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Episode 128 - Cake or Death (Pins or Video Games)?

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 9m·analyzed·Nov 16, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Pinball pricing concerns and Twitch DMCA chaos dominate discussion of industry trends.

Summary

Eclectic Gamers podcast episode discussing pinball and video games during COVID-19 quarantine. Hosts Dennis and Tony debate whether Stern should release Led Zeppelin pinball in 2020, discuss the $1,000 TMNT topper pricing criticism, and cover extensive Twitch DMCA strike issues affecting streamers across platforms.

Key Claims

  • Gary Stern indicated Stern has 5,000 pinball machine orders they're trying to catch up on

    high confidence · Dennis cited recent interview with Gary Stern regarding production backlog

  • Stern TMNT topper pricing jumped from ~$600 (Black Knight topper) to $1,000 in under a year

    high confidence · Dennis directly compared recent topper pricing to Black Knight moving topper at $450

  • Elvira House of Horrors rerun pushed from October to November/December or later

    high confidence · Dennis cited conversation with Zach Minney from Flippin' Out Pinball/Pinball Show

  • Twitch received fewer than 50 DMCA notifications per year before May 2020, then thousands per week starting May

    high confidence · Tony cited Twitch's published apology letter with specific statistics

  • Twitch gave users only 3 days (Tuesday to Friday) to delete flagged VODs before DMCA bans started

    high confidence · Tony described Twitch's notification and deletion tool timeline

  • Led Zeppelin as a theme is more commercially attractive than Guns N' Roses for pinball

    medium confidence · Dennis and Tony's opinion based on band popularity and licensing difficulty

  • GNR pinball is beautiful but reportedly not fun to play

    medium confidence · Tony summarized feedback from players; noted Zach Minney praised it but has history of generous ratings

  • A major unnamed band lead singer was DMCA struck for his own music on Twitch

    medium confidence · Tony mentioned incident but couldn't recall specific name; unverified detail

Notable Quotes

  • “There's no way Zeppelin doesn't sell. So especially with a really solid design behind it, it'd be insane.”

    Tony @ ~early episode — Core argument that Led Zeppelin IP strength alone drives sales regardless of game quality

  • “you could go out and buy a PS5 and an Xbox One Series X, both for the price of this topper”

    Dennis @ ~mid-episode — Value comparison illustrating topper price inflation relative to console pricing

  • “if enough people are willing to spend that much money on it, why wouldn't the companies make it that much? Sure, and that's the question. And Stern's experimenting, I think.”

    Tony / Dennis @ ~topper section — Acknowledges Stern using toppers as price ceiling experimentation with market feedback

  • “I just don't – unless the license deal makes them – forces their hand... I just think it's like, no, our lines are busy. Why sell a new game when we too busy selling the old ones”

    Dennis @ ~Led Zeppelin section — Production capacity constraints as rationale for delaying 2020 release

  • “when we start getting to the point where a topper is, what, a fifth of the price of a machine if you buy an SE? Yeah, no, and that's the value equation that I run through.”

    Dennis @ ~topper pricing — Arithmetic showing topper pricing approaching machine cost parity

  • “Their answer is to the DMCA problem is, oh, just don't play background music.”

    Tony @ ~DMCA section — Critique of Twitch's inadequate response to systemic DMCA issue

  • “there's been several streamers that are, oh, what do they call them? They're just real-life streamers who just stream them doing stuff, who've gotten hits because they were walking down the street past a restaurant that had music playing outside.”

    Dennis @ ~DMCA impact — Illustrates absurdity of DMCA enforcement scope beyond intentional music use

Entities

DennispersonTonypersonGary SternpersonSteve RitchiepersonZach MinneypersonStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyChicago Gaming CompanycompanyTwitchcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern has 5,000 pinball machines on backorder and is prioritizing production of existing titles over new releases

    high · Dennis: 'Gary Stern in an interview had indicated that Stern has actually got orders for 5,000 pinball machines that they're trying to catch up on'

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Show's video game coverage criticized as poor quality, driving viewers to Eclectic Gamers for alternative perspective

    medium · Dennis: 'a lot of people reached out, a lot for us, asking about listening to this show because the coverage of video games on TPS was so terrible that they needed to wash that out'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Stern positioned to undercut Jersey Jack on price while matching or exceeding gameplay quality; potential strategic Zeppelin release as direct GNR counter-play

    medium · Dennis: 'I could see them doing it as a counterplay... I think Zeppelin is a bigger pull period'

  • ?

    product_concern: GNR pinball sold on aesthetics and light show rather than gameplay quality; concerns that Zeppelin may need superior gameplay to compete despite brand strength

    medium · Tony: 'Everything I've heard is it's beautiful, it sounds great, the light show's amazing, and it plays pinball. Nah. Everything I've heard is it's very eh, but it's amazing and beautiful'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: LED Zeppelin historically difficult to license; Stern's potential ability to secure license positions as rare commercial advantage

    medium · Dennis: 'it's historically been very difficult to get them to agree to do licensed stuff'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.207

0:00
This episode of the Eclectic Gamers Podcast is brought to you by the Empire and the Roanoke Pinball Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. The Roanoke Pinball Museum. It is an interactive museum more powerful than the Death Star itself. It is powered by science and history of pinball. Its mission is to cultivate curiosity in science, art, and imperial design. The museum is open every day except during Order 66 and Mondays. It houses over 65 machines with models ranging from 1932 to 2018. If you only knew the power of the Roanoke Pinball Museum, join me and together we will explore the entire universe of pinball.
0:58
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, November 15th. This is episode 128 of this wonderful quarantine edition.
1:23
Tell us about the quarantine. Tony! The closest I've come to leaving the house was I did take my trash cans to the curb on Thursday morning at like 6 in the morning. And I've taken my dog out into the backyard. That's the only times I've left the house since I officially went into quarantine last Tuesday.
1:50
And I come off quarantine on this upcoming Thursday. Yes. So it's almost over. I'm fine. I have no issues.
2:03
Other than the headache of, you know, not being able to leave the house. And my mom has some medical stuff going on, and I haven't been able to go over and help with that at all.
YouTube Gamingcompany
Roanoke Pinball Museumorganization
Guns N' Rosesgame
Led Zeppelingame
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesgame
Elvira House of Horrorsgame
Black Knightgame
Whitewatergame
Whirlwindgame
R2-D2game
Hadesgame
Grand Theft Auto Vgame
  • $

    market_signal: YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming gaining traction among streamers due to superior DMCA/music licensing infrastructure vs Twitch

    high · Tony: 'YouTube Gaming doesn't have this problem... Facebook Gaming has signed licensing deals... This is mainly Twitch that is taking the heavy hits'

