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Episode 41 - Cold Waters Drown the Silver Ball

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 35m·held·Aug 13, 2017
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Eclectic Gamers tackles pinball pricing crisis and Stern's latest moves.

Summary

Dennis and Tony from Eclectic Gamers discuss pinball industry news including Stern's warranty ghosting clarification, KISS code update, Zach Sharp's hiring as marketing director, Star Wars (Premium) gameplay footage, and launch an in-depth discussion about rising pinball machine prices and affordability concerns in the hobby.

Key Claims

  • Stern clarified via distributor communication that there is no change to warranty policy despite ghosting clauses in manuals

    high confidence · Dennis reports Gary Stern issued clarification that Stern is still standing behind products as they have been, despite adding ghosting language to manuals

  • Zach Sharp, current #1 IFPA-ranked competitive pinball player, was hired as Stern's new marketing director

    high confidence · Dennis announces Zach Sharp hired as marketing director, replacing Jody Dankberg who moved to director of licensing and new business development

  • Jody Dankberg was promoted from marketing director to director of licensing and new business development at Stern

    high confidence · Dennis states Jody Dankberg is now in the licensing and new business development role

  • Zach Sharp is the vice president of the IFPA, and his brother Josh Sharp runs the organization

    high confidence · Tony clarifies that Zach is VP of IFPA and Josh Sharp is the executive running the organization

  • KISS received a code update that was long overdue despite the game still being in production

    high confidence · Tony notes he was surprised by the wait for the update, Dennis observes it was mostly bug fixes with some gameplay adjustments

  • Star Wars Premium features a hyperspace loop and an exploding Death Star toy that are the main mechanical differences from the Pro model

    high confidence · Dennis describes watching Deadflip's Premium gameplay stream showing hyperspace loop and Death Star explosion mechanics

  • Coast to Coast Pinball with Nate Shivers has returned to releasing new episodes after hiatus

    high confidence · Dennis notes Coast to Coast Pinball is back with apparently targeting two episodes per month frequency

  • Stern acquired Keith Elwin, a former #1 IFPA-ranked player, as a pinball designer a few months before hiring Zach Sharp

    high confidence · Dennis notes Stern has been harvesting talent from competitive pinball, including Keith Elwin who had to relocate to Chicago

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm flabbergasted. I did not expect this outcome at all. I demand a recount.”

    Tony @ ~19:45 — Humorous reaction to 8-Ball Deluxe winning the billiards pinball poll by overwhelming consensus

  • “It'll all come down to enforcement. I'm sure it is to protect them in some way, to allow denial in some way where they can point to something specifically.”

    Tony @ ~31:20 — Skeptical assessment of Stern's ghosting clause in manuals, suggesting it may be legal cover for warranty denial

  • “Stern's definitely kind of harvesting crops from the field of competitive pinball.”

    Dennis @ ~50:15 — Observes Stern's strategic recruitment of top competitive players (Keith Elwin as designer, Zach Sharp as marketing director)

  • “I think that's good. I think it's been used really well on some other games. Maybe too sparingly maybe Star Trek was too sparing with the photon torpedo.”

    Tony @ ~85:30 — Commentary on lock bar/third button usage across Stern games, suggesting design balance issues

  • “We're we're really kind of blessed in the ability to play new games because they hit location here often.”

    Tony @ ~95:10 — Reflects on privileged access to new machines on location in their area (Kansas)

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyZach SharppersonJosh SharppersonGary SternpersonJody DankbergpersonKeith ElwinpersonNate ShiverspersonKISS (Stern 2024)game

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern hired competitive player Zach Sharp as marketing director and promoted Jody Dankberg to licensing/business development, signaling strategic shift toward IFPA/competitive community engagement

    high · Dennis reports Zach Sharp hire; Tony notes this follows Keith Elwin hiring as designer; both indicate Stern 'harvesting crops from competitive pinball'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern integrating competitive pinball players into organizational structure (marketing director, designer roles) alongside competitive circuit sponsorships (Stern Circuit, Stern Army)

    high · Dennis catalogs Stern's acquisition of Keith Elwin and Zach Sharp; Tony notes Stern Circuit and Army initiatives; discussion of growing IFPA-Stern ties

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Star Wars Premium lock bar multiplier feature appears overused in design; code has been modified multiple times since Pro stream to reduce multiplier points, suggesting design balance issues

    high · Tony notes 'if you don't juggle that, the multiplier thing, you're just not getting any points'; Dennis notes code modifications reducing multiplier points value

  • $

    market_signal: Episode 481 finale sets up major discussion about pinball machine pricing sustainability and affordability concerns across the hobby

    medium · Dennis titles final segment 'Is Pinball Too Expensive?' and indicates this is becoming a focal point on Pinside forums; Tony's single-word response 'Yes' suggests consensus concern

  • ?

    content_signal: Coast to Coast Pinball podcast has returned after hiatus; Australian pinball podcast Head to Head Pinball launched with dual competitive/collector host format

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.285

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, August 13th. This is episode 481. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. And we're going to be talking to you about the normal pinball and video games. And that's about all this time. Yeah, but we got a lot of it. I sure got a lot of it. But before that, intro time. So, Tony, what's been going on? It's been two weeks. Two weeks. Does anyone know what that's from? Probably not. These whippersnappers don't know.
0:45
Whippersnappers. In the last two weeks, I've been actually pretty busy because, as I said last episode, but I was studying for my big certification test at work, which I successfully passed. Congratulations. So I don't ever have to take one again. Yeah, I was going to ask, was that the final one? I thought it was. Yeah, that's the last one. That is the final one. There's no more to take as long as I don't lose my certification, which just requires continuing education courses. Yeah, it's the same with, well, probably a lot of things. My health insurance licenses are the same way, and the tests were, as I'm sure your test was, it was so grueling. It's so much easier just to keep the education up, even though I don't sell insurance. So I just keep them in case I need them for work. Yeah. No, yeah, that's how this is. The test was just so insane. It's like, man, I'll just do the continuing education courses, even if I don't need it, just to maintain I have it. So, because of that, I decided to treat myself. So I purchased a couple new games, including one that I said I wasn't going to purchase because it was too expensive. Not a Submariner one. Yeah, I picked up Cold Waters. And I also picked up Sniper Elite 4. I played two. I really liked that. If you like graphic gunshot wounds. Yeah. It's definitely got that. And then I also, due to the sale and due to my desire to injure myself because I'd been spending too much money on games all of a sudden, and because the new patch came out, I picked up No Man's Sky because it's been a year and they've done a lot. And it's like, okay, we will give it a look. But I haven't touched it yet. Yeah. Yeah, I've not ever played it. And, you know, I think the last I ever really spoke about it much was when we all talked about it when Jack Danger guest hosted our second guest hosting that we had last year. No, no, that was with Don. I think that was Don, yeah. Yeah, no, with Jack we talked Overwatch. Yeah, no, yeah, that's right. We gave a lot of time to that one because Don had been playing it. and I remember his reaction to it was mixed, as I recall. Yeah, it had been on my short list, and it hit so poorly that it immediately left my short list, but they've put out three big patches now, and I've seen some reviews, most of which say, hey, it's not what everyone expected it to be at launch, but it's a lot better than it used to be, And seeing as it was on sale everywhere for 60% off this weekend, I went ahead and snatched it. Okay. Well, we'll be able to learn more in a future episode about it then, which could be good if it has become good. Anything else beyond your test success and subsequent splurge? No, not really. That's about all I've done. I've been really lazy. yeah well post test fatigue I'm sure yeah I was I pretty much just vegged afterwards and played lots of games because I've just been studying for two three hours a day every day leading up to the test well that makes sense I have not been playing a ton of video games a little bit Overwatch their summer games have started so actually I have been putting a lot of time in on that But we'll get to that in the video game segment.
Star Wars Premium
game
Star Wars Progame
8-Ball Deluxe (Stern 1981)game
Coast to Coast Pinballorganization
Head to Head Pinballorganization
Pinball Done Quickevent
Pinball EDOorganization
IFPAorganization
Stern Armyorganization
Stern Circuitevent
Sharky's Shootoutgame
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization

high · Dennis notes Nate Shivers' Coast to Coast back with ~2 episodes/month target; Head to Head Pinball described as new, Australian, weekly, 3 episodes in with strong sound quality

  • ?

    product_concern: Star Wars Premium hyperspace loop and Death Star explosion mechanics experienced technical failures during official gameplay stream (loop malfunction, LED failure on Death Star explosion)

    high · Dennis describes watching Deadflip stream where loop 'quit going' and Death Star 'cracked open but there was no light show'; ball center drained from loop malfunction

  • ?

    code_update: KISS received long-delayed code update despite ongoing production, indicating either resource constraints or deprioritization of established titles

    medium · Tony expresses surprise at long wait despite production continuing; Dennis notes update mostly bug fixes with gameplay adjustments; city selection feature still non-functional

  • ?

    product_concern: Stern issued clarification on ghosting insert language in manuals to distributor network, indicating legal protection strategy while maintaining public warranty position

    high · Dennis reports Gary Stern issued clarification via distributor communication; Tony assesses as legal CYA ('allow denial in some way')

