This episode of the Eclectic Gamers podcast is brought to you by the Roanoke Pinball Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. What does the Roanoke Pinball Museum need with a starship? It doesn't, because it's an interactive museum dedicated to the science and history of pinball. Their mission is to cultivate curiosity in science, art, and history through pinball, while preserving and honoring its role in American culture. The museum is open every day in the Federation, except on Mondays, and it houses over 65 machines, with models ranging from 1932 to 2018. Of all the pinball museums I have known, Roanoke is the most human. Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, November 29th. This is episode 129. Wah, wah. Why, wah. I'm Tony. Why, wah. I'm Dennis. Why, wah. Because they're both, it's the 29th and we're on episode 129. Oh, I'm not. I'm sort of slow. Okay. Yay. Because it's, yay. Ooh, excitement. What have you done? Did you have turkey? We had a little bit of turkey We didn't do any big family stuff We just made something just for me The wife and kids And Had some turkey And then you went out and it stood in line for Black Friday No Oh okay No I did order Some gifts this weekend For like the kids But That's it I mean, it wasn't anything special. Now, I did buy some stuff for myself because I'm greedy and selfish that way, but that was because Steam was having their big autumn sale. That's right. I picked up the Halo Master Chief Collection and Wasteland 3, and I've not started either because I did that yesterday. Yeah, I'm trying to remember what Wasteland is. Wasteland is very similar to the old pre first person shooter Fallouts it's a post apocalyptic isometric game so but you haven't started it yet but I haven't started it and I know the Master Chief collection is the accumulated collection of a bunch of Halo games Yeah, it's Halo, Halo 2, Halo 3, ODST, Fallout Reach, I think, or Reach or whatever it is. Yeah, Reach, Halo Reach. Yeah, there's a bunch of those all. And like the Halo and Halo 2 and all of them have been redone specifically for modern PCs. So they're all the PC-oriented versions. so at some point it means there's a chance that I'll actually play a Halo more than like our cooperative playthrough of ODST and I think there was another Halo we played cooperative. We at least started Reach. Those are the only Halos I've ever played is whatever we've done cooperative. I played Halo 2 on PC way back. It was a Games for Windows Live game. Oh, that was back before they even had the their new super special happy thing. I just remember the sniper section was really hard. So be careful on those jackals. They'll snipe you. Jackal! Speaking of Black Friday, though, I should go ahead and announce that we do have, just like last year, we do have a coupon code for our Teespring store, which there's a link in the show notes to Teespring if people want to buy EGP shirts. There are also a few other items. There's some EGP face masks because it's 2020. and there might be a, I don't know what else is there. There's some other stuff, but it's mostly shirts. And it's 20% off of everything. So the code is FRIDAY20, so F-R-I-D-A-Y-2-0, all caps for Friday. When you just put it in the promo code and it'll take 20% off everything that you add in from the EGP store. And that code is active now and it ends on the 1st of December. So not much time left. so basically if you're listening to this episode anything after like the day it comes out yes you're too late well i announced it on the social media so it's sort of like yeah could i could could i extend it i could but cyber monday's the 30th and it's like no and it's 20 so i'm only allowing it for so long so yeah because that eats into almost everything yeah and they won't let you they won't let you uh have to me pay them money for sending shirts out i think that's against the rules of the teespring store so it's just it's like it's like true break even uh so we've got that going uh i did i had some turkey too i have not bought any well no i i bought one present so far um and i'll probably check tomorrow during cyber monday for some stuff to order some things because i just when I usually just kind of around the the first or so I just sort of order everything I can normally because I don't like to go out and stay in line anyway so right uh I've been playing my Grand Theft Auto 5 you got me for my birthday I'm real deep in the game now super deep the criminals everywhere you're off you're off you know murdering prostitutes and selling drugs and it's a weird game it's a weird game and but oh my gosh there are bugs bugs galore like How can a game be buggy that's been out for this many years on this many platforms? But a case in point, every time – like you can buy stocks. That's how deep this game is. You can buy stocks and you do assassinations to influence the stock market. So like you do. Like you do. And so I lost like almost all my money on a character. I bought a bunch of stock and it didn't give me credit for the stock, but it took my money in. I've realized with any of the characters, if I want to buy stock in a company, I have to buy one stock first, which I won't get credit for, and then it will remember after that. I don't get it, but it happens on every single character, and I have to do it every single time I'm buying a new stock. If it's a new company I've not purchased in yet. So that sucks, but it wasn't much money initially. It was all my money, but at the time I had less than $10,000, so it wasn't a big deal. But anyway, so that's been what I've been working on video game wise. And speaking of video games, we normally jump into the pinball segment here. But on the last episode, we answered a