  • $

    market_signal: TMNT topper priced at $1,000 represents significant markup with minimal feature improvement over prior toppers (Black Knight $450)

    high · Dennis compared $1,000 TMNT to $450 Black Knight and noted doubling in price over ~1 year for similar moving parts

  • ?

    product_strategy: Elvira House of Horrors rerun pushed from October to November/December or later due to Stern production backlog

    high · Dennis: 'the Elvira House of Horrors, which was supposed to get another run in October, that has been pushed back to November, December and might get pushed back even further'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern experimenting with topper price ceiling; R2-D2 topper at $750 not selling out, indicating feedback on premium pricing limits

    high · Dennis: 'Stern's experimenting, I think. They're trying to find where the ceiling is on the toppers because they're not all selling out'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Led Zeppelin pinball by Steve Ritchie rumored for release in late 2020 or Q1 2021; timing uncertain due to production constraints

    medium · Dennis: 'Steve Ritchie will be the next designer to release, and it will be Led Zeppelin. And some people have thought it would already have been out by now, so I'm hearing still here in November. I've been thinking maybe January'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Twitch unprepared for DMCA enforcement wave; gave users only 72 hours to delete flagged VODs with minimal information

    high · Tony: 'they announced on a Tuesday that any of your stuff that's not deleted by Friday the bans will start coming out'

