going to quickly find them they might eventually find them but anyway what i'm saying is this is a to me this would be a red flag that they might start to slip even more than the couple weeks behind that they had last indicated and as as you may recall the reason why that's interesting i mean people not making every expected deadline is not unusual in pinball at all it's nothing you know particular to multimorphic but what is interesting is for weird al they put in some They put in a unique scenario where, if I remember it right, it was they had non-refundable deposits unless they fell behind by six months on your order. Then you could get your money back and get out. Last we heard, they're not remotely near that yet, but originally the listing that I remember on Facebook or that I could find was for one pinball assembler. Now they know they need more, but they've probably budgeted a certain amount. And with inflation and everything else that's been happening, I'm guessing maybe they had only ever planned for 15 an hour. Right. And now they're just kind of stuck. And I ran into that myself last year when I was going to hire an assistant director position where I am. I had a certain amount in the budget and then with the way things were going, I'm like, I don't think I had I have enough planned. So the thing that worked in my advantage was because I didn't get the job hired the first few months of the grant, I had basically money unspent that I was able to then use to up the salary because they weren't actually going to work for like a full three years. They're going to work for two years and nine months. So I had three months of pay that I was able to change the way it all works. It's math. The way it worked out. You get the same money. They just start later. Right, right, right. So grant-wise, I'm spending the same amount, but the person I hired makes more per year than they would have had I filled the job July 1, 2021. So anyway, it's just interesting. I won't be surprised if this is actually happening for all the other companies. It's more obvious with Multimorphic because, one, I pulled the listing, and two, the reason why I was interested was because of that unique cancellation Ryan Policky. Right. They're the ones who could be more heavily affected by it. Right, right, because a company like Spooky, to my knowledge, and again, people can correct me if I'm wrong, is it's been, you have to give us the deposit, and they have no bailout provisions. Spooky could string you along forever, and you'd just have to lose the deposit if you got tired of waiting. Speaking of waiting and being tired, let's move to Stern Pinball. So according to The Nap Arcade and I have a link to this piece in the show notes the Jurassic Park the pro models they currently on the production line So if you've been waiting for Jurassic Park, you're probably waiting a while, perhaps. Here you go. So not a lot to say here or discuss here. They're just – here's the sign again of the value of Stern dropping that second cornerstone of the year because they're clearly still chipping away at that backlog. We'll see how it works out for them. Yeah. Last – I think this was on the last pinball show. Maybe it was the one before that I was on with Zach Minney who is a distributor. I know he had mentioned that he's got such a backlog on Godzilla premiums. Compared to all the other stuff, it would be more strategic actually just to pump those out because there's just so much demand. But obviously there are other titles that continue to languish. Well, they've got a couple of lines. There's no reason there's not Godzilla on one of those lines. It would only come down to parts probably or if they're having staffing issues. Which is always a possibility. I think they're also going to be helped having dumped that second cornerstone with the inflation. I'm not going to be surprised to see less people buying machines than before. So them dumping that extra cornerstone might work out for them in multiple ways this year. Yeah. Yeah, it could. But watching what happens with the pinball economy, we're already seeing the signs of it. There are listings that are going down, some somewhat significant, plus the balking that we saw on Toy Story 4. People are like – because again, with the inflation and stuff and the decision, I'm confident of the company to try and cut out people just flipping their games. so they're trying to suck all that out so you can't because they're already at the max price. Right. I get the strategy. We'll just have to see how well it works out with all the stuff that is not in their control going on around us in addition to that. Yep. So we're at the final pinball portion, Tony. It's time for Rumor Corner. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Corner. all right on this week's rumor corner we have a couple of spooky ones i got some spooky rumors Spooky Rumors. So let me start with the... It's not going to shock a ton of people. This rumor's been out there for a little bit. But again, they can't all be winners here on Eclectic Gamers Podcast. The rumor is that Spooky does have the Scooby-Doo license. I've been hearing... Which one? I don't know. I haven't heard that. Let's assume classic. I hope it's classic. Okay. It is classic. That's what the rumor now is. That's what the rumor now is. I've seen some of the newer... I didn't know there was a newer. Oh, no. There's a bunch of newer Scooby-Doo things, and I miss the classic Scooby-Doo designs. Okay. Well, the rumor, and I've been hearing about spooky and Scooby-Doo for years and years and years, because they're like, it's a spooky theme. I'm like, okay, that's, sure, why not? Why not? All right, so that's on the, I don't know if that would be the next game, Given how long their production cycles are, it would not surprise me if it was. I don't know how well it will sell. I mean, it's spooky. It will sell out. Setting aside the TNA 2.0, which maybe comes in here at the end of the Halloween run. I don't know. Scott Danesi had a comment fairly recently that it's not all that far out, but he doesn't directly work for spooky either. So I don't know if that's true. But I'm going to give you all a twofer because we're on the topic of spooky. and I did just mention Halloween. So here's another rumor. Reports have been coming into me through my rumor network of spies and informants. Yes. Well, it's not breaking news. This is still a rumor. This is a breaking rumor. Oh, so this is more like spies handing you little notes in the dark. Maybe. Brush passes and dead drops. They're like they claim to be spies, but I don't know that they actually know, so they're rumors. So they're the – They're rumorize. So it's more like the crows reporting to Sauron. Well, I thought they were accurate. How can you trust a crow? It's more like my little Nostradama. Nostradama. We have Nostradama. We have some Nostradama out at the spooky fields. And so in between all of the cheese curds and beer at the pubs, What they are telling me is that Halloween and Ultraman both are receiving significant, and I mean this was emphasized by my Nostradame, significant reworks to their animations. And this code update that will have these animation reworks is supposed to drop very, very soon. Well, I mean, good, because the Halloween animations are garbage. I mean, we've talked about it in the past, just how garbage they are. Anyway, are you not rumor-tanged, Tony? See, now I have this. I remember back when we played Magic the Gathering. Okay. And I almost always played red decks, and I had a goblin deck. You did? And I had the goblin soothsayer. And the little comment was, when I want your opinion, I'll read your entrails. And the lady said they were just pulling guts out of something. And that's my image of you getting rumor corner now is you're sitting down and you've got like a chalk outline on the ground and you're like pulling the entrails out of some animal building the rumor corner and you're summoning the great old ones to let you see into the future. Well, how the rumors come is really not the business of the listeners. They are only to be rumor tamed. So that's why they had to let go of some of those animal control officers Because there's just not as many strays in the area anymore Huh So, video games Video games Video game segment We did have an email That I tossed into our notes here It's from Procco From Germany So, hey Procco, thank you for writing in This is his email Heyo from Germany Here are some more thoughts on last episode's discussion on increasing review scores. You might recall, incidentally, listeners, that on the last episode, we had another email that had shared a graph of the, I think it was the Metacritic data, and how the critic scores have, on average, gone down on console games over time. However, the user scores – no, flip that. Flip that. Take that. Reverse it. Critic scores have been going up over time. User scores have been going down. Correct. note this ignores everything that has to do with reviewers giving good scores to keep their relationships with publishers one one reviews include if a game is functioning properly which is what you hinted at that people grade a game that at least works with a 50 percent in my opinion people should just stop reviewing games that don't work or are not enjoyable because of too many bugs. Then, on review sites, it could just say, doesn't work, get a refund, and the games that do work properly can now get a score in the full 0 to 100 range. 