write-in question about which would we choose if we could only have one for the rest of our live video game or pinball. And we chose video game. And we've had a number of emails. Actually, I had four emails come in since that episode. And I think all of them pretty much revolved around that. So I'm going to go ahead and kind of insert a mailbag segment here before we go formally into pinball and video games as their own topics. So the first one I'm going to note is from Skippy C. And I'm not going to read his entire email aloud because the way it was structured, I don't think he wanted it entirely read on air. I just wanted to note that he did say, you both hit the nail on the head in regards to video games or pinball. Hands down agree, and I'm a huge pinball fan too. The hobby has totally turned into flexing. So I'll leave it with that. Other than at the end of it, he did say, I just had to say that I totally concur. So thank you, Skippy, for the email about that. And then we had an email from Matthew P., who I believe is who asked us that question. And so he wrote in to say, loved how easy it was for you and Tony to say video games. I hate that I am 53 and I seem to be drifting away from them. played and own everything from the Atari 2600 to current gen, about 35 systems. All my games are physical copies, about 2,500 in box games. Thinking about selling most to fund more pins, but I just started The Last of Us Part II and it's blowing me away. I enjoy the solo gameplay of pinball and as a gamer love single player games, and for a while games were focusing on co-op or multiplayer too much. But like you guys said, gaming is cheaper. He emphasized that. And you have so many more options. Again, thanks for a great show. Stay safe. So thank you, Matthew, for that email about that. We have an email from Sean L. And he has a few kind of random thoughts. So we'll probably tackle these. He has three thoughts, three random thoughts. So we'll address these. So, hey, Dennis and Tony, a few thoughts from the latest podcast. Number one, when you were discussing if Stern should release a new game with such a backlog, you failed to mention the possible backlash of the 5000 people waiting for their pins they already ordered to arrive. How annoyed would those people be when that line was supposed to be making their game is diverted to a new game when there are still 5,000 waiting to be produced? Many of those people could be repeat customers in the future and have quite a sour taste in their mouth at being bumped for a new release. I know myself now approaching five months of waiting would not be a happy camper. Well, I would say, Sean, that is a great point. We did not mention that the issue of anger in when we discussed the idea about, you know, when Led Zeppelin might come out from Stern and that they have the massive multi thousand unit backlog. But it is a good point about the concerns that it could have on those that are kind of I don't want to say preordered, but have an order in and are waiting for their game. What are your thoughts about that? That's a really valid point. I don't know how much Stern would really care about pissing people off about that if they thought they could make the money. But that would be a valid concern. I know those people would be very pissed off. I mean, I would be. Yeah, I don't know if the biggest concern would be the repeat customer angle. But it could definitely be a concern about people canceling their order. Because, again, these aren't pre-orders in the typical sense. Some of these folks might have a deposit in with their distributor, but my understanding is the distributor could just move that money to another machine or refund it. I don't think there's any hard lock that they can't have their deposit back. So that would be, I think, the bigger concern. But I would think it would be something that Stern should be concerned with. Yeah. Topic number two, random thought number two. Why do people seem to thrive on having their name mentioned on a stream as if they are addicted to it? There are several articles linking dopamine and oxytocin releases in the body to such scenarios and social media. So there is an addictive nature to it, and hearing your name makes you feel good because of those releases. I could quote a whole bunch of polynomials, but I think that may have been beaten to death already. why why do i don't know what the i guess i don't understand the question is the question why do we think that triggers dopamine and oxytocin releases i have no idea other than my my assumption has been when someone's name is said on a stream like that it's one of two things it either makes them feel like they have a more direct connection with the streamer themselves or it's like kind of vicarious fame hey here's someone with a bunch of people watching them they named me so now i'm famous too. Yeah, I think it's probably along the lines of it gives them the connection. It makes them feel like they're real to the streamer and if it's one of those streamers where somebody spends a lot of time watching them and everything involved that on the watcher's side of things it may feel like a friendship when the streamer doesn't know them. They're just a streamer. whatever. So it gives them a feeling of accomplishment and connection. Yeah, I've read an article where one highly successful streamer was explaining their strategy on interrelating with their audience. And that streamer said one of the main things that he does that he thinks a lot of streamers don't do, but helps quite a bit, is whenever he's talking to the stream, he never says like you guys or things like that it's always you he always says it in a way that every person listening could think that he is