    • 2:17
    Because obviously the last thing I wanted to do was bring more risk into there. Right. So, yeah. Yeah, other than psychological issues, it hasn't been that bad. Have you gotten any games played?
    2:34
    I've been playing my normal mobile waifu games. I did start playing Hades, actually. I have a bunch of games that I picked up, but the only one I've played is Hades. I've put in, let me see, a bunch of hours into Hades over the last week.
    2:57
    I have put in 13 hours in the last two weeks into Hades. That game is pretty. I mean, it is like really pretty. It is a hack and slash, roguelike. so it's kind of like a combination between Binding of Isaac and Diablo I think it's about the best way I'd kind of put the feel but you're playing the son of Hades who's attempting to get out of the underworld to go visit you know your other godly relatives and every time you play through you get like any roguelike, you get you can get things that carry over to make your next runs easier.
    3:51
    Skills and stuff. And you can unlock weapons and stuff to make your next runs easier, and you just keep pushing through.
    3:59
    So it's been really enjoyable. I've been enjoying it quite a lot. Nice. Well, I did finish the other day Slayaway Camp. We got all the achievements in it. Nice. We did some of the NC-17 scenes. Oh, they had to be censored for Canadian television. It was very, very dramatic. No! And started Grand Theft Auto V, which you got me for my birthday. So I passed the part where I had to learn how to work a tow truck. Aw. So I'm on my way. And don't worry, you'll probably be able to play Grand Theft Auto V on the Xbox Series Quantum 49. I'm sure everyone's like, whoa, Grand Theft Auto V, that new release. Dennis must be so excited. that's right that's one of those things that's always thrown at me it's like in the old days it's like the PS3 had like or the PS2 had like three or four Grand Theft Auto games and Grand Theft Auto 5 is now on like three Playstations it's the Skyrim of Rockstar it's just it's everywhere it'll be everything also just so people have a taste of Tony Quarantine Edition. In the show notes, I'm including a link to one of what I would call one of the WTF videos that he has sent me within the last 24 hours. This one is the Dishingus Khan one. Oh, yeah. So I don't know what you're doing in order to find these things.
    5:33
    Okay. I don't know how I got to that. Okay. I mean, I have a rough idea. I know where my, you know how you start looking at stuff in YouTube and you just start following like related links? Okay, yeah.
    5:48
    That started because my daughter, my oldest daughter, has been doing a pacifist run in Undertale. And she keeps, she kept coming in and telling us about, like last night while we were doing our Jackbox game, group game. she kept coming in and talking about she beat a boss and then it turned out that the boss had a second form. A second form. And I'd made a joke about bosses with multiple forms. Right. And later that night after we got off of Jackbox we were talking and I explained the joke that I'd made because she obviously didn't understand it because she's never played Final Fantasy 7. She didn't know about the Latin. So she didn't know about the Latin. So I actually showed her video, I started showing her videos of people doing the final Sephiroth fight.
    6:43
    And the music and the form change after form change after form change. And then I went from there, I started tracking through like people singing Sephiroth's theme, like acapella.
    7:01
    And from there I got to the other video I sent you which was the Rasputin video and it went from there eventually I mean you have to understand that this isn't like one one one one this is there's like 15 or 20 other things in between all these and from there I got to the video you're linking because it's just crazy it was just when I hit that I'm like I don't even know what this is but I need to share this I can feel it in my soul. It's like a mimetic thing that required me to share it. Okay. So you were just sheerly overwhelmed, basically. Yes.
    7:43
    Okay. Well, I'm also going to put in the Rasputin one as well. Yeah. So, yeah, that's been my quarantine insanity. I'm sitting here with, because my old telecommute workstation that I had back in April has been completely disassembled because I needed the monitors that formed that workstation to provide monitors for my wife's new computer and my daughter's new computer she got for her birthday and stuff like that. So instead, I have moved my telecommute workstation over to my 52-inch TV. That actually works pretty well for telecommuting stuff. Nice. Because I'm setting it easily. A 52 inch screen easily breaks up into four sections for my different ongoing work for my state reporting and everything. Cool. Okay. Well, anyway, yeah, the only links this week are those two weird videos. So don't, I don't know. Don't write to us about them. I don't want to hear about it. It's just, I'm just putting them out there to subject others to them.
    8:58
    Well, we do want to hear about it if you think they're as enjoyable and strange as we do. Do we? I mean, if you want to tell us, you can. I don't know if I want to ask you that. We love to hear anything you have to say. We always love feedback. And speaking of feedback, I was told that people wanted to hear us talk about pinball and video games. In fact, thanks to the pinball show's prior week's episode, a lot of people reached out, a lot for us, asking about listening to this show because the coverage of video games on TPS was so terrible that they needed to wash that out with something else. They needed a palate cleanser. Yes. Well, I shared with you the one person on Pinside who said you knew a thousand times more than Zach about video games. And I hope that that is true. But before we go into what Zach doesn't understand, We will start with pinball like we normally would. And I only have two topics. I don't think these are going to take very long because there's really not any new pinball news that I think is worth us discussing on this show. But the first is about if we're going to see any new pinball machines out in 2020. I've been assuming, no, we would not. However, the rumor mill has been abuzz with about, I should say, I have assumed no more from Stern. It's possible maybe Chicago Gaming would, but the rumor mill has been that Stern Pinball and the commonly discussed thing is Steve Ritchie will be the next designer to release, and it will be Led Zeppelin. And some people have thought it would already have been out by now, so I'm hearing still here in November. I'm hearing in December. I've been thinking maybe January for that game, but I don't really want to talk about Led Zeppelin itself because I haven't seen any photos of it or anything. But I was just curious, Tony, do you think Stern should release another pinball machine this year, or should they hold off? Hmm. I have a hard time seeing them put out another game this late in the year, especially with a music pin, with such a big music pin having been released by Jersey Jack just so recently. but that's for the exact same reason I can see them dropping it if they think Zeppelin is strong enough to shut GNR down.
    11:15
    Yeah. I mean, I could see them doing it as a counterplay. Yeah, and there have been a lot of people that think there's no way it could, that there's no way it can be as impressive as GNR, and so that it would lose in that fight. What do you think about that claim? from everything I've heard if it looked halfway decent but played really good I think it would because I think Zeppelin is a bigger pull period and from everything I've heard GNR is not that fun so it's beautiful I've heard it's beautiful Zach Minney says it's the only game he's been playing lately oh yay Zach Minney, whose worst rated game ever is like a B++, loves a game that he sells. Oh, man. That's definitely going to sell my thought on everything. He gave Baywatch like a C+. Baywatch, a C+. Okay. Yeah. Case in point.
    12:17
    No. I'm not saying it's a bad game. I've not played it. I have no idea. I've just watched it played, and I've talked to enough people who have physically played it, And everything I've heard is it's beautiful, it sounds great, the light show's amazing, and it plays pinball. Nah.
    12:42
    Everything I've heard is it's very eh, but it's amazing and beautiful. So if they can put out something that looks anywhere near it but is amazing to play, and with, let's face it, as much as Guns N' Roses is popular, there's no Zeppelin. I mean, really.
    13:06
    If you're just going off the nostalgia and the soundtrack crowd and the discography, Zeppelin wins every time. Yeah, I personally felt that Zeppelin as a band would be more attractive than Guns N' Roses, though. Some of the younger crowd disagree with me on that.
    13:30