2. The scope of non-indie games gets bigger every year, and the technology to fulfill the higher requirements gets better every year. Nowadays, AAA games have an expansive story, gameplay with with different ways to approach the game, highly detailed worlds, characters and animations, complete physics and particle systems, movie script-long dialogues, fully voice-acted, of course, a lot of customization, online multiplayer, and the list goes on and on. It just becomes a longer and longer list of checkboxes. And if reviewers try to grade a game objectively, and considering everything the game has to offer, if like one or two of these aren't checked or half-checked, it won't reduce the score by much. when the rest is there. The players then give a lower score in total because everyone has one of these points that they give a lot more weight to, but it's not to their liking. And for the huge games, you will have those players for all the checkboxes. So those are his two points he wanted to bring up. I think they're both really valid points. I wish they would do the reviews in a way that's just like, this game is too buggy to even review. Just say it. This game is too buggy to review. Maybe we'll review it when they fix stuff later. Or this game just is broken or whatever. Okay, kind of like a, and you didn't hear this because I know you don't listen to pinball podcasts, but I was listening to Slam Tilt Podcast and Ron Hallett Jr., one of the hosts there, he had played Toy Story 4 at a recent pinball show. The game was malfunctioning so much for him. Like, he was so sure that it was not playing right that he would not give an evaluation of it. He said, I know I said I have to play it to review it. I can't count that. I don't think it was a fair play. I think that's the right way to handle something like that. If you play a game, you say, well, like the case in point, like the cyberpunk issues that so many people, especially on consoles, were having. Be like, well, we were having tons of issues, and it was being very buggy and all that. Stuff like that. I think they'd just be, yep, game's too buggy, can't review it right now. And his second point, Paco's second point about the process and all the checkboxes, that's a fair one too. And I don't think all items should be equal on a game. Like having a weird or maybe annoying musical score, maybe that's not as important as the quality of the gameplay. Right. And that can come down to, again, I'll point to pinball again, the straight down the middle of pinball show YouTube channel with Greg Bone and Zach Minney. When they were first reviewing pinball machines on their grading criteria, every category was equally balanced. And I know at some point a few years ago now, they did shift that so that they would rank their percent, like how much is art as a percentage of your total score? because, again, art may be really important to one person, but to another person it's like, okay, it's an ugly game, but the game plays there, and so what do you value? And you need to figure out how you as a reviewer are going to equate all of that because different people are going to walk up and think different things, but at least if you've announced it, what your formula is, I think it should be a formula because you need to decide just what's most important to you as a gamer. Right. Case in point with myself, a lot of people, the music in a game is very important. And I always turn the music off. It's the first thing I do before I even start anything is I go into options and I turn all music off on every game. It started when I was much younger. The I had a computer and it was not strong enough to play all of my games. but if you shut stuff down like the music and other options, I can make it play games. There's no way that computer should have played. And I got used to playing games with no music. And I find the music distracting or annoying when I'd rather have something else completely. Like I'll listen to a podcast, depend upon the game I'm playing, or I'll watch some, a movie or I'll be talking with my wife and kids, uh, with a game going. So I just, I always shut the music off. It's the first thing I do. Uh, Sometimes with certain things where I know that it's going to have an amazing musical score, I might go listen to the music separately, or I might turn the music back on like a Final Fantasy game. But for the most part, no, I always turn the music off. Music has zero bearing, has zero count on me when it comes to reviewing a game. So it could have the best, most amazing score ever, but I don't care because I won't hear it because it's the first thing I turn off. Okay. Well, thanks, Procco, for the email. Now, Tony, I know you've got a few video game items that have cropped up over the last couple of weeks for us to go through. I have a couple things. The first one is one that you actually sent me before I even saw it. The ESA, the people who run E3, have announced they are partnering with ReadPop to produce E3 2023. For those of you who don't know who ReadPop is, ReadPop is one of the major names in event running. They run PAX, they run New York Comic Con, they run the Star Wars Celebration and many others. So this is a group that is very well-versed and very well-regarded in running large events like this. Successful large events. Successful large events like this. The reason I sent this to you is because you probably, for the last decade or so, have been bagging on E3 and how horrible it is. and it clearly has got, I mean, it has