Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Put your money where your mouth is

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·52m 49s·held·May 29, 2020
View original

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

BlahCade discusses digital pinball music licensing, arcade cabinet sales booms, and proposes listener poll on premium soundtrack DLC.

Summary

BlahCade hosts Chris Friebus and Jared Morgan discuss Joe Rogan's Spotify deal, Arcade1Up's booming business during COVID-19 versus delays at other manufacturers, and propose a poll asking listeners whether they would pay $5 DLC for official music licensing on Zen Pinball digital tables. The conversation also explores DLC pricing models across gaming platforms and digital ownership concerns.

Key Claims

  • Arcade1Up has sold over one million arcade cabinets in two years, with 96% week-to-week sales growth since March 2020 lockdowns

    high confidence · Chris Friebus citing Arcade1Up business metrics during COVID-19

  • Toy Shock (formerly Arcuda) has announced indefinite closure due to COVID-19 disrupting manufacturing and distribution

    high confidence · Chris Friebus referencing Ed Partridge's alert about Arcuda banner notification

  • Zen Pinball only licensed music from the original Star Wars trilogy (A New Hope) for their Star Wars tables, not later films

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan explaining licensing constraints on Star Wars music

  • Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 2 remaster recovered only 18 of 26 original soundtrack songs due to licensing difficulties with 1990s artists

    high confidence · Chris Friebus discussing Tony Hawk licensing challenges

  • The Zen Alien table is well-designed with proper music integration into gameplay scenes

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan opinion on Alien table quality

  • Arcade1Up has had no distribution problems because they pre-stockpiled arcade cabinet inventory

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus explaining Arcade1Up's manufacturing advantage over competitors

  • Joe Rogan signed a $100 million deal with Spotify to move his podcast exclusively to the platform

    high confidence · Chris Friebus citing Joe Rogan's Spotify exclusive podcast deal

  • Some pinball players claim Whitewater is unplayable due to the hi-hat noise distraction

    medium confidence · Chris Friebus referencing community complaints about Whitewater

  • Rock Band DLC customers could accumulate 4,000+ songs at $5 per song pack, totaling approximately $20,000+

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan discussing Rock Band DLC spending patterns

Notable Quotes

  • “I would be happy with $20 million a year. $20 million a year would be able to sustain my lifestyle as I currently know it.”

    Chris Friebus @ early in episode — Humorous self-deprecation about podcast income vs. Joe Rogan's deal; frames their motivation as non-monetary

  • “We don't do it for the money. We certainly don't do it for the fame. So we just do it because reasons. because of reasons because stuff and things.”

    Jared Morgan @ opening segment — Establishes BlahCade's ethos of passion over profit; becomes a running joke

  • “It's fascinating that they're not having any issues with that. And here's the thing. I think this bodes really, really well for pinball, digital pinball in general.”

    Chris Friebus @ mid-episode — Key insight linking Arcade1Up's success to broader digital pinball market expansion

  • “If you secure that Stern license, then there's all those third-party licenses that are going to have to go. Yeah, that's true. Those things are going to get costly.”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Discussion of licensing complexity if Zen acquires Stern IP; reveals cost pressures

  • “Music's hard. Very hard. I mean, just, again, ask Stern. Yeah, exactly. With the music tables that they've put out and the contract runs out and that's time to go back to Vault Edition and it's like, hey, did that price just go up?”

    Jared Morgan @ mid-episode — Highlights the commercial reality of music licensing expiration and price increases in pinball

  • “For those tables that are iconic, like E.T. and Jaws and those, that you really need the music, particularly if it's well orchestrated, to, you know, in certain points in the game, it would just make a huge difference to your enjoyment of the game. It would be so much more immersive.”

    Jared Morgan @ poll discussion — Explains the value proposition behind paid music DLC; emphasizes immersion over mechanics

  • “I think for five bucks, it would need to be well integrated into the game. They couldn't just chuck a soundtrack into the game and just have the thing playing over and over again.”

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonJoe RoganpersonEd PartridgepersonArcade1UpcompanyToy ShockcompanyZen Pinball / Zen StudioscompanyWilliamscompanyStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • $

    market_signal: Arcade1Up's 1M+ unit sales in two years and 96% weekly growth during COVID-19 lockdowns demonstrates significant consumer appetite for home arcade cabinets and hints at halo effect for digital pinball platforms

    high · Chris Freebiss: 'Arcade1Up has sold over one million arcade cabinets in two years...96% week-to-week better in sales since March...they're not having any problem with distribution'

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: Toy Shock (Arcuda) announces indefinite closure due to COVID-19 manufacturing and distribution disruptions, contrasting sharply with Arcade1Up's supply chain resilience

    high · Chris Freebiss: 'Arcuda posted a banner that said closing indefinitely...COVID-19 disrupting manufacturing distribution services'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Discussion of music licensing as major cost barrier for digital pinball platforms; Tony Hawk Pro Skater remaster could only secure 18 of 26 original songs due to artist pricing and IP holder reluctance

    high · Chris Freebiss: 'some bands...think that they're worth even more now and so they price themselves right out of it'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Hosts propose $5 DLC model for official music licensing on Zen Pinball tables, suggesting audience segmentation between casual players and invested enthusiasts willing to pay for immersion

    medium · Chris Freebiss: 'would you be willing to pay $5 DLC to have the music for those tables? Is that insane?'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Discussion emphasizes that music licensing DLC must be deeply integrated into gameplay (tied to specific modes/scenes) rather than simply overlaid; reflects quality standards for audio design in pinball