    Yeah, I mean, I think a thing to bear in mind is Stern's price point on their games are lower on the tiers than Jersey Jack is. So I don't think, I would never expect Led Zeppelin to have the same light show. No, no, I wouldn't either. I don't think, I've never seen a Stern game that had a light show as good as most of Jersey Jack's light shows. Just period. Well, they put more money in. into their games and they charge you for it too. Yeah. But I think just because of theme, because to me, when it comes to music pins, of all the music pins that are out there, the music pins that are interesting to me just based upon their musical theme, ACDC, Zeppelin would be interesting to me. And that's about it. I mean, there's other ones that, yeah, they're fun games and I appreciate their basing. I mean, I like Guns N' Roses. I like Metallica. I like Alice Cooper, but none of them to me are on the same level as an ACDC or a Zeppelin. I mean, that's top tier for me music-wise in my dad rock categories.
    14:51
    It wouldn't be quite the same level as some people are looking for. I'm still going to just keep patiently waiting for my Huey Lewis and the News music pen.
    15:07
    Well, be very patient. But, no, I think that it would... There's no way Zeppelin doesn't sell. So especially with a really solid design behind it, it'd be insane.
    15:26
    Yes, the I I don't I mean, I the reason why I don't think they release in 2020 is I see the attraction. I mean, it's a huge band. It's historically been very difficult to get them to agree to do licensed stuff. and Christmas, obviously, getting pins sold for Christmas, easy money in the bank. The issue that I really fall back on, though, is because of the delays of the pandemic and coupled with the success and desire on some of their other titles that they've released, it was only a few weeks ago, I think less than a month ago, that I read that Gary Stern in an interview had indicated that Stern has actually got orders for 5,000 pinball machines that they're trying to catch up on. And it's that simple fact that they're behind on production that makes me wonder, why would you launch when your line's so busy already? And that's why I think they wait. That's a valid point. And, I mean, let's be fair, with the spike in cases, it's very possible that there could be restrictions on their production capacities coming up again. Yes, that's a good point. And I, speaking with Zach Menny for doing the pinball show earlier today, he mentioned to me that the Elvira House of Horrors, which was supposed to get another run in October, that has been pushed back to November, December and might get pushed back even further. So if they're already having to push back their planned reruns because they're building so many Avengers games or they need to build more Jurassic Parks or whatnot, it's like I just don't – unless the license deal makes them – forces their hand, as good as it might be against Guns N' Roses, I just think it's like, no, our lines are busy. Why sell a new game when we too busy selling the old ones I think that a perfectly valid point And here the thing It would make an amazing quarter one release title Yeah. And again, referencing back to the fact that they're the only pinball company that can plan releases around quarters because nobody else can do it. but they can plan around going, well, let's see, what's our big title going to be released in quarter one? What's our big quarter two release going to be? What's our big quarter three? They can make plans around something like that, which is something that none of the other pinball companies can do.
    17:57
    I do hope that the Led Zeppelin game has the part from epic rap battles of history where with J.R.R. Tolkien, where he has to rap about how awesome he is. And if you don't believe it, just ask Led Zeppelin. I want that part in.
    18:13
    That would be fun. I'm sure it's an affordable thing to do. So do it. Do it. Well, our second pinball topic. This is one I don't normally – we don't normally do pinball topper talk on this show because I don't care about toppers. Let's be fair. We talk about them, but not necessarily in a respectful way. Well, and maybe this won't be very respectful either. That will really come down to you. So I wanted to note that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, successful Stern Pinball game release, it just got a new topper. It's $1,000 plus shipping. This is the same price point as the Elvira House of Horrors topper, which I think some people, myself included, suspected that the Elvira topper might have been more because there was no pro run. It's a boutique pin. They only had the premium model on up. but Turtles is a cornerstone and like the Elvira topper it's got a part that moves in this case it's the eye with the technodrome it's still got some flat plastics and some LEDs so it integrates when it plugs into the game but okay, so it's $1,000 my stance, which people can hear in far more depth on one of the prior Pinball Show episodes and I don't want to regurgitate it here is basically, it's everyone's money you can spend what you want If the toppers aren't dropping in value, it's hard for me to say that it's a bad deal per se. But that being said, this is a significant markup with not really much more functionality versus where toppers were just a few years ago, including very recently a year ago where you would expect that a manufacturer topper from Stern would run about $600. And we saw the Black Knight moving topper, which again moves more than I would argue this one does, which was under that, which I think was $450 plus shipping. But Tony, I think people want to hear your opinion about this. What do you think of a $1,000 turtle topper or Elvira topper for that matter?
    20:15
    Here's the thing. it's just like a pinball machine or anything else if you like it you have the money you're not going to to to put your family into needless debt to purchase it and you want it go for it i i would never ever spend that much money on a topper even if i had bought a new in box game i the topper would have to be amazing. I mean, honestly, I have owned multiple vehicles that don't cost $1,000 that were perfectly good vehicles and lasted me for decades.
    21:00
    For the simple fact for that plastic that moves a little and lights, I can't do it. I have my own interests. I have my own things that I spend money on that a lot of people would consider stupid because I like the aesthetic or I like the look or I like what it adds when I put it up in my game room or something. I couldn't do it with a topper because literally the only toppers that have ever really interested me in pinball. I mean, there are some cool toppers out there. Don't get me wrong, but the only ones that have ever seemed like really special to me are like the waterfall topper on Whitewater. Yeah. The whirlwind topper with the fan in it is hilarious and I love it. I think, I will say right now, greatest topper of all time. Period. That fan is amazing.
    22:00
    And if you don't believe me, just wait until you're in the middle of a crowded convention somewhere and you're playing one with the topper on and the fan kicks on and you'll realize just how amazing it is. You know if we ever have a crowded convention thing to go back to.
    22:15
    But other than that, toppers just, I mean, they're interesting, but they don't really do it for me. I'm not going to pay extra for some huge, I'm not spending a thousand dollars on a topper. Especially some of these toppers where you're seeing them where there are hundreds and hundreds of dollars and they're all flat plastics.
    22:33
    That's just insane to me. most of those toppers you could do yourself with some leds and uh cnc cutter for plexi plenty of people do you see plenty of mods where people do the custom toppers that you can put on top that's just plastic cutouts uh you can go on etsy and find night lights made that way it doesn't take a whole lot to do them as long as you've got the proper equipment most of the proper equipment to make those type of toppers cost less than those toppers do so just floating it out there yeah you raise good points i mean for me obviously there's no value debate here i and i think part of the issue though is that if toppers had always been this exorbitantly priced it'd be one thing like it always was a flex it was always about rich people showing off how rich they are but they've just gone up. I mean, they almost doubled here in a year, in some cases more than doubled, against those with comparative features. So we know it's not the bill of materials.
    23:41
    But yeah, value-wise, I mean, let's be frank. We cover pinball and video games. It cannot be lost on listeners. I won't allow it to be lost on listeners of this show, that you could go out and buy a PS5 and an Xbox One Series X, both for the price of this topper. Yeah. Both. And the value there is far more significant than that little hunk of plastic. It just is.
    24:04
    But your money, do what you want. If you need a flex, I guess toppers are the flex now. That's how I see it. Maybe shooter rods will be next.
    24:14
