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Episode 154 - EGP+

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 27m·analyzed·Nov 15, 2021
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

EGP hosts critique Expo logistics while praising Multimorphic's Heist as best P3 game and platform ambassador.

Summary

Hosts Dennis and Tony from Eclectic Gamers Podcast discuss their post-Expo experience, critiquing the Chicago Pinball Expo's poor organization (low-quality free play area, machines breaking down, $60 seminar fees for content livestreamed free), while praising vendor area and arcade setup. They also discuss their first Multimorphic P3 experience with Heist, calling it the best P3 game and strong platform ambassador, and critique tournament management practices at pinball events.

Key Claims

  • Chicago Pinball Expo livestreamed seminars for free while charging $60 to attend in person

    high confidence · Dennis states: 'they live streamed them for free' and 'everything was' livestreamed except the Stern tour

  • Half the free play pinball machines at Expo were being packed up and removed at 5 PM on Saturday

    high confidence · Dennis: 'half of the machines were being packed up' and machines 'were just getting hauled away' at 5 PM when area was supposed to be open until 2 AM

  • Heist is the best P3 game Multimorphic has released to date

    high confidence · Dennis: 'Heist, that is by far the best P3 game I have ever played' and later 'there's been nothing before heist that I would consider a reason to purchase a P3'

  • Multimorphic P3 Heist convinced several people to purchase P3 platforms at Expo

    medium confidence · Dennis: 'I know several who bought, who did buy Order P3 there' after trying Heist

  • Cactus Canyon remake had 1,250 LE units announced at Expo

    medium confidence · Dennis: 'I believe they had at the time indicated there were, I think, 1,250 LEs' and 'based off of my discussion on the Triple Drain podcast'

  • Expo tournament had multiple organizational failures including broken machines, changed start times, and bracket issues

    high confidence · Dennis describes: 'broken classic games like Sea Ray', 'event organizers turning off flashing the lights', 'changing the start times on people', 'weird long bracket'

  • Texas Pinball Festival has better machine selection and curation than Expo

    medium confidence · Dennis: 'we're spoiled from Texas Pinball Festival' and compares to Expo having 'old crap' that wasn't tested; Ron Hallett quote comparing TPF as 'show-off show' vs Expo filling space

  • Ricochet pinball-themed watch by Ryan Claytor will become permanent collection item at Mr. Jones Watches after limited run

    high confidence · Dennis: 'they are at some point going to make it a part of the permanent collection'

Notable Quotes

  • “Heist, that is by far the best P3 game I have ever played...there's been nothing before heist that I would consider a reason to purchase a P3”

    Dennis @ N/A — Core assessment of Multimorphic's P3 platform quality and Heist's value proposition as platform differentiator

  • “Heist is very much the type of game P3 needs. Heist is an actual reason to buy P3”

    Tony @ N/A — Confirms P3 platform lacked compelling software titles before Heist; signals market need for quality exclusive content

  • “It basically came out in the pandemic. Because I think that's a game that could move some of their units. I'm not willing to pay $10,000 for Heist, but in this current market, I think there are people that would.”

    Dennis @ N/A — Acknowledges Heist's strong appeal despite P3's $10k+ price point; suggests pricing barrier not insurmountable for quality software

  • “if your tournament ran four hours long before you finished women's finals, you better make some changes next year and don't just think it was a fluke because it was your poor planning”

    Dennis @ N/A — Critique of tournament management practices; calls for data-driven planning improvements

  • “If you want the tournament to be taken seriously, you need to run it with a degree of professionalism. It's not the tournament's obligation to accommodate people's alcoholism.”

    Tony @ N/A — Strong statement on tournament professionalism standards; critiques Expo's decision to delay start times due to player behavior

  • “Whoever did that, that was a good set up...the arcade games were impressive...they worked”

    Dennis @ N/A — Acknowledges arcade section as bright spot in otherwise disappointing Expo free play area

  • “The vendor area I thought was pretty impressive. It was the free play area that was abysmal”

    Dennis @ N/A — Clear delineation of Expo's strengths and critical weaknesses

Entities

DennispersonTonypersonRyan ClaytorpersonMichael W.personKen WalkerpersonRon HallettpersonTravis MurraypersonJoe EngelberthpersonTom GraffpersonColin McAlpineperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Tournament management practices across pinball industry lack professionalism, including rule changes mid-tournament, altered start times, poor scheduling

    high · Reports of Expo tournament having 'broken games', 'changed start times' due to partying, 'weird long bracket', running 4+ hours over; parallels to fighting game tournament management failures

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Attendees expressed preference for informal social gathering over formal Expo/tournament structure; tournament participation seen as constraining rather than enhancing experience

    medium · Dennis reports dinner conversation consensus: 'probably would have been happier overall just getting a group of friends together' than attending formal tournament/Expo structure

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Heist's use of character pop-ups on screen as gameplay distraction method rather than full animation demonstrates effective P3 design approach

    medium · Dennis: 'the way they used the screen with the pop-ups of the characters was a good way to kind of distract from them not like fully animating a bunch of stuff'

  • ?

    event_signal: Expo charged $60 for seminars that were simultaneously livestreamed for free, creating value disconnect and poor event ROI justification

    high · Dennis: 'they live streamed them for free...everything was' livestreamed except Stern virtual tour; calls decision 'asinine'

  • ?

    event_signal: Chicago Pinball Expo failed to properly curate and maintain free play pinball machine area; machines being packed up during operational hours, many non-functional, poor preparation compared to Texas Pinball Festival

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.264

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, November 14th. This is episode 154. Our return to standard. we're in a normal place not a random hotel with the air conditioner screaming along in the background while we record we even used lapel mics so that could have still been an okay recording i just i don't use that recorder much and i was like if anything i worried the gain would be too low and it wasn't we weren't we didn't blow it out we weren't over yeah i should have just i should have seen either to figure out how to turn off that ac which i don't know i ran the whole time Yeah. And I don't know how much it would have mattered considering when you opened our window to look outside, all we saw were like the four large air conditioning units three feet from our window for the entire hotel. Yeah, it wasn't. That was an interesting. Let's just say that it wasn't the Drury and Frisco. Correct. That was that was that was no Drury.
1:13
It was abomination. I'm telling you, I'm not. I'm not, Tony. No, we're not back to normal. I need another vacation. I wouldn't mind going on another one because it has not been fun since getting back. Oh, God, it hasn't. It's so horrible. It's so terrible. I only need Tony. Yes. What have you been doing, Tony, since you got back?
1:38
Well, I've mainly been working around the house. Specifically, I've been organizing. I've been working on my battle station because it's been rough. It got away from me in 2020, and I didn't do anything to it, and it got piled up. And honestly, you know how sometimes you'll just start stacking stuff like on a table, and eventually it just becomes the junk table where everything gets just tossed and then lost? That's basically what my battle station turned into. So I had my keyboard area was free, and I could see my monitors. But I've got two huge bat wings because I have a huge corner desk, and they were so full of crud that there were periods of time where I couldn't even use my TV because there was so much stuff stacked in front of the TV. So I have completely cleared all that off. And I purchased a rolling TV stand and mounted my TV to it. So my TV is not even on my desk anymore. I have it pushed behind the desk and it is between the desk and my campus queen now. but that frees that entire desk up because it ate about three quarters between that during the TV, the TV's legs and the soundbar, it ate up about half to three quarters of the real estate on that side of the desk. And then I just only use, the only other thing I did was, uh, we'll set my work laptop over there on top of whatever it was, whatever it was over setting over there because I was working my, I run my work laptop through the television. And so I have gotten that whole setup off of my desk. So that whole left side of my desk is completely clear. The right side of my desk is almost completely clear.