speaking to that person as an individual interesting and it's by design to make them feel like they have a personal relationship and i can see where that would work really well i mean let's be honest this is the exact same way that all of like the the the uh OnlyFans stuff works and the CamGirl type stuff works. It's all by developing a relationship and having people give money. And Twitch is the same thing but with video games instead of physicality. It's all the exact same type of system just in different incarnations. Yeah, that's a good point. So those are our thoughts on that. And the final random thought is number three, video games versus pinball machines. I agree. I would take video games as well. However, one major side of pinball you didn't mention is the in-person social aspect pre slash post COVID. Although video games have multiplayer, there is no substitute for in-person interactions. Most of the fun I have with my pinball machines is getting together with friends and meeting new people during tournaments and meets. A fairly important aspect that I'm not sure any of us would want to lose. I know that's a big one to you, Tony. That's a major one to me. That's my primary thing is it's all about the social interaction for me. And it's social, that higher end social interaction. I mean, it's an important thing to me. That's one of the part of the reasons this year has been as hard on me as it's been is because I don't have that social interaction. And I don't always necessarily deal with it as well as I should. But it's something that I have been very noticeable has been lacking in my life this year. Yeah, well, it was probably in terms of my downtime social stuff. It was one of the biggest things that I was doing. And, you know, it was something that was very different for me as I'm a much more introverted person. That was a big change up. And and yeah, I miss that quite a bit. And it's something that and on like on the video game front, like I don't usually participate in unless I'm like playing with people. I do like party chat stuff. I don't generally talk with randoms when I play multiplayer games on the Internet. Right. And I'm the same way. And I don't play a lot of multiplayer games anyway. It's not really my how I play. I do some, but even when I do, I don't chat beyond your general necessary call-outs. Like, hey, there's the Sombra and I need healing. It's just one of those things that it's not a connection type that I typically get. Yeah, well, I mean, like a lot of those, like you mentioned Overwatch with your Sombra reference. the the you know that's all like drop in drop unless you're in as with a group these are just random people that you might see in a future game you might not you're just in it for a little bit they give you in-game voice commands to basically say pretty much anything you need to do other than at the highest levels so it's like there's nothing to talk about not to mention that like if you're losing it can get super toxic so you know people will start yell i've been i've turned it on before I've tried to participate before and sometimes it's fine. Sometimes no one else is there and no one's talking. And sometimes everyone just starts blaming each other. And it's just like a miserable experience because all there are people yelling at each other because someone calls someone a name and then it just gets stupid. So anyway, those were those were Sean's random thoughts. So thank you, Sean, for writing in. And our last piece of email comes from David Dennis, who is the co-host of Silver Ball Chronicles, a history podcast over on the Pinball Network. His email says, hi, Debonair, Dennis, and titular Tony. So I hate this email already. He didn't say that. I said that. Back to his email. I have a question which has really been racking my mind recently. Maybe you two charming and brilliant men can help. If you have a pinball machine and slowly replace each component. Yeah, he made a typo, but he meant each component. One by one over 10 years until you've replaced all but one single piece. then rebuilt the old machine out of the old replaced parts with one new component, would you technically have two of the exact same machine? This is kind of like that whole, I know there's a fancy name for it, but... Faux intellectualism? Well, I was thinking that there's a specific name for it. It's a thought line, but it's like if you sit there and you've got your grandpa's axe, It's like, yeah, this is the axe my grandpa used. It's got four new heads and three new handles on it. Is it still grandpa's axe type thing? Oh, I see. Yeah, there's another deeper, because it's a much, much older thought process. I just always think of it as grandpa's axe. I had never heard about grandpa's axe. Yeah, well, let me look it up. Well, while you're looking that up, I'll say what this reminds me of is in, I know, in the history of watchmaking, This became an issue regarding what gets to be classified as a Swiss made watch. Because is it the movement? Is it the dial? Like what can you call a watch Swiss made if you put it together in America, but the movement was built in Switzerland? That's where there can be companies that will take ETA movements or ETA movements, which is a common third party movement for mechanical watches. It's owned by Swatch, which most people have heard of the Swatch group. and so lots of companies all over the world will use edda movements in their watches and then on the dial they can say that they're swiss made because that helps sell watches makes sense yeah it's the the thought experiment the ship of theists theists thought experiment whether an object has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object It's a metaphysics of