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.158

0:00
blockade pinball podcast this is the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebiss aka shut your trap joining as always halfway across the world jerry morgan hello there Groundhog Day.
0:27
Well, for those that are watching live, they're the only ones learning to get that. You know, it's kind of funny. So, obviously, I always announce my name and then my online, wherever you can find me, name being ShutYourTrap. And yet people are still surprised in forums where they go, wait, you're the guys that do the podcast? Really? It's like... Well, okay. I couldn't be more clear every single time, but maybe there's a lot of shut your traps out there. I don't know. There's not, really.
1:02
When I type your name into Twitter, there's only a couple that come up. Yeah, you know. So, Jared, clearly we're not doing this correctly.
1:13
Are you familiar with who Joe Rogan is? Joe Rogan? Vaguely, yes. Remind me? Joe Rogan used to be an actor. He used to be, I think he still does stand-up sometime. He does all the commentary for UFC fights, and he also has, depending on the service, a top three podcast of everybody in the world. Oh, right, okay. If you go over to YouTube, Joe has almost 2,000 episodes, and when I say episodes, these are like two to three hour long episodes with people, you know, celebrities and politicians and people that he talks to and everything. It's absolutely a very, very good podcast video-wise. The reason why I say that we're doing this wrong is Spotify just signed him to yank all of his videos off of YouTube and put them over on Spotify, who I guess is now going to be doing videos and do his podcast exclusively over there to the tune of $100 million over the next couple of years. $100 million, eh? $100 million. I actually saw a tweet relating to this the other day and I had no idea what it was talking about. I was going, what? Joe Rogan? Spotify? What? I also didn't have the cares to actually go and research any further than the tweet because I did not know who this guy was.

  • FarSight probably built their Pinball Arcade platform model on monthly $5 song/table DLC releases similar to Rock Band

    medium confidence · Jared Morgan speculating on FarSight's DLC pricing strategy

    • Jared Morgan @ DLC discussion — Sets quality standard for DLC pricing; warns against lazy implementation

  • “So then you basically, there was a classless war in rock band because you didn't have enough songs.”

    Chris Friebus @ Rock Band DLC discussion — Colorful description of digital divide in online gaming; reveals social friction from DLC inequality

  • “I'm seriously questioning with the PS5 coming out. I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to wind up getting it or not... the only titles that I really cared about anymore were Uncharted and The Last of Us of which Uncharted is done.”

    Chris Friebus @ console discussion — Signals declining console loyalty; reflects broader trend of players moving to PC for ownership/flexibility

  • “It's annoying having that many things hooked up to your TV. It's really annoying. But it's the only way you can actually enjoy all those past titles.”

    Chris Friebus @ console section — Illustrates friction in maintaining backward compatibility across console generations; commentary on digital ecosystem fragmentation

    • FarSight Studios
    company
    Harmonixcompany
    Activisioncompany
    Pinball FX 3product
    Pinball Arcadeproduct
    Rock Bandproduct
    Guitar Heroproduct
    Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 2product
    Jawsgame
    E.T.game
    Jurassic Parkgame
    Back to the Futuregame
    Star Warsgame
    Aliengame
    White Watergame
    Iron Mangame

    medium · Jared Morgan: 'It would need to be well integrated into the game...have that tied in properly to the music and the music of that particular scene'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Chris Freebiss expresses hesitation about PS5 purchase due to exhausted exclusive title pipeline (Uncharted complete, Last of Us sequel final); signals broader console gaming fatigue and migration toward PC

    medium · Chris Freebiss: 'I'm seriously questioning with the PS5...the only titles I really cared about anymore were Uncharted and The Last of Us which are done'

  • $

    market_signal: Hosts discuss platform lock-in and DLC library non-portability across console generations; highlights consumer anxiety about investment loss in digital ecosystems

    medium · Chris Freebiss: 'when this thing dies...I'd rather just sit at a desk and play a game rather than have to worry about my hundreds of dollars worth of downloads'

  • ?

    community_signal: BlahCade announces multi-platform poll (Twitter, Discord, Digital Pinball Fans forum, PinballFX3 Discord) to gauge listener interest in premium music DLC; indicates active community consultation approach

    high · Chris Freebiss: 'I'm going to post this up...on Twitter...also on Digital Pinball Fans or on the PinballFX3 Discord chat page'

  • ?

    content_signal: Extended discussion of Joe Rogan's $100M Spotify deal and content creator compensation establishes context for BlahCade's non-commercial ethos

    high · Chris Freebiss: 'Joe Rogan...has a top three podcast of everybody in the world...Spotify just signed him...to the tune of $100 million'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Extensive Rock Band and Guitar Hero DLC discussion establishes historical precedent for aggressive music licensing monetization; Rock Band customers accumulated 4000+ songs costing $20,000+

    high · Chris Freebiss and Jared Morgan: Rock Band discussion showing $5 per song pack model accumulating to 4,000 songs and $20,000+ spending

  • ?

    design_innovation: Jared Morgan highlights Zen Alien table as exemplary for proper music integration into gameplay scenes; contrasts with Iron Man's generic techno music as negative example

    medium · Jared Morgan: 'Alien...is the one table that I think they did a fantastic job' vs. Iron Man 'generic techno music that Zen used to love doing'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Discussion reveals that securing Stern license for digital platforms would require re-negotiating third-party music/IP licenses, creating cost and complexity barriers

    medium · Chris Freebiss: 'If you secure that Stern license, then there's all those third-party licenses that are going to have to go...Those things are going to get costly'