“The rules made a lot of sense...the way they used the screen with the pop-ups of the characters was a good way to kind of distract from them not like fully animating a bunch of stuff”

Dennis @ N/A — Specific praise for Heist's rules design and screen integration approach on P3 platform

Chicago Pinball Expo
event
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Mr. Jones Watchescompany
Multimorphic P3product
Heistgame
Cactus Canyon Remakegame
Castlevaniagame
Ghost in the Shellgame
Sonic Spinballgame
Greek Godsgame
Ricochet Watchproduct
Galloping Ghost Arcadecompany
ReplayFXevent
Pinbergevent

high · Dennis witnessed half machines packed/removed at 5 PM when area open until 2 AM; multiple machines non-functional Saturday; comparison to TPF's 'show-off show' vs Expo's 'fill space with old crap' approach

  • $

    market_signal: Cactus Canyon Remake announced with 1,250 LE units at Expo

    medium · Dennis: 'I believe they had at the time indicated there were, I think, 1,250 LEs' based on Triple Drain podcast discussion

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic Heist positioned as platform-defining title that converts interest to P3 unit sales

    high · Dennis: 'I know several who bought, who did buy Order P3 there' after Heist demos; 'Heist is an actual reason to buy P3'; described as 'ambassador for that platform'

  • ?

    technology_signal: P3 platform lacked compelling software titles prior to Heist, limiting platform differentiation and appeal

    high · Dennis: 'there's been nothing before heist that I would consider a reason to purchase a P3'; Tony: 'I would think that if I was going to get a P3, I would get it because of Heist'