clearly been very poorly run. But I was really curious about your reaction to this, because I know you've definitely been in the camp of E3 is unsalvageable. But I also know we never considered the idea of ESA actually bringing in pros. Professionals? Yeah, I never thought they would. I never did. I always assumed ESA doesn't know what they're doing, and they're going to continue to not know what they're doing, trying to figure out on the cheap how to keep their overcharged venue thing going. their gravy chain. Yeah. And then they're going to dox everybody who got tickets for them. Yeah. Yeah. All this, all this, cause it's been amateur hour forever. It has. So I never thought they would bring in like, like a big pro group to do it. And they have. And, uh, I'm, I'm eager to see what it is, uh, and how it goes. Um, we got a quick quote here from one, uh, from read pops, global VP of gaming. Uh, he promises in a, In a press release, he promised that E3 2023 would be recognizably epic, a return to form that honors what's always worked while reshaping what didn't. It is a tremendous honor and privilege for ReadPop to take on the responsibility of bringing E3 back in 2023. With the support and endorsement of the ESA, we're going to build a world-class event to serve the global gaming industry in new and broader ways than we already do at ReadPop through our portfolio of world-leading events and websites. Well, the PAX events have become some of the most well-attended and super popular events for video games and fandom in recent memory to the point where at one point there were four PAX, five PAX. Yeah. No, there was like a – Because there was West, East, South, West, Tabletop, which had like no video games. I think there might have been one more. I think the one in Texas, the south or southwest, is gone. But I think there's still several PAXs. There's at least still east and west. And at one point there was one like every quarter of the year. But I think it's a big plus for E3. I think this is the type of thing that might actually get E3 to come back and maintain its relevance. It could be too much or too little too late. It could be Sony's been gone for years. EA's been gone. All the other big events that happen in the summer now might be too much for it. We'll just have to see how it actually ends up going. I think they made a good choice, though. I think this is their best chance. Okay. Yep, I agree. Speaking of conventions Blizzard is planning on bringing BlizzCon back As an in-person thing in 2023 Wow Don't bring your Winnie the Pooh bags Don't bring your Winnie the Pooh bags If a developer Asked you to come visit them in a suite I wouldn't go Well they've claimed in their internal report That they don't really have any problems So it's probably just for free pop Yeah They're just trying to give you some free stuff Get you some free candy. Get you some free chlamydia. Monkey pox. Monkey pox. So, yeah, we'll see. With the place Blizzard's at, the fact that they are preparing for their joining with Microsoft, which is being now looked at by the UK in addition to the U about the merger being possibly an issue That be an interesting one to see what happens if one side says it one group says it's okay and another group says it's not. But we'll just have to see how that goes. We'll see if they can bring BlizzCon back and make it good because even the last few years it wasn't. It had some good years but those last couple ones were a little rough before COVID got them to save themselves by stopping it. Yeah. I don't really see the point in them continuing it, but especially what, I mean, it didn't help when they were going along and there's like, are no new games. Right. So it's like, that's what makes it a weird choice. Like, what are you promoting? They haven't had, other than their mobile game for years and years, Overwatch was their newest game. That game's old. Yeah. I mean, they've had nothing new. And, okay, so Overwatch 2 is supposed to launch later this year. This year, not next year. So what? I mean, there's nothing to. Right. I don't get it. I mean, the next Diablo might be next year. Maybe. That's true. That would give them something. Don't you all have wallets? Not anymore. Rockstar has let fans know that there's going to be no more major updates for Red Dead Online as they are shifting all of those resources to Grand Theft Auto 6. I didn't know they still were supporting Red Dead Online. I didn't either. I did. It was kind of fun. They've apparently still been doing yearly special events, and they're just going to rerun those events now and do a couple little things. The game has now officially shifted to live support. From what I've read, fans have considered that it was on live support for a while now. But now it's official. They've decided to shift all those resources to Grand Theft Auto VI because Grand Theft Auto 5 has been out for, let's see, PS3, PS4, PS5. Yeah. Yeah, a while, as we say in the industry. They want to get 6 ready for the PS6 