    • 2:50
    Apparently, I didn't read the tweet, so I don't really know the backstory, but some people are saying that was a really dumb move on his behalf.
    2:56
    I wouldn't say it's a dumb move on his behalf. I mean, here's the thing. He's got like 4.4 million subscribers on YouTube.
    3:04
    Now, I'm sure he's making money off of the advertisements there, but he's going to flip over, and his whole thing was, you've got to be just like YouTube was, which is absolutely free for anybody to be able to do. They just have to put up with the ads like they do on YouTube if they're not a YouTube Red subscriber. Basically, or YouTube Premiere, I don't know, whichever their more expensive services.
    3:27
    So technically, everybody should be able to follow over. But tell me another podcaster that's earning 100, or YouTube sensation that's earning that kind of dough. Oh, I don't know. I generally don't follow those type of YouTube accounts, so I wouldn't be able to tell you that. But that's what I'm saying.
    3:51
    You hear about YouTubers that are pulling in $10 million a year. Like PewDiePie, et cetera. Exactly. Well, I mean, shoot, if he can, let's say this deal is for the next five years, I would be happy with $20 million a year. $20 million a year would be able to sustain my lifestyle as I currently know it. Yeah, it would be all right. I'm happy just getting, you know, games codes sent to us. Exactly right. Well, certainly for this profession that we're both doing now, like, yeah, getting the odd game code here and there, sort of, yeah, it's pretty sweet, you know. I mean, you know, I guess our drive isn't quite what his is. Well, we don't do it for the money. We certainly don't do it for the fame. So we just do it because reasons. because of reasons because stuff and things wait a second we gotta save that for the end there um okay so let's uh we're gonna kind of dive right in here folks um hold on i gotta get uh get a little window action going on so i'm staring at the uh the proper thing um oh window action not not that kind of window action um So we want to start things off by, we posted this week a little notification that we saw, that Jared specifically saw, regarding our friends over at Arcuda. And that was a banner that said, closing indefinitely.
    5:26
    Hmm. It was a little bit ominous. And it's up there now. It's going to stay there for a while. And it wasn't actually me who found it. one of the friends of the show, Ed Partridge, who you'll know from previous exploits as the guys doing all pinball and play ball games there. He said, so, yeah, more delays. That was his message to me. And I went, oh, it's, yeah, not really good at all. Well, and the sad part is it's just like they keep on coming so close, so close to what seems like finally having product that people will have in their homes. and then something happens. And this time around, it's good old COVID-19 disrupting manufacturing distribution services.
    6:15
    But, you know, I firmly believe that, as with a lot of companies, it's just everybody's kind of being put on hold from the moment. Yeah, pretty much. So hopefully we wish them all the best and hopefully we'll hear more news from them. Now, the flip side of that is something that I've read about Arcade 1-Up, regarding how booming their business has been because of good old COVID-19. Yeah, they've been getting, like, I don't know the number, I forgot the numbers off the top of my head, but they are an astronomical amount of units sold. There's a million or something, isn't there? Yeah, so in the two years that they've been selling these cabinets, they have sold over one million arcade cabinets, which is astounding in two years' time. That's a lot. Yeah. I mean, we're not talking about, you know, Xboxes here, folks. It's a physical product that only has a limited amount of things, you know. Yeah, that's huge. And then on top of that, since March, which basically is when the U.S. went into lockdown mode, mid-March, they've been doing 96% week-to-week better in sales. Because everyone's bored. Right, but the amazing part is they're not having any problem with distribution. I don't know who it is they were using or where they're manufacturing their parts or whatever, but they said they had enough of the arcade cabinets in stockpile that they were able to pull from that, and that was therefore not overwhelming the manufacturing, and so they've been able to keep up and keep on going. So where Toy Shock had announced that they were going to have to push when, what is it, the 2.0? Actually, the 1.2 come out. Everything's being pushed farther down the pike. Hopefully, 1UP's not having to push anything, and we'll still see that Star Wars cabinet come out, I believe they said third quarter. Something like that. We're getting close to entering third quarter of the year. That would be good. Yeah, so hopefully they're still on track there.
    8:32
    Oh, I love that comment right there, Jared. They don't want to wait for anything else to be released. Any new tales for Pinball FX 3 and Beta? I don't know.
    8:46
    We can't confirm or deny anything. Sorry. So it's about that. Yeah, that's about that. and then they promptly clicked away and said, I'm not listening to this anymore.
    9:03
    Let's stick around. This is what we do. So anyway, yeah, I thought it was really fascinating, though, that they're not having any issues with that. And here's the thing. I think this bodes really, really well for pinball, digital pinball in general, because Toy Shock was saying that they had no problem with their initial release, selling out everything they had manufactured. All right, that went really quick, actually. Right. And now you're going to have 1UP coming out with their cabinets. And so hopefully that does. And what that does is it just raises the profile of Digital Pinball in general. And once you've got the profile raised and once you've got a larger user base, then you're going to start gathering attention, like we've touched upon before, of people that go, hey, what's this thing that I'm seeing in Target and Walmart that everybody's scooping up, and how can I become a part of it? Yeah, because everyone doesn't want to be, they don't want to keep up with the Joneses, right? So if someone else has one of these things in their lounge room, well, of course you're going to want one. Or more, right, and you're going to get these people that are like, well, hey, you know that license that I don't know what to do quite with? Hey, do you guys want to do something with it?
    10:15
    So that's kind of the... That's what I would hope. I really, really want this to open up the doors more, kick the doors down, basically, for Xen.
    10:28
    Because, again, we've seen what they've been doing with the Williams license that they have right now.
    10:36
    Everybody is hoping that they'll eventually secure the Stern license. But if you secure that Stern license, then there's all those third-party licenses that are going to have to go.
    10:47