    • 3:23
    It's getting to the point where I'll actually be able to use my desk space for what I used to use it for, like doing hobby work and working on projects and stuff. So that's really nice. in addition to that I've been organizing stuff around the house and cleaning up stuff and just kind of getting everything pulled together I think that vacation I needed it a lot more than I thought I did because when I came back I actually had like energy and drive and I cared about doing stuff which lately I haven't I just go home and hang out with the family and play games and not do any of the type of stuff that I really need to but after that I've had a lot of energy so I've been keeping busy and getting stuff organized now if only I can get things going as well at work we'll be good well I have not been doing a lot of stuff around the house so much I did a few worked on a couple watch projects that I one I'm doing for someone else and one that I tried to do on my own which didn't work out a lot of those don't work out, which is fine. They were all really cheap things to learn. I'm a learner. I'm learning how to I can now strip a watch apart in about 35 minutes. Putting it back together. That's another story. But you successfully put some back together.
    4:51
    And I put Windows 11 on this recording computer, which as an interesting FYI to only us, I've now closed my voice meter app because that is not the Microsoft the microphone array. Apparently, Windows 11 is now finally arraying knowing that we have two microphones plugged in. Oh, wow. So, we're going to see how that works. I mean, we did a test record with it already, but I looked at the voice meter and I all of a sudden saw that we weren't having anything flashing up on the inputs anymore after I rebooted it. And I was like, oh, wait, but it's still working. So, finally, maybe I can not use yet another layer of app and Microsoft may balance our gain a lot better than me trying to manually do it. So, yeah, we'll see. We'll see how it turns out. Other than Watch Project stuff, in terms of sort of what we talk about here, I did finish the quote unquote main ending of Hades. Like I got the credits to roll. So that's winning it 10 times, escaping 10 times is sort of that threshold. So I'm still playing that towards the epilogue because there is apparently an epilogue because I see there's an achievement for one. I also, I did yesterday in fact, I played my Aliens Fireteam game, which is kind of like a Left 4 Dead with aliens Okay, the first time I played it, I played it by myself with bots Last night, I played it and I had one bot but I had one human player I didn't have my headset or anything I couldn't finish the game I'm assuming I was at the end of the level I don't know for sure that that was true but the other person just quit playing. That game never times them out. They had not been moving. They were back three rooms away from me. I had to keep going back. There was just infinitely spawning aliens. I had done all the objectives in the room you were supposed to be in. It wouldn't let us move on. I'm like, that is a fatal flaw. Someone can just... I don't assume they meant to troll me, but it's like, I can't finish the lab. I've gone through all of this. It's supposed to be a three-person thing. doing all this work, killing all these uber aliens, and then it's just like, just, they were probably sitting there waiting for you to say something to them. They just crossed their arms off. When he talks to me, I'm not moving. I don't know. Look, I saved them. I went back and saved them because an alien had them on the ground. I was just like, I should have. I mean, they weren't playing when we first started the level, and then they did start to play, and then they quit playing after we got like halfway through where we got. And I'm just like, I don't know. But maybe I need to see if there's a way to just say, don't let me play with human beings. But normally humans do better than bots. So I usually want there to be human beings. But now they're going to be like that.
    7:37
    Speaking of like that, we have a bunch of stuff. Actually, not really. I'm going to say it that way so that the audience is excited. The first thing I thought we should do, Obviously, we talked a little bit more about the hotel and recording gate, as we now refer to it. But we did record our episode before Expo was done. We did. We actually recorded it in the morning of Saturday at Expo. Expo ran all day Saturday, and then there was a Sunday for just people in the tournament, which no one cares about, or at least we don't care about because we weren't in the tournament. So there are a few items I wanted to touch on. First one is we did get an email from Michael W., and I want to go ahead and read that aloud here. This is what Michael wrote to us at EclecticGamersPodcast at gmail.com. Hi, guys. Not sure if you remember me saying this, but two years ago I warned you, don't go to Expo. It's not worth it. Well, now I think you see why. Correct. I'm still making the plug that you should really check out MCG. Much better show than Expo. I think you guys were spot on with your assessment. Cheers. Mike. Well, thank you, Michael, for saying I told you so to Tony and me. I did remember someone had warned us about Expo. I don't remember who. Yeah. I think it was more than one person. Okay.
    8:56
    So, yes, we ignored your warnings. It's not driven by a desire to prove you wrong. Instead, it was driven by a desire to take a vacation. And we had already decided that if some reason, like if there was like an Epsilon variant of COVID and an expo got canceled, we were still going to go to Chicago and just go and eat stuff. Yeah. That was going to be the strategy. We'll find a museum or something. We would do something. We'd find something. So that was the main thing. Plus, part of my reasoning behind expo was so many industry people were there. I mean, we did meet a lot of people that listened to the show or are involved in the hobby in some way. So in terms of being a good get-together with other pinball people, I mean, I think you and Tony and I only went out to eat dinner, just the two of us, one night out of four.
    9:51
    And we were invited to others. It's just, you know, we were hungry at the time most people eat dinner, like 7 o'clock.
    9:59
    And all the invitations to dinner started rolling in around 9. Yeah, it was. And I get it. The tournament and stuff was delaying people. So anyway, in those regards, it was really good. I also think that the vendor area, I thought the vendor area was pretty impressive. It was the free play area that was abysmal and the, quite frankly, asinine decision to charge $60 to go to the seminars. And the reason why I'm willing to say it's asinine is they live streamed them for free. Yeah. I didn't even realize that until after Expo, but they live streamed all of that. Other than the Stern tour, the virtual tour was not online, but everything was. I don't think anybody ordered anything for a virtual tour either. I mean, so, you know, there's also a lot of there's a lot of changes that I think Expo really should consider. I mean, they don't need to do anything. Again, I'm big on now this whole do you really need to try? Because so many people in pinball just sort of tolerate whatever at this point. Oh, yeah. You do anything you want to a pinball person. Yeah. So I guess they don't need to change. But, I mean, this is why I don't, unless Expo has a big change, or unless someone, like, wants to pay my flight, I'm not really inclined to go back either. Now, I've heard good things about MGC other than I think, if it's the one I'm thinking of, I haven't heard great things about their tournament. But I don't usually play in the tournaments.
    11:18
    I think the most, I think the roughest thing out of Expo for me, we didn't talk about on our last episode because it happened after our last episode, And that was, you know, on Saturday at 5 p.m. when the free play area is open until 2 in the morning. At 5 p.m. when we were walking around the free play area, like half of the machines were being packed up. And there were giant gaps where machines had been taken out and they were just getting hauled away. Yeah, that's a good point. It was extremely noticeable, extremely disturbing. I mean, it was sad, I guess. And the fact that so many were down, and I did see texts on the floor trying, but there were so many. To me, it was very clear that a number of those games had not been gone through before they had showed up. And I guess we're just spoiled from Texas Pinball Festival, where I think I heard Ron Hallett over on the Slam Tilt podcast describe it this way, that Texas seems like almost a show-off show, where there are these people bringing their restored games. It's just like, look at me, look at how awesome my game is. And then there's Expo, which is like, here, we have to fill some space, so let's just throw a bunch of old crap and not even show if it works or not. Right. Sort of thing. So it's like.
    12:38
    Because there were several machines that I wanted to try and wanted to play, and they were not functional on day one, and they were not functional on Saturday when we left. It seemed like, and maybe I was wrong, it seemed like the free play area of Expo had more rare pinball machines than I see at TPF. Pity I couldn't play hardly any of them. I will say one thing, though. The arcade games at Expo, that was a good set up. Whoever did that, that was a good set up. Yes. I like the arcade games. The arcade games were from a lot of them. I don't know if it was all of them, but I did. I have been talking with a listener, and they're from Galloping Ghost. Oh, the arcade. The arcade brought a bunch of them. Well, the arcade games showing, they were. I get it. they're easier to get working than pinball, but they worked. They had some interesting unique ones. I mean, I know some people were really excited to see the Beavis and Butthead prototype that was there, but the arcades were impressive. Ken Walker is who I was talking to. Good old Ken. We were talking about some of the stuff up there. But yeah, he said a lot of the games that seem... I'm going back through old messages. I know he said that a bunch of them came from Galloping Ghost. Well, anyway, that part was good. They had a really nice assortment. There were a number of them. 55. They brought 55 games. Okay. So that part was really – you know, there are arcade games at TPF. They're usually in one little row kind of off on the – I've usually played a few when I'm there. Yeah. But this, I thought this arcade setup was more impressive. It was. Also, kudos to whoever the group was that brought that weird rat race game where two players are controlling the – Yes. That was fun. That was next to the joust. Yes. And we know someone with a joust, so I've played plenty of joust. But rat race, that was weird. So that one, I was glad that was there. So just, there were some highlights. There were some gems in the rough of the free play area. Just not as many gems as one would have hoped, especially when it came to pinball machines. But, you know, we don't have any control over that. Let's see. You can mention them. there was Phoebe and Larry's Joust, Rat Trap, and the Varkom. Okay, I didn't try the Varkom. I didn't try the Varkom. But anyway, it was a nice... Yeah, they had a cool setup, and they were really good about explaining what to do, and it was a good way to do it. It was like a little vendor of three really cool games. So, I had fun with that.
    15:12
    I will say, and I kind of touched on this, actually, on a watch video I did, but, again, we don't talk about watches on this show, except when they relate to pinball. So I did wear my Ricochet watch when I was up there, the pinball-themed watch designed by Ryan Claytor that was sold through Mr. Jones Watches. And they did a limited run, but they are at some point going to make it a part of the permanent collection. So I do have a link in the show notes to at least the limited run one so you can see what it looks like. But I have never in my entire life had so many people ask me about a watch. Oh, man. It was getting to the point where I was like, oh dear god yes it's a watch I understand it looks cool so they're like oh they see the robots and stuff they love that and then they're not sure how to tell the time or they don't have their glasses and they can't read the time because the time is all on these little dials it's a very beautiful it is amazing I love it but it is definitely a show watch because it's not a super easy to read watch No, no, no. It's so beautiful. I'm amazed you did not wear out the clasp, though, taking it off so many times so people could see it. Yeah, I just let them look at the time and stuff. Yeah, I just take it off. So I did have an interview. Just slamming your face in the fist. Yeah, just like, how about now? How about now?
    16:36