drop. Nintendo is once again partnering with Lego. They're bringing out a Lego Bowser. It is 2,800 plus pieces, and it is $270. But he is large and like Fully posable and his head moves And he's got a little fireball launcher And he's supposed to interact with some of the other Mario Lego sets In some sort of way I don't know how But they're Bringing that out That'll be interesting Now we're done with all the happy news So now all we got left is Bad stuff So we're going to end it that way Activision Blizzard? We already talked about them. It was a neutral thing. It was neutral. What's so sad? What's bad, Tony? Well, Summer Games done quick. They raised a lot of money for charity. They raised $3 million for Doctors Without Borders. How is that bad? People like Doctors Without Borders. They do. But unfortunately, they're a speedrunning-focused thing. And apparently, one of the speedrunners faked it. Fake it till you make it? He has admitted that he faked part of his run. I'm definitely not going to pronounce this correctly. It's MechaRasm. He was a Russian speedrunner. He was one of the few online speedrunners at a mostly live event. He did a live run of Metal Gear Rising Revengeance. The charity donation goal incentive was to have him do an extra run of the Blade Wolf DLC. the goal was hit, but since it happened, he has admitted that he faked that run because he used pre-recorded footage. Yeah. I guess for those that aren't familiar with the Games Done Quick, it's a week-long thing. And so when the charity drive is going on, there are a variety of incentives that people can put their donation towards in addition to just donating. Right. And so a lot of them are, hey, there will be a threshold of, let's say, If this raises $20,000, we'll have the – before the end of this runner's main run, we'll add a bonus run, usually a much shorter exhibition or DLC or something. Just something else so people see a little more time. To me, it's always been a little bit – especially in recent times, a little bit of a joke because everything always meets all its incentives. So it feels a little artificial to me. They always somehow miraculously meet all the thresholds. but anyway so yeah so I read about this after the fact I did not see this run I didn't see this run either because I was at my conference when this event was going on because I've donated in the past towards runs before my favorite ones have always been on a lot of the really long runs like the Final Fantasy runs they'll hit a certain point where they need to do a bunch of organizational work before they get pushed into the final one especially in like Final Fantasy 9 there's a point that requires a ton of bag work and readjusting how your bag is laid out to make the next part of the run work. And it normally takes a minute or so. And one of the incentives a lot of times is requiring them to do it blindfolded. Yeah. There have been incentives to do runs blindfolded. It's really, really interesting. Now, Games Done Quick was in person this year. Yes. So normally something the way he cheated would not have been possible. However, he was accommodated with remote play, which is something a lot of people have been asking for because one of the biggest problems is a lot of – Games Done Quick always happens in the U.S. Right. And a lot of the top speedrunners live all over the world and cannot afford to travel to this event. So – because there have been funding drives to help get some of them there from time to time. But people have been kind of hoping that a hybrid model would work. And I know a lot of people are worried that this has now undermined that and that maybe Games Done Quick will now be like, ah, now that we're kind of on the back end of the pandemic, do we want to continue to allow people to stream from home where they have so much more control over the environment? From what I read, there were some people who were thinking it was a little weird because when the run was going on, there were points where you couldn't, there was no keyboard sounds, there was no proper external sounds. One of the big red flags I remember reading about was someone had said he took his hand off the mouse at one point and then caught himself and – I guess. I didn't watch this part. Yeah. Said that he was using the mouse left-handed at that stage because he had realized his right hand was on – in frame. Right. And not on the mouse like it had been all the other times. And so he quickly claimed something about needing to use his left hand for it. Yeah. Well, and we got another quick quote from Games Done Quick. Yesterday, we were made aware that Mecherasm played a segmented video for his DLC run at Summer Games Done Quick 2022. He has since admitted to this, both to some members of the community as well as directly to GDQ staff. He contacted our staff with a document detailing that he had planned this for over a month, demonstrating that this was planned and intentional. This was made possible because of the remote nature of this