this is a blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the BlahCade Pinball Podcast i'm your host chris frebus not joining me uh because of the insane early time in the morning would be for him is jared morgan but uh that is because we are once again being visited by Mel Kirk, Vice President of Publishing for Zen Studios. Welcome back, Mel. Hey, Chris. Thanks for having me. Good to be here again. Absolutely. So you are here today to discuss some goings-ons with the Williams Collection Volume 2, but before we even dive into that, we need to talk about Volume 1 a little bit. When last we talked to you, obviously this was a big mystery how this was going to be received. what you guys could expect in terms of sales and just general reception. How has that been now that you've had a month of it being out? Yeah, it's been extremely positive. We're very happy with the overall reaction. We see the writing on the wall that people like what we've done for the most part. There's no reason to say, like, we're not going to be working on this for a very long time. I mean, it's been incredible. I think we brought in a whole new segment in the Pinball FX, a whole new player base, people who, you know, just didn't play with us previously. So, you know, it's been really, really great to invite them in. At the same time, our existing player base were like, you know, we announced and then released the games and they were like, what are these? These are very different from what you guys were, but hey, this is really cool. So I think we kind of we did all the right things and there's some more things for us to tweak and whatnot. but everything was really good, really, really positive. I think that was actually my biggest surprise was I never realized that there was this separation between, you know, Pimble Arcade players and FX3 or FX2, basically would be the assumption there, players. But I didn't realize there was this giant divide between them. And when the game released, reading people's reactions, all of a sudden it was, yeah, from the people that were exclusively Pinball FX players, it was just kind of like the, oh, hey, this is better than I expected. Okay, this is cool. I'm like, what do you mean you were better than expected? These are classic tables. And then from the Pinball Arcade faction, you could tell that they hadn't touched Pinball FX since Pinball FX 2. And that all their biases towards, you know, oh, I don't like fantasy tables, or oh, I don't like the Zen physics. And all of a sudden it was like, oh, hey, look at that. These these physics are wonderful. And I'm actually playing with all the fancy overlay on, you know, on these Williams tables rather than playing them the vanilla version. This is kind of cool. It's made me check out some of their other tables. And that's where I was just like, wow, you mean there really was a separation. So, yeah, it's fantastic that you're bridging that gap. yeah and this is something that i think that we've known and sensed for a long time is that people who are playing our games didn't play they didn't grow up playing pinball they didn't grow up in arcades or with machines they never even touched one before and so uh their version of pinball their experience uh truly is what zen has given them uh on consoles in in mobile devices that's where they played these games that's where they got their first touch of pinball whereas we knew this whole other crowd you know really that's what they they just want to play the stuff that they grew up with or that they're nostalgic about. And, yeah, I think that we did the right things to make both player groups happy. And, you know, I think the cool thing also for the people who are new to Xen or haven't touched it since FX2, I think you see that FX3 gives you a lot to do with your table. It's not just sit down and play the game. But you got a lot of choices and a lot of options, and so I think that was a pleasant surprise for people. And there's more coming in that regard. so yeah I think we're off on a good start it was really interesting I don't know we released we've been doing these little pinball story videos showing the Budapest Pinball Museum and then I think this week it might have just been yesterday actually we released about Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda California and their director of the museum D'Arcy who's become a good friend she was talking about the type of people now that are coming into the arcade you know kids and families and people who never played pinball, and that's a main part of their business now. So I do think that we're seeing a whole new generation of player. Xen is uniquely positioned to introduce these classic tables to these people who have been with us now for a while and a younger audience. Yeah, I have heard a few people where they're like, wow, I'm really surprised by the user interface in FX3. It's so smooth. It's so easy. You know, and it's opened them up to, especially with the tournaments, the create your own tournament mode, where it's just like, yeah, this is a blast. And being able to dive in and just play with other people. And that's