    • 4:28
    Let's see. Oh, I thought I'd go ahead and start in my intro section to note a couple podcasts. Pinball, both of them are pinball-oriented. One is a very familiar one, and I should have mentioned it like two episodes ago. But apparently Nate is back with Coast to Coast Pinball. He's been back and releasing episodes. So that's kind of cool. It's obviously he was one of the main podcasts that I first heard when I started listening. it's not the same frequency he's it sounded like he's going to shoot for maybe two a month but uh it remains entertaining same same basic format structure uh and i have a link to it in the show notes not that anyone uh not that he needs the promotion because he's probably the most popular pinball podcast there is i would assume to this day um and then another one's a new one an australian pinball podcast called head-to-head pinball and i have talked a bit in the past about another Australian one called Pinheads. They haven't put out an episode in a very long time, over half a year. This one's a weekly format, but it's a two-host system, which I generally think works the best, which is why we do it. But they are taking a clever tact. One of them is a competitive player, and one of them is a collector. And so hence the name, because they're coming at it from two different angles with their topics. And so far, they've been integrating that aspect really well. So they seem to have a good dynamic, excellent sound quality out of the gate. So they're only about three episodes in so far, but I've got a link to them in the show notes as well. So I mean, even if you're not, I'm obviously not Australian, but it still can be entertaining to listen to. And it's interesting to hear the perspectives from Australia because there is a lot of pinball popularity there, but obviously because of their distance, they face other challenges to the hobby that we kind of take for granted. So I thought I would note those two.
    6:21
    Other thing, I finally got my Pinball Done Quick refund. I should have had that and been able to announce it at the last episode, but Pinball EDO was just highly unresponsive with me after the initial communication about the refund for several weeks, but they finally made it right, so I got my money back, which is good there.
    6:40
    I've been reading a couple books. I don't usually announce book progress because I honestly just barely get through them anymore, it seems. But I had a coupon for a Kindle book, so I used it on Jeffrey Deaver's The Steel Kiss. That's one of the Lincoln Rhyme novels. I'm a big fan of Jeffrey Deaver's mysteries. I like them. They're pretty good. I've read them all except for the most recent ones. This is the second most recent, I believe, so I still need the most recent one. And I never read Bone Collector because I saw the Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie movie, and I figured it was probably already spoiled for me. So that's the one book I didn't read. I think I've read all the other ones, though. uh another one was one of those every month with amazon prime you get a pick out of a selection of upcoming books to have one for free so i got james w halls when they come for you and i just finished that this morning and i'm noting it only because it was actually good most of the time those books are maybe okay at best yeah i've i've had that issue with them i've reason i don't grab them unless something really catches my eye is because several of them i've just stopped and halfway turn. It's not even worth finishing this book. I've wondered on some of the ones I've read, it seemed to be a case where I wondered if it was the translation. A lot of them seem to be foreign written, and then they're translated, and I've wondered if maybe they're better, and just a lot of the prose collapses under the translator's kind of shoddy job or something. I'm not sure, though. They could just be bad from the get-go. But no, this one was actually entertaining. I liked it. And the only other thing I was going to note in the intro was Sharky's Shootout, because I'm not going to talk about it in the pinball segment. I have been making some more progress on it. My shop job on it is complete.
    8:27
    Yesterday, no, two days ago now, I replaced the two broken drop targets I had. One was chipped and one was flat out busted. So those were replaced. I took them all apart, cleaned them, and put on new padded decals on the whole thing. So those should hold up better. board work still is awaiting one transistor order i believe and then we'll pull the board and go ahead and get that repaired uh i'm still also awaiting awaiting my nvram replacement chip and my cliffy protectors but those aren't related to functionality so i don't need those to actually have the game quote unquote done i imagine the cliffies may be finished this week i was told there was a three-week lag on those. The guy's busy. Those were probably going to be the last thing I was expecting to get.
    9:17
    That's it for me. It's getting closer. I heard a clink. It sounds like someone's drinking a little early. I dropped a bottle cap. I could tell what it was. Your snowball microphone by Yeti is... or by Blue. Or is it by Yeti? Which one is it? Is it Blue or Yeti? It's Blue. I have the Yeti version. You've got the Yeti from blue. And you've got the snowball. Yes. Which can pick up a bottle cap at 500 feet. Except for it was like two and a half feet. 500 feet.
    9:48
    Incredible. Your gain is just way up. Alright. Now that we've gained through our introductions, let's go ahead and go to our first segment, which will, as usual, be the pinball segment. I've got poll results. Yay!
    10:03
    That's right. Our billiards. Rank the billiards. pinball themes. Modern era only. So I will have a... Actually, it's already been up. I put it up on Friday on our website. I just didn't announce it. So people can go and see the heat map if they want to because it was a ranking system. But here are the results. So in reverse order. So in 10th place was Pinball Pool. That old Gottlieb. Then in 9th place, Poor Sharky Shootout. Aww.
    10:35
    Yeah. Sad. Eighth place, Bad Girls. So most of my taste has already been eliminated now. Seventh place was Pool Sharks, which was my least favorite. Sixth place was Cueball Wizard. One of the few games on this list I've actually played. Pinball Arcade has let a lot of people have exposure to that, but it's just not a very popular game. I think the Pinside average sale price on those is $1,100, and I'm not surprised. It's a one-ramp game, and, well, we could go on about it if we ever want to, but it's not one I'm ever inclined to get.
    11:09
    Fifth place was Eight Ball Champ. I've played that virtually. Fourth place is Eight Ball. We've both played that in person.
    11:18
    Third place is Nine Ball, the Stern Electronics game. Third place is ninth place. Wait, what? Yeah, I almost said that, and it sounded really dumb. Second place was Break Shot, the Capcom game. I've never played it, so I really want to try it, because apparently a lot of people ranked it pretty high.
    11:37
    And first place, will shock you to no end, was 8-Ball Deluxe. I am flabbergasted. I did not expect this outcome at all. I demand a recount. I would have recounted because the amazing thing to me was not every single person put it at number one. Only most people. so anyway it's not everyone's favorite it's just almost everyone's favorite but hey it's a great layout it and it spawned a lot of uh clones which didn't make it nearly high as high up on the list so anyway that's that so thanks everyone for playing along with that it was sort of neat we hadn't done a poll in a while uh now i've got three kind of news pieces all kind of not kind of all directly related to stern pinball so we'll just kind of go through those pretty quick i think The first is, as I know Tony remembers, last episode we talked about the ghosting clause that Stern has stuck into at least some of their manuals. It was found in the L.E. and Premium manual on the front page. I said it was on the warranty page. That was inaccurate. It was actually, I guess, on the – not the cover, but I guess the first page of the manual.
    12:50
    Yes, deception. I was just trying to bring the man down, I guess. but anyway so there's been a little bit of clarification issued this has been shared on at least on pin side and I believe also shared on some of the pinball Facebook pages but I believe in a communique issued to their distributor network Gary Stern clarified that there is no change to the warranty and that they are still planning to stand behind their products as they have been standing behind their products. So that, you know, I've obviously condensed it down greatly, but it was a, we're not changing our approach, but we're putting these clauses in. So, I mean, he didn't spell out why they're putting the clauses in other than the pinball is becoming more, you know, acquired at the home level. So I guess it's language to maybe, well, I think it's the same thing we kind of speculated last time. I'm assuming it's to deal with people who are getting nitpicky and they can point to the manual and say, you know, there's an expectation that some of this ghosting is going to happen in certain instances, but if you have more than a couple inserts ghosted, they'll probably replace them as they have been, which, if I recall, the manual warranty doesn't guarantee that anyway, but they have gone beyond their warranty in many cases, is my understanding. I think the clarification was important because it does help because I know there was a lot of stuff. Even I thought it sounded a lot way like a CYA to give them a reason to start dumping warranties. So we'll see. I mean, as long as that doesn't actually happen and it's just verbiage for legal reasons that doesn't turn into them just completely walking away from issues in the future, I think everything will be fine. We'll just have to wait and see how that turns out. Yeah, it'll all come down to enforcement. I'm sure it is to protect them in some way, to allow denial in some way where they can point to something specifically, or at the very least to get people to maybe cut down on calling them the moment they see a sliver of any ghosting. But that also kind of begs the question of how many people actually sit there and read their manual. It is on the front, so I guess you wouldn't have to read far, but I never sat there and read my Star Trek manual when I got it. you have to read the manual every time I read the setup instructions you've read every word of the manual I read the setup I trusted them and Star Trek's been fine but that my model predates all the ghosting complaints with there's all sorts of speculation online especially on Pinside about what's causing the ghosting because everyone's sure that it's not deliberate it's just Is it the clear? Did they change the formula? Was it the change in the play field finisher? Was it a situation with the insert type they're using? I don't know. I don't do enough wood and plastic clear coat work, as in I do zero of it, to have any grounds to speculate. Second piece of stern news, unless you wanted to add something. No, I was just saying that's the next hobby you can take up is clear coating wood. because i just want to inhale all those chemicals and turn my garage into a spray paint paradise air i guess i'd airbrush at that point yeah fancy i'd have all the tools you get all sorts of tools and you your house would always have that that really nice sawdust smell going on so uh next news piece from stern uh kiss you remember kiss the pinball machine not the old one the newer one oh oh that yeah okay yeah uh they got a code update apparently uh this has been a long awaited code update i'm honestly surprised because i kind of figured that this game was just done and forgotten