    Yeah, that's true. Those things are going to get costly. And I would point out that cost because just announced also, and believe me, I'm so on board with this, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 2 remastered in 4K. The trailer that dropped, it looks just fantastic. the company that's making it is actually using the physics code that never soft used for those first two games yeah so it's going to still feel like it should hold yeah because apparently i i suddenly of course i've been doing a youtube deep dive and um somebody was talking about the last tony hawk remaster that came out the tony hawk hd and they were saying it looked decent it was made in Unreal Engine, Unreal 3, but the physics just were not the same, and that kind of ruined the whole feel of it. Yeah, that reminds me quite a bit of, you know, the reason why the Daytona 3 and stuff didn't do very well in the arcades is because, oh sorry, Daytona 2, and probably Daytona 3 as well, didn't do well in the arcades because Daytona 2, it just didn't feel like Daytona. And if you're used to playing a game, particularly if you have nostalgic feelings about something like Tony Hawk, which is a hugely popular franchise, one of which I did not get into, but I know it was massive. Large enough that the second game, I think, is still the number two best rated game on Metacritic.
    12:27
    Insane, right? And I know that Netherworld ran a Tony Hawk tournament down here. So they had a whole lot of PlayStation all hooked up, ready to play Tony Hawk, and there was some serious competition going on. Because people love it.
    12:44
    Now one of the big things is part of what made the game was the soundtrack, right? So they went back and tried to secure all the licenses. There's 26 songs between the first two games.
    12:58
    And by the looks of it, they've been able to secure 18 of those songs. And basically what they came out and said was look it ain so easy to secure things from the 90s anymore There plenty of bands that just don want to be a part of something like this or think that they worth even more now and so they price themselves right out of it.
    13:21
    And that's what I'm hoping is the opposite of what will happen with these pinball tables coming out on these platforms like 1UP and what Toy Shock has because maybe these bands and stuff will still be receptive to the idea and be like, hey, no, you know what? You're putting our music in front of all these eyeballs again? Great.
    13:47
    The downside is that a lot of these artists are like, yeah, but we've moved on from that song. We don't want to play that song anymore in concert. We want to sell our new album.
    13:56
    Wouldn't you rather have our new song? And I think that's where the licensing kind of gets kind of tricky, especially when it comes to music. Because music's hard. Very hard. Oh, yeah. I mean, just, again, ask Stern.
    14:17
    Yeah, exactly. With the music tables that they've put out and the contract runs out and that's time to go back to Vault Edition and it's like, hey, did that price just go up? Mm-hmm. Yep. Or securing, I'm sorry, when they made the Beatles table, do you think that was cheap, getting that music? Yeah, no.
    14:42
    It wasn't. And that's why the table cost so much. Yeah, very, very much. So here's the question that we want to pose to you folks.
    14:56
    And it's kind of, because it got me thinking about, well, a couple of things have been getting me thinking about this. I've been going back and watching movies, old movies or older movies from the 90s, of which a few then have, wouldn't you know it, licensed titles in Zen, like Jaws and E.T. and Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park is the ones that I've been going back and watching right now. Yes. And, of course, we've kind of touched upon this before when you're playing them, that there's something definitely missing because the music's not there. and the Star Wars tables feel like Star Wars because you get that Star Wars music and I think I keep on trying to correct me if I'm wrong Jared but I think the Xen only licensed music from the first movie from A New Hope I don't think they licensed it from or the original trilogy maybe that was what they licensed it for I think it was from the original trilogy because there's certainly no original music in the later tables like Force Awakens etc no no no they've been pulling everything from that original batch of music because it's insanely expensive. Because John Williams likes to get paid. Right?
    16:10
    Or at least his agent does. So here's what I want to know. And if you're in the comments section, I would love to have you guys chime in. We're also going to put a poll up on Twitter and probably in the Discord forum and the Digital Pinball Fans forum just because I really do want to know if this is something that you guys would be interested in that maybe we can kind of convince them to go back and do this, which is, would you pay extra to have the official music on those tables?
    16:46
    So having the Jurassic Park theme on all three Jurassic World tables. Well, they did Jurassic World and Mayhem and Park. Okay, yeah, so they did three different things. But anyway, yeah, doing the classic Jurassic Park theme or having the E.T. theme or the Jaws theme on the Jaws table, you know, on Back to the Future, either using the Back to the Future music or, you know, going over to Huey Lewis and saying, hey, can we borrow, you know, a little Power of Love?
    17:13
    That's right. Or Back in Time, because I think he did that one, too. Yes, he did two songs. And then if you want to go for the for the triplicate, then go talk to ZZ Top and get Doubleback put in there.
    17:23
    Yeah. But here's the thing. knowing that music is insanely expensive, would you be willing to pay, and I'm just going to throw this number out here, $5 DLC to have the music for those tables? Is that insane? Would it make the tables better? Do you feel like, ah, I can live without the music?
    17:47
    Just kind of curious to know what everybody's thoughts are. What are some of the thoughts that go through your mind there, Jared?
    17:54
    It's an interesting idea. I think for those tables that are iconic, like E.T. and Jaws and those, that you really need the music, particularly if it's well orchestrated, pun half intended, to, you know, in certain points in the game, it would just make a huge difference to your enjoyment of the game. It would be so much more immersive. You know me, I'm a huge sound nut when it comes to getting sound right in pinball.
    18:29
    And yeah, it would make a huge difference, I reckon, to how you enjoy the table. So for the cost of a large coffee, yeah, I'd probably pay that. Because I know that when I play Iron Man, I hate the music. It's that generic techno music that Zen used to love doing. Oh, yeah. It just brings nothing. I would do anything to get rid of that techno blab that they have in there. I mean, I turn off the music whenever I play those. But if you were able to throw in a little Avengers music on there or something from the Marvel movies. Yeah, some orchestral stuff. Because they've got a massive back catalog of orchestral music in all of those Marvel franchises. There's huge amounts of content they could use. you know you know so yeah it would make a big difference it's an interesting thought that's what i'm saying i'm curious to know what people's opinions would be if it's a is it a make or break on the table because there's plenty of people that my god they say tables are broken for the silliest of reasons i how many people are saying that whitewater is unplayable because of the hi-hat noise.