    But I did actually, I had an interview with Ryan Claytor on my watch channel, and I had asked him, like, how many people did he think would come up to him with the watch on at the next show he goes to? What I should have said is how many people are going to ask me about it next time I wear one to a pinball event? Because, holy cow, it was weird. There were people stopping us and asking about the watch who didn't know who you were, which was impressive because I thought everybody knew who you were. No, I'm a nobody in this. I'm not a pinball ambassador. I'm a nobody in this hobby. But speaking of not nobodies in this hobby, I might also talk a little bit about homebrew games because we played some on Saturday, but I don't think either of us had touched any before then, or at least we didn't bring it up on the episode. Yeah. So I ended up playing Castlevania and Ghost in the Shell. I enjoyed them both. I enjoyed Castlevania more. I talked to the creator of Ghost in the Shell, and he and I had corresponded before in the past. So Ghost in the Shell has the really cool ramp, which it's both entrances and exits. So you can go in both ways and exits both ways, which is really cool. and then Castlevania had these two pop lumpers over on the left orbit and integrated like it was like the video game the ghost in the shell sort of following the standalone did you ever see standalone complex okay I really like standalone complex so I enjoyed both of those homebrews but those were the only two I tried I played Castlevania I really liked the two pop lumpers and I don't think I played any of the other homebrews I kept meaning to go play Greek Gods because I had multiple people tell me how good Greek Gods were and every time I walked over there. There were a bunch of people playing Greek Gods. That was me with Sonic Spinball. There was always a crowd around Sonic.
    18:17
    It's weird because there were a lot less lines at Expo than there are at Texas. I think maybe I got spoiled at Expo. I was just like, there's a line. I don't believe in waiting in lines here.
    18:28
    There was one called Dumpster Fire that I went to play, but it was turned off. I guess it had become a Dumpster Fire and broke.
    18:38
    Theme appropriate. Very well done. So anyway, those were nice. And then we have one manufacturer thing that we had not yet played, and we mentioned on our episode our intent to go play it, and that was Heist. Yes, and that was like the first thing we played when the vendor area opened on Saturday morning. We went straight to Heist. Yeah, because we had, and we gave our comments on episode 153 about Sorcerer's Apprentice.
    19:00
    Okay, so I guess I'll start. In terms of Heist, that is by far the best P3 game I have ever played. that's how I'd open it I thought it made a lot the rules made a lot of sense it had an excellent explanation when you'd start it if you wanted to sit through and listen to that would do that the way they used the screen with the pop-ups of the characters was a good way to kind of distract from them not like fully animating a bunch of stuff and I just thought it looked that comic sort of style they went with looked a lot cleaner than how I feel about Lexi for example and it's fun my biggest gripe was simply that I didn't care for having the third flipper on a second button there are other games like Starship Troopers that have done that and I've had other people confirm with me now at this point you can actually go into the settings and say you want the main button to fire both of those flippers on the right so either you even wanted to object to it you could change it so just overall it's unfortunate that P3 the pandemic kind of screwed them on the initial reveal of Heist because they dropped it at a... It basically came out in the pandemic. Because I think that's a game that could move some of their units. I'm not willing to pay $10,000 for Heist, but in this current market, I think there are people that would. And I heard there were people that got to try those games, and I'm going to assume it was Heist that pushed them over the edge, because I know several who bought, who did buy Order P3 there. So Heist is an excellent ambassador for that game. for that platform. In fact, when we're talking non-licensed games, um, I mean, there's a, there's a really good job. I would say a heist is very much the type of game P3 needs. Heist is an actual reason to buy P3 because there's been nothing before heist that I would consider a reason to purchase a P3. I, it's still too expensive, but I think everything's too expensive. So price doesn't really have so much to do with it. But I would think that if I was going to get a P3, I would get it because of Heist and that I'd get other stuff later to fill in and to do other stuff. But Heist would be the reason to get one. For me, it would be because of the pricing. It would be like, we'll have to see what their licensed game is, for example. But in my mind, it would be a, I need something else for me to want to get the platform, for example. but I would be getting the heist module with it. Whatever I do would be with the heist module. Because at that, however much for the module. So for me, that's sort of the, it's sort of a helps push it over the edge sort of thing. You know, be worth spending the whatever thousands for just the module, and then I still need something else. I would still need something else, obviously, to push me over. But A-plus effort. Right And I think like we were saying I mean just having one solid good game instead of hoping to have another good game come eventually I think can go a long way towards pushing people over the purchase because they think we got this one There's still obviously something else. Yeah. And Crane Toy. Cool. I always look cool. So we had commented on that when it came out. All right. So I think that was everything I had for us on follow up on Expo that we didn't hit on when we recorded at Expo. Was there anything else that you had? Just a quick thing is we had the week after Expo, we went to a pinball tournament. And afterwards, we had dinner with a bunch of other pinballers and talked about stuff. And one thing said to come up because some one of them in particular had gone to Expo with us. Well, not directly with us, but they were at Expo as well. Let's go with that. And during our conversation, that was one thing is we've been talking about what we liked and didn't like about Expo. And it pretty much came up just this that it was a lot of fun meeting a lot of people and having fun, but probably would have been happier overall. Just getting a group of friends together and doing a big group trip to Chicago than spending the time for like the tournament and Expo in its totality and everything. Yeah, I mean, it felt, there was a lot of, when we were there, there was a lot of, let's walk around and just see if we encounter someone to have a conversation with, which often didn't work. Yeah, and that's fun. I enjoy that. I mean, this is a, I know, this is going to fly in the face, and I like playing in local tournaments. We play in a lot of local tournaments.
    23:34
    I'm going to go, this is my advice, you know, take it or leave it. I know a lot of you are hardcore tournament people, and you definitely want to leave it. But my recommendation is not to play in these tournaments at these shows. I think it just ends up putting you in a weird bind of annoyance. Which is where we were when we played in Texas that one time. Yeah. And I've heard that Texas is run by a different team on the tournament side because we played in 2016. Right. And it's different now. I think it transitioned to a different coordinator. I think Colin McAlpine runs it now as of 2018. And I hear that it's done a lot better than how it had been before. This with Expo, and again, we weren't in it, But from broken classic games like Sea Ray that people were very frustrated about, to event organizers turning off flashing the lights when it was time to leave on people, which that's not the first event I've heard this happen at, to a weird long bracket that you stick up on the wall, to changing the start times on people, to just it was, it sounded like it was a mess. And, of course, what's the thing that always happens with all tournaments? This is my stereotype of all tournaments. It ran long. Yeah. It ran long. And, like, that was where we were. You mentioned the instance where we, on one of the evenings, we just went and got food, like, at 7 because the group that wanted to try and organize with us was still waiting on tournament people. And it's like, no, I'm not. I cannot justify waiting because you don't really know when it's going to end. Right. And see, that's one of those things. I mean, they run hours late. That's how poorly done these things are. And then they pushed the start times back because people stayed out partying. Here's my thought. I mean, just like we've had the discussions about the fighting game tournaments that have done the same thing. Oh, yes. That's exactly what I was thinking. Where they pushed back the start times because the big names were out partying until 5 in the morning, so they couldn't start at the planned start time.
    25:30
    Whatever you said the original start time was, if one of the two competitors is there and the other is not, They forfeit. You know, we pushed it back because people were out. No. Yeah. If you want the tournament to be taken seriously, you need to run it with a degree of professionalism. It's not the tournament's obligation to accommodate people's alcoholism. Yeah. That's it. I mean, that's great. They chose to spend the whole night partying. That means they're out of the tournament because they forfeited their position. Yep. Period. Yeah. I agree. concept of changing times because people were out partying is so just insane to me. Yes, and this is where I'm too ignorant to go into any details on it, but I was following the which I believe was the MGC tournament. I think it was the MGC tournament. It was a tournament up in, I believe, Wisconsin. And one of our area players was there and they were kind of doing like a play by play of what was happening with the event. It sounded like the rules of the tournament were being changed while the tournament was going along. No. no you do not do that I'm sorry that you don't like your own rules lesson learned for next year but changing and this stuff you know you mentioned the fighting game thing but for me a lot of this goes back to when I was really heavy in in game play in MMOs and it was like you needed to have rules and those rules often required reform we didn't get it right a lot of times but you didn't want to change rules on the fly because that's where wrongs start to happen. And then people feel cheated because you didn't follow what you said. And it's better to follow what you say than to change on the fly. Just learn next time and make a difference because you came up with a plan. Plans don't always work. It's okay, I get it. To me, some of this stuff is sort of like a, when will people finally learn? And that's where the, hey, you know what? If your tournament ran four hours long before you finished women's finals, you better make some changes next year and don't just think it was a fluke because it was your poor planning that resulted in this. It might have been starting several hours later. Could have been. But this is what they do. It's weird. And, you know, the only group that I knew of on a large scale that was really good about this that I know was ReplayFX and Pinberg where they would try and play test and take data on their game plays to know how long each game typically took a team to finish up. And that helped keep things in check. That's the sort of stuff you need to do. If you want to be serious, if you want it to be Mickey Mouse, that's fine. But I think you just need to start forfeiting people because, yeah. Just letting people, it's bad enough that the games take too long. When you start allowing people to slow you up and say, well, we're dropping 9 a.m. start times and we're going to start at 10. Oh, yeah. Did you email everyone? Oh, you weren't equipped to do that? Oh, so people showed up at 9 and then had nothing to do for an hour and they just had to be told to read a bracket on a wall? Wow. Just wow. so clean it up guys if you're a tournament people clean it up especially when you're charging money like that yeah we expect better we have a lot of expectations you know what I didn't have expectations on Cactus Canyon remake I had one expectation that it would be a remake of Cactus Canyon that was my expectation I'm a simple person of simple remake needs and so I expect Okay, so we talked about that because it was revealed. I mean, it had been announced before Expo that Cactus Canyon, surprising no one, was the next remake.
    29:06