identity question, according to the Wikipedia. Okay. So I guess given he asked, what's your stance on that? It's like, do we have two of the exact same machine given one only has one of the original parts and then the other was the original machine, but it basically got robotized into modern parts other than one still old part remains? I think you've just got two machines. I this whole identity thing is one of those deeper than I'm willing to go into it. Do you have two pinball machines that are the that are the exact same machine in a way? It's all about a thought process and a way of looking at it. I don't I don't think I guess the way I would describe it based off of what you've summarized and what we've said here. I would not say you could claim these are both grandpa's pinball machine. I don't think you could. Whatever one is a majority of the old pieces is grandpa's pinball machine. Or if you don't want to do it that way, whatever one is still got the, and in this case, it would be the machine that was rebuilt with the old parts, I'm assuming, with the serial numbers. Like there's a serial number on the cab. So whichever one's got the serial numbered cab is grandpa's machine, no matter how many new parts it is. But you can only call one as new. It's like if you tear a dollar bill in half, which one is the dollar bill? That's why – well, neither are unless one's got part of the serial numbers because serial numbers are on both sides of the dollar bill. One's got part of the serial numbers. It's not a true in half. That's the one that counts as a full dollar. You don't actually have to have both pieces. As long as you've got the majority of the bill, that's the dollar bill. The other part is nothing. It's trash. Yeah. So that would be how I would describe it. So, no, you do not have two of the exact same machine. Whichever I would lean towards, whichever one is mostly the old parts, that's the original machine. It doesn't matter if you moved them or took them out temporarily or not. I think whichever one holds the original machine spirit inside. So if you can get a hold of the original machine spirit and find out which one it thinks it is, that's the one that it is. Yes. But most people do not care in pinball. and in the sense that there are people out there that go and they buy all new parts to build like quick silvers and uh and stargazers all made from repo part like it didn't even start as an original it's all just built from scratch is that still a stargazer sure plays the same software plays as far as most pinball people are concerned that doesn't have a serial number from stern electronics is irrelevant you could sell that thing for the same amount that you would get if You actually had an authentic one. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, I think it's one of those things where people just, it's, oh, here, it's a machine. They don't need to have the whole history of, there's no Carfax for pinball machines. Well, and that's where, like, I know where we talk about how, you know, art is such a big deal with pinball machines and stuff. But, I mean, this isn't like, are you buying the Mona Lisa? Are you buying a repo of the Mona Lisa? It's not. This isn't art. This is commercial stuff that has art on it. Commercial art, I might add. So in that regard, as long as you have that art, it doesn't matter. Like, well, it's a repo. Yeah, well, it was all screened stuff in the first place. So no one really cares. It's not like you're buying an original painting here. So if you went and you went to CPR and got repo stuff and all that, it's like no one cares. Is your back glass redone by BG Resto or do you have the original? No one cares. Does it, it's all about how, like, does it look good or has got cracks in it? You know, it's, does it play? Is it playing properly? Does the game function? Do you really care? Have you got an original medieval madness? You got Chicago gaming's medieval madness? Like, no, if anything, the new one's probably more attractive. So it's like, so anyway, it's a sort of interesting question, but not really. But thank you anyway, David, for trying. That's it. That's our, that's our emails. So thank you everyone for writing in. We're not used to getting that many, at least not that many that are worth answering. Speaking of answering, questions must be answered in the realm of pinball, Tony. There are many questions. Pinball questions? There's actual pinball stuff this time? Yeah, we do have some. We have three topics. I'm going to open with Sorin, who I'm going to say his last name, so I apologize to Sorin. I'm not sure how to pronounce it. I'm probably not saying Sorin right. Maybe it's Sirin. It might be Sirin. Because it's got that – it's like that O with a slash through it. Right. Anyway, he's fairly well-known in pinball for people who do mods because he had programmed a whole slew of custom ROMs, a whole bunch of them, mostly focusing on Bally Williams games. And a few months ago, those were no longer publicly available online. And I don't know if he ever addressed that publicly at the time. The assumption was there was probably a license complaint that he was modifying original code, and the license is controlled by Planetary Pinball for those WMS assets. But the news is that Soren has entered into a partnership with Planetary Pinball. So his ROMs are now going to be released, and in fact, four are already out for WMS Games. Yeah, WMS Games, Williams Games. And the current ones that are out are Roadshow, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Radical, and Junkyard. And assuming that those do well, more will be on the way. And I believe you can go and get those through any of the authorized distributors. I checked on