    19:42
    Oh, yeah. It makes it incredibly hard to play that game. No, just play better. Play better, folks, if you can't play the game that well. I had noise. So that's the thing, though. It's like, well, if I can put up with that, I mean, I personally don't even, never bother me in the least, but if I can put up with that, can't I put up with the generic music on the Jurassic Park table? but and this is where i'm saying hey if you're going to complain or you want if you had that option if it was just there as a dlc an add-on think of it as when tpa was doing hey do you want the pro add-on um yeah exactly and the pro add-on what was it five bucks per table five bucks wasn't worth it but it was still five bucks this this i think would be at least a little bit worth it because it's going to be right there on your face every single time you play it every single was only playing. I think for five bucks, it would need to be well integrated into the game. They couldn't just chuck a soundtrack into the game and just have the thing playing over and over again. It would need to be they need to do a proper job of actually putting it into the game. Like where a mode starts for example, have that tied in properly to the music and the music of that particular scene in the movie if they're doing scenes, like for example Alien and all the scenes and everything. actually I thought Alien strangely enough is the one table that I think they did a fantastic job yeah but you know what I mean right the other movie scenes in all the Star Wars ones should I have that music that's linked to the scene that would be for real Star Wars fans that would be a huge difference I think so yeah I think if that is what I got for 5 US dollars it's important to note the currency here too We're talking five US dollars, so you know like 35 Australian dollars at the moment.
    21:37
    It's more like eight, but still, you know, I think I'd probably, on some tables, I don't know if I'd jump for all of them, because some of the tables I'm just not really a big fan of. But for those tables that I am, I play a lot and I enjoy, yeah, I'd probably invest the money in that. All right, so, yeah, I'm going to post this up in some way, shape, or form up on Twitter, and I'll leave it up there for a couple of days. So if you have an opinion, please go pop into the poll, and if you're not on Twitter, look for it also on Digital Pinball Fans or on the PinballFX3 Discord chat page, which, if you haven't been over to, is rather can get lively. Just saying. yeah i haven't gone to the discord page i'm in the um the steam forum so now so good because i never go over there yeah i i normally just like whenever i get the chance to actually open up steam it's usually to play games and i see like that oh you've got 25 new messages they go maybe later and i never really check them um but i'm still in there so my i have an intention to go and look through some of the threads but i often don't get a chance because i just actually you know i want to play games when i'm on um uh steam not read shocking yeah i did go uh so i downloaded the free gta5 that epic games was offering uh and i used to be a huge gta fan back when it was gta3 vice city and vice city is huge i love vice city uh but then i fell out for san andreas it just didn't grab me i think i got about halfway through it and then uh gta4 did nothing for me and so i didn't even bother with gta5 but hey it's free so you know yeah we know the video hasn't uh synced back up there's nothing we can do about that unfortunately that's a cool feature that's that's a feature of our show that one um out of sync audio and video so um yeah it's one of the premium features we often we offer and you're all subscribed to it I downloaded it a long time ago for free on the PS4 when they were doing their monthly game of it, the Mad Max game. I was all excited for the game, and then I was like, why did I never play it? I know I loaded it up, but that was about the end of it. And then I realized, well, that was when my son was going through his whole brain surgery thing. So there's a good reason why I never... Yeah, that's probably a fair reason for taking a gap away from literally everything.
    24:14
    Yeah. Yeah, you know. So I had been playing this Sniper Elite 4, which was kind of fun, just taking insanely long shots in World War II and knocking off Nazis. But I finished that.
    24:28
    It is, Jared. Trust me. It's quite therapeutic being 300 yards out, and they can't hear your gunfire and just, poing, headshot.
    24:38
    And so I was like, I should play that Mad Max game. So I started playing it. and it's totally like a GTA.
    24:47
    Totally. Just in terms of it's that open world, you're wandering around, picking up missions, there's roads for you to drive down and the roads are heavily traveled by, you know, other war boys and you can do little car battles and get out of your car and do things. I mean, it's not totally GTA, but it's certainly along that same vein of driving around smashing things. Yeah, it's that classic genre that we all know and love. Yeah, you know. It's going to scare me if I get back into the old Guitar Hero realm of things, but something tells me I'm not going to.
    25:28
    No, well, you've got to have deep pockets if you want to get back into that realm. No, because I already have all the games, all the instruments. All the DLC, all right, yeah. Bonoie.
    25:39
    Let's talk about DLC for a moment again, folks. You want to talk about insane DLC? Guitar Hero. Actually, Rock Band was the main offender here. Because Guitar Hero just would put out a new disc every year.
    25:57
    And you'd have to then buy that disc and get all the songs. And it took them a while to make it so you could import the previous disc's music into your current library. but then of course that importing here we go again some artists went no you know want to and so then those songs didn't carry over so if you want to play those songs and I looking at tool in particular no you got to stick with one that particular game if you wanted to play their song So you have to go bust out the disc put it back in play that and then, okay, I'm done with that, and then go back and do the other. And then Rock Band took it in a completely different way, which was, well, we're going to put out our bass disc, and then we're just going to kick out new songs every month. And it would be like two songs a month, basically. and they would charge five bucks per song or i mean per pack pack all right which again hey us playing pinball we're kind of aware of that i think i honestly truly believe that's the model that farsight uh built their platform on probably yeah um but then all of a sudden i looked one day at the list of dlc that they had and they had yeah we could see you mace um he's all he's being sneaky because i know what he wants he wants his tablet here oh okay uh we can see you buddy just stand up you look more foolish um no i looked at this list they had over 2 000 songs two thousand songs five dollars a bop that's a lot of money chris that's insane and then so as as the uh time went on and the fad was fading those of us that were still playing online because that was where it was at it was online man he didn't close my closet door um so the portal to another world is open right it's like good god there's books back there and a really old stereo.