such a critical component to pinball is being able to play against other people. Yeah, that's something we're just scratching the surface on that. We have a lot of plans on the multiplayer aspect for FX3 tournament play in game events. You know, these are what we call the game-as-a-service element of the game, which FX3 is probably one of the original games-as-a-service, you know, ever since the early days. So really looking forward to doing more there, and we'll be talking about that later on. Has there been any surprises to you guys at Xen with the release of the Williams pack that you didn't quite expect reaction-wise or just, you know, sales-wise, anything? I mean, was there anything that just kind of, like, grabbed you? Not so much. I mean, actually, we've done really well on Steam. Previously, we'd been a little weak on PC, just like Pinball FX3 presence. But that actually was – we got quite a response there. It's clear that a lot of people playing on PinCab, probably more people than we expected are playing on PinCab now, you know, for all their Pinball PC stuff. So it kind of emphasized more the need for us to work faster on the arcade features and getting the game the way we want it to run there. But otherwise, yeah, you know, I don't know. We thought about it for a long time from a lot of different angles. I think we were pretty well prepared. The censorship thing or whatever you want to call it, you know, we knew that that would be a topic of discussion. Maybe that got a little bigger than we thought. I didn't expect to show up in front of Ars Technica. That was cool. I got to talk to Kyle Orland, who I hadn't spoken to in a long time, and we had a great discussion. I'm sure you guys read that. But, yeah, I think for the most part, that's probably what maybe was not expected from us. Yeah. I mean, we even devoted an entire podcast to that whole issue. It was one of those things where, and this is kind of we understand our fan base, which is they go, ooh, new, shiny. They get all excited about that, and then they revert. And it's, okay, what can we complain about now? And so that was kind of one of those things where it was like, oh, here we go. But I think that even kind of blew up larger than I expected it to be. And I know you're going to address some of that coming up here. Unless, shoot, do you want to dive into that right now? I know you have some news for us yeah we can do that now it kind of tied into what we going to talk about with new content which we announce here We keep that on teaser so you guys keep paying attention to what we talking about here So, yeah, there's going to be on PC, we're going to be releasing original versions of Volume 1 tables, and all the tables that are coming in the future will be true to form unaltered, so no censorship there. There will also be a family mode. So you're going to have two versions of the table now based on what's best for you and in your play situation. So that means we're talking about unaltered. That means no art is changed. No game modes have changed. Nothing has changed. Family mode will be basically kind of like what we are currently seeing with what was done in volume one. Exactly. Okay. So you're going to have pure versions of the table. All the artwork, VOs, DMDs, whatever's going on will be from the original true form. and then the family version, if you will, the edited version is also available and you can pick and choose which one you want to play. It's not like we're charging you money for one or the other. When you buy the game, you get both of those versions. You're being sensitive to the audience, basically. We're giving you a choice. However you want to play, you can. And that's on PC. So you notice I'm not saying console or other platforms because it's a bigger situation. On Steam, we're not affected by our rating. but you know this is us we think that the majority of these players who want this version are on PC and so this is our you know first attempt to say alright we heard you here you go you now have a choice great I think that'll go over like gangbusters just the fact that again you've listened to the community what's been being said out there and it's one of those hard things to communicate where it's like you guys have a business aspect and and how to run the company and deal with the licensors that you have and as well as the customers. And it's trying to find that fine balance of, of how to please both. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of conversations. It's not, it's not just a conversation with us and players or us and you know, platform holder, mobile licensors involved all of the people who have played the game previously and on steam, it's much more flexible and open and we're able to do things differently than on, you know, these more curated platforms on console side. Right. Regarding the, and this is purely selfish reasons here, because I've started building what I'm calling the microcab. It's that thing that Jeremy Williams did for VR. And coming up with button layouts, I'm trying to anticipate what you guys are going to be doing when it comes time for games that have MagnaSave or some games like, for instance, The Shadow has the second set of flippers. Is that something where, like currently for Zen titles, when you have a MagnaSave on any of your Zen games, it's basically pushing the launch button again, and that's what activates that. But with Williams Table, sometimes it's directional. Left or right side of the table, that is going to be happening. Are you going to be implementing using the second shoulder button, basically the trigger button or whatever on the controllers for that, or are you going to be sticking with the launch button being that kind of trigger? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't think I have a definitive answer for you on that right now for a controller or for a keyboard. I can tell you on our pinball machines, our virtual cabinets that we're working on, we do have a second set of buttons just up on the flipper buttons on the side of the unit. So we've identified that that's a good place for the hands when you're playing like a traditional pinball. So for people who are playing arcades, that's likely what we would recommend. but on the controller and the keyboard I don't know exactly what we're doing just yet I know that it's still because our games do it a certain way and William's games do it a different way what I like to do is give the player the option so if we could let you guys do your own button configuration map it however we like I think that would be the best solution it's the most amount of work on our side but you know i in the long run i think it's the least amount of work on our side because then we don't lock players out if they want to do it differently or you know then we don't create a situation here where people are unhappy so i'm actually adding a third button to the to the flipper side uh that's going to be for activating the wizard uh bonus because i don't want to have to reach up to the top i would just want it right there at my finger to be able to do it and still do flippers. So I'm adding a third button for that purpose. Um, but it's one of those things where it's like when trying to figure this out, I'm like, guy, how is that going to work? Uh, because a lot of these pin cabs also don't have two buttons, uh, in there. So I'm like, Oh, that's going to be different. Yeah. Yeah. These are the problems. These are the things, you know, uh, at the very end of the road where you discover, Hey, what about this? You know? and it needs to be sorted out. But once we get there, I'll definitely share that with you and let you know what's going on. Okay. Okay, I'm dying to know. Folks, I don't even know what the upcoming tables are. So let's break that nut open right now. What are the upcoming tables for the Williams Volume 2 collection? Drum roll. For Volume 2, we're doing the Party Zone. Okay. Doing Attack from Mars. Uh-huh. We're doing Black Rose. Black Rose. There we go. So, Bally Machines. Yes. Brings up a question. Are we going to have a separate Bally tab, or is it all going to be under the Williams tab? It's all going to be under the Williams tab. Okay. For now. We're going to, you know, we want to, part of our, what's hard for us is, like, keeping that home screen clean. Yeah. You know, we have tabs with, like, just one table, and it looks kind of empty. It's kind of a disappointment, I think. Sometimes we're like, there's one thing there. It's like, what happened? I don't know. I think we're, I think we're still hoping out that, you know, there'll be maybe a half-life table for the valve section and, you know, I don't know what, Walking Dead Volume 2. I don't know. But, or Skybound. I don't know. But, yeah, so they're all going to, they're going to be in that Williams town. Okay. With Party Zone, boy, that wasn't in any of the, the, material beforehand that we were able to even fathom a guess on. And so, you know, I know that our forum loves to speculate, loves hints and guesses, and just they'll mine that to the ends of the world. So that's really a surprise. That was nothing, not even in any of the videos of in the museum there that was there. That's going to be fantastic for all of the plastics. Yeah. You guys have shown just, I mentioned it before, especially looking at Junkyard, the plastics that you guys have come up with for your clears are amazing. So that's going to really show that off with Party Zone. Yeah, I think so. Again, we're at the very beginning of this, and we're working on people's favorite games. Some of these here are just favorites of our designers and our team and stuff. but yeah you know Party Zone it's got a ton of personality to it the classic version is going to be amazing and the remaster you know there's some cool stuff that obviously you'll see in assets that we're releasing today we got you know Captain Zar there's like flying around on a rocket and there's fireworks going around going off everywhere it's really quite a party so I think it's going to go real well that brings up something else that surprised me people were very vocal about the dragon flying around a medieval mannish because it was blocking their flippers. And I'm like, well, if