Planetary Pinball's website. It looks like the ROM chips are running $15 a chip if you want to get them direct from Planetary. Soren did appear on the Slam Tilt podcast and I have a link in the show notes where they did an interview with him so you can go and listen he talks all about it that's probably the best place to go and learn about this well I've known about Soren's ROMs for years you know as I think about it I can't say I've ever actually played one I'm not sure if I have I don't think so though I'd say if you haven't I definitely haven't considering the limited amount of time I have on And, yeah, the only games with modded ROMs that I can really think have been playing have been, oh, there's the one mod you had on the Jurassic Park and the Star Wars mods. Yeah, Chad H. Yeah, I've played some of those. Yeah, he's known for modding Data East and Sega. And I think Chad had a – his approach was, I feel, very clever. He does not release the modified ROM code, so I think he's avoided the licensor issue. You actually have to get a copy of the original ROM, which are freely available. And the original ROMs for these WMS games are freely available. You can go to IPDB and download them. And then you download his code and then you have to use a merging tool which will combine the two together as an end user to modify your own personal game That how he avoided the challenge But it is more work obviously It requires a degree of competence to do that. But yes, I've known people that use the chat H code. We had a few of those games on location. As you noted, I modified my Jurassic Park back when I owned it to run that. We may have played games with, I mean, I've played so many WMS games. I've never owned a game to my knowledge that Sorin has modified. So it's never been an option for me, but I've heard very good things about his code. Most of his stuff is, and the way these are being billed because they're officially licensed. These are official. Now these are official code updates, you know, confirmed to work with these games. And, you know, like one of my big complaints with, excuse me, I'm assuming Sorin addressed it, but like Roadshow, I didn't like the, like Miami is the right way to go. Going New York is stupid and you have to hit pots to make the switch and all that. Like I think he's modified some of that aspect, if I remember from the interview correctly. So probably made that game better because it needed it. And I think so on and so on. You know, Junkyard is one that I've heard a lot of complaints about. I think the video modes were too lopsided on the scoring, if I remember correctly. So he's made modifications to address, you know, improvements so that it should be a more enjoyable game. So, but I've always heard very positive things about his code. I look forward to eventually trying some of these. Hopefully. I know people who own these games. I don't know if they'll buy the chips or not. I guess it depends on how much they hate the old code. Right. And we might be able to have a chance if there's ever, you know, in-person pinball again. Yeah, well, maybe someday. Speaking of someday, Deep Root. Someday, they're planning to release Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's not get crazy. Well, that's what they're planning. I'm only speaking of what they intend. They're talking about someday releasing a game. Yes. I'm just going to leave it right there. Well, less than. Planning seems a little strong. Well, you know, plans are, we don't know all the internals, but I'm going to assume that there is a plan. How well constructed, I do not know. But nonetheless, they did reveal a couple production, what they said were production models of Raza. on location. They had a special event at a, I think a coffee brewery in Texas, and those ended up being streamed. The Fliptronic, which is a Twitch streaming group that operates under the Pinball Network, they contacted Deep Root, Fliptronic did, and asked if they could stream the game. And Deep Root said, yeah, you can stream it for an hour. And so they headed over there and they set up their stuff. And so we got to have a lot of high quality images and see the new gameplay. Did you watch the stream live or on recording, Tony? I watched a little bit of the recording. I didn't watch the whole thing, but I've watched highlights. They went over an hour because I left before they ended the stream, but I watched about an hour of it. So I saw most of it or most of what was planned. What were your sort of takeaway thoughts from what you saw? It's a pinball game. I mean... Revolutionary. Yeah, it didn't seem... For as changed the pinball world as the talks are, I didn't get that. What did you think of the pin bar? You know, I don't think I ever watched very much where they did anything with the pin bar. For a while, they were messing around with the pin bar a bit. The streamers said that the pin bar was not uncomfortable in terms of where their hands were positioned on the lockdown bar. So and I think some other people I did not really look at the corners and edges. Some other people who watched said it looked like they had rounded the edges more than what they saw when the the deep six VIPs went and took their photos and talked about the game. So I don't know if that's true or not. But but comfort was confirmed. So it was not the pain bar. Some people were assuming that was going to feel like stellar wars, which is good. I thought the pin bar looked good. Like the visuals, most of the time the visuals on the pin bar seem to be the same that were on the backbox display. So it's just another place you could look, which, you know, kind of like with Highway and stuff, I've found that the screen lower towards the flippers is