    Maybe they'll be $1,000. Yeah, there's going to be the super special $1,000 edition shooter rod. See, this is how it's for when it's like, well, I've got the LE. Whoa, so do I. but I've got the Ellie and the topper. Oh, oh, I do too, but I've also got the shooter rod. So my Ellie is so much better than your Ellie. My Ellie is so much bigger than your Ellie. Come, come bask in the glory of my Ellie. I'm going to, I'm going to later on. We've got a, we had a listener right in and with a question for us, and I'm going to touch on this again later. I'm going to go a little proletariat on people, but yeah, I hope these toppers are coming with a jar of gray Poupon with them. because that's the vibe I'm getting at this point. And I don't like that, but that's not my choice. It's not aimed for me. Yeah, people buy it. I mean, here's the thing is if enough people are willing to spend that much money on it, why wouldn't the companies make it that much? Sure, and that's the question. And Stern's experimenting, I think. They're trying to find where the ceiling is on the toppers because they're not all selling out. R2-D2, limited topper, $750. They're still in stock. So they're not all selling out. Yeah. I mean, when we start getting to the point where a topper is, what, a fifth of the price of a machine if you buy an SE?
    25:41
    Yeah, no, and that's the value equation that I run through. I just can't help but think that in somewhere between five and six toppers, you've bought yourself a pro. Yeah. I mean, for six, barely, you can't even look at it while you're playing things. I just – it's not what pinball is about for me.
    26:02
    So anyway, speaking of selling out, let's shift over to video games. Okay. Well, we got more news here. So Tony, get us going. I guess are we going to start with streaming? Yeah. Most of our – a lot of our news is streaming related here.
    26:21
    I'm not actually going to go through the notes in the order because I want to balance. Actually, I'm not going to go through the notes in the exact same order that are in there, but I'm going to open up with what should be the obvious one that we've talked about a whole bunch of times.
    26:36
    Twitches and the DMCA bands. Yes. I hear about this a lot. Yeah. They sat on them for a long time while they were trying to develop stuff to help their users before the band started hitting. and what they actually sat on and held was oh look we made a mass deletion tool and they announced on a Tuesday that any of your stuff that's not deleted by Friday the bans will start coming out for so that's not very much time yeah three days and when they sent out the letters they didn't send out any information they didn't tell people which VODs they were going to get struck for so there were people who had 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 VODs and their answer is, there's a DMCA strike in there. Have fun. So it's basically delete them all because you don't have time to figure out which ones were the problem. Right. And that was literally Twitch's answer was just delete everything. Delete it all. Get rid of it all. And just like their answer is to the DMCA problem is, oh, just don't play background music.
    27:49
    Well, what about the people who are getting DMCA struck for you know, everything? Because there's people who were getting DMCA struck for covers of songs.
    28:05
    In-game music? In-game music they were getting DMCA strikes for. They were getting not a DMCA strike, but VOD muting for sound effects in the game. So their VODs would be muted because there was a wind noise or a grandfather clock in the back or sound in a game. And they were getting their VODs muted. That comes from a separate company. That's not a DMCA strike there. That's coming from a company out there called, I didn't write it down.
    28:39
    Basically, it's a company that uses an algorithm and people hire them. and then they just find whatever their algorithm finds, whatever they've put into it, and then they instantly send a thing out that says, hey, this is ours. You're not allowed to use it.
    28:59
    But that's been hitting people for grandfather clocks, like I said, wind noises in games, stuff like that has been getting that triggered. one of the there's been a couple people who've gotten hit by DMCA strikes for playing their own music that they wrote and performed and they got DMCA strikes on it and not just like people doing little or people making their own stuff one oh I cannot remember his name I should have written it down I didn't have this one in the notes because I read it a week or two ago pretty big name from a band was playing his music in the background from his band and he got a DMCA takedown notice and he was the lead singer of the band so So it's like, okay, I just got DMCA struck for my own music.
    30:13
    But he can appeal that, right? Yeah, he can appeal that if he doesn't take the ban. And that's the thing is a lot of there has been an ongoing, there's a couple places that they're just keeping an updated every week list of who has been banned this week because Twitch streamers are being banned in the, you know, hundreds. And not just like little streamers like us, but we're seeing Twitch partners banned.
    30:47
    Oh. And Ryoje Hong, he was banned. I heard about that, yeah. He's an Overwatch streamer. And I mean, it's just gone insane. Twitch did publish an apology letter a few days ago talking about the issues according to the letter before May of this year they had received less than 50 DMCA notifications per year starting in May they were getting thousands a week so somebody in the music industry suddenly realized that Twitch was a thing or they finally developed a tool that could do it for them. Right. Which is what we talked about when the first round of these started in May.
    31:37
    And a lot of what Twitch talked about in their apology letter was that they have done a very bad job of providing information and providing tools to help their users handle the ongoing issues.
    31:55
    So we're going to see where this is going forward. This is one of those things that we've talked about again multiple times in the past. It'll be interesting to see how this affects streamers on the pinball side with music pins, how this will affect streamers. Because there's been several streamers that are,
    32:14
    oh, what do they call them? They're just real-life streamers who just stream them doing stuff, who've gotten hits because they were walking down the street past a restaurant that had music playing outside. Right, yeah, I heard about those. Or they were sitting at a bar. talking and there was music playing and they've gotten strikes on those.
    32:36
    Now, much like back over the summer, there was the Twitch blackout over all the sexual harassment stuff where a whole bunch of Twitch streamers just went totally silent. There's been some Twitch streamers who've been kind of fighting the DMCA thing in their own ways. Um, there was one guy who, uh, play was playing guitar hero with headphones in and his stream was just him talking about what he was hearing. And, oh, this is such a great song. Yeah. Yeah. Like that while he was playing, uh, there's been other people who've gone to totally mute thing, uh, muted their games and they're doing all their own sound effects.
    33:28
    There was one where someone was playing Skyrim and she was doing all her own sound effects for the walking and the fighting and dragons roaring.
    33:40
    The clips I watched of it were hilarious. There's another one where a guy did a stream playing Resident Evil where he dubbed over all the sound effects doing. So, you know, doors creaking and zombie noises and even all the dialogue was dubbed over in his voice.
    34:02
    He just replaced all the sound files in the game. So, that's kind of the humorous protesting stuff, but this is going to be an interesting take and this could be a really big detriment to Twitch because YouTube Gaming doesn't have this problem because of, uh, YouTube having the already having direct ties with the music industry and doing licensing things And Facebook Gaming has signed licensing deals with the music industry that is making this much less of a problem on their end. So this is mainly Twitch that is taking the heavy hits because they've never dealt with it and they're not set up to deal with it and they haven't preemptively tried to get something set up to deal with it. Do you think they will? I mean, a lot of people are going to feel, at least those that aren't banned yet, are going to feel it's too difficult, too risky to switch from Twitch would be my thought. Well, and that's the thing is it would be really risky to switch from Twitch to another gaming stream, especially if you're some of those small to mid-level streamers or those niche streamers. I have one streamer that I follow who he's, he made the switch over to YouTube gaming and he lost 50% or more of his viewers when he did.
    35:36