you've ever played any of the Star Wars tables where the Millennium Falcon is flying around this is all par for the course It just one little added trick to get around And the other thing was that the dragon tends to finish by the time your ball save is finished So hey you lose a ball no biggie So I imagine that the captain's going to be flying around much in a similar vein in his rocket. Yeah, that will be happening. Again, if you don't like the dragon flying around, hey, man, just hit the button. It's gone. If you're playing it and all of a sudden you hit multiball and the dragon's flying around, just turn it off for that. for that moment. You know, it's cool. And then black Rose will be interesting too, because that one is really hard to translate from three dimensions into 2d. It's got, I don't know there. I think it's just something about that middle rail dividing the table that, you know, right down vertically that it throws you off. Um, so that'll be interesting to see what you guys, how you do that. Yeah. And you know, uh, black Rose is a 3d ship. So, um, that's going to be really cool. What do you guys, what do you see what's going on? Yeah. We have a ball-attacking compass, which is going to be guiding, which is really cool. And the globe will be spinning, treasure chest, interactive cannon. So there's actually quite a bit going on there on the remastered version for this one. Attack for Mars, I have to ask, how are you guys going to handle the strobe multiball? Okay. Well, flying saucers. lots of action lots of flying uh saucers um it's gonna be it's gonna be quite a a time um well i'll just say you have to play it okay right so uh yeah you'll have a lot of fun because that's going to be the one factor where like what was i just playing oh because we're doing uh we're we just had a tournament where we had we're playing et and obviously when it goes trick-or-treating mode, the whole table just goes dark. And I went, that's what I want for StrobeMotiball. So hopefully that's what, yeah, once I get to play it all, you know that's what I'm going to go for first, is trying to get that mode going so I can find out what is in store for me. The update just came out. I might be able to get you into these. I'll have to check that out afterward. Yeah. One of the suggestions that kind of came out in terms of the animations that you guys can go ahead and do with these tables in the fantasy version of it was incorporating whatever's going on on the DMD and just putting that onto the table. Essentially making it so you don't even have to look at the DMD. With Volume 2, did you guys go a little amp up the fantasy elements a little more after seeing people's reactions to Volume 1? Or are you still not at that point yet in terms of your lead time? still not quite at that point uh volume two has been in production uh since you know before volume one released so we've been working on this we outlined what we wanted to do i think black rose might be a step a little further um some parts of what we're doing an attack from mars um might be as well but still not full-blown zen craziness like that we can do there's ideas uh for these that we crossed off and said, no, let's not do that. But I think we're going to inch our way forward as we keep getting validated that people like this and they like how much we're doing. If we didn't have the option to just push up a button, turn it off, we wouldn't do this. But that is there. So, hey, if the dragon's blocking your view on Medieval Madness, just turn it off for a minute and then turn it back on. It's kind of giving you guys a little more freedom. Yeah. and so you know I think that that's that's where we're headed I will say you know volume 3 we're in production as well right now there's one table in particular I think we're gonna we might just go for it we might just blow it out just see what the heck happens do you guys take any inspiration off of the mods that people have done to their real tables me looking at getaway I was like I've seen the donut shop I've seen the mountain on somebody's table. So to me, I kind of like, I wonder if that's one of those things that you guys have taken cues off of other people's mods. I think the team may have. I'm not involved so much in the early design. I get something that comes across my desk and it says, hey, here's the table. Here's what we're going to plan to do to it. I have time. My job is a little different. So I have time to look at it and say, is this enough? Is it not enough? Is this fun? is this exciting? The guys know best. The designers know best. I think maybe at some point it'd be cool for you to talk to either Deep or to Thomas or some of these guys who are actually doing this stuff and find out. Yeah, that'd be amazing. They're much better suited to answer the question than I am. I just try to look at the general picture of what is the plan for this table and is it going to work for both player groups. Now that we can offer original versions on Steam, I'm definitely big checkbox like, yeah, of course. And now it's just if they want to play the second version or not. Yeah. I know my fantasy mod, just