more convenient for me to watch than the backbox. So I thought that was – Yeah, I don't like looking up away from the play field that much. So I think using it like that and duplicating – I think some people may have been disappointed that it wasn't like maybe doing more of a JJP thing where the separate screen is showing something else. But I think it makes more sense actually just to duplicate and keep it like that because the backbox display obviously is more useful to people that aren't playing to be able to watch what's going on. But I think that having it do that display stuff was fine. It – I saw where the Magda today button was on the pin bar to where the thumb was supposed to conveniently be able to push it off on the side. So – and that's where they would type in their initials and stuff. I think the integration of it looked decent. the ramps definitely were more makeable than what we saw with the prototype reveal a year ago so there was that I still think that the playfield layout itself seems very uninspired and not very interesting unfortunately I saw at least two ball hang-ups where they had to take the glass off so that was a concern because again I only watched for an hour and you had to like I normally, when I stream a game for one or two hours of my own, I don't usually have a ball get stuck at all. So that was a bit concerning that that happened. I didn't get a good sense about the code and what the rules were. They were very good versus what we already knew. So I can't really comment on what's going on software-wise with that. There wasn't a lot of explanation provided. And again, this was not a planned reveal, like walkthrough deep dive stream. This was very spur of the moment. Deep Root was approached and agreed to allow it to be streamed. It wasn't set up to be like what we think of with a first reveal stream from Jersey Jack or from Stern. It wasn't set up that way. So they – it was – and my understanding was it was very deliberate. that Deep Root wanted people, they wanted to see people play it live to see if it was intuitive, to see if people could figure out what to do without going through a walkthrough. So a walkthrough would defeat the purpose of their, because they were out there actually like play testing this. That's the purpose that they had, not to reveal it. I thought doing the stream was smart for them though, because of the damage that was done with the lack of the reveal when they brought in the deep six. I think they're in a really weird space right now where normally if the game's not ready to ship, I wouldn't do a reveal, but the cat's kind of out of the bag on Raza. So I thought anything that could mitigate the damage done during that is smart. And from what I could tell on pin side, the discussion seemed to be a lot more positive. Like, oh, okay. The pin bar does actually seem to make sense how they're using it. Oh, okay. The game seems to shoot better than we remembered it shooting a year ago so again there's a lot they've had a they've rung a bell that's very difficult to unring but i think the stream did more good for them than harm i think that's probably true uh but honestly with how bad that whole deep six reveal went it would have been hard for it to hurt them more than they were already hurt yeah i agree that's why i think there was nothing much to lose by doing this. I mean, yeah, because even if they'd gone to stream and the game ended up being broken, it wouldn't have hurt them any more than the damage that they've already taken. Yeah, but overall, I still really struggle to see very many of this game selling. I honestly don't think it will. I mean, it's going to sell. Don't get me wrong, but I don't think it's going to be some game-changing world winner that you're going to see everywhere. Yeah. I just, what innovations they've got going on here are not, in my view, enough to motivate a lot of people. They'd rather wait for these innovations to appear on a better playing game than this. And that's the thing. There's just nothing about this game that, to me, screams, this is an incredible gameplay experience. and that's unfortunate because I think that's ultimately well if you're not going to sell off a theme which is the biggest thing that can normally get you initial interest then you gotta sell off of gameplay and right as I've mentioned before no matter how good the rules are if the geometry is not stellar there's only so far that that code can go so even if the rules are great I just don't it just doesn't look like it shoots very well I don't think it looks like it shoots terrible like i don't think this is like a rob zombie but i don't i don't think this is going to go down as a very good shooter either no uh i think it's going to be at this point kind of the rollout for the their innovations and their real hope is going to be a second game yes that will hopefully be strong enough to push enough interest, which is, in a lot of cases, that's going to be a running problem. You have to be an actual entity, to be an actual company. You have to put out more than one game, and you have to consistently put out more than one game, and those games have to be fun. and flops are going to happen. And I'm not saying that this will be a flop. I just don't think that the innovations alone are going to be enough with what we've seen to turn this into some sort of world winner. And the, they, uh, sure. Aren't looking like that mystical stern breaker that people were touting them as, you know, several years ago when it first came up, when they first came into existence, like they tout every new manufacturer as going to be the great stern slayer. Yeah. And I think most of that is maybe more wishful thinking on the part of fans than