    28:12
    Because I paid to import all the music into basically Rock Band 3. It was, I think, the last iteration.
    28:22
    And I'd be playing against people online. Well, you could see what other songs, how big their DLC library was.
    28:29
    And my library of over 300 songs, not good enough. And so they'd hop back offline. they wouldn't connect with you. Oh, they wouldn't even play with you because you didn't have enough titles to choose from. No, because they were like, I've already played all those songs. I don't want to play those anymore. I want to play all the new stuff. Oh, wow. So then you basically, there was a classless war in rock band because you didn't have enough songs. So therefore you were like the downtrodden and you never got any people Yeah, you're some popper going, please sir, play with me.
    29:03
    You know, and I'm like, wait a second. And by the time we got to where they weren't, you know, it was between PS3 and PS4, or excuse me, yeah, because that was this big discussion of, hey, when the PS4 comes out, is there going to be a new Rock Band game? Is all that DLC going to carry over? Because some people were going, I have all, by this point, 4,000 songs.
    29:32
    Whoa, okay. that's uh is that twenty thousand dollars that's what i'm saying i don't know how much money they pumped into this thing again if you're pumping you know five bucks every week or two you don't really notice it right yeah well it's just like buying a coffee really isn't it it's like oh yeah right i'll just go get my songs you know but then when you but then when you have to go do a platform shift you realize how much you just spent and that you're landlocked on that platform well yeah because you i mean there's no way they're going to carry over those songs for free right no we've been well we've been following how dlc works in in pinball for long enough and pinball is probably the more you know um generous dlc side of things like uh when we're talking about music well zen has no hope certainly zen was yes that's that's true zen is definitely the ones that uh will try and look after you where they can but yeah no way like we're talking about activision as well aren't we for rock band so no no activision was a guitar hero ah yes rock band was uh harmonics oh harmonics yeah still though they're they're still trying to make money here and i think honestly i think because i saw the writing on the wall for that where i questioned wait a second what happens when the ps4 comes out and i was just looking at my pinball arcade library in that second season going i don't think i'm going to because i know i'm gonna get a ps4 but i don't want to rebuy everything again and that's when i put the brakes on it and then somebody sent me a code for the PC, and once I started playing on the PC, it was like, you know what, I'm going to stay over here because I'm never going to have to worry about my library not migrating with me. That's right. All I need is a compatible PC and I'm done. Like, yeah, the console game is good. There's trade-offs, as we already know what they are, like convenience over ownership, really. Well, again, even right now, I have hooked up to my TV. A PS2, a PS3, a PS4, a Switch. I did have a Wii U hooked up.
    31:59
    It's annoying having that many things hooked up to your TV. It's really annoying. It is. But it's the only way you can actually enjoy all those past titles. Right. But then I pop over on my PC and it's, hey, there's Steam. and hey i flip over my laptop and even though it can't play games very well i could down i go hey there's steam i could just download the games over here you know i don't have to unplug and haul it around and all that other stuff no it's just there and you can you can play it as long as your hardware supports it go for it yeah and that's good i mean like there's trade-offs like portability wise pc sucks but at the same time i'd rather just sit at a desk and play a game rather than have to worry about, geez, what's my hundreds of dollars worth of downloads and stuff going to do when this thing dies? You know, it's just a thought that would just plague me, I reckon, if I had a console. Yeah. I mean, that's why I'm seriously questioning with the PS5 coming out. I'm like, I don't know if I'm going to wind up getting it or not.
    33:06
    I don't, well... I mean, it's going to be... Let's put it to you this way. the only reason why I get it is for PlayStation exclusive titles yeah yeah but the problem is that the only titles that I really cared about anymore were Uncharted and The Last of Us of which Uncharted is done The Last of Us is getting its sequel coming out in a couple of weeks for the PS4 and other than that the exclusives that I liked like I was into God of War but I mean who knows if there's going to be another game of that so it's kind of like the titles that I really like my Playstation 4 to begin with are all kind of winding down and done and I'm not latching on to any of the new exclusives and so I'm just playing third party stuff that pops up on the PC instead yeah I don't know yeah I don't have an answer to how I feel about consoles The idea of a Switch sounds nice to me, but I don't really have a lot of time to play games at the moment. So having another thing I need to look at all the time reminding me that I don't have time to do anything fun isn't really a good prospect for me at the moment. I know my boy loves the Switch.
    34:32
    What's funny is he almost rarely ever plugs it into the TV. He almost always plays it exclusively in portable mode. So he would be definitely a candidate for the Switch Lite? No.
    34:46
    No, because he actually loves playing it with the Pro Controller. Ah, right. Yeah. And I don't think the Switch Lite allows you to connect other hard-like peripherals through Bluetooth, or does it? I don't know. Honestly, I don't know.
    35:03
    But it's nice. I think you can connect other controllers to it. And here's the other thing that I don't like about the Switch Lite. You can't use the flip grip on it.
    35:12