by now i have to admit i've been i've been surprised the opposite way i've been surprised that they've waited this long to do a code update given this game is still in production but i haven't followed it closely because i don't own a kiss i don't know of a kiss nearby on the kansas side on location anymore we had one for quite a while at nub's pub i like the layout of kiss but you could you know the the software was lacking uh the software is probably still lacking i did read through the readme it looked like it was mostly bug fixes there were some gameplay adjustments but i didn't see anything i didn't see the city choice uh making a difference yet and and maybe that's not ever going to matter and that's just going to be for you know kicks i don't know yeah or just yeah to make it feel more like more immersive i don't know it just seemed like that choosing the sit because it's not you're choosing the song makes a difference with the shots that's always been the case so in a way you don't it's not like acdc or aerosmith had you pick cities also. So KISS had this extra layer, but it didn't do anything. And it seems like since you get a choice, it should do something. But again, I don't know. If it still ends up as deep as any other music pin, I think it's hard to complain, but it does look a little weird. But still, it's good that they got this because there were some scoring issues and such. Some of those bugs were sort of severe. So it's good that they finally got a code update out. I sure wouldn't mind trying this again on location now that it has its code update, but I don't think it'll be a priority for anyone to re-rotate it in just because of this, from what I've read. Yeah, I doubt it. I doubt we'll see it come back in just for this. I mean, it might come in as part of the normal rotations, but I'm not holding my breath. Yeah, and the one on Nubz, it wasn't operator-owned. It's kind of like the Star Wars he's running. It was owned by a private collector who was willing to let it go out en route for a while. So if I'm remembering the setup on that right. So anyway, last piece of Stern news. They have a new marketing director. They've hired Zach Sharp, the current number one in the world, according to the IFPA ranking of competitive pinball players. The previous director of marketing, Jody Dankberg, he is now he's still with Stern. He's now been moved up to the director of licensing and new business development. So I know Zach has a marketing background. I don't know with whom, but it's not like a wholly new role to him. It's just, though it's showing those ties, it's interesting because Stern just a few months ago had acquired Keith Elwin, who was once also number one IFBA ranked player in the world, as a pinball designer. So Stern's definitely kind of harvesting crops from the field of competitive pinball.
    19:57
    This was less of a reach. I think Zach already lived in Chicago versus Keith, who had to move there. But anyway, I have no idea if this means there's going to be any change to marketing strategy or not. Obviously, Zach, though, given his competitive bona fides, is very well established in the tournament community and well respected. So he may have an easier time reaching out to that group of people. I don't know how much overlap there is necessarily between high-level competitive players and collectors. There's a degree of it, but not everyone who plays successfully competitively buys lots of pinball machines. So I don't know. Now, here's a question. is how is this going to affect the changes we've been seeing in the IFPA and the upcoming, and Stern has their new thing they've been doing, Stern Army,
    20:54
    and all of that for competitive play and boosting the hobby. So I'm curious to see how this will have an overall effect considering Zach's involvement with the IFPA and everything. Yeah, Zach is the vice president of the IFPA. His brother, Josh Sharp, is who runs the organization outright.
    21:20
    I don't know. My guess will be we'll still continue to see things move in that direction. The ties between the IFPA and Stern have been growing. You've mentioned the Stern Army, which came about, I think, less than a year ago. So, yeah, as I recall. And then I believe it was a month or two ago, they announced that there was going to be kind of replacing the Papa Circuit. There's going to be the Stern Circuit event where Stern is going to be the big sponsor of this massive 20 location circuit that culminates with this final championship thing. Like what Cactus Jacks is on the Papa Circuit. Those sort of events all basically being branded as Stern stuff because they're willing to be a big sponsor. I think we'll see more things along those lines and those items cultivated. Given Zach's background, I think he's going to identify most strongly with the idea that Stern should be reaching out to the competitive group, that those people will be the most interested in acquisition of pinball machines, that they're a prime group that you can cultivate because they already have a high level of interest in playing.
    22:30
    And so not only might they buy machines, they can also encourage locations to acquire new machines because playing on the new machines is useful to them because that's what they're going to face in tournaments and such. So there's some of that, but also given that he has a marketing background, I think he's going to be broad-based enough that it's not going to just be exclusive to that. I think that'll continue to grow. So, but I think my sense has always been that a lot of that stuff has been more the IFPA pushing and Stern agreeing rather than Stern reaching out to IFPA and saying, hey, let's see what we can do to reach out to competitive players. Maybe we'll see more of Stern sort of taking the lead. I've always just assumed, maybe falsely, but I've always assumed that it's been Josh Sharp who's been driving that train trying to enhance the exposure of competitive pinball and get the sponsorship levels up. So it just seems that way based off his personality and the interviews I've heard that that's really his passion that was driving that. But I can stand to be corrected if I am incorrect. Okay, that's it for the Stern News. Two more topics. One was Star Wars Premium, Deadflip, aired gameplay. I have a link to the recording of that in the show notes on YouTube. I don know if you had an opportunity to take a look at any of the footage I caught some of it live I was also watching Overwatch World Cup so I was bouncing back and forth So sorry Jack but I have to see if Symmetra in the meta or not That's just what I got to do. But I was able to watch a good segment of it. Yeah, I actually didn't watch any of it because I've been horrible because I've just been brain dead and playing games and watching live streams of other stuff. that I didn't even, until you told me about it the other day, I didn't even realize it, and I kept meaning to see it, and I just haven't gone and checked it out yet.
    24:19
    Okay, well, they were at it again, much like when they played the Pro model. The big notable difference on the Premium model, obviously, is the hyperspace loop, and it looks cool when it's working right. There was a part where something happened. I don't recall. I think it may have been a software bug, or something had occurred while the game was going. And the ball, the loop quit going. So the balls kind of went down to the bottom of it and eventually fell out and center drained. And it was kind of like, oh, that's sad. But when it was actually functioning, it looked really cool. I don't know if it really changes the gameplay experience other than kind of like how, you know, getaway. You get the ball on that loop and how it's like going fast. It's like that, but it seemed faster to me, even faster. So visually, it looks really cool. I think in person, it would be very visually impressive. But from a gameplay standpoint, I don't know if it's critical. It seemed like when there were multiple balls out, there would still be a ball going on that. So you weren't actually having to manage and catch up all the balls. At least one seemed still supposed to be up there. I may be misunderstanding, but that's what it looked like.
    25:33
    The other main difference is the other toy, the Death Star. It actually explodes apart when you defeat the Death Star. I guess the LEDs weren't triggered by the system when it was blown up right at the end of the stream.
    25:48
    And it cracked open like you would probably expect it would, but there was no light show, so it was a little underwhelming. But, you know, it was what it was.
    25:59
    They played the game differently than they did on the pro stream. On the Pro stream, it was sort of what I consider that competitive player standpoint where they were playing for points. On this, they weren't doing the multiplier locks. In fact, I don't recall if I saw anyone hitting the button on the lock bar. And I know that they've modified the software at least two times since the Pro stream. And they've reduced the number of points you can earn with the bonus multipliers through those changes. But I think they were deliberately not doing it. probably decided to go for modes and try and show more of the game depth rather than just go for points like they normally, a lot of the people there like Jack normally play competitively, and so they would go for points, not try and clear story mode. Yeah, and for my play when I played on it the other day, I mean, it seems like if you don't juggle that, the multiplier thing, you're just not getting any points.
    26:55
    Yeah, not enough. I don't know how fun that actually is, because to me it seems to steal a lot from the game, but I'm also a poor player.
    27:06
    It's just so – I don't like it, but I don't know if I don't like the lock bar thing because I'm just not any good at it because it's so different from what I'm used to with pinball. Same thing like why do I not care for video modes generally? Well, because it's not playing pinball. It's different. but it was done enough that and some people like video modes or like certain video modes supposedly i don't know if i've met any of them but i'm sure they're out there the uh so good video modes yeah there's some really bad video modes and i've wondered with this if it was just the idea of hey you know what pinball shouldn't it and it hasn't throughout its history it hasn't only been you managing two buttons so let's have this third button on the lock bar actually be used significantly uh and i think that's good i think it's been used really well on some other games maybe too sparingly maybe star trek was too sparing with the photon torpedo need maybe walking dead premium and le was too sparing too hard to earn walker bombs so you didn't need to use it very much i think this one's just making you push it too much though is the problem the multiplayer is too easy to earn it's um it's too flexible It doesn't burn out enough. It's not like you have to do a lot of work to start being able to hit that button again to lock in some shots for some multiplier. So I think that's my problem with it. I like the layout of the table, though. I think that the layout's interesting. It's very fast, brutally fast. Yeah, that's true. So I can't say it's my favorite layout, but I think it's a clever layout. even though I know in the photos it looked a lot like ACDC, this does not play like any other game I'm familiar with. I don't feel like I'm playing another Steve Ritchie game, except F-14 in the sense that's really fast. That's about it. So I think it feels really different. For better and for worse. Okay, that actually is really cool. While we've been talking, I've had the video muted and playing up on one of my spare monitors and that hyperdrive ring is pretty cool. yeah no visually it's great i i wouldn't pay you know over i wouldn't pay over a thousand dollars more just to have that feature so i'm looking at for my cheapskate stance but we'll get to that in our next segment but yeah no it looks neat it really does uh i like the idea of it as a concept i think it's very very clever and that's the sort of thing that can attract people on location kind like the whole iron monger when he pops up and says hello hello i'm iron monger and then the kids put their money in and he goes goodbye and they're like no and they never earn him because he was kind of hard to light yeah no it it's definitely an interesting addition i just like you i don't know if it's worth the extra money it doesn't seem like this feels more like a star track where the extra stuff was less important than like game of thrones where there were massive differences to how the game played or walking dead where the whole walker bomb thing so we'll see how it ends up leveling out over time um i don't know i i might eventually get a chance to play one, but I'm not holding my breath. Yeah, I have no idea if anyone's getting a premium in our area for location play or not. I don't know, because we already have three pros out and about. Yeah, that's one thing is the really big games we've been getting them all lately.