particular run in the marathon. This is absolutely unacceptable and attempts to undermine the integrity of the speedrunning community that we love and support. The exact result they desired was unclear from the document, but it is clear that they believed we would not be willing to speak out about their behavior. However, we believe it is in the community's best interest to know why this run was removed by GDQ. We have removed MechaRasm's runs from our YouTube archive, and he will not be permitted to run in the future. yeah so it was my understanding is you can still see this run if you're willing to go into the giant like twitch archive of the whole day and find it but normally what games done quick does is they segment them out as individual runs for youtube and that got pulled down and initially it was pulled down before the statement was out so people were very confused because they It hurt. Here's the thing that wasn't, wasn't touched on in the quotes, his montage of runs set a world record at the event. So people wanted to go back and see it setting. It's important. I think it's important to remember setting world records at GameStone quick is really, really rare because it's not, it's not an optimized environment for it. A lot of times because they're marathons marathon means meaning they run the entire game and sometimes things are more folk like people will set track records and it all depends by the game a lot of times these speed runners play games in in segmented chunks and they they use snapshots like a stopwatch almost to know and they work those segments over and over that's how they get really good and their best times are not in a marathon it's each little snapshot they've had a best time at some game in their life and that's kind of how they put it together and think about it all you know they're different ways to track it but that's why there was so much demand is because I think at this Games Done Quick, there were two, maybe three world records set on a 24-7 stream. I mean, we ran for a whole week and it's 24 hours a day. And he was one of those two or three. But it was fake. Right. Because it was a segmented, from what I read, the video was a segmented video. It was best of segments put together. Yeah. Times he had played that he had saved and he glued them together in a way to try and mask that it wasn't being done live. Some additional information, I guess on one of the fighting game discords or on this game's – not fighting game discord. On either speedrunning discord or on a Metal Gear discord or something. Someone had shared this on Reddit, so how true it is, not sure. But he had purportedly claimed that – he had made a statement about why he had done this. And in that statement, he, I guess, pivoted to the position that he planned to make this clear. But the goal, again, much like Games Done Quick, the goal, people aren't understanding what he's trying to argue is the goal at this point. The nearest I could tell from what people were claiming he was quoted as seemed to suggest that he was trying to argue that it was wrong that Games Done Quick is so focused on marathon performance instead of the proper way to do it is in segment by segment by segment. But I totally don't get it. Games Done Quick isn't about however each individual community of speed. Speed running is all by game. So how each little community chooses to view itself, that's not – like Games Done Quick doesn't exist to set world records. It exists just so you can see people break games. That's why it's there. And so I don't understand what his point was. Here's something I didn't know until you had posted all this. So you noted he is a – does he live in Russia? That's everything I read says he lives in Russia. He's a Russian speedrunner. Why was he even allowed? I don't know. Everything I read just said – just referred to him as a Russian speedrunner. Maybe he did all this because of Ukraine. There's a reason why they're not being allowed to participate in a lot. It's nothing personal. It's about the invasion of Ukraine. So seeing this surprises me because there have been other groups that have chosen to – Not allow. Right. And then we've seen groups like FIFA when they've been like, okay, well, no, we're going to still let them play. And then all these other countries are like, we just won't. It doesn't – like boycotts don't work if they're with a colander. Right. So that's my point. I'm surprised at this. Yeah, because that was one of the first things I'd noticed is that all the articles said it was Russian-based. And it was like, well, that's weird. It may be completely unfair of me, but it adds the narrative of did he deliberately sabotage it because he's upset about the world's response to his country's invasion of an innocent country. Which is entirely possible. I still like you bring up, it's like, why was he allowed at the event at all then? I don't know. And our last bit is kind of barely touching on video games, but it does involve the PlayStation Store. So