anything, though, because the only element of Deep Root, besides their big talk, that suggested they might be different was the sheer volume of designers they brought on board. Like the number of designers they brought in suggested that they were going to be on the level of Stern in terms of production because, I mean, they had four designers. It was Nordman, Norris, Osler, Papaduke. Plus Robert, the principal of Deep Root, also said he was going to do design. So that's five. I mean no one has five designers except maybe Stern. I mean Stern has got Eddie, Elwin, Richie, Borg, and sometimes Gomez. So, yeah, five. And that should give them, and that would make you think that they were opening for the big shot. And remember, originally, they had originally talked about when they dropped machines, they were going to drop four or five machines to begin with. Right. And that talk is long dead. Yeah. Long gone. At this point. So my thought would be their game number two should be Goonies. I don't know of anything else that they've, because they've revealed all these upcoming themes. That's the only one that I think could significantly move immediate units and get a lot of people exposure to actually playing a Deep Root game and knowing if they like it or not, with the Who being the second pick. I will have you know, I have read on Pinside, and the only game they want is Food Truck. None of the rest of this matters. That's true. I do see the most chatter about Food Truck, so my prediction may be incorrect, but it would be what I would do if I were to do that. Yeah, no, and I think that's the thing. I think one of those games is the game that's going to have to be Game 2. I have no earthly idea which game will be Game 2, but I think they're going to have to have something pretty major to push out if they don't want an ongoing issue. And if they don't want to end up as a company that's put out a couple machines and then goes away after a lot of big talk. Now, the other thing that kind of came up a little bit after this reveal is on Pinside, there was a user that shared in a few multiple in multiple posts information that appeared to be found from what was billed as Deep Root staging website, which would be where they were constructing a website information. It wasn't meant to be public yet, but could eventually be public. I'm not including links for a couple of reasons. One, since it's from a staging website, there's no guarantee that this information ultimately would be what the company decides to do. And I don't want to imply that they've confirmed that this is the case. Not to mention that if someone created a fake staging website, it might not actually be Deep Roots. So while I don't personally suspect any sort of shenanigans going on in that regard, I don't know for sure. So I want to fully put in all the caveats here that this is not confirmed that Deep Root is doing this stuff. This is what someone found that implied they might be considering doing this stuff. And there was a whole bunch in it. There are only a couple of things that I wanted to bring up with you, though. The first was that, according to the purported staging website, Deep Root was entertaining the idea of a $5,000 price point for the arcade level of the pro, basically the pro models of their games. That would put it at just under what Stern's pros are now trading at. I think new in box sterns are around 54, 5,500 kind of depends, which if you're going with, uh, Avengers or going with one of the older games, but, um, now that would be, that's true. That would, to me, be very interesting because deep root initially in their talk made me think they were going to gun for something in the pro price point. And then future talk made me think they were backing away from it. But if they actually are planning to offer their games at a pro price point, that would be something that none of the other manufacturers are doing. Oh, and I think that would be great. I think the pro price point is one of those things that keeps Stern being the grand duchess of the ball. The fact that there is machines that are good, and in some cases better than the more expensive machines at a low enough price point for the more casual collector to actually consider picking up. Yeah. I think that's a really big thing for them. And I 100% don't see how any of the other groups can ever hope to sell like Stern sells without something in the pro price range. Yeah. And if and when location pinball makes its resurgence, that can be something that's attractive to operators because as I've heard other operators note, whatever monetary earning difference they see from a, say, fully loaded Jersey Jack game versus a Stern Pro, it's not enough to offset the price difference. and factoring in what the games will resell for is something of concern, obviously. And at least Stern Pros hold their value very well. And not that most pinball loses a lot of value, but if you're only going to lose $500 on a Stern Pro and you might lose $1,000 on your sale of the JJP LE, again, that's just, and you're making the same amount of money off of both, why wouldn't you buy the Stern Pro sort of thing? So this might get their foot in the door for people that are thinking, hey, it might be worth seeing how the pin bar does on location and taking a chance and routing an arcade edition of Deep Root and seeing if it – because the damage done if the game doesn't earn well isn't going to be that bad. It was like we only had to buy it for 5K. So it's not like we just had to spend $9,500 on it. So the other thing that was on the purported staging website is DLC. So the way it was written up is, I believe it was around $50 a month, though there was a discount if you bought a year's