    30:47
    I mean, we've got a dialed in on location. We've got, I mean, we don't really, we're really kind of blessed in the ability to play new games because they hit location here often. Which I think is a good segue into our final pinball topic, but I also think it's going to be the one that we're going to put some significant length on because of how it's meaty, it's deep. We're going to be deep. We're going to be serious here.
    31:14
    So I've broadly just titled the segment, Is Pinball Too Expensive? Yes. All right. Now we're moving on to video games. Yeah. Never mind. In fact, brevity is the soul of wit, as Tony has just proven. I want to give some context to the discussion because obviously there are a lot of facets to this and different people may mean different things regarding it. So here's why I wanted to bring it up in this way. And we've touched on this from time to time ever since we started this podcast. But it sort of seems to be coming to a head lately. It probably does from time to time. It's probably fairly cyclic. But here are some sort of general and specific reasons why I thought now was a good time for us to kind of put some in-depth talk on it. there has been a lot of discussion on pin side which is we've noted is a major pinball forum regarding the cost of new in box pinball machines there are also ongoing threads talking about the new the newest stern system which is the spike system that's been in all the games since WWE and the issue regarding the costs for node board replacement because these are designed now for people to pull out boards and replace them with new boards rather than just going in with soldering iron and other discussions on that forum that have been related to the rising cost of used pinball machines. Now, another point, there are forum threads and podcast discussions regarding the cost of importing pins into the U.S. So back at the beginning, I mentioned that new Australian podcast, Head to Head Pinball. They've touched on this in a couple of episodes just in regards to how much they have to pay to get a Stern Pro to their shores. and obviously there's a conversion going on there but it's not i mean they're already in five figures in australian dollars to bring in a machine so it's it's worth noting another point uh there's been the long-going comparisons all over the place social media forums podcasts between machines especially and i mean mostly stern's pro models versus the premium le models just like you mentioned regarding Star Wars and what's a Hyperloop worth. This also is about the concerns in the reduced bill of materials and games. That's the big attack on Star Wars is where are the toys? Where's the content? It looks empty. Some people think it looks more empty than Iron Man. Coupled with Stern having their recent price hikes on pro models. In 2015, you could get a pro to your door for about $4,800. Now, it's more like $5,200 to $5,300.
    33:56
    So, that's only been a couple of years. And then, a couple other items of note. We talked last episode about total nuclear annihilation and its announcement. Nate, again, notice how I've tied everything in, referencing his podcast back in the intro on Coast to Coast Pinball, on his most recent episode, which is 235, it was very brief, but he defended the $6,000 price tag for total nuclear annihilation, saying it's a premium machine, so it commands a premium price.
    34:29
    Coupled with, but there's a lot of discussion online, obviously, about whether or not that's indeed a fair assessment. And then finally, we've also got price increases from things like Highway's Alien Pinball, which Tony and I had corresponded with, but we haven't talked about the price increase on air before for any who want to get it now. so I'm not quite sure I think the price went up somewhere between $1,000 and $1,500 I get confused because they have different models available but I remembered it being available for I thought $6,500 and now it's about $8,000 at least through whatever the model Cointaker has on their website so there's just some context about why I think we need to talk about it it's coming up in a variety of venues on a variety of elements of the game so in terms of talking about this in depth, I think there's kind of three pieces we can start with or go through. And I think we should start with the easiest one. Location play. Do you think location play is too expensive for pinball? I don't think location play is too expensive for pinball. Yes, it's not like it used to be where it was a quarter, but that makes sense with the cost of everything else. I think if we start seeing prices exceeding a dollar, location play is going to go out real quick because as is, I can already tell when I'm going and doing a tournament when I hit all my tournament games end up being on dollar machines compared to the other machines I can tell because those are normally the nights where I have to grab more quarters because I don't ever bring enough because normally I'm knocked out real quick. But I think location play, I think in the modern day, the dollar price point is something that is, for today, the dollar price point is like it used to be the 50 cent or quarter price point. It was what just everybody saw as normal and okay. And I mean, the concept of $1.50 to play a game, I can't even fathom it. We might see it happen in the future. who knows what's going to happen. But to me, the thought of paying more than a dollar to play a game, because already paying a dollar to play a game, I'm sitting here, it's like, well, like earlier I said, I treated myself. I bought Cold Waters. That cost me $40. So that is 40 games of Star Wars.
    36:52
    Right. When you start comparing it to stuff like that, I mean, that's 40 cheeseburgers from McDonald's, though the pinball's better than the cheeseburgers from McDonald's.
    37:06
    Well, it's more fulfilling, yet also less fulfilling. Well, less filling, anyway. More fulfilling, but less filling. I don't have a problem with the location play pricing, as is. But if the cost of pros keeps going up, we're going to end up at a point where their location play is going to have to go up just because they can't afford it. If you put a game out en route and it's doing good, but it still takes you three years to make back what you made on the machine, then that's three years of uselessness, basically. I mean, you're just making back the machine.
    37:52
    So it's a big question. I think the way the industry has been going is aiming more for the home collector markets. That's by having the, oh, here's a pro and here's an LE. Here's a standard model and here's the special edition model and the cranked prices and stuff. And typically they have more things to break and more things that are visually pleasing but not required. And that's why they crank the prices on those ones. and there's people out there who pay them.
    38:27
    There's nothing wrong with that. That's perfectly good. I think the real question, and I think the question that we can't really answer because we don't know, is what are the profit margins on a pinball machine? And that's the question. I mean, at what point, I mean, they have to make enough money on the machine to pay for the cost of the parts, the cost of the assembly, the cost of everybody who works at the company who you know from the person in hr to the janitor to the person who takes care of the dry cleaning or whatever i mean all those people have to get paid and once and they have to pay for the research and design time for new games and once all that's factored out anything that's left is profit so what is how profitable is a game once you factor all this out and we don't know.
    39:24
    There's not really a good way to know. And even if we did know, all we have to do is look at, you know, Hollywood accounting and you can see that they can make game, make things, show whatever they want. I mean, movies that make a billion dollars are still considered to have not made any money, even though they made a billion dollars just by playing accounting games. So the same thing could happen here. It's just something we're never going to get a straight answer to But it's something that I think is what is directly Necessary to have a really good discussion Is it actually too expensive? I mean, if it costs $500 to make a game And they're charging $10,000 Yes If it costs $8,000 to make the game And they're charging $10,000 Then no And that's just something I don't see a way to really know. Right. I mean, unless they ever wanted to open their books or it was public enough that they would. I mean, unlike the Hollywood thing is an interesting example where I don't know what accounting rules they play by in Hollywood. But, you know, assuming an organization was subject to generally accepted accounting practices for audit purposes, you could probably have a reasonable understanding of exactly what the financials are. But, you know, project by project, it would hopefully be carved up into some sort of sane way. But again, there are industries, as you have noted, where it's not necessarily done that way, or at least they have some reason for gaming it in a particular way, though Hollywood is its own unique beast for a lot of reasons. I think well let me go ahead and handle it in two things first the location pinball I agree with you I think location prices are fine but I think the dollar is pretty much a hard cap I have a lot of trouble believing that a lot of locations would be viable if they had to go beyond a dollar because of the mental barrier that people have I think that people thought that about the 50 cent cap it's like who would pay more than 50 cents Well, 40 years on, everybody pays more than 50 cents. 50 cents are seen as cheap games. So I don't want to put it as so hard as a hard cap because we don't know what things will be like in 30 years. In 30 years, $2 a game might be seen as the new normal. It could be, but, I mean, you also noted the issue with your cheeseburger-slash-video-game comparison that pinball isn't in a vacuum. This isn't a case of arcade versus arcade. pinball is now competing against home entertainment so if it's in 30 years if it's now three dollars instead of one dollar well but how much would cold water 22 cost did it still cost 40 bucks if it was still 40 bucks then i don't see how pinball can get away with it well yeah and that's the thing is if it was still 40 bucks yeah you're right but if it had gone up as well if it was like 75 now and that's all something there's just no good way to see that i mean if you get 10 economists in the room i guarantee you're going to get at least six different answers to what things are going to look like uh that way in the future it's not for me the the issue is not one of inflation that's not people will things will inflate and in theory they should be accepting of the inflation rate the problem that pinball has on most locations is that it's still using CoinMex and dollar bill authenticators. It's not... People will know. They'll feel it if they have to pull out two dollar bills and stick it into a machine. We're not going to start printing two dollar bills. Beyond what are already done.