    And we've seen this when even some of the big names changed, they've lost up to half of their viewers when they changed platforms just because other people aren't changing platforms. And I'm 100% honest, not all the other platforms are as friendly, in my personal opinion, when it comes to trying to find people playing specific games and stuff. I'm still not sold on Facebook Gaming. I know there's a lot of people that have gone there, but I don't enjoy it as much as Twitch. I have been watching more YouTube Gaming. I think that's better, but a lot of it is just the ecosystem you're used to. That's why I watch mainly Twitch because that's the ecosystem I'm used to. But if this stuff keeps happening, a lot of those streamers are going to go elsewhere and you're going to have to start watching other things. Uh, most of the people I watch, the DMCA aren't being an issue because I'm not a big fan of people who play music in the background anyway, because I'm not there to listen to their music curation. and I'm there to listen to them talk and joke and play games and stuff like that.
    36:51
    It'll be interesting to see where things go going forward on this. Yep, it's definitely one to watch.
    36:59
    Also, being November, that means new consoles. Yay! I don't have any. I don't have any either, so I can't talk about how amazing or unamazing or terrible. Here's the thing. There were no... Seriously, the best, most interesting launch titles out there were... The new Spider-Man game?
    37:23
    I think, probably. Yeah, I would say for Sony, yeah. And I don't even know. Because everything that everybody I know was looking forward to being a launch title for Xbox has been delayed to 21. Assassin's Creed Valhalla is being held up as the game to get for the Xbox. Yeah, that's a third party. Yeah. So it's not been a great launch title ecosystem this time when the consoles came out. It's not stopped people from buying them. I know they're sold out all over the place. I've seen plenty of reports from people who still have their shipping notification that it's on the way from Amazon and still hasn't arrived. Not to mention everybody who bought them and bought extras and is now selling them on eBay or Facebook Marketplace for twice or three times the purchase price.
    38:31
    It's not unusual to see scalping on a new product. Yeah, that's normal. I think this might not have been the best run to do that, but I'm sure most of those guys are going to make enough money to make it worth their while.
    38:45
    But I think the lack of launch titles is definitely going to make it less interesting. Yeah, I would think so. I swear I don't really see the pressure. But on the flip side, again, when I was recording TPS, Zach Minney, he was really upset. He couldn't get a PS5 pre-ordered, and he's willing to turn to a scalper. Why? What game is so important? He wants to play the Spider-Man.
    39:10
    But they'll be back in stock in a week. Well, maybe he won't get the scalped version by then. I don't know. See, that's the thing that gets me. It's not like what's sold out now is going to still be sold out and heading into – For the scalpers and stuff, again, people, they're not sure when things will be back in stock. And I always attribute this because I get to be mean and say such things to a bunch of parents who just cannot tell their kids no for Christmas. And it's like, I got to get them this.
    39:42
    I blame that for a lot of this sort of behavior. I can see that. But at the same time, it's like, why?
    39:49
    I mean, the fact that it's just like the people who buy all the tickets. I mean, just normal scalping. Everyone who buys all the tickets for a concert and then then sells them online for five times the cost. It's just That little Timmy and Tammy won it And you gotta get it or else you're a bad parent Even if there aren't any games for it Yeah We'll see how this ends up I'm going to be interested And here's the thing I'm assuming That this will break The Nintendo Switch's Consecutive record Oh yeah they've been doing great Because the Nintendo Switch has been And they made announcements this week about what their October numbers were. But they've been the best-selling console for 23 straight months. Oh, yeah. No, it's huge. And just in October, just in the United States, they sold 735,000 units. Mm-hmm. I mean, that's amazing. Their total worldwide sales since launch is over 68 million.
    41:05
    That's huge. Yep. And the question is going to be, with the launch of the Series X and the PS5, I'm going to be curious to see how their launch sales compare to the launch sales of the Xbox One X, the PS4 and the Switch.
    41:31
    And I'm going to be curious to see how their sales going forward, once they get past the first couple months of sales, actually shakes out too. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure that they'll not be in the lead on the sales anymore, but it's the price point coupled with the portability means it satisfies something that these new consoles won't. And that's the value there. Nintendo does its own thing sometimes it doesn't work out Wii U and sometimes it works out Switch the Wii was the same way it was something totally different and it was enormous and then the Wii U sucked and now the Switch is enormous we even talked about it we weren't sure how it was going to sell with it being so portable when it was first announced and the launch and the dock and everything And it's enormous. The DS is gone. This is what they're doing. And Nintendo owns the mobile space. Everything else is playing phone games. Right.
    42:38
    And the fact that they have been able to successfully port, I mean, so many games to it has just helped their sales. So because who doesn't want to play Skyrim when they're sitting on a subway somewhere? Yeah. The portability side of it, that's where I think Nintendo is going to – I think they're going to stick with – I'm sure they're already developing their Switch 2 or whatever they're going to call it. I know there's rumors of an upgraded Switch. Okay. They might do a mid-thing, kind of like the PS4 Pro and such were. Right. Yeah, kind of a mid-generation thing with better graphics processing and stuff. I know I've heard rumors and speculation that we've got a next generation Switch that will be more powerful. And there's been talk about them doing built-in, basically like the docking station, having a graphics card to force power up when you're in the docking station. That's interesting. Uh, again, no proof, nothing from Nintendo about that. That's just rumor stuff I've read online. Uh, but it would be, I mean, it would be one way to get around the need to have so much more processing capability. Since they've already sold people that, oh, when you put it on the docking station, because it has more power, it'll get better. when you can sell it on, oh, once you put it in the docking station, of course it's going to get a lot better because the docking station will offload the graphics processing.
    44:21
    Is it a possibility? Yeah, anything's a possibility, but we'll just have to see what comes from there. Yeah, that's exciting, though. It's exciting to hear the rumor. Yeah, I mean, again, it's a rumor. Who knows? Well, with Nintendo, anything's possible. Right. I mean, it's Nintendo. If they rolled out the next generation of Switch and they're like, here, it's a bicycle helmet with flip-down lenses that are the screens, I wouldn't be surprised at this point.
    44:59
    That's not that weird. Hopefully not, but it wouldn't surprise me. It's Nintendo VR 2. is the VR boy too and on the last real big thing I had in here was going back to streaming but on the less depressing side of it Pokimane has announced that she is putting a cap on the donations to her Twitch channel so that viewers can't do enormous tips anymore. They can't do anything over $5.
    45:46
    And I think it's a great idea especially when you're talking about a channel as large as hers where even with all the donations she gets that's still probably a small fraction of the money she actually is making at this point. because most of her money is coming from her deal with Twitch and her various sponsorship deals.
    46:13
    And I'm sure, especially, I know a lot of streamers kind of have issues with the, when people put, like, just put huge amounts of money, donate huge and huge amounts of money, because it's one of those things that it's like, it almost feels like you're forced to pay a lot of attention to that person because they gave you so much money and it's kind of skeevy. Let's go with skeevy. And I can see how it could feel that way. I've seen multiple interviews with people who mentioned that they're not real comfortable when they get huge donations because it always makes them like wonder why or is this somebody who's doing like like the when you read about the people playing all the wallet gobbler gotcha games who are putting their families into debt so they can buy more pools from from their their whatever the gotcha game of the week is that they're playing yeah I remember once I was watching Tim the Tapman and someone donated a thousand dollars to him and you could tell he didn't really know how to handle it he basically stopped playing and spoke to the person for five minutes yeah because I mean they had like a whole heart felt they basically said he saved their life so I see that was part of the company right just the money this person was like suicidal and said that you know watching Tim and hearing Tim got them through that. So there was that aspect to it as well. I did read about this. I saw a number, a few other big name streamers have either said it's a good idea or are also now doing this. I guess there was some, there was another streamer who did something similar a while ago, a few months ago, about limiting on, I don't know if they prohibited bits entirely or capped them at a similar low rate. And also I've read, though I haven't read the specifics, that there's been backlash to it. there has been, uh, I read there were a lot of people who were, one of the big backlashes I read is a lot of people, uh, claim that, Oh, she's just trying to hide money for tax purposes.