    At the show, they had a couple of games. I didn't play them because I played Cactus Canyon out the wazoo. I don't need to play it anymore. And they revealed the game. And I believe they had at the time indicated there were, I think, 1,250 LEs. I didn't reconfirm this, but based off of my discussion on the Triple Drain podcast. Oh, which I don't think I plugged. I'll go ahead and plug it now. I was on the Triple Drain Pinball podcast back just this week, episode nine. I'll have a link in the show notes to it so people can go and check it out if they want to. That's with Travis Murray, who we, out of Oklahoma, we correspond with him a lot. And then Joe Engelberth, who is on the Pinball Network with a YouTube channel.
    29:51
    Well, Twitch stream and a podcast. And sometimes he does stuff on YouTube, I think. Or at least the Twitch stuff goes to YouTube, so I'm right no matter what. And then Tom Graff is the third host, and he is who streamed the tournament. So he didn't run the tournaments, but he streamed the tournaments for Expo. People, Fox City stream, which is pretty good quality. Anyway, on that, I believe it was noted 1,250 LE units. Here's the thing. Here's why I have this back in here. I do have a link in the show notes to Chicago Gaming Company's model matrix of the three models. They only talked about two at the show. Now, the LE doesn't list any more price because it's sold out from CGC. However, I've gone back and confirmed. All right. So the LE was $9,250 with that limited like 1,250 units. that's the one that came with the topper the trim, certain molded plastics on the play field you know, an Ellie if you want the standard edition or special edition apparently I'm hearing that some things is listed as special edition now and I don't know if they changed the name or people just didn't know what Essie stood for and guessed it doesn't matter, we'll just say Essie just so you know Dasvidanya, cowboy what was it, Dada Rush is that what cowboy is in Russian? I'm trying to remember my red October.
    31:15
    Oh, no, buckaroo. Yeah. Buckaroo. No, it sounds like a buckaroo. Of course. I don't know if Daburish is anything. Maybe it's probably not.
    31:28
    So the standard edition version, $8,000. Okay. Now, here's the long and the short of it, Tony. There were, because the LEs sold out so quickly, supposedly, sold out so quickly. People were very upset, especially when they saw the topper, because people really want a topper where guys' arms spin in 360-degree motions, because that's how buckaroos do it. And it has, like, a gameplay mode in it, too. So people were like, and to be fair, CGC's toppers usually look pretty good. I mean, they're sculpted and all that. So people were upset because, while at Expo they indicated they might sell the topper separately for people that are getting the SE. They were noncommittal about it. Well, I don't know if they're going to sell the topper for the SE, but I'm going to guess no, because now there's an SE Plus edition. The SE Plus, looking at that matrix, is exactly the same game as the SE, just with the topper. Its price, $9,250. The exact same price as the LE was listed for. Without any of the other LE features, just the topper. What are your thoughts, Tony? What are your thoughts?
    32:47
    Man, some of you people better just have a real love of a topper because you're about to get screwed to get one.
    32:54
    None of the LE bonuses for the LE price, but you get the topper? You get the topper. I mean, holy crap. I'm seriously they are bending you over a table. People wanted that topper, though, Tony. Apparently, they wanted the topper that bad. And that's the thing with pinball. It's a $1,250 topper. $1,250 topper. And I bet you they sell a ton of them.
    33:23
    Yeah, I, you know, I think it'll sell. I agree with you. I don't know how many, because I just don't know what the demand really is for CCR.
    33:32
    Now, I bet you a bunch of the people who are in on an SE upgrade to an SE Plus. They might. You know, it's weird because, I mean, I guess in terms of winners and losers, the winner is the LE buyers because now they're LE. They got more value for it than the SE pluses get. So that, in my view, upvalued the LE because now if they want to flip one, they'll be like, you know, you want the rest of the toys and stuff. Right. You're going to have to pay more. And bear in mind, post fact, they decided that the topper price alone was worth the LE. So these other components should actually be worth it. Do you respect the fact that they didn't just magically generate out of nowhere more LEs? Yes. Like some others. Excuse me. They didn't some others it.
    34:20
    No, that's fair. Here's the behind the scenes that I have heard. Not confirmed. These are what my sources say. My sources say that the reason they've done it like this, saying aside, I don't know why they price it exactly the same as the LE. I mean, let me go ahead and cover the losers there, obviously. Is anyone buying an SE Plus? If you knew the LE was $92.50 and now you see the SE Plus is $92.50, there might be some people that will not do it just on principle, but I don't know how many. Principle? We're talking about pinball. Yeah, I know. We're talking about a hobby that would make excuses for all sorts of bad behavior just for the chance to get a new shiny. I mean, why does J-Pop get so many chances? Right. People are willing to forgive an awful lot in this hobby. Actually, I think they're overly forgiving. Oh, I agree completely. So anyway, but saying that aside, you know, maybe there might be some that if they know the whole background, at the very least might leave them a bad taste in their mouth about CGC's behavior. That said, once the new game drops, the licensed non-remake, they'll be back in line because that's just how it works. But in terms of the sourcing, what I've heard is CGC's deal with Planetary regarding the Williams license is such that they have to pay more. Like if they sell accessories, a percentage of that income goes back to Planetary Pinball. I believe that's the group with the license, Planetary. The percentage is lower on pins than it is on accessories. So by making the SE+, they actually get to keep more money than if they sold the topper, even at $1,250.
    36:02
    Separate. So CGC has done it in a way to maximize their money. So then I get that. It's just, again, they clearly, SE, the old, I saw some screenshots on Pennside of the old matrix when people, not like people meaning to post it as the old matrix, just when they were sharing the information, it didn't have an SE plus in it when it first came out. So again, this is just another company that, you know, maybe they realized they sold the LEs for too little. I mean, there were a lot of people online that were. They jumped on this LE, even though they, my impression, weren't huge fans of Cactus Canyon, just because they were shocked that an LE would come out in 2021 at under $10,000.
    36:42
    Do you remember when 10K by Christmas was a joke? I do. Pepperidge Farm remembers. Buckaroos remember. it's become a thing so that's that with the Cactus Canyon remake and then my last pinball item that I just wanted to bring up with you is Stern so more sourcing and again it's something we covered on Triple Drain so obviously I don't want to be overly repetitive I don't know how much overlap we have with the listener base but so I have received word in the last week or so that Stern is making some statements, predictions about production that if you were hoping that Stern's plan was we're going to get caught up on a backlog of all these orders, they don't think they're going to be able to do that. That's my read from the information I'm getting. I think that anybody who's been dealing with the supply line issues, especially on the higher, like the industrial side, industrial end, like I am, I was talking to one of my vendors last Friday or last Wednesday, and replacement control boards for some of our actuators. he flat told me 2023 mid-year is the earliest we can even think to get those repair parts. He can get me an all-new actuator, the new style, but at this point, if I had ordered it last week, it might be here by March. Maybe. That's the best he can give me. I have parts that we ordered in April with a 26-week lead time that we have now been given the lead time of they'll be done when they're done because they have no idea. That's how bad the backlogs have gotten. So we have no idea when stuff is going to come in. I have parts. I have stuff that has been out for repair for months, and they're telling me maybe July.
    38:50
    So I can understand where they're coming from. on them not going to be able to catch up and then only going to fall farther behind because quite frankly, the supply chain situation is really bad and it's even worse to people who don't necessarily work directly with it because they'll notice the issues. You know, it's like, Oh, there's less cars and we hear news things about the chip shortages and there's not going to be enough PS fives for us for Christmas and, and all this stuff. But when you start getting into the industrial, Especially when you're talking about large bulk items. It is really, really bad.
    39:32
    So, yes, so you understand the position that they're in. Now, let me talk about how they're going to be addressing it. Now, part of the issue is, again, from what sources I've heard from,
    39:46
    Stern is not planning to reduce their cornerstone releases, at least not for the first half of the year. I have heard, though I don't remember what months, I have heard they've got a month in the winter, probably January, maybe it was February, blocked off to just run a new game. Everyone's assuming that will be Rush because there was a picture leak. And then another, again, I can't remember what month. This is how bad I am with all these sources of things. I think it's sometime around May, June-ish, kind of like how Led Zeppelin dropped, I think. I don't remember what month Led Zeppelin dropped. But for another new game only being produced, they the sourcing didn't know what the what the games were. But again, this sort of fits with some of the statements I believe Gomez made about how, you know, a lot of these cornerstone decisions seem to be driven by that. There are license obligations, but there are timelines that were assumed in the licenses. I continue to wonder if Stern is finally at the point. I would have honestly hoped by the start of this year, not signing as many licenses, knowing they have to catch up at some stage. And unless they think that they're just going to build their way out of the hole, which would work if everyone gives up on their orders like a lot of people do. That would be one way. The other way would just have to be eventually the floodgates will open. But I just don't I just don't see how that will will work in the fast enough because there are other industries that are going to get a priority for a lot of this stuff. Right. So about what they're planning to do. So bear in mind that there are still new games coming out for people to get excited about and to try and buy. I have heard that their distribution network that Stern has has been informed that they will be rationed pros and premiums similar to that's sort of what happens with LEs already because they're a limited number of LEs. Now, the number I've heard on the percentage that they're allowed to get has varied basically by distributor, I guess, but essentially 10 to 20 percent of whatever they've asked for.
    41:54
    So if you said I need 50 Godzilla pros when they do their next run of Godzilla pros, that distributor that said they need 50 will get between five and 10. Bear in mind, meanwhile, how Stern does that. And yes, the wait lists are with if you choose to do it and distributors are obligated to wait list. But if there is a wait list, the any time Stern implements a price increase, that's that's effective immediately. So, for example, when the when the Godzilla's came out, all games immediately had a three hundred dollar price increase, I guess, to cover connected connected that was going to go out. Now, Godzilla was way more than that. Right. But everything else had a 300 immediately. As of January 1, everything else matches Godzilla's pricing. So if you were still waiting for a Mandalorian and Stern can't build it until February, then you will pay the Godzilla price for your Mandalorian. It doesn't matter that you told the distributor day one you want Mandalorian. So convert to Godzilla.
    43:02
    Yes, you probably should. Come join us for the auction. But, hey, some families are more into Baby Yoda than they are into Baby Kaiju. Join the screen.
    43:13