because I've never even seen it other than photos, but if you guys ever got around to doing Johnny Mnemonic, somebody did a full Matrix conversion to that and just turned it into a Matrix table. And I know that they were going to sell it as a kit and they kind of got the cease and desist letter. But I was like, that's so awesome that somebody went to that length. I'm hoping I get to like talk to William Gibson at some point because I read so many of that guy's books. Like it would be awesome to like have a conversation with him. I don't even know how much how fully aware he is of the pinball game. But, you know, maybe one day that would be a dream come true for me anyway. Fingers crossed that that if you guys go that licensing route, that that just becomes one of those. Oh, man, I have to talk to him. I'm sorry. One conversation with William Gibson for, you know, 10 minutes. Let's talk a little bit about the physics. So you guys put it out there for the public beta and got, guys, just a ton of feedback. And I was amazed at how quickly Deep was able to actually implement some things and do changes. It seemed like every week we were getting a new build. And then it went on hiatus for the two weeks prior to the actual tables being released. And when it came out, it was changed yet again, basically incorporating everything that everybody had. It's a staggering amount that has gone in with that. Is he going to be having to do that now for each and every table that you guys go? I mean, custom physics wise, or do you feel like there's a baseline that's been reached now? I don't know. I mean, I think I think we have a baseline for the way that Williams pinball needs to play. then there are some tweaks that need to happen for each game that we make and we're committed and we just realize that that's going to be the way it is i think for the most part people are happy however i know a situation that we're running into and it's almost like we have to answer this question by question no matter how much we write about it people maybe don't read the history of what's going on um is you know pinball pinball machines depending on where you're playing and the age of the machine and the way it's been maintained they're all going to play differently. No two fishtails machines are going to play the same. The games that we have in our office are almost in brand new condition. I would say that's the benchmark that we go for is these games should play like a brand new game. We do have pieces that have been replaced and we have parts that are new. Our game, the way that they're playing one spinball in a video game, we're modeling after how it plays in a new machine. Still, there's some things they play differently in some cases based on pitch of play field, based on bumpers and where things are. So we have to make adjustments What else can we look forward to that gonna be changing within volume 2 Yeah we heard a lot of requests to turn off the cinematic cameras completely in Volume 2 so we're putting that option in as well. It's like basically a toggle option in the options portion, kind of like turning on and off ball trails? Yeah. Okay. So, again, I believe that's for even a more pure experience, no distractions. So that's there as well. I still feel like we're in the mode of just perfecting that baseline that we're talking about. It's a really good way to put it. And it's getting the experience pure for everybody who wants it pure. We have other features that we were hoping to release with Volume 2, which would expand the FX to give you even more things to do with your tables. Hopefully, once this all clears out, all the updates and features and more things can really start to flow faster. with more content. So that's where we are with Volume 2. And just in case you're all wondering, Pack 2 is $9.99. So we're aiming for a December release. We're not exactly sure of our date. It could be December 4th or 11th. But right now we're in that, where we're sorting that out with first parties. So you don't have to wait long. It's coming soon. Awesome. I know one of the things that people have been asking about was within the custom tournaments, when turning with the Williams tables you can select tournament mode but what that hasn't affected is the flippers the flipper angles it still was using the steeper flipper angles so basically all the tournament mode did was turn on tournament rules but it didn't and slope but it didn't affect the actual flipper thing is that something that we can look to being addressed in the future too or is that something you guys weren't even aware about yeah let me make a note of that because I don't know the status of that right now. I know people were going, wait, this is way too easy to trap a ball, but it's still steep as hell. Yeah, I'll look into what's going on with that and see if that can't get fixed as well. That shouldn't be difficult to fix. Could happen kind of instantly, actually. Ta-da, bingo. Another thing that, and I know we touched upon this last time, and I don't know if there's been any new discussions within Zen about this, but all those people that are coming