    48:33
    Okay. I'm not sure how that works given that I'm sure she gets a 10 99 from, from Twitch. Right? Well, the tips are too public and makes it too easy to be audited. so they can't play tax games with the money is one thing I've heard. Yeah, that's crap. For those that don't know, because Twitch is based in the U.S., I mean, the organization is obligated, any business, in fact, and nonprofits are obligated to give 1099s to sole proprietorship people.
    49:06
    You don't have to do that for other corporations because they have to do their 990s and tax forms. But you have to – if someone gets like over $600 a year and they don't work for a company, you have to give them a form that you also send to the IRS. And that's what – since Twitch is gathering all the donations, they have to track it. It's not on her. It's on them. Right. Well, and that's the thing is, I mean, I've gotten 1099s before. Back when I worked at the airport and I washed airplanes on the side, when you crossed a certain threshold with one group, I almost always got a 1099. I know some because I got worried. I didn't think about it. I mean, I knew about doing 1099s for individuals, but like there are some businesses, governments even. I get for my nonprofit. I work for a nonprofit corporation, so we're incorporated. We don't need to receive 1099s because I'm turning in a tax form. Like I'm obligated to report all my income anyway. But some places don't want to take the chance. They send a 1099 to everyone that gets over $600 because you can get a fine if you don't. do it. Well, and that's the thing is, is some companies, they just automatically, I know there was one company that I stopped washing their airplanes because I washed, you know, two airplanes for like under a hundred dollars over the course of a year. And then a 1099 showed up and I'm like, wow, wow. I don't want a paperwork waste. Okay. Now I have, So I just didn't wash for those guys anymore. I mean, I didn't wash a whole lot of airplanes because I didn't like it. But we had a bunch of people when I worked at the airport that they, I mean, they obviously got 1099 and they expected to get 1099 because some of those guys made $10,000, $15,000 on the side every year washing airplanes. I normally made, with everything, maybe an extra grand here and there. But I hated washing airplanes. so I only did it when it was like a really, you know, I needed, you know, there's a new console coming out or there, there was something I needed extra money for. So I'd wash a plane and I'd know the, I knew, I knew the 10 99 would be coming for the most part because normally I had, I worked with groups that I do, you know, 600 or a thousand dollars worth of washes over the course of six months to a year. So I'd know there was a 10 99 coming. That's why I was surprised when I got one for like 200 bucks. So anyway, a place like Twitch where they're not – I mean practically there might be a few streamers that are actually incorporated that wouldn't need – like LLCs or something that wouldn't need to have a 1099. But by and large almost all of the streamers qualify for 1099 and then they send them to those that meet the threshold the threshold Anyway so that where yeah that tax evasion thing If she was routing her donations through something that wasn't Twitch, I could see that argument, but not if it's like Twitch bits and stuff, no. Right. Well, I'm sure that people get the same thing. I'm sure people get 1099 from their Patreon accounts because, I mean, there's a lot of people who make a fairly large amount of money on Patreon.
    52:22
    And there's lots of people who make money in all sorts of ways. I mean, that's the way things are. There's nothing wrong with that. but I think most of the comments I've heard were either between where the tax one related to this. And then the other ones were the, were the holier than thou or try saying that she's trying to be holier than thou and act like she's something special and make other streamers look bad type, basically just woman hating because she's a successful female streamer attack type thing, which has become rampant in certain portions of the viewership across all streaming media, as far as I can tell. Yeah, actually, I wouldn't be surprised if that's a great deal of it.
    53:13
    Yeah, no, that's that. I mean, I'm pretty confident that's where even the tax claim comes from is it's just trying to pretty it up over something else. because, again, there's so many things you'll hear about stuff like this that if this was somebody like XQC, Tem the Tap Man, one of the other big streamers who'd done the same thing, you probably wouldn't hear the same complaints. And I did see an article headline saying XQC praised this move. So I don't know if he's doing it himself or not. Well, I mean, it's XQC. Yeah. Not a big fan. No, I'm not either. I think because I've seen Overwatch stuff, he shows up in all of my feed things. Yeah, he does me too. He is so toxic, I don't care. Well, that's the thing. I'm at the point that I don't really follow very many big-name Twitch streamers anymore because so many of them are... If they're not toxic, their viewers are.
    54:17
    And I mean, I'm one of those people who I almost never have chat on. in streams anymore at all, except for certain, uh, streamers, most of whom, not all of them, but most of whom are pretty small. Um, or some of whom who are, I've noticed are really good about squashing the really toxic stuff. Um, I will keep the chats up on there sometimes. Um, but honestly I think the biggest streamer that I keep chat up and I actively get involved in the chat in on occasion is probably seagull uh most everyone else where I get actively involved in are much smaller where you know there might be five six hundred or a thousand at most people online at once and I've got some streamers I follow that are basically like like you and me when we stream and you know there might be 15 people there on a really really good day and those ones i almost always sit there and i'll chat and interact with them but yeah i don't know i just thought it was a nice thing um because there are a lot of people who spend a lot of money on on reaching out it's like almost like it's oh they said my name they read my thing out loud so it makes a...
    55:49
    Yeah, like they're addicted to it. Yeah. Which, I mean... Maybe they are. Yeah, I mean, it's entirely possible. It's one of those things that's like, I guess it's better than drugs? Or alcohol? I guess. I mean, I don't know if I'd say it's less destructive. It's just destructive in a different way? well i don't know i mean maybe it's kind of like people who have a gambling addiction but at least those are the gambling addiction in theory might win money yeah you're not getting anything back from twitch yeah that's very true uh just like like we've got i mean with the quarantine stuff going on and everything. I've talked to plenty of people who are just annihilated because they can't do their normal Friday or Saturday night bar crawls that they used to do all the time during the lockdown. And with the lockdown is over, it's business as usual. And you'll hear him talking about it's like, oh, yeah, no, it was shoulder to shoulder fully packed to bar this and that and it's just like okay i mean not getting into any politics or anything i just it's one of those things that it's like there are a lot of people that just uh mentally have not been able to manage the social isolation aspect yeah well and i mentioned this to you, I actually had the other day, last week, before I went into, or not last week now, the week before last, I actually had my very first time eating at a restaurant since the last time you and I went post-pinball. March. Yeah. Early March, yeah. To our little place that we like to go. Los Amberguesas. Yes.
    58:07
    And even then, it was we went and got our food, and then we went outside, and we sat on the tailgates of our trucks, and we talked while we ate our food. like with our trucks beside each other and are sitting in the tailgates.
    58:24
    So it was different, but it was interesting, but I mean, it was interesting cause I haven't done anything except for get stuff picked up to go or drive through since March.
    58:38