    So, I mean, I had a, you know, this is well circulated. I actually had a conversation with Zach Minney, flipping out pinball, about, like, what his plans are for next year. And he said, you know, with the supply chain stuff sort of like this year, it's been really frustrating because there's not really a way for any of them to grow their business right now. It's sort of ironic. There's all this demand. Everyone knows about all this demand for pinball. There's all these used games getting scooped up for ridiculous prices because people can't get things new because supplies are so short and everyone's flipping games for ridiculous amounts of money. But it like if you don have any supply what good is adding more customers to your wait list Because some of these people are going to wait a year Right There are games I have heard there are some games that are in current production, I'm air quoting, current production, that will stay in current production, that they will not build in 2022 at all. I've heard at least three. That does not surprise me either. They have to make, they're having to make emergency decisions on how they're running. But, I mean, just imagine, here's my what so we got Godzilla theme well known theme but theme aside I'm going to go ahead and say most people are agreeing Keith Elwin's greatest game already and it's not at 1.0 rules yet I would say so when Rush comes out regardless of how popular Rush is vis-a-vis Godzilla it will in my mind sabotage Godzilla production because you have to make Rush now just one more thing on top of everything else. Don't forget all the people waiting for Elvira Premium. Don't forget the people trying to get Deadpool, an extremely popular game that people have been trying to buy new. You have to wait for the runs. And the way Stern's going to approach it is, historically, my understanding is Stern has done very, they'll throw something on, they can shift their line really quick. So they'll throw something on the line for a week or whatever to catch up on a log of whatever their distributors say, hey, I need, you know, I need three Star Treks. They aren't doing Star Trek. run. Back when Star Trek was at the very, very tail end and they were still building them. It's like, hey, I need three Star Treks and he needs two Star Treks. Okay, we're going to go and we're going to build 40 Star Trek pros in a week or in a day, probably. Just convert a line over real quick. Now they're planning to do much larger batches so they don't have to change the line over as much to deal with this sort of thing. But that's where the rationing kicks in. So when they finally do a run of Deadpool, it should be a sizable run of units. They don't want to just do a couple dozen. But you got to wait for that new date now because they're not going to be as nimble. Right. And my understanding is they've thrown out some of the production timelines for some of the trim models and games. And it's way out there for some of these. And some like Elvira Premium, I mentioned, you know, aside from that 40th anniversary thing that they're doing here, they they have repeatedly kicked the can down the road on it. But I think if I if I remember correctly, Elvira Premium's run has been delayed at least twice now. no the rumor mill is stern uh staff hates building over it's really hard for them like there's something about it that's difficult i don't know it's the house or what but like it's more mechanically frustrating to put together than their usual games so that may be part of the reason they keep kicking the can down the road but i mean it's annoying people and i've heard there are still people that were kind of like first month in on mando that don't have mando yet Yeah and that's And it's a deeply popular game too It is a very popular game I think that Like you said At the start of this little Discussion Hopefully they have Made adjustments to their licensing And to their scheduling and to their contracts That will let them slow down And start doing catch up And don't get me wrong I love the fact that Stern is the group that puts out Multiple games a year I know it's their thing but I do think we're at the point that it would probably help them in the long run to dial back just because their current production ability has been so greatly reduced yep I mean I think they're putting their distributors in an interesting bind because how long do you keep a wait list I'm not even sure they should be doing wait lists right now I think I would 100% honestly if I was a distributor if I did do a wait list it would be capped at a limited number of people especially with these kind of reductions and these limited allotments you'd have to I think you'd be better off for them to just for the distributors to go more back to the kind of old school model where they're just like just send me five of everything and then when they get them in stock they just have it and it's like here's what came into stock this is what I have first come first serve yeah and that's where I mean they've got existing wait lists they could purge their wait lists and just use here's the thing given how hot the market is right now they're not going to have any problem selling these pens so if you have a wait list of 50 for Mandalorian in a way I could see you going in and saying you know what just tell everyone that you're not keeping the wait list anymore drop it, still put in your order for 50, you'll move, you get five or you get 50, you'll move them all. So who cares? I mean, you've got a good sense of what the market is for Guardians versus Deadpool versus Mando versus Godzilla based off your wait list. But at least right now, there's no real point in having the wait list. I think the big thing we're moving that way might hurt distributors is that they're going to have to start looking for warehouse space. At least a limited amount for temporary storage. if they go to that route.
    49:13
    I mean, ultimately, if they were to get them all at once, it's conceivable long-term. But here's the thing. Once production stabilizes, they could go back to doing wait lists. Correct. So in a way, I just think for the short term,
    49:26
    if you could lock in the old prices, I could see the value in still doing the wait list thing. But since you can't, I'm just imagining, I would hate just having to follow a list of 50 people to let them know, by the way, your game is now $600 more. And you have to tell each one of them that, find out if they're still going to be locked in on it. And it's just, it's a lot of work for no money, for no additional money. You're not going to make more money with it. So I just, yeah. I mean, it's not our problem. It's whatever. I think it was Travis who mentioned one of the distributors he heard from has dropped wait lists already. And they're like, there's no point. There's no point. I'll sell everything I get. So we don't need to. Why do the work when the games sell themselves now? You don't have to try.
    50:17
    And again, back to that theme. You just don't have to try in pinball. It just happens. One of the things that came up on that on the Triple Drain podcast in the discussion was the thought of, will the distributor start selling over MSRP because there's so much demand for the games? setting aside if there were any contractual prohibitions on that which i'm not aware of any in pinball uh the thing that i remember though is stern has been experimenting with selling games direct they sell their pins direct they've sold some le's i know right so i'm wondering if that starts to happen does stern open up the storefront and say oh by the way you can buy from us too and of course they'll never sell over msrp Right. So that might be I'm not sure that's a viable path for for the distributors. What I think is more likely will be Stern continuing to just up their prices to try and find where their ceilings at to limit flipping, but still sell everything they want to sell. Right. We're seeing, you know, you're seeing some instances where it's like, OK, well, these new prices on Godzilla, that wasn't the ceiling. Elvira 40th editions where distributors are asking 25k and they ain't all sold out okay ceilings must be under that and over Godzilla it's somewhere in there it's floating around in there somewhere so yeah we'll see I can and I know I've talked about this on the show previously but I can see them going to the model where they sell somewhere between 75 and 100% of the LEs through themselves and then keep the other stuff going out through the distributed network. Yeah, yeah. We'll have to see. But right now, you know, production obviously is their struggle. But like with everybody. Yes, yes. It's not unique to pinball. So before moving to the video game section, I guess I didn't put this in the show notes, but I should probably bring up, so rumor corner. I don't know what I'm calling it. All right. You know, we covered the thing a couple of times with pinball rumors. I have had a few people reach out to me mentioning that they really liked it when we cover pinball rumors. I think even if they're not true. People just like to hear rumors. Yeah, I guess so. They don't care if it's inaccurate or what.
    52:32
    So here's a rumor. Here's a pinball rumor. I do not believe it. I do not believe it at all. But you guys want rumors? Here's a rumor. The rumor is Harry Potter pinball going to happen. Home pin.
    52:49
    the Taiwan-based, the one that made Thunderbirds. Now, it sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? From a production standpoint, right? And they're currently working on this as Spinal Tap Pinball, okay?
    53:04
    Here's the argument of the rumor, Tony. Because, as you may know, J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, purportedly anti-pinball because she doesn't like the idea of them being in bars. she has had a lot of controversy regarding certain statements that she's made via social media okay the rumor mill is mike from home pin has also been in a similar hot water situations for similar style statements and that they have essentially bonded over this cancel culture working against them sort of thing and so he has been able through that basically through an ideological connection, been able to secure the Harry Potter license.
    53:50
    I'm assuming books, not movies, but that wasn't part of the rumor, but that he has Harry Potter and he can do it. And I don't know if they're doing anything to accommodate the bars or not. That wasn't part of the rumor. Just that, hey, they both have been, quote unquote, canceled, and that's how he won her over, was, hey, we need to stick it to all these, the libs.
    54:14
    So, again, I don't buy it. But there you go. There's rumor corner. Harry Potter pinball. Home pin. Harry Potter pinball.
    54:24
    Okay. We just designed a makeup corner where we just start making shit up. Hey, look, I'm not saying that I invented that rumor, but I'm saying that people wanted rumors, and I'm giving them, I'm giving the people what they want. they want rumors so we're calling it rumor corner possibly made up possibly real we don't know some of the rumors are good I'm telling you I don't believe this rumor but that's the rumor people say you shoot the ramp every time you get a letter you just have to spell you're a wizard Harry You can get your extra ball that way. I don't know how many shots that is. You're a wizard, Eric. There you go. Now, video games. We can sell a thing, paper. Crinkle, crinkle, crinkle.
    55:29
    About as good as the effects from the first film. So at the start of the video games thing, I'm sure you're going to touch on this, but I do want to note, we did get an email from Chris Chandler. to our EGP account, just telling us that there are delays on Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4. And I know you want to open with Blizzard because Blizzard's your favorite topic, and you always include it, so go ahead. Yeah, we're just getting it done out of the way because there's been a lot, and there's always a lot with them anymore, and it's just starting to get kind of bad.
    56:04
    But Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 have been delayed because they will benefit from more development time to reach its full potential.
    56:17
    Okay. I mean, both teams have had major shakeups this year. I mean, Overwatch League lost Jeff Kaplan and one of the executive producers. The Diablo team has lost, like, pretty much their entire leadership and had to start over from the leadership angle. But I think this is such a massive blow I know Overwatch The next season of Overwatch League Was supposed to run on an early build of Overwatch 2 I think the rumor is it still is Going to Which would make total sense Whatever level of alpha build They have that they can If it's stable enough for them to run on But This has been hurt so bad Because Overwatch has basically been just ignored since they started working on Overwatch 2 in 19.
    57:09