in Austria and Germany, purchased Studio Canal films will be removed from the PlayStation Store due to evolving licensing agreements. They will also be removed from the players' libraries, including movies that were purchased. Oh. because of PlayStation's licensing ties in Europe, specifically in those two countries, with that studio, any of their films that were purchased through the PlayStation store will be removed from the players' libraries with no refund. That's very unusual. And Studio Canal Films sounds like someone you don't know. Yeah, I know. I've never heard of it. Yeah. In Europe, they have like John Wick and Saw. They're the big distributor. They're a big distributor. They're a big distributor in Europe. Well, I mean, I'm going to say morally, removal from people that have already purchased is wrong. Correct. And when we've seen games licenses expire on systems, it's been typical that, no, you can't buy them anymore. But even if you've uninstalled them, you can go back and re-download them through private store links. That said, there's probably language. in the EU ways that said that these were like leases and that there was some technicality where you never really owned it, which is what everyone's always been afraid of with digital products is this sort of crap. And I've had stuff in the past personally where I, I did not lose it, but the version changed. Uh, I've had, Blizzard did that with a Warcraft. Yeah. Uh, and I, and I've had like, uh, I had an audio book at one time, uh, that they changed to a new narrator. So the original narrator version is gone. I've had another one where they changed narrators, but I can still download my version, which was the original narrator, but I can't, but they don't sell that version. Right. And I'm okay with that. Yeah. Like if you're, I get it. Licenses expire. They can't sell stuff like that forever. But if we're going into a cloud-based system, we should be able to constantly access the things we legally bought. Whenever we would like them. And I know people often think about the big doomsdays of what happens if the Amazon store goes away. What happens if you lose all your movies you bought through Amazon digitally and that sort of stuff. But what more often I think is this. What happens when these little things come in and you're like, I didn't really own it. Or maybe I did really own it, but it's gone anyway. Because people don't read through all that. And what are you going to do? What's your other option? Some of the stuff you can't even get physical anymore. I mean, even with physical stuff, it gets to be a problem. Look at the one I was reading about today, which, of course, you'll be familiar with, is Star Wars Original Trilogy. You know, George Lucas, like, went through fire and death to make sure no one can get the original non-special edition versions of those anymore. Yeah. So unless you had a hard copy somewhere, you can't buy it anymore. You can't find it. I think I might still have the hard – I might sell VHSs of the original. My folks might. But it's like apparently there's a documentary coming out that's going to have original footage. And so because people had been wondering – one of the few things that people were optimistic about with Disney taking over Star Wars was the thought that maybe they would allow non-special editions to be available again. Because special editions, we saw them in high school in the theaters, which was a really cool experience. But some of the decisions he made were – and not just like who shot first stuff, but like the stupid, ugly Jabba and stepping on his tail thing. Just like bad choices. See, when it comes to stuff like that, I'm most comfortable with special effects upgrades where you don't change anything. You just upgrade the special effects. Like, there's a remastered version of the original series Star Trek where they've gone through and done just a special effects upgrade. Where they basically redone all of the special effects shots and the ship stuff so it looks better. And it's not, you know, here's the really nice model of the Enterprise. and here's like a rubber bouncy ball with a light inside of it as some weird alien thing. Or they've done stuff like that. Or things are just seen at an extreme distance because they didn't have time to make or money to make a model for something. I'm okay with stuff like that more than the wholesale editorial changes. Well, I guess that's it for the show. That's all? Yeah. We're done? All right. Well, we'll be back in a couple weeks. If you want to reach out to us, you can email us, eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com, or go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast, and you can use the Messenger tool, and we'll get that. Yep. We'll be available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers, and I'll kick out some of those pictures from my joy on the Instagram. All right. Well, until the next episode, my name is Dennis. I've been Tony Goodbye everybody See ya