    So yep. Interesting times. It'll be interesting to see who, if anybody, picks up this style of capping. My guess is that if anybody does or those that do are all going to be the larger streamers, that makes the most sense to me. Because they're the ones who can most handle the loss of that, of the tips. Right, I agree. Well, speaking of loss, we did have a listener here that I was saving for the end of the show to bring up. They brought in to us with a question. Matthew P. emailed eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com. And this is a very brief email.
    59:28
    It says, Tony and Dennis, easy one, pinball or video games? You can only choose one for the rest of your life. I love both and feel as I am getting older, I enjoy pinball more. Thanks for another great show. Stay safe. Matthew. So that's the query, Tony. If you only had to pick one, would you have video games or would you have pinball? Video games. More depth, more choice. Yep, yep, yep. And honestly, it's as easy for me as well. Video games by a country mile. Absolutely. I love pinball and I've played a lot of pinball. but I could sit down and put hundreds of hours into a Fallout game or a Final Fantasy game or why would – yeah. Oh, I've got a whole host of reasons from that. You don't have the issues with transport. You don't have the issues with the number that you can have around. With digital storage, we can basically have infinite games if we want them, and that's not true for pinball.
    60:36
    And kind of where I said I'd come back to it from when we were talking about the toppers, but especially modern, like new-in-box pinball, as expensive as it has gotten – and it's always been because it's been commercial-grade equipment. I get that. But it's become such a rich-person game, and it disgusts me in a lot of ways, that it seems about the flex now. It's about people showing off their money. It's about people going for CEs and LEs and name dropping that that's what they're buying left and right. And that's not why I got into pinball. It's not my interest in pinball. And if it's going to be a rich person's game, I'll play with the poor kids.
    61:13
    Yeah. I can go online and play with friends if I want to play an online game. If I want to be by myself, I can have a good single player experience. I can find games that will give me both. Pinball just cannot match that. It just cannot. There's a reason why pinball lost to video games. It's because video games are better. Yeah, it is. I mean, even outside of the arcade settings where the battle was originally lost, it's even worse now that it's in the home setting over the arcade setting. Because video games just keep getting cheaper and smaller and easier to use and easier to maintain because there's nothing special needed.
    61:54
    Oh, yeah, easy to get fixed. You can mail them off. I mean, there's a whole, I mean, so yeah. And ultimately if I can only pick one for the rest of my life, you know what? Virtual pinball is a genre of video games. So it's not, you can, it's not as good. No problem. Doesn't matter. We have sacrifices must be made. You can say Call of Duty isn't as good as real war either. well and i mean that's the thing is i yeah no it's just replayability and the continuing changes and the cost everything it's just so more variety more it's you know affordability all that it's just i mean you think about it with pinball we're we're in a golden era with pinball but we're lucky to see six games out in a year yeah that that's a that's a light month for video games right and here's the thing is no matter how different the pinball games are pinball when you get down to it isn't that different it's always the same game genre is why right always a mechanical mechanical interaction with a sloped play field in physics that's and they can't twist the physics under the glass virtually they can but they can't they can't with a physical pinball machine. So your game experience is still just the same, you know, making shots, catching, controlling the ball. And your ability to control the ball is essentially the same from game to game because they're all doing basically the same lower play fields now. It's just...
    63:27
    Right. I wouldn't want to have to pick, but I mean, quite frankly, there's just more variety. There's just more variety. And I favor the variety. Even if nothing, I mean, or everything else was equal price and everything, the variety of video games would win out for me. Yeah, because the variety is just so much. Because you can go from playing a flight sim to an RPG to a first-person shooter to something that is kind of a mash-up crossover of all three. And it's so much easier to make an informed decision. It's funny because your risk in terms of dollars, even getting the consoles, is so much lower than buying a pinball machine. But you have better, more perfect information, which is a core function in a capitalist system is the assumption that the consumer can make an informed decision before they make the buy. We have real game journalism in video games. We don't have it in pinball. No, not at all. It's difficult to get good reviews on pinball. Everyone knows everyone else. They're always building. It's almost like the joke is shilling, but it's almost like everyone's praising everything all the time. It's hard to really know. So – and a lot of people who are giving their opinions actually aren't that good at pinball and don't – really shouldn't be giving their opinions. They don't know what they're talking about. It's – a lot of amateurs have big megaphones, and I'm speaking about myself as well. Yeah. I'm an amateur with a megaphone. We're the same. We fall into that. We are most definitely not the journalist like the big name video game journalist. If you were to like poll video game fans and pinball fans, more people know Tony in the pinball side than they do the video game side. And that's just because of the size of the hobbies. It's interesting. But our expertise comes solely from self-proclaimed that we put out content. But a lot of people put out video game content. And that's not even counting the professionals that do it because there's so much demand. Right. So it's just easier to make smart decisions in video games. It just is. And it's also, even if you go to just like a general, not even the reviewers and the journalists, just a straight up review system. I mean, because if you look at a review system for people who've played, say, Rick and Morty. if every person who's ever played Rick and Morty ranked it on a 1 to 10 scale you still wouldn't have but a few thousand people where you can get 30,000 people reviewing a video game because everybody's played it. Yeah.
    66:16
    This is different, but yeah. If I had to pick, I would end up going with video games. I think in a lot of ways, talking about the hobby of pinball is more interesting to me because, again, there are so many things covering video games. The history is shallower in a lot of ways. It's just a younger hobby. There's stuff about it I don't find as interesting.
    66:40
    But when it comes to play, if I only have one, give me a controller. Yeah. Well, and yeah, it just, it makes total sense. And that's kind of the interesting thing is because it's so, and you call it, it's a younger hobby. While it's technically the older hobby, well, pinball's the older hobby. In a lot of ways, it's younger because it's just so much smaller, so much more niche.
    67:08
    This is a lot about pinball that was forgotten because it wasn't really, but that's like a historic, that's like me thinking about it from a historical aspect. Right. So that's more of a niche thing for me. And I could still know that even if I couldn't have access to pinball anymore. So that's, in a way, it doesn't factor in. But fascinating question, Matthew. I hope you enjoyed our answers, even if you disagree with them. Yeah, I really liked that question. Yeah, that's fun. So if others have a desire to write in questions to us, you absolutely can. You can always email us at CollectedGamersPodcast.gmail.com or reach out to us via Facebook.com slash CollectedGamersPodcast. we are available at twitch twitter and instagram as eclectic underscore gamers and we'll be back in a couple of weeks probably talking about some pinball stuff and some video game stuff there'll be some pinball stuff we don't have to pick that's the beauty of it so we get to do both we can do it all that's right if you want to go to twitch and give us more than five dollar donations I'm not stopping you yeah no that's perfectly good we're not I streamed I streamed yesterday Oh, nice I should probably Get stuff rigged up and stream some video game stuff Yeah Someday maybe Someday I don't think anybody wants to sit there and watch me Do my dailies on my mobile games Which is like half of my Gaming That's half your gaming life now That did come up in the discord It's like, it always says you're playing Bluestacks What are you doing? I don't like playing all my mobile games on my phone or my tablet. So I put blue stacks on my computer so I can play them on my computer.
    68:58
    Which would make them much easier to stream. That's true. So, well, until next time, I am Dennis. I'm Tony. Goodbye. See ya.