    Yeah, you can't. Which is why you see heaps of Switch Lites. Most of the things on our local Craigslist-like services over here, you see people selling Switch Lites, and they go, oh, yeah, I've had it for a week, but now I'm buying a Switch, and I don't need it anymore. like i don't like it just seems like a i get where they're going with it but there's just you get to the point where you go no i really want to do this thing with it and you can't and you go well i'm stuck aren't i like i've i've either got to just suck it up and stick with this one i've got or go for the full switch but the thing is at the moment you can't buy a switch for love nor money here in australia because everyone bought them with covid19 i was just I was going to say everything is poof, gone. Yeah, everything is gone. You know what I did? I dragged out – you'll laugh at this. I dragged out a webcam that I had in my e-waste bag that I was going to take to the dump. Okay. It was like a 10-year-old Logitech C600. I had to look up the model number because it wasn't on there, and it's marked under C600, which is a 2-megapixel camera webcam. It just does 720p, just. and I sold the thing for $40 because people are that desperate for webcams down here that they will buy a 10-year-old one for $40 because you cannot get them. Well, apparently, I was just overhearing a conversation in the other room today.
    36:46
    Jigsaw puzzles. Can't find them. All right. Board games as well. I hear were pretty hard to get. The thing that kind of blows me away is no bicycles. oh really no bikes no because where do all the bikes come from china china oh yes yeah it sort of makes you realize that we rely probably a little bit too heavily on china for things just a bit yeah yeah you know if we were manufacturing locally yes we have to pay a lot more money but we at least control our supply chains that reminds me i saw a picture the sheer number of bicycles that are produced in China is staggering. And they do a thing that's kind of like the electric scooters that just get left.
    37:38
    Whereas it's bike sharing, more or less, right? Oh, yeah. But these things wind up littering the streets and piling up. And so a truck comes by and scoops up all the bikes. And then they take it to a bike graveyard. this picture that i saw it was a flyover with a drone yeah over this roving hill and i thought it was spring flowers in bloom oh no it was just all the different colored bicycles stacked in this essential graveyard just for acres wow just the just bones of bikes just the bones of bikes wow and and you and and they said something about that they were basically they produce twice as many bikes as there are people in china okay who is using the other ones Well, they're in the trash.
    38:40
    Oh, jeez. You just think of how much of a waste that is. Surely they could just take all those bikes and just melt them down. Well, I'm sure they'd get melted down eventually.
    38:50
    There's probably such a backlog of them that they have to put them somewhere before they can actually get into the meltdown queue. Right, right. But, yeah, no, I walked.
    38:58
    We're going to get one of our bikes tuned up, and so I'd gone to a bike store to make sure they were doing it. and the only bikes that they had, and this is a proper bike shop, the only bikes that they had were all $1,000 and more bicycles. So the elite bikes that no one, like mom and dad and their kids, would want to buy. It's the bikes for the serious biker, yeah.
    39:21
    We're doing triathlon sort of thing. Right, serious mountain biking and stuff, yeah. And then just even the local Target, I noticed that there wasn't a single bike up on their wall of bikes.
    39:32
    Wow And those are the dirt cheap bikes that basically are the landfill of China Yeah pretty much Like they last for a couple years and that about it Yeah. So, anyway, amazing. Speaking of landfills, so, Pimble Hall of Fame, Las Vegas. Yeah. They just broke ground on their new site. Ah. Their new site is actually on the Strip. it's just south of the Mandalay Bay right near the Welcome to Las Vegas sign on the strip. Right. And basically, you've got to love Tim Arnold. Tim Arnold is a character to be sure. And he goes, we're going to make sure that we have this gigantic sign of Pinball Hall of Fame so that anybody that is taking their picture of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign will have our sign in the background.
    40:27
    And then on top of that, he says that on the top of their roof, because they're literally right underneath the flight pattern of all flights coming into the airport there, right? Oh, right. So you'll be able to see the top of the building from the airplane windows. Just, you know, basically building here, airplanes are a little bit here, so they'll be able to see. And he says he's going to put in gigantic letters along the roof, Welcome to Reno, just to mess with people's heads.
    40:57
    What a troll. I love him. Anyway, he was doing an interview and they were asking where he got all of his tables, you know, all of his machines from, because he's got a warehouse of over a thousand machines. Yeah, he's got a collection. Yeah. And he basically said that back in the 80s, he would go around with a... I think he said it was a bread truck.
    41:23
    And all the arcades, they just dumped these things these these pinball machines there was no resale there was it was you used them for the couple of months that you know got your money back from them or whatever and hey you got to make space keep them throw them to the dump and rather than having them take them to the dump he offered to come and pick them up pick them up for him so he literally just picked up free pinball machines yeah yeah crazy business or lucky him yeah if it wasn't free i think he was saying that the most anybody was asking was 200 bucks.
    42:01
    You're right. So, yeah. Even back in the 80s, that was cheap. Yeah. And I've talked to a few people who said that they used to go to the dumps, to the city dump, and look for pinball machines in the dump.
    42:16
    Yeah. Which is just mind-boggling. Yeah, you think about where we are today, and there's not a soul that would do that you think about what how people lost their minds when they watched that uh tnt amusements video where they threw a pinball machine off the roof yeah and that was a junker as they then go say they're like it was irredeemably no way no how going to be fixed yeah yeah it was just beyond anything yeah but you know now even like there's an industry around junked pinball machines like there's a company called tilt cycle that manufactures pieces of art with old bits of pinball machines so even the old ones are the junkers get reborn into something else now like they would never go to the dump now that's probably also because you now got to pay a dumping fee.
    43:14
    Oh, yeah, that's right. And they're big, heavy. So, you know, it costs a lot. So, yeah. Oh, man. Yeah, the times will be... I mean, God, can you imagine, though, if it... Again, hop into your time machine and, you know, you find yourself plopping back into the 80s and you're just like... It's like the sports almanac of pinball, isn't it, really?
    43:36