over from Pimble Arcade and now sampling once again the older Zen tables, they've all gone, oh, my God, I would kill to have these new physics put into as an option. Has there been any more discussions about doing that sort of thing? Yeah, we figured out how long it would take for us to do it. it's clear that it wouldn't be something that we could just do all at once. It would have to be phased in. It would have to go kind of content by content, pack by pack, so to speak. So if we were going to do it all at once, it would be a substantial, substantial investment, and it would delay content. It would delay more Williams tables from coming out and other things that we have in production. So we're trying to figure out how to phase it in. It is something that we plan to do. And it's funny because, you know, we released Williams and everything else, you know, sales-wise, everything else got a boost, right? That's just, we knew that that would happen. But then I think that we'd see even more boosts and people would actually, they want to play with these physics now. The new crowd, the TPA crowd, there's no question. So, yeah, it's definitely on our list of things to do. It's just how quickly and where do we start and how long is it going to take? because this is it's not a it's not a situation where you can flip the switch because obviously those tables there were some uh uh you know call it magic tricks going on to make the ball move in certain vicinities on some of your tables um and now trying to throw in these physics it kind of changes up the geometry of everything i would imagine everything everything has changed yeah surface materials um oh that's right because you guys were doing different surface contact Yeah. First slide on the ball. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot. It's definitely not a push of a button kind of thing. One line of code deployed and off it goes. You know, it is table by table. Okay. But there you go, folks. At least you know that they're actually taking it to heart and working on it. We're flattered. You know, we did something new that we hadn't done before, and everyone's like, hey, do this on your table. I mean, it's, you know, it's great. That's fantastic, too. Okay, so as you mentioned, Black Rose, Party Zone, Attack from Mars. $9.99 is going to be the price point for that coming in. First half of December is kind of the target for going with that. That is, I don't know, I'm excited. That's all I can say. It's getting to play these in this new fashion. It's like even though we've played them to death already, it's still exciting because I'm really looking forward to what you guys have in store with the fantasy elements. That's how I play all the tables now. I can't help it. If I throw them in the generic version, it's kind of one of those like, oh yeah, that's what it looks like. No, show me the stuff. I'm glad that you guys are then for Volume 3, like you said, that there'll be one table that maybe you just go unleashed. It'll be fun to see whether that happens. Yeah, and this is part of the reason why we're doing these tables is bring them into just a bit more of a modern era. They're going to have a whole new shelf life. It's just hard because you can't go play these. Not everybody can just go down to their arcade and find an Attack from Mars machine. But everybody has a phone. Everybody has a console or a PC. And let's reimagine these. You can play them in a pure form, but let's reimagine these, especially for people who have never played them before. Because, look, we live in a very dynamic world. Static things just aren't so exciting anymore. I mean, you can see this on the manufacturing side with new games. They're somewhat video game like, you know, there's still the classic mechanical pieces, but the DMDs and all the interactive stuff going on. You know, I think that this is just where the world is now. And that's part of our mission is to like give these games new life. So I'm happy to hear that you're enjoying it. Absolutely. No, it's been a blast. Okay, folks, we're going to do something here. We're going to wrap up the show and then we're going to come back with a a second part, maybe. So here's the deal. Make sure you go to our website. That is blockade pinball.com slash episodes. And that's where you'll find a show notes as well as past episodes and, uh, all manner of things of that nature. Be sure to go to red bubble.com and type in blockade as your search. And there you'll find all sorts of our new merchandise that we've been, uh, pimping out because that pays for us to be able to host this, which is kind of important. And then make sure you follow us on Twitter. The show is at blockade. I am at shut your traps. Jared is at Jared boards. Okay. With that, we will talk to you all again next week. Wizard amusement.com. The site to visit for custom pinball shooter. Easy to install. Totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. Withremusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization. Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blockade is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.