    Basically, they throw out a few skins for events. The events aren't even new anymore. No new events. They'll drop an occasional deathmatch map, but no new regular maps. No new heroes since Echo, which was late 19, I think. I think you're right. There's been nothing new in Overwatch. Overwatch is hemorrhaging the players. Yeah, I mean, the thing with all these other games that last is you have to keep producing content. And they can thrive. The new graphics of Overwatch 2 aren't what the game needs. It needed support. Right. And what's interesting is we're pushed back. So we're looking at a pushback. I was already not expecting Overwatch 2 before fall of 22, which means we're looking at sometime in 23 minimum. and for them to push back that far a full another year of just completely ignoring Overwatch's needs basically as they hemorrhage players and then they think they're going to get all those players back when they have to drop $60 or $70 for a new game that is just got co-op built into what the old game was and the other changes. I know the games are supposed to be compatible, but I don't see how they're going to keep their player base. When you've got companies dropping a Call of Duty every year, a Battlefield every year, where you get all these other games that are dropping new engines, new tie-ins, they're keeping things going, for them to be sitting here and just ignoring Overwatch and then hoping to get everybody back when they eventually drop Overwatch 2, I think is a pipe dream.
    59:00
    The Diablo 4 delay I think is less of an injury for Blizzard than the Overwatch delay, but it still hurts them because Diablo has always been one of their kind of pillar games. Even after the disaster that was Diablo 3, it was still a very popular game.
    59:19
    It launched poorly. It had some of the worst real money stuff I've ever seen. But after they corrected all that, they still got a decent amount of players. But this whole debacle for Diablo 4 that started with their announcement of the Diablo Infinities or whatever it was, the phone game, that's still not out. I don't think it comes out until next year.
    59:45
    Oh. I think it comes out in 22. So that's the position of trouble that they are in. when it comes to those games. And on top of all of that, as you recall, when Alan Brock left Blizzard in the midst of all of the fallout, he was the president of Blizzard. He was replaced by Jen O'Neill and her co-leader Mike Ybarra, were both hired as the replacement, and was their big flagship. Hey, look, see, we're including women in our leadership teams and this and that. That all happened back in August.
    60:26
    She's no longer co-leader of Blizzard. She stepped out from that. And she's currently working at Activision until the end of the year. And then she'll be leaving Activision.
    60:39
    She wrote in her announcement that she put on that, I'm doing this not because I am without hope for Blizzard, quite the opposite. I'm inspired by the passion of everyone here working towards meaningful, lasting change with their whole hearts. This energy has inspired me to step out and explore how I can do more to have games and diversity intersect and hopefully make a broader industry impact that will benefit Blizzard and other studios as well. While I'm not totally sure what form that will take, I am excited to embark on a new journey to find out.
    61:12
    You can make a bet with me. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know. She was there for so little time. I mean, I guess, I don't know, was she at Blizzard before then? She was hired in for this position. Okay, so she was an outsider brought in. Okay, so it sounds like she couldn't make the change she wanted to make. That's how I read it. And their decision was instead of bringing another co-leader in to help Mike, they're just going to make Mike president of Blizzard now. They waved the flag. They said, look, we got a girl. We have a female in here. Who didn't want to stay. She left, but that's okay. We're good. We got Mike. What more do you need?
    61:56
    BlizzCon, scheduled for February. Hasn't been put on indefinite pause. That's wise. Very wise. For once, they wouldn't have to really probably, most likely, pause because of the pandemic, but what's there to talk about? The phone game that's not out yet? The delay on Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2? Yeah. How you don't have any women working for you? What are you going to talk about? Are you going to ban people dressing up as Winnie the Pooh still? Is that still a thing? Probably.
    62:26
    A bunch of people walking in dressed up as Pooh. Yeah. They say they are reimagining the event. They have nothing. We know they've got nothing to show. The event's been running for 15 or 16 years now, but they've got absolutely nothing to show, and it would be nothing but bad press for them to have it. canceling it is less bad press than what would have come from actually having it. I agree with you. Canceling is the right thing. It's the right thing to do.
    62:57
    And to finish it off, during their latest quarterly results call, they shared their monthly active user count is down 13% year on year, down to 26 million players despite the launch of Diablo II Resurrected. they have lost 3 million users since last quarter.
    63:21
    Most likely most of them are WoW. Yeah, that would be my guess. Because WoW has been hemorrhaging people bad.
    63:27
    A lot of them went to Amazon New World, though that didn't last very long before it hemorrhaged everybody.
    63:34
    Final Fantasy XIV picked up so many that they had to start shutting down new character creations on servers while they spun up more servers and got things put back together. so still 3 million users lost in a quarter.
    63:52
    It's huge. It's just they went from 29 million to 26 million in a quarter. They've lost a million since May. So, yeah, no, it's Blizzard and Activision are in a real bad place right now. Yeah, no, it's interesting to see such a video game behemoth like that basically in free fall, And they seem, I almost said totally at a loss to know what to do. It seems like they've been trying things and none of it's working. Yeah. I don't know that I've ever seen a company this large take this kind of pounding and be sent reeling like this.
    64:34
    I mean, EA's had its bad moments, but nothing that ever felt this bad. I don't know. I really don't know a company that's been this size that's taken this kind of power. It's like, I think part of the, yeah, I think the issue is the pounding is coming from a multitude of directions. So, obviously, the big thing that we have often focused on, and I think the general public typically focuses on, is the harassment angle within the company, within the Blizzard side.
    65:03
    But that being said, there are other, I mean, they had already made mistakes about their expansion with Warcraft and how the World of Warcraft players were super frustrated by what they were getting delivered, coupled with Overwatch 1 is an aged game at this point. I mean, it's been out over five years, and they're not putting out any supporting content, so there's little reason to say. I mean, I have, because they have the new Cassidy, the renamed McCree to Cassidy, I went in last week and I played to get the new skin. And other than that, I played this year. And I played during the Halloween event where I'd go in real quick to get those skins. That's it. So when they're not giving out skins, I don't play weekly anymore because there's nothing new to try. So I just am like, hey, I'll just wait until they have another event. So I probably play for the Christmas event to get more They probably throw out a few new skins I be like I see if I can get a few by playing some arcade mode And that be that And you know just coupled with every they just, yeah. So I think for a while they kind of coasted on their world of Warcraft funds, which I mean, it was a success. It was still a successful, you know, but it's just, they're so behind on anything new and they're so controversial now. So people are not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt of this. But I mean, like, If you were Bobby, what would you do at this point to try and salvage? I don't want to say saving the whole thing, just any of it.
    66:31
    I honestly don't know. Obviously, if you could go back, they should have started working up a WoW successor a decade ago. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because no matter what updates they do to the engine, what changes they make, it's just aged. it's aged out. So they should have started coming up with something else to take its place.
    67:01
    Arguably, what spent decades is their number one franchise, the entire StarCraft franchise. It's just gone. Yeah, I haven't heard it. They haven't mentioned or talked about it in years. And honestly, StarCraft, and specifically competitive StarCraft, is a big part of what kept Blizzard alive and some of the other lean times.
    67:24
    But that whole franchise is just gone at this point. Nothing since StarCraft II, and that was so long ago, I don't even remember when it was.
    67:34
    It's just, yeah. I mean, the only thing that I can suggest of any of it is one tiny piece. It's only because it's been the piece that lately I've been most engaged with Blizzard, which would be the Overwatch piece.
    67:48
    Here's what I would do. I would go to Jeff Kaplan and say, we will double your former salary. You have unilateral control over the direction of Overwatch 2, and we will fund you to now re-spin up development of additional content for Overwatch 1 in the meantime.
    68:06
    Now, maybe the time frames are too tight to pull all that off, but I don't think so. I think they have characters they were planning to reveal in Overwatch 2. Start dropping them in 1. maybe not all of them, but start dropping something so that people still want to be engaged with the product and then allow him to steer the rest of this. Now, maybe that still means it comes out in 2023, but you bring back someone who was as popular as Jeff, I think it sends a good message. Jeff leaving looked really bad. He looked terribly bad, especially Jeff leaving just as all this stuff started coming to light. Yes, and I haven't heard any accusations at Jeff at all. And Jeff, in my view, was always seen as, well, no, bringing him in does not solve your gender issue.
    68:49
    He was always very diversity-oriented in talking. That's Overwatch's cast of characters was very diversity-oriented. It was always something that they kind of planted their flag on. And so bringing back Papa Jeff, I think, would reassure a lot of people to see things through. And including in his auspices of oversight, I'm including the League to decide what you're going to do to keep your esports thing going here. I think the league is on life support. I mean, all the teams clearly are, and as much as they spent, I'm sure those franchises are like, you better not be pulling the plug on this. They got to fix that. Honestly, that'd be my second thing. So you want another suggestion of what I would do to fix the league? Especially if we're stuck with either Alpha or going back to Overwatch 1. Bottom line, the Watchers aren't going to have access to Overwatch 2.
    69:41
    Release the Blizzard Arena and do that. bring them back, bring back the, you got to bring back the live audience. You just got to, we can't, it sucks comparatively to watch them through LAN. And if the homesteads are ready, maybe we can go ahead and do that. But, but the, the spirit of that, the excitement of that, you can recapture that even on the older game. Evo does it all the time, but the crowds and the signs and the, and the desk interacting and all of that, it needs to feel more cohesive and doing it remote. They got way cleaner this year than they were in 2020, but it's still weird. It still feels like you're watching a bunch of clips that are strung together in between matches. It doesn't have that energy, that inherent kind of flow. The stadium feel. Yeah. That was what they were going for. It was such a great idea. And it worked really well. It really did. And I know this wasn't Blizzard's fault. It was the pandemic's fault, but I'm still not sure of where it's also quit letting like freaking American teams be in APAC.
    70:49
    Like, I'm sorry, if you're in New York, you should be in the US, not out in Singapore. That's they have Asian teams for the APAC. I agree with that. It makes no sense when they've started rolling all of the teams to the. why would you put teams that are clearly based in the Atlantic in the Pacific Division? It's weird. It's always been weird, but whatever. Whatever. You know what isn't weird? Marvel Avengers. That's not weird. No, it's just the greatest terrible thing that Square has done lately. So last time you brought this up, I think you said they were bringing back some paid XP boosting. Well, they weren't bringing back the XP boosting. They had apparently forgotten that one of the things they said when they launched the game is that we will only ever monetize cosmetics and we won't bring in other stuff.
    71:49
    And then they decided after going, you know what? This game's too easy. Let's make the XP grind harder. I remember that. And then, you know, the XP grind is pretty hard. Let's sell XP boost. Okay. And then there was a backlash that they ignored for a month.
    72:07
    And they finally come out and said something about it. They have removed the XP boost, even though they should have never had it. They had it in the first place because, you know, they promised not to do it. But here's their statement.