    I mean, first things first, you're like, okay, I'm going to buy one of all of these and never open it and just leave it mint in box um take that well take the batteries out yeah yeah yeah pop it open long enough to pop the batteries out and that's it um and uh and then yeah i'm gonna go just to all these arcades and be like are you done with that yet do you want me to take that off your hands i can it's just taking up space for you like how much do you want me just to take it away for you like maybe give you a couple hundred for it or something like you know put the new space invaders soon it'll make you more money yeah yeah it should be incredible when this place opens up because it's being specifically designed for uh you know to their specifications this time around i think he said that they're able to double the amount of tables that they'll have up which currently i think they're at 200 and some um they're going to have a section of classic arcade cabinets also and he says that they're already they're buying any new table that comes out they buy um and put in and put in but he says that's still not enough to fill the floor space necessarily for what they want so they're going to be putting out some just really really oddball old uh unique like wood rails and stuff like that you just never you would never ever see and this is what was great when I went to Pacific Pinball Museum the stuff they have on the floor there you know I would never have seen them if I hadn't actually gone to America and gone to this place to see wood rails they're just not available anywhere so yeah having these really odd ones is the reason why you go to something like Pinball Hall of Fame or Pacific Pinball Museum because where else are you going to see these things? Maybe in a private collection of a person who's over 80 because they're the sort of people who collect wood rails.
    45:38
    It's an incredibly important thing that he's doing there in Reno. Reno, Las Vegas. That's one of those places that I'm going to be excited when it opens up because that's literally the only reason why I want to go to Las Vegas. Yeah, because gambling is a mugs game. You don't do that if you're smart. Well, especially, Las Vegas is about to open up again. Oh, right. Within, I think, next week.
    46:10
    And everybody's going, well, how the hell do you do that when you have social distancing? Yeah. Every second pokey.
    46:18
    Every second seat on the table. Well, check out some of the things. So I think they said they're limiting to like roulette is only going to have three people at it. Craps will only have six people at it, max.
    46:31
    For like blackjack, there's going to be a plastic divider between the seats and a plastic divider in front of the dealer.
    46:40
    Decks of cards are going to be swapped out regularly. And then I imagine, and here's where I'm wondering, like, are they just going to toss the decks? or are they going to have some lady in the back with a rag wiping down each card? Because I was like, hey, you know what? They're not going to have a problem with marked decks anymore.
    47:01
    No, they certainly won't. You know, at the craps table, when new shooter comes out, new shooter gets new dice. You're not throwing the same dice that the past shooter shot with. Oh, yeah. Chips are going to regularly be cleaned. And that's another one. I was like, man. I mean, because when you're sitting at a table, you're playing with your chips nonstop. Yeah. the i think hand sanitizer in the uh slot pits is going to be basically every other machine yeah basically yeah well yeah this will change pretty much everything to do with well everything to do with gambling publicly um and i think that i i don't know how it's going to be like gambling is essentially a social activity and i think having these necessary things in place it's going to change the whole vibe of it and i just wonder if it's going to be as attractive for people as it was before well i tell you what you can use it to your advantage when you're playing poker because you know right before you know you got your hand you're kind of bluffing you know you're bluffing you're trying to shake everybody else off the uh off the pot and so you just go and then you push all in yep that's right hey i don't want those chips no no no you're full you keep that we're good yeah that's right yep oh man well anyway so folks i don't know if you've noticed but uh next episode is episode 200 how do we do that by showing up literally it was just the show of award stuff for an hour each couple of weeks so here's what i'm gonna throw out to you because it's probably gonna take us you know two or three weeks before we get to that show just with the sheer fact that there's no pinball news look at this show you'll see how we uh half pinball half not um so you know we're kind of spacing these things just in hopes that some news drops so then we can do an episode so but here's my question for you that episode 200 what would you guys like to see in episode 200 is there anything you want us to reminisce about anything you want us to cover um stories that you want us to retell, I don't know.
    49:32
    Please help us figure this one out. Drop us a line over there on the old Twitter and let us know that way. Or you can drop us an email, blahblahblockade at gmail.com.
    49:47
    Because it's hard to do a special episode when there's nothing special going on. Yeah. I mean, what did we do for the 100th show? We had a few guests of podcasts passed on. Yeah, we had Jeff Strong back on, and I can't remember, did we have Sean on that episode? I think he did pop in. Yeah, I think he did actually pop in. I think so.
    50:15
    So anyway, but I mean, there's no guarantee that we can secure them. And we've already done our interview with Mel recently, so we can't have one of those. So it might be the classic lockdown birthday party that everyone is said to have. Should we have some cars drive by and honk? Yeah, that's right.
    50:37
    It might be very non-eventful. But, you know, like Chris says, if you've got any ideas that you want us to explore for the next show, let us know and we'll see what we can do. Yeah, because, I mean, we kind of do the show for you guys anyway. Yeah. Like we said earlier, we don't do it for the fame nor the money.
    50:55
    We do it for the free games. Yeah, for the free games, yeah. All right. How else? How else can you guys show your support? Oh, yeah. You know we sell T-shirts? I'm thinking, Jared, there's also over on This Week in Pinball. Apparently they now sponsor a T-shirt site, so we might have to go that route also. Then while I'm saying that, this week in pinball has a database of everybody that does a show about pinball. Check it out. And if you could be so kind, drop us a review, drop us a, a star rating so that we can be relevant. We've got a couple. We just want some more. It would be nice to get some more and it's free to do that. You don't have to pay a single cent. So if you don't want to support the show financially, do it by spreading the word and giving us nice ratings here and there. Yeah, and we're not saying that you have to give us a five star. Just don't give us a one star. Yeah, don't give us a one.
    51:59
    I don't think we're that bad. We're fine with constructive criticism, but, you know. In before folks saying that my audio is out of sync and they need to fix that before they give me a five.
    52:13
    And then we would completely go, you know. Show is great, except for their audio is sinking. And the echoes.
    52:20
    yeah exactly alright beyond that that's what we have to look forward to next time it's episode 200 that'll be packed with stuff and all things there you go folks alright be sure to keep an eye out for the polls that I'll be posting and make your thoughts known that way until next time buh-bye