    43:07
    It's not like how Dave and Buster's gets around this with their claw machines and stuff. By making you do everything on a card and using credit points. They're doing that to mask. It's all an illusion so you don't feel that you're spending as much money as you're actually spending on each game. But most individual locations don't have that capability. There are some that will do things like pay range and stuff, which make it easier to pay. And maybe if enough things adopted that, I could see people going, oh, okay, well, I'm just clicking on my phone. What's $1.25? What's $1.50? It's not the amount. It's just that mental barrier of how much am I actually sticking in this for a 90-second experience. Right, and that's kind of like the games you get on your phone where they'll pop up the thing where it's like, oh, no, you're out of energy. For a dollar, you can get more energy, and you're like, oh, sure, I'll spend a dollar. But the thing is you've now done that 15 times today, but you don't think about it. But speaking of phones, with the increase of things like Apple Pay and Google Wallet and NFC contact pay and stuff like that, At what point do we see a shift from, and completely skipping the whole card reader, oh, swipe your credit card in your pinball machine thing, to a point where you can literally just tap your phone against the game and hit authorize and play. But, I mean, I think that's something that's coming that we'll start seeing, not just in stuff like this. We're going to start seeing that in everywhere in the next 50 years. I wouldn't be surprised.
    44:46
    Yeah, no, I think that makes sense. So overall, though, since we're both in agreement that location plays, pricing right now isn't really an issue. Let's go ahead and set that one aside because we're in agreement that that's not a problem. So that really just leaves the collection side. and you elaborated a lot about the on the costs obviously for manufacturing versus the cost of sales and how we don't know how much they're making off of these things which is a completely fair point but let's go off of what we do know we know that pinball has increased in popularity especially since oh let's say 2012 maybe 2010 but as of 2012 was when it seemed like stern was starting to really push out a lot of machines. They also had a lot of really successful machines. We also know that there have been a number of companies that have started up since 2012.
    45:41
    Every single one of those companies has targeted one market demographic, the home collector. I can't think of anyone else that the closest you could say that did more than the home collector was Jersey Jack. And I note that because they have the redemption option that they put into their games and such but jersey jack's whole premise when he was when he's forming as i understood it was we want to make these full featured machines that people will love to have that have all the bells and whistles which seemed very collector oriented very home market oriented to me because not wanting to go back to how much it costs to play on location but to note the location side of things. The part that concerns me is, for the operator, that it's already at a point where they don't make enough on the machine. Not like how it was in the old days, where you'd buy a machine, you'd profit from the machine, and then you could throw the machine away. Now, they're factoring in the sale of the machine as part of the get their money back part. so you don't buy a $5,200 game and make $5,200 on it you buy a $5,200 game and you make your three grand on it and then you sell it hopefully for $4,800 and then you made money and that's not how the arcade industry worked historically so that's part of my concern with the with the pricing and the pricing that the part that doesn't make any sense to me is we look at all the popularity. A popularity where you have a Jersey Jack pinball, a Dutch pinball, a, like it or not, a Skit Bee and a Zidware, an American pinball, and you've got Spooky pinball. And all of these companies have all of a sudden come out of the woodwork and they all saying we going to sell machines to collectors So the demand you think is there based off of that sheer volume in highway pinball lest I forget because they still around all of them targeting that same sort of market And I think the reason why people question how much does it really cost to make a pinball machine is you see these cases of highway pinball. Oh, well, it was $6,500. Now we need it to be $8,000. or Dutch pinball. What was the pre-order rate for Big Levowski? $8,500 US, I think. And then if you didn't do that, it was $10,000 if you wanted it. And it's like, holy cow, it's really expensive. Pinball is so hard. Except we need to remember general market dynamics at the same time. We know that they're selling more and more pinball machines. We see more and more people list them on Pinsight in their collections. We see the volume of Stern pinball enough that they go into a new, bigger factory so they can run multiple lines at a time and put out all these machines. All this stuff is going on, plus you have all these other companies showing up. There is a thing called economies of scale.
    48:34
    As this volume goes up, the cost to the manufacturer does not go up. It goes down. So why are the prices going up? I put forth that they have gone up because they are profiteering, which is their right to do as a company. In the case of Stern, I think that's what's going on. I think in the case of the other companies, they have struggled, and that's why people are so concerned is they see these companies and they flounder, and it's like, well, they must not be charging enough. They're just not charging enough for the pins. And you know what? They might not have been, but I don't know. I don't know where all those hidden costs are as to why it was so difficult when Wizard of Oz was first announced. I think it was less than $7,000, and that didn't work well. for Jersey Jack. So you sort of have these two stories. You've got that aspect of these companies trying to do all this stuff, and then they struggle and they have to raise prices if they can even survive. And then you have the case of Stern Pinball, where people say, well, look, they keep making these efficiency changes and stuff, and they're cutting pieces out, but the costs keep going up. So what's going on here? We know Stern's being successful right now. They're not living by the skin of their teeth here. It's not 2006.
    49:48
    So I think that's that interesting dynamic. And I'm not saying it's good or bad, but the thing that I think surprises people who are familiar with market industries in general that confuses them is they look at it and they go, huh? And I think they go, huh, because you went from a situation where there was a monopoly with Stern to a situation now where by varying degrees of success, there are a half dozen companies making pinball machines, but the prices have gone up across the board. So why is that? Why do you think that is? I don't know. I honestly do not know. I mean, there are so many things that it could be, things that would make sense, but we don't always see how that lays out. Like you were saying, there's all these new manufacturers out there, but almost all of them have either failed or had to be bailed out. Is this due to teething problems from them being new and where Stern is already set in place and has been in place and all the cost and the figuring things out that comes from starting a company new, Stern has already handled and taken care of decades ago. So they're now able to coast while these other companies have those higher operating costs and those bigger issues due to startup. Or is it because everything anymore is licensed and licensing is more expensive? Or is it an increase in cost due to the changes in tech? in all honesty with how tech is going I don't really think it's that one because at this point you can buy tech a lot of the tech is so cheap and boards are cheap that when you're buying stuff in bulk the prices come down so I don't think it's going to be the tech now it could be research costs if you want to call it research costs as you go to figure out new ways to integrate, you know, like they're starting to integrate LCDs, but even that's been happening for a couple years, and I don't see how high the cost would be for that integration, and once that cost is done, what's the next new thing that's going to be on the thing, because it's still, for the most part, the same old mechs we've been seeing for years. They might be controlled in slightly new ways, but it's still a magnet's a magnet, a sling is a sling, a pop bumper is a pop bumper. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure where it is. And it could just be because I don't have enough of an economics background, let alone a business economics background to sit down and really ferret out what the issues are. And it could be like you said, it could just be, well, it's getting popular again and let's crank our prices and let's build a nest egg, a parachute for once the popularity drops off again so that we have reserves built up and then things will drop back down to subsistence like it was before the popularity came back. Yeah, I mean you raised a number of different variables and obviously that's the challenge here because this is a manufactured product it's really difficult to be able to necessarily point to anything in particular that, I mean, obviously, as I've expressed, I think it is in the case of those that are being successful. It's just looking at the market and realizing the market can bear these costs. So let's charge these rates. In the case of the unsuccessful ones, where they've been unsuccessful, that's, I think, a far more daunting challenge. I have heard that prior to their now new management, highway pinball's problem was the one you pointed out regarding acquisition of parts. And you mentioned acquisition in bulk. I have heard that Highway didn't do that. They were buying parts for building five to ten machines at a time. And so that's like me going to online to Marco Specialties or Pinball Life and ordering my repair parts for a pin where if I order a certain count, I can get a discount, but I'm not. So I'm going to pay, you know, I'm going to pay a premium for just one part because I didn't need a whole lot of them. that is an awful way to run an assembly line. But, and you can end up spending, I mean, some things that I can see just from the parts stores. I'm buying them end of sale. It's not wholesale. It's not a special deal that you'd think a factory would have. But sometimes I can save up to, say, 50% on a part if I was to buy 20 of them. Well, yeah, and that'd be one of those things. You'd think in this situation you'd sit down and you'd go, we are, well, now this could be like spooky. Spooky sets a specific number of pens. And it could just be as simple as they're sitting down going, we're going to build 200 pens. We need these parts. We need exactly, we need X, Y, and Z for each pen. So we need 200 X, Y, and Z. What kind of deal can you cut at me on 200 X, Y, and Z? I'm going to build 200 pens no matter what. And that lets them lock prices in where some of the others, they're like, well, we don't know how many we're going to sell, but we're going to go ahead and say we're going to do 100. So let's lock in 100 X, Y, and Z. And then once we roll these first 100, we'll see what we're doing. Maybe we'll order another 100. Maybe we'll order 25.