    72:24
    We apologize for not responding sooner to your concerns about the addition of paid consumables in the marketplace. we introduced them as an option for an evolving player base and did not see them as pay to win since they didn't offer power directly.
    72:44
    Yes. Because you only get power from, from going higher in level, but the level itself isn't the power. It's whether it unlocks. Yeah. Indirect power.
    72:56
    Yes. The emperor would be pleased with their theory. Execute interrupt power. Why do you not believe me? I'm only level 180. That's not my power. My power is my 20 unlockables.
    73:13
    After considering your feedback, we have decided that by the end of the day today, we will remove Hero's Catalyst and Fragment Extractors for purchase. They will continue to be earnable rewards, and those already owned are still usable. We hope that this can be the first step in rebuilding your confidence in us as a team. It continues to be our goal to make the very best game possible. Thank you for being a part of Marvel's Avengers game. Why does the square just give up on this game? Just give up on this game. Just let it go. You know the meme with the guy looking over his shoulder at the girl while his girlfriend is looking? Yes, yes. I've seen multiple of that where it's square looking at Guardians of the Galaxy while the girlfriend is Marvel Avengers being all like, hey! What about me? What about me? Except they keep doing stuff with her. Yeah, I don't. Okay, I don't understand. This is such a toad. This is fine. It's so dope. They're probably like, well, this is better than Blizzard. They didn't see it as play to win. I don't know. That is the goofiest argument I have. It's so, I mean, this is like, come on. No, it's indirect. Do it. Buy your XP.
    74:33
    The level bar is cosmetic. The number floats there. It's really just cosmetic. Really, what's the definition of pay to win?
    74:43
    I mean, you're not paying to win. You still have to do the work. You just get extra bonuses for doing the work. Have you ever heard the tale of Darth Pais the Wise? they say could alter the very powers of his character by manipulating the level numbers above his bar I know there's been a running joke with us but this is just but this is a better joke than Blizzard's like a Blizzard's just sad Blizzard is like the fall of a titan this is hey look Square's got plenty of money eventually they'll turn out part two of the Final Fantasy VII remake and they'll be fine. But let's watch them just screw this up repeatedly.
    75:35
    Oh man, it's just so bad. It's so bad. And you know what? I decided because this has been just a trash video game day after having no video game segment last time that, you know what, I'm going to finish it. I'm going to finish it with the biggest trash thing in video gaming.
    76:00
    It's time for my yearly update on Star Citizen. Oh, it is that time. I normally do it for the last episode of the year. I don't know why I do the main authority thing with Star Citizen.
    76:12
    Actually, there's a huge Star Citizen need. It's massive. The game developers, Cloud Imperium, are opening a massive new studio in Manchester, England. Oh, tilly-ho-ho. They're opening it in May of 2022. So pretty soon. And when I say massive, I mean it's huge. Their current staff is 400 as their current team. That's a big team. Yeah. By 2026, they're supposed to be 1,000. They're going to be hitting 700 within two years. Wow. Why are they ramping up so much? I don't know. Everything's in alpha. Maybe they think something's actually going to go live. Maybe they think they're getting ready to do something. Like Squadron 42, which is the standalone game. Isn't that almost done? It was supposed to have released like two years ago.
    77:13
    It's the standalone. It's a single player, right? It's the single player standalone game that uses assets and stuff. and they've got Mark Hamill and Gillian Anderson and all sorts of big-name voice actors in it. And it still doesn't have a release date because nothing has a release date.
    77:33
    So we have no idea when it will be out. But it should be out at some point, maybe. My opinion, I think there's a solid chance that Star Citizen goes into beta by 2090. Maybe. Possibly. I know I plan on handing my personal account in my will to my children so that one of them can maybe get a chance to play.
    78:03
    Well, I'm glad you're having the foresight. Because they are currently in Alpha 3.15. and they're talking about getting it pushed all the way up to alpha 3.18 by second quarter of 22. I don't know what that means. It's we push new alpha. Alpha, like people don't even usually talk about alpha because it's so pointless to the consumer. Exactly. But the game is they currently have the game playable in a way, kind of. you can play on the alpha assets with some ships and some this and that. They actually have grown it to the point where they have a system. There is a single star system with a couple planets and some moons and some stuff. And there's apparently stuff to do. Though pretty much every time I see videos, it's basically people just screwing around. Because that's about all there really is. Because they haven't implemented almost everything yet. But they're building it. the people who play it every day.
    79:06
    And I just, the thing is they are up to 3,333,458 backers. Who rose to raise a total price of 397,793,982 or $793,982. as of this morning because they have a live tracker on the website that tells you a live view of their current donation count and their current donator count. Right.
    79:45
    I mean, that's like a self-perpetuating mechanism. But we are literally coming up on a decade since the Kickstarter. With $400 million put into it. Yes. Now, you did back this into the Kickstarter. I didn't actually back in the Kickstarter. I backed it shortly after. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because they immediately transitioned from the Kickstarter to just continuing the Kickstarter on the web. So do you have a pre-order? Basically, I can go play the game right now. What's available? The ship that I've pre-ordered into is available. That's actually a flyable ship. I can go fly my ship right now. I haven't done it. the only time I touched it was in their very, very first game release where it was here. It's like, like alpha 0.00009 or something like that. It's basically, it was a hangar and your ship was sitting there and you could look at it. Okay.
    80:46
    Oh, excitement. So, uh, that was the most I've done. So we're, we're coming up on a decade. We'll come up on a decade. There is nothing out there on it yet. there's no real game. The game was supposed to be the standalone version of the game. Could be coming sometime soon. Might not be coming sometime soon.
    81:08
    The Persistent Universe MMO version of the game, who knows? Because that's what Star Citizen is. Right, that was the vanilla request. Because I remember Squadron was added. It was one of those stretch goal things, wasn't it? It is just insane at the point where setting app, it's still kind of a complete joke because of how long it's been and how long it's probably been. But it's still too big to fail. This is the banking crisis in video games. It's too big to fail. This is just like Fembo. People keep dumping money into it. At this point, there is a package out there, a starter package for $1,100.
    81:54
    That's almost as much as a topper. I know. For $1,100, you get five spaceships and a dune buggy. Dune. Also known as the Arrakis buggy. The Arrakis buggy.
    82:08
    Sorry. Right now, you could go out right now and drop $750 on a spaceship. I could? Yes. Wow. I mean, if you wanted to. But looks like pinball has found its niche, its groove, where people just pour money into stuff that makes no sense and just randomly hand... That's the exact same groove that Star Citizen has gotten into. There is a certain level of people that are pouring money into it. I was reading the other day on a forum from a guy who decided... He decided to step away from Star Citizen until Squadron 42 releases because there's just, it's too aggravating to keep hearing the news and try and follow everything because he's already into the game for $4,000.
    83:05
    I just don't understand. And every time they release a new ship, he wants to buy the new ship. He thinks it's really cool and he would like to purchase it.
    83:14
    I just don't. I mean, this is up there with those people who are like, I spent $12,000 on my phone game because I was trying to unlock my wife's phone. That's the thing. But at least then they are actually playing it. To me, it's almost like it reminds me of people that just started to follow all the stock trading stuff on Reddit. They buy all the meme stocks and lose their money. But at least they understand there was the potential they could have made their money. Something could have happened. If they had done it in a certain way at a certain time, whatever. They're getting ownership and something. You're not buying these ships and give you ownership into Star Citizen. So I just don't understand. I could see someone doing it as an investor going, no, I think eventually this is going to. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of Deep Root. It does. You look at all the millions of dollars that appear to have been poured into those Deep Root companies. And then clearly not knowing how to get to market with a product. But here's the big difference. and star citizen idiots, including myself, handing them more money. To be fair. In your defense, it wasn't the meme it is when you bought. Weren't you like 2013? That was still a sane timeline. No one had expected it to be out in 2013. I expected it to be out within a couple of years.
    84:31
    I mean, I was thinking 15, maybe 16. No. no no no no that's not where we're at but with Deep Root there was no money coming in except for people who didn't know that they were actually putting money into it at least here it's idiots giving their own money up instead of people having their money stolen from them Star Citizen hasn't quite gotten to the point where they're just garnishing the paycheck on everybody on the planet to fund their game development yeah that'll happen in about 10 years the thing that i wonder though with star system and again this getting way into legal realms that i do not understand is could someone litigate them claiming that the company knows they're not actually going to produce a product and so they're perpetuating a fraud to essentially get donations at this point just to allow people to ostensibly go in and do work but have no real deliverable that they ever have to meet well that's the problem with that from a legal standpoint as I would see is they are delivering stuff they're not delivering they haven't delivered any of the games they promised but they are delivering gameplay because they're like oh here's the new module with some of the new stuff we added to the game you can fly your ship and now you can go and shoot the guns or now you can go land on the planet and then jump in your dune buggy and drive around the planet so there is content.
    86:03
    It's the way they've designed it is they're putting it out as like modules that they add to, or they add new content and new modules that give new ability, and eventually there'll be a full game there, supposedly, someday. And it's still, even now, not the worst dropping I've taken from pre-ordering something. So, hey. Because I'm only in the Star Citizen for like $125. Robotech Kickstarter. Oh, I remember the Robotech. You talked about that one for an hour. Yeah. So you were very angry. It was way more than that, and I got almost nothing. Whatever happened with that company? They're gone? They're not gone, but their Robotech stuff's gone because they lost the licensing.
    86:50
    But that company still exists doing other things because Robotech wasn't their only thing. but yeah, no, they're I haven't looked it up recently because it's just anger it's just so much anger but, yeah that's where we are well, for those that want to reach out to us about where we are at and the hobby of video games or pinball you can always email us at CollectedGamersPodcast at gmail.com or go to facebook.com slash EclecticGamersPodcast we're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as Eclectic underscore Gamer and we'll be back in a couple of weeks with Who knows what news? Possibly Rush.
    87:31
    I'm guessing a December reveal. I would think so. But it could be January, but I think December. It would be a nice drop if they could get some LEs and stuff available just before Christmas.
    87:44
    Yeah, it would be a treat. A treat for all of you. 10,000 plus some other thousands by Christmas. Yay! Well, until then, I am Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye, everybody. See ya.