    55:33
    It's just an economy of scale. Right, right. So I think that's been an issue. Obviously, if those statements were accurate, that's obviously been an issue for Highway. I don't know if it's been an issue for any of the other companies. You mentioned licensing. That's a good one to go on briefly because I know I've read online some people have speculated that Star Wars is the way that it is because perhaps the bill of materials affecting how much stuff Steve could put into the game was impacted because perhaps Disney wants more for the Star Wars license than how much Stern typically has to pay for a license. I would not be surprised at all by that. It would not surprise me either. However, broadly speaking, I don't think licensing is a primary issue of cost drivers for pinball as a whole. And I'm saying that based off the fact that Dial-In is the same price as Hobbit.
    56:31
    Total Nuclear Annihilation is the same price as Rob Zombie. the american pinballs houdini which yeah it's it's using houdini but they're not paying a license fee he's passed his copyright or whatever or whatever is a seven thousand dollar game so whether or not they're licensed doesn't seem to affect the price i'm not seeing any discount offered by any pinball manufacturer for it being non-licensed so i don't want to flat out characterize it as a red herring to blame licenses and in the case i mean maybe in the case that i I could see in the case of, say, Star Wars, perhaps it would be Stern saying, we're going to make this much money on every pinball machine. This license took an extra $100 away from your bill of materials. I could see that. I could see them doing that. But it doesn't seem to matter. If Stern miraculously made a machine with an original theme, I don't think they were going to give it to us $100 cheaper. No, I don't think so either. I think what all that comes in, and especially because people like it when everything stays the same. So saying, well, this is a pro game. Pro games cost blank. So it could be that pro games cost $5,200. And on that $5,200 on a licensed machine, they make 10% as profit. I'm just making these numbers up. So no horrible emails because I'm literally just making these numbers up as examples. And then if they turned out a game that was at the same price point but it had cheaper licensing, maybe their profit would move up to 12%. Or if it was a completely unlicensed game, maybe they could push their profit up to 15%. And they'd leave the price the same and people are just like, oh, I got a Pro. Okay, you got the $5,200 model. Or, oh, I got an LE. Okay, so you got the $8,000 model. So it's like all sodas are 50 cents. It's like, oh, I got a soda. Okay, that's 50 cents. It's just a label and a cost attached to that label.
    58:37
    And their profit varies, but they don't change the label because if their licensing was more expensive, they lose a couple percent. If it was less expensive, they gain a couple percent. and it probably works better overall to give them an area to aim for and something to work with and to keep people happy because people like it when things are nice, settled, even, non-changing, stuff like that. My thought would be in terms of, so getting back to the baseline question, is it too expensive? I'd say it just depends. And I did mention in kind of my summary of reasons to bring up the discussion that obviously the cost on used prices going up has come up in all of this. I think that's clearly just a byproduct of more people being interested in collecting, the hobby growing, so more people are trying to scoop things up. So that's going to drive prices up on the used side. It's not been going up as bad as it was a couple years ago. So, I mean, whether or not it's too expensive, I'd say that just depends on how much money you have. If you would want to see pinball be cheaper, then I don't think it's so much a quote-unquote vote with the wallet scenario in that case. I think the problem that the pinball industry has is people talk about all these new companies as competitors to Stern, but they're not. They're not really competitors to Stern. They compete with Stern only in regards to the high-end collector market, the home collector market specifically. there's very little competition on that operator side of things the reason that i think it's okay for the pinball it's okay for stern to continue to raise their pro prices and not really face any issues is they're still the cheapest option so i mean of all that all the names i i gave out the only one that had priced below what what pros are at currently is skit b with their predator pinball with an illegal license that wasn't obtained and never got built. That's the only one. I think he was like $4,500. So he might have been still above pro price back then. I don't know. But all the others are more. Everyone else is more. So I think the only way you would be able to see any pressure on the downward point to drive costs down rather than just allow them to continue to go up would be to have a manufacturer, either a new manufacturer or one of these existing manufacturers try and build something that competes with the pro line but do it at a lower price point that would probably force stern to do a response if the volume was there by the competitor to actually be a threat but without that there's no there's no incentive they're still looking for the sweet spot a lot of people kind of i don't want to use the word blamed but blamed jersey jack pinball when it came about saying well the what was the best gift that jersey jack pinball gave to Stern. It was telling them, you're charging too little for pinball machines. Because it was looking at all that, that it's like, you know, Stern has the tier model now with a Pro, Premium, and LE. A lot of people criticize that model. And me too, because I don't like games with different types of gameplay being called the same thing. That's my criticism of it, and not just being different trim and stuff. I like the idea of playing a Game of Thrones means you know how to play Game of Thrones, not, oh wait, this one doesn't have an upper play field. I don't know what I'm doing now, sort of thing. But that's the situation. Until there's someone that thinks, no, there's too much profit built in, we can be a profitable company by coming in and attacking the lower end of the segment. Will there be any incentive for pricing to decrease on the new inbox, in my view? And I don't think we'll ever see that. I don't think anybody who comes in is going to plan for that. And when you get down to it, if they come in, they've got all the startup costs like I was talking about earlier because they've got to assemble a factory, they've got to hire workers, they've got to put together a factory, or they've got a contract. And if they're going to contract, it's going to be even more expensive. So unless somebody walks in with a ready-made factory spot that they can work with and keep the prices low, I just can't see it happening. I think even if somebody could come in and walk in and do it, And they could walk in and say, it's like, you know what? I can build a machine for $2,000 and sell it for $3,000. I bet you they'll still sell it for $5,200. They could. Or they might sell it a little bit less to try and make there be an incentive to say, no, I'll do it at $48,000. So that you have a reason to trust me, the new guy, over going with the company with 30 years experience. Right. Strategy. But, no, I agree with you. I can't really picture a new company coming in and doing it. The most likely, I think, would be actually one of these existing companies expanding, if they're successful, expanding their model to not just be home collectors anymore. For Jersey Jack to say, we're going to introduce a lean line, an operator-friendly line of machines that are not going to be as full-fledged. They'll have to sacrifice something. They sacrifice something, they say, and this will be designed for route operation. Easy to service, less depth in code, whatever. I could see that possibly, but they have to be successful in the market they targeted first because that's basically a line expansion at that point. Yeah, that'd be interesting to see how things shake out over the next couple of years, but I don't think we're going to see prices going down anytime soon. No, I don't think it's going to happen. That's the only what if I could come up with that would drive it down, other than what you had already mentioned, which would be the bottom kind of falls out. The number of sales just dry up. People quit coming into the hobby. The hobby contracts some, perhaps. And then, you know, this was setting up the rainy day funds. And then the prices go down to survival mode, I think is how you described it. Yeah. Well, I think we've survived in pinball long enough. So let's move our targets towards video games. And let's start with a not so happy one, unfortunately, for a game that I was and still am looking forward to, which is Middle Earth Shadow of War. They have decided that they need loot boxes. They've got to have loot boxes. Everyone's doing loot boxes. So it's a single-player game with loot boxes. Some of the loot boxes include things like XP boosts and orcs for your orc army and such. And I've heard that the stuff, I'm assuming the orcs and weapons or whatnot, can be obtained in-game, because I've given some language on that, but I just thought, Tony, what are your thoughts on loot boxes that aren't just costumes and such, but actually things like XP boosts that you can spend real-world money and buy for your single-player experience. I already don't like loot boxes, period.
    65:34
    But I say that, but I've bought loot boxes, and I always go after free loot boxes whenever I get a chance. I'll play modes I don't normally play just to get a chance to get a loot box. but I do have an issue with loot boxes that have game changing effects in them other non-cosmetic things I've got issues with that and I especially have issues with it in a single player game I mean it's like why? what could you possibly find in a loot box that you would need for a single player game? I mean what could there possibly be? and I'm also not a fan of loot boxes because I don't think you should buy a box to hopefully maybe get something you're looking for you should just go buy what you want that's why I've lost all my interest in games like Magic the Gathering that's why my kids love those blind bag toys that all the toy companies are putting out now two or three bucks, you open the bag There's some little cutesy thing in it that comes in like five different versions with eight different colors, and there's ultra-rares and rares, and you just have to keep buying them until you get the ones you want. I can't even stand that entire business model, but it works. It works really well, and when it's designed at a low enough price point so that people don't even think that they're actually spending money, because, you know, it's, oh, this is $3. Okay, yeah. I mean, what else am I going to spend this $3 on? It just gets out of hand, and people turn around. They're like, oh, I spent $100 on loot boxes last month. How did that happen?
    67:27
    I don't know. I don't like the system. If you want to make Boost available for your single-player game or a multiplayer game, which is even worse, I should be able to just sit down and go, you know what? I want to buy a week's worth of XP boost. Spend the money. There are some games out there now that I do play that have systems like that where if you pay for your premium, you get XP boost and you get currency boost. So you earn more XP and more currency. And you just go, okay, I'm going to play a lot today. It's Saturday, the wife and kids are doing stuff, I'm home alone, I'm going to play this all day long. So I'm going to go ahead and spend a day's worth of boosts so I can maximize what I'm doing in the short time I'm actually playing today. And stuff like that bothers me less than loot boxes. But anything that gives a player who spent money an advantage over a player who didn't, I dislike. and I just cannot fathom a single-player game where you're buying this stuff for a single-player game. It makes no sense to me.
    68:46
    Yeah, my views are pretty similar. I don't have a problem. I don't either like or dislike the idea of cosmetic loot crate systems. If you've got a way in-game to earn them, great. If you have to buy them, I'm less of a fan. But if they're just cosmetic, if they're just costumes for multiplayer games, Overwatch is a good case in point where they have their loot crate system.
    69:11
    You earn loot crates as you play. You can buy them if you want to buy them. And while they didn't do it originally, they are at the point now where you can even use the in-game currency and buy the items outright if you want instead to get specifically what you want. But on cosmetic stuff, don't care.
    69:27
    Single-player stuff, I'm with you. I don't understand why you can't just buy the specific boost that you want. My question in a case with a single player like this is, isn't this, I mean, this seems like it's going to break the balance. I think it'd make the game less fun. You're going to go in and you're going to buy XP boosts instead of playing the game? I don't know. I guess maybe some people will want to rush to the end and they can't rush to the end by just playing the main missions. To the end, why don't you just put it on, I just want to see the story mode. or whatever cutesy name they put for the easiest level and play through it in easy mode. I think you can. I don't think this is the developer's idea. I think this is the publisher's idea. I think, and I'm feeling this from a couple other podcasts I've heard, but I agree with the logic that they were told from on high, you need to modernize this more, put in crates. And so they have into their single-player game as best they could. because it makes no sense. The first game didn't need them. It doesn't make any sense in this case. It's just weird. It's just a weird thing. I mean, because the first game had DLC that was purely cosmetic, and people bought it. People will buy cosmetics. If they think something looks cool enough, they will buy the cosmetic stuff, and they won't have a complaint about it, and I don't have a problem with that. I just, yeah. loot crates. This seems like the worst way to attempt to monetize this. Yeah, it does. It seems like, okay, well, somebody wants XP boosts. Okay, we'll sell them an XP boost. But to say, well, you can buy this crate. There's a 4% chance you'll get an XP boost. And there a 5 chance you get the currency boost There a 1 chance you get the super XP boost Buy 15 boxes at once and hopefully you get what you want I just can't, I can't even, that stuff just, it makes me mad. Yeah, from what I'm hearing, I don't think it's gone full on what I totally despise, which is pay to win, but it just, yeah, the whole randomized thing, It makes it an extra, it reeks of an extra bad cash grab because of that random element you've just highlighted with your catch-a-ride Borderlands voice.
    71:50
    And so, yeah, it's just, it's unfortunate. It's definitely taken some luster off. I still want the game, but I got to say, there's a black eye for me to it. Yeah, it does. Now, what is interesting is loot boxes are something that I need to – I'm looking it up right now. I'm trying to remember it because, yeah, it hit – coming out, the odds for loot boxes in China by law are supposed to be or they're being added. They have to give the drop rates in the loot boxes. It has to be listed somewhere where you can look them up as something that China added this year. I remember, yeah, in December of last year, as of May 1st of this year, if you sell a loot box, chest, crate, container, or other assorted randomized item dispenser in China, the odds of what it can spit out must be public.
    72:43
    So they have to list somewhere what the odds are. Now, I'm sure most places are just doing this thing where they were putting out where they'll put the odds on a web page that you can't find a direct link to off of. you have to find it somewhere else or somebody gives you a direct link to it. But I mean, that's definitely going to hurt people when they're like, well, I really, really want this. I want this, this one specific skin. And when they say, Oh, you have a 1% chance to get it.
    73:15
    Uh, how are people going to respond to that? And I think it's something that wouldn't hurt if you're going to go this way, at least let people know what the odds are. I just think it's as a system loot boxes as an overall system not just Shadow of Mordor just loot boxes period need to go away but they monetize well and with a lot of games they have to be monetized to maintain because people aren't going to pay the money for a monthly subscription this isn't like the old wow days where everybody wanted to play a game you know well I'll spend $15 a month to play this game, so they've got to make money somehow, or else there is no reason to keep maintaining the game. Why should you keep working on the game when the only money you're getting off the game is new sales? It's a tough system. It's a tough decision to see where you draw the line. I just think trying to monetize a single-player game this way is really dumb, and I think that loot boxes in general are, they're the best for the company to monetize because people will buy more loot boxes because if I could go spend $5 to get this awesome Junkrat skin or I spend $50 to get enough loot boxes to get it, of course that's going to work better for them.
    74:46
    I just don't like the system. I understand the need for the system but I don't like the system. Yeah, it's big bucks It monetizes Blizzard hasn't said much other than that Overwatch is over a billion dollar franchise But I'd really like to know How much of the money they brought in on Overwatch Was game sales and how much of it was loot crate Yeah I don't want to be one of those people I don't want to try and tell people How to spend their money Spend your money on whatever you want to spend your money on I don't care I just think this type of system is the least fair and least user-friendly way to do it. Yeah, and different places have set them up in different ways. I mean, Overwatch probably isn't the most lucrative model versus, say, what I've heard about League of Legends and their microtransactions, which I believe last year was noted at bringing them in over a billion dollars alone.
    75:44
    But speaking of Overwatch, let's go ahead and hop on over to that. they're running their Summer Games event again. I didn't have the game when they had that event last year. So this is new to me. So Lucio Ball is new to me. And apparently it's a lot like Rocket League, which I've seen but hadn't played. I did do a bunch of Lucio Ball last week. They've added its own ranked mode right now. So they're actually doing the whole badges and you can get credits towards your Golden Gun unlocks and all that. It's on its own ranking system. So have you ever played Lucio Ball? I played Lucio Ball last year when it was out, and it was fun. I enjoyed it. I read the thing where they showed the changes they make, and all the changes they made to Lucio Ball are changes that I feel are very good for increasing the playability and getting rid of the yelling at the monitor, walking away from the game issues that were had just from reading it. but I have not played it yet this year.
    76:51
    Okay. And they didn't have ranked last year. Yeah, they know that was new. Yeah, it's interesting. Anyway, for folks that do play our own Overwatch and haven't played it in a while, they did add in a new, yes, dreaded loot for the loot crates, new costumes and stuff, in addition to the old ones, which are all in reduced price for the in-game currency. So if you had unlocks you didn't get last time, they're available again. Soldier 76 has the best one Yeah, everyone pretty much agrees With his grill master outfit Yeah, that's awesome I want that one I would buy it straight up But I've burned all my currency And I haven't replenished enough to buy stuff And I'm not going to buy loot boxes Surprise I never have It does get me to play the game more I can't say I never have because I did last year at Halloween because I wanted Junk Rats. I bought five, and I got Junk Rats thing in them. And I bought them on the last day before it went away, and I got Junk Rats thing because that was before they let you start just buying them outright with built-up in-game currency. I burned through my reserve of currency back on the anniversary when I was buying all the stuff from the anniversary, and I have not built it back up very high. Yeah, I don't know what I'm at right now. But anyway, folks, it's out and available. Speaking of out and available, speak the words of a game you've already spoken the words of but now actually can speak with the knowledge of one who has actually clicked upon it. As I said earlier, I treated myself and I bought Cold Waters. And the game is fun. I am now halfway-ish. I don't know for sure. I'm at some portion of the way through my second playthrough of the campaign this is a game where the tutorial is the tutorial missions are very simple but they're also incredibly important because it really doesn't play like, I mean it doesn't play like an FPS it's not like you can sit down with Battlefield and just start playing because you've played Call of Duty or Quake in the past and you know, yeah there'll be some special controls but the vast majority of the important stuff is going to be the same. And it doesn't work that way in this. I mean, the controls are similar. They're in places like you would expect, but there's a lot of very important controls that you need to know that you have to either, you know, read a guide or play a tutorial to do. But the tutorial missions were easy and fast and decently well done. I played a couple standalone missions just to get a feel for it before I jumped into the campaign. And then I jumped into the campaign and my first campaign I played was a 1984 campaign and I've been playing I were that campaign I was playing on casual and casual is just that um it's very forgiving uh throughout the playthrough I had to dodge it's not like I was never under threat but it was not the edge of your seat kind of, oh man, how did I survive that feeling that I saw watching people stream? Obviously they're playing on higher levels or my second playthrough, I've bumped up to realistic mode, which is a step up from casual and a step below elite, which has been having some serious pucker factor at times as I'm playing through. Um, what's interesting about the game is the the campaign is that there are when the can't when you go down you might die if you're in iron man mode i'm not in iron man mode so you'll get rescued you can go out on another sub but mission wins and mission losses kind of affect what things are but this is where we start running into the issues with the game the number of missions are pretty low because your mission types, every time you're given a mission, your mission is going to be either there are SSGNs transiting to the GIUK gap or wherever to get its convoys, stop them. There are submarines dropping off commandos, stop them. There are submarine tenders deploying at sea to reload and replenish submarines so they don't have to go all the way back to port, find them and sink them. we want you to deliver commandos go drop these commandos off somewhere or oh there's an invasion fleet go hit this invasion fleet so there's stuff like that throughout but you might get the same one three or four times in a campaign and while the gameplay itself is enjoyable I wish the campaign had a bit more variety to it and I kind of wish there was a Russian campaign So I can play on the Russian side I know some of that stuff is coming Some of that stuff has been modded in There's been a lot of mods Out there already for this game The mods are They're not on Steam You've got to get them from It's Subsem.com I think it is But there's Codes that add in more submarines Because the submarine count is kind of Limited there's a mod that'll do a Russian campaign there's mods that will add things to make the difficulty even higher but all in all, even with all that and with the kind of repetitive nature of it a lot of games are repetitive and I don't mind it it's a lot of fun because as is, even though it's like, oh okay I've got to go sink some submarines again, that's my mission I'm playing a submarine game I'm not going to be getting hostages out of a bank. I'm going to be sinking ships. So that's what the missions are going to all be based around.
    83:02
    I've been enjoying it. With the difficulty upped, it has definitely been harder to the point where I'm not quite sure if I'm going to up the difficulty to Elite or if I'm going to give it a couple goes at the current to get a better feel for it.
    83:25
    Because I've had a couple times where I've spent probably 15, 20 real-life minutes with the game in real time, not in time compression mode, dodging torpedoes because I messed up or I did something that I shouldn't have and everybody in the world saw me and decided it was their job to kill me. And in some times they succeed. But it's been enjoyable all in all.
    83:56
    For people who are into the submarine type thing, the military simulation type thing, I would recommend keeping an eye on it. If you really, really liked the old Red Storm Rising game, I could see going ahead and picking it up but waiting for a sale or waiting until they get a few more patches out I don't think is going to kill you but the game is really enjoyable. What's different with the difficulty up? I'm assuming it's not a health thing it must be how they behave in some way. Yeah, it's an AI behavioral thing. With it on casual the enemies are basically death and dumb I had several times where the match started and I would do a couple maneuvers to get my target motion analysis working in so you go one way for a short time then you do a 90 degree turn so you get some target motion analysis to really lock in where the subs are and then I launch torpedoes and then that's it because they don't ever dodge enough and they don't get away from the torpedoes and they only sometimes counter fire, and their escorts don't hunt you that hard. And when they do attack, it's not like they go, hey, there's a sub there. Let's drop three. Let's fire a bunch of stuff at them. They're like, well, we'll fire one, and we'll see how that works.
    85:26
    When you move the difficulty up, your sonar doesn't work as good. With it set to realistic, your sonar is not the, this might as well be clear water, and I can see everything.
    85:40
    They can hide from you. You lose contacts a lot more often where they fade out. It's much less forgiving of that type of thing.
    85:50
    The enemy AI is much more aggressive and they're much smarter when it comes to dodging. I had one where I had messed up an attack. there was a storm and I was attacking a surface fleet and I sunk two of the ships of the surface fleet and I could not find the rest of the surface fleet and I even went so far I went up to periscope depth and I raised my radar and I radiated which lets everybody know exactly where you are and I couldn't see anything because the sea state was so bad and this and that So I just moved away from that area until the game let me leave. And then it showed this giant list of stuff that was there. I mean, there was like 15 ships and like three submarines, and I never found any of it other than the two ships I found. And I sank. I never saw any of the rest. I don't think anybody ever hunted me. And I left that, and after that mission, I almost immediately got picked up into a combat situation again, and this time it was with two subs. And I was driving a Los Angeles class sub, and I came up against two alphas, which are just stupid fast for submarines. I mean, stupid fast. And I ended up, I only had six torpedoes left going into the fight. And I ended up shooting all six of my torpedoes to kill one of the two alphas, and I ran from the other. and the only reason I was able to get away is because I was able to break contact where he no longer had contact with me because he was so busy dodging the two torpedoes I put at him because one torpedo wasn't enough they were easily dodging singleton so I waited until they got close and I put two torpedoes on each of them and I varied one of my torpedoes was an active homer and the other was passive homing so my hope was that they would concentrate on dodging the active homing and the passive homing would get them, which is what happened with the one I sank. But the other one, he was able to get away from everything, but I ran out of torpedoes, so I was able to break contact and run away because I had a couple missiles and a couple decoys. But at the same time, at one point, there were three of us within 5,000 yards of each other, all going flat out as fast as we could, twisting, because there was like eight torpedoes in the water. And I'm pretty certain at one point one of my torpedoes chased me because when it lost contact with the Alpha, it picked me up. And I know for a fact one of them was dodging his own torpedoes because my torpedo had blown up and he was still dodging like two torpedoes. And I know I had only launched two torpedoes at that point, and one of them I knew was gone. The other one was on a different target. So I know he was dodging his own torpedoes. It was a mess. It was insane. That took 20 some odd minutes. That happened just before we started recording. That's why when you sent me the message initially, it took me over a half hour. I was in the middle of this big old underwater furball when my thing chimed. I'm just like, I can't, not right now. So yeah, the difficulty definitely goes up and I'm sure it's just going to step up as much when I take it up to elite. So we'll see what happens. But it's been fun. I've been enjoying it. You will take it to Elite. You will. Yeah, probably. I'm a sucker for punishment. Yep. If I didn't like getting beat up, I wouldn't still be playing pinball and board games and everything else. You know, I might just not be good at games.
    89:36
    No, no, you're just playing hard stuff. That's the secret. Well, let's talk about something that's not necessarily hard because it makes little sense in a lot of ways, And that is something that we both played at a party yesterday called the Jackbox Party Pack 2. Yay! We've played Jackbox Party Pack games before, and I've played them online with Twitch streamers when they'll do the... I know the big one, a lot of Twitch streamers like to do Quiplash online, and I've played that as well with streamers, which is one of the things I really like about the Jackbox games. Yeah, it's interesting because they have such a variety, but they are all oriented around one thing, being good party games or trying to be good party games. We did play the entire set. We did, other than the last game, we did two of everything. So we played Fibbage 2. We played Earwax. We played Bidiot. We played Quiplash XL. And the last one was Bomb Corp, which we did. We had to do the story mode, so we didn't really play two of it. We restarted it when we died a couple times. But I guess rather than going through all of those, other than to say Fibbage is a game where you lie, Earwax is a game where you put together audio sounds, Bidiot's is drawing art, Quiplash is Quiplash, and Bobcorp is defuse bombs and don't play it when it's after 10 p.m. because everyone's way too tired to figure it out.
    91:06
    What was your favorite of those for the evening? Not necessarily your favorite game, I suppose. I will go with I'm going to take Quiplash out of the running because I just think Quiplash is a massively fun game but it's not like this is anything really new I think every version of this game has Quiplash of the other ones that I played for the first time I would say Earwax was the most fun I was surprised I would agree I actually thought I wasn't going to like Earwax when we were first going into it because the description of it With the audio cues, I thought, how is this going to work? I thought it was going to be too loud to hear it properly.
    91:46
    I thought the sounds were going to come through our phones. I was very confused. Actually, that was really fun because you'd get a description of a setting, and then you'd have a list of sounds, and you'd pick two of them, and they would play in the order. So in a way, it was like ears against humanity.
    92:02
    But I agree with you. I thought that one was the best overall. my worst one which was already pretty much revealed was Bomb Corp it was just too hard to think maybe if we had done it first it would have been better maybe yeah maybe we were all real tired at that point I think for a party game it just requires a little too much thought that's more like full on tabletop style serious gaming I was a bit surprised at it based off of what everything else in Jackbox is, which is trying to be clever. You know, almost everything else is to be clever. And this was not. This was lives were at stake. There were lives, and the lives were lost. It was sad. Many lives were lost. Yes. Like all Jackbox stuff, it had funny comments, and it had funny stuff going on, but it just wasn't as fun as the others were. It felt a lot more serious. I liked it overall, so that was nice. So I just thought we'd give it a mention And I think that's the last thing for us to mention On this episode I think we made it I think so Soon like I was saying I'll be able to talk more about Sniper Elite 4 I've been playing it some But it's nothing huge Other than the whole Hey I just shot some Nazi in the testicles And he gave me a slow motion Cam of them exploding But it's been fun so far And I'm also, like I said, I'm going to take that Work on No Man's Sky And see how That is Playing, that's my plans for Hopefully I'll have one of those at a point Where I can talk about them next Episode I have no idea what I'll have I have not played Dishonored for two weeks And I'm probably going to still work at Overwatch While the summer games are going So I don't expect a lot out of me maybe sharpies will be done by next next episode maybe not hard to know when the transistor will come anyway well if you didn't have it being delivered by rat boat hey so it's a science it's the science of purchasing it's what i do to keep pinball prices down i'm doing my part are the manufacturers doing theirs i don't think so anyway if you'd like to reach out to us to talk to us about sniper elites or maybe some strange skies where no man is allowed to be or the price pinball machines, you can email us eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com We're also on a variety of social media, such as facebook.com slash eclectic gamers podcast. We're on Twitter and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. Also on Twitch, though we haven't done much there lately. Nope. But it's there, and it's the same as all the others. So you can always go over there and just wait for us to come online, but you'll be waiting a long time. until next time I'll say that I'm Dennis and I'm Tony so long everyone