worth up front, though you had to commit to subscribing for a year. It was a software as a service model, was the proposal, that you would get access to DLC. Plus, there were a few other perks to the program. There was things like a discount on shipping. You could get credit in the store if you bought enough pinball machines. So there was more than just the DLC in the subscription. But the bottom line, the thing that's made people want to start talking about this is the idea of purchasing for extra software. And in this case, if it was an actual subscription, that could imply that as a license, if and when you stop subscribing, you would lose access to the software licenses that you were paying for. Kind of like Office 365. You pay an annual subscription. You quit subscribing to it. You quit getting access to it. You don't own what you subscribe to. It's temporary. Right. It's one of those things that is just someone trying it would not surprise me in the least, but it doesn't necessarily make me happy. I think that doing it as software as a service is not going to work. I think that's a flop waiting to happen. Trying to, well, I don't care for it, trying to sell a license to DLC where this is all online, cloud-based, you create an account, so it's still a license and you can't transfer it when you sell the game away, but you permanently have access to the DLC that you, quote unquote, bought, Steam style. It's in your library. I could see that moving forward. I don't think people having to constantly pay to gain access to the software, I think that's a no-go i think there's a reason why we only tend to see that sort of software as a service on office applications not games right and i'd be much more likely to see them having one of those like uh like like the season pass type thing where you pay a certain amount of money up front and then you get certain things as they are released or kind of like with uh mobile gaming, you, if you pay a certain amount, I mean, you can, you don't have to pay anything. You get the whole game for free, but if you pay a certain amount per month, you know, you'll get extras and you'll get bonuses and there'll be extra special things you can do. It's just, it's all slippery slope stuff that has you start worrying about what else they're going to try and put in or any pinball company could put in the kind of thing that would require you or give you bonuses from having extra money put in. It's kind of like, oh, remember there was a point in time where you could always drop another quarter and purchase an extra ball if you had a good game going. Yeah, buy-in, yeah. Yeah, if they could do something similar to that, especially when we're talking about uh, systems like they've talked about. And I'm not saying this is something they're doing. I'm just saying it's something that's crossed my mind where you can log into the machine and it has your information from every other machine you've played with that game. And it has all your user data and you know, your, your own customized avatar with your $500 worth of customized bling that your avatar was wearing that you bought because you play gotcha games and, and all that stuff. when it allows you to start getting the fact, if you're playing with friends and you get bonuses or you get rule tweaks or you get some change that's locked to just your player because you're the one who paid for it and the others don't get the same thing, that's when you're going to start running into issues. Yeah, I just, I mean, you know, an example for those that aren't familiar with season passes, from the video game side, that would be a lot of companies started to offer those where you would preemptively, oftentimes preemptively, buy access to all the DLC. And usually the reward for that would, for example, be a discount. So you said, okay, I'm going to get all the DLC as a season pass. Here's the money up front for all of that. But normally with that model, the companies would be forthright in saying like, oh, here, would you like to buy the season pass for Fallout 3? There will be three DLC packs or four DLC packs that will come out. We guarantee it. And so you had a sense about what quantity you were going to get. And then you could get the season pass. Or if you thought, no, I'm only going to maybe want one or two of the DLCs, you could buy those a la carte. And then when you sell your physical copy of Fallout, your disc, the DLC is stuck to your account. So you can't sell it secondhand, but you could still sell your original software just like you could sell the pinball machine. Yeah, I could see stuff like that. but it's going to require a lot more planning than most pinball manufacturers are used to. Now, Deep Root's new, so that's not like it's a change in culture for them. But yeah, unfortunately, I do think that the DLC thing is going to be more and more common. I believe in the latest patch notes I saw, I don't normally read patch notes, but I looked at the latest patch notes for Avengers pinball machine, and they added software support related to the topper that I have not heard of. I haven't seen the topper yet, but I'm not surprised they're selling a topper. And it looks like they're pulling the Jurassic Park thing where there will yet again be a mode. Some would call it DLC in their game that is only accessible if you have the topper. And I think the big question. Which will cost $15,000. I don't know. My concern will be that my guess will be that the topper will cost $1,000. I would guess it's going to cost – yeah. really struggle to get people to subscribe to that. I definitely could see them do it. Well, a multi-port Morphic does it. Look at Ranger in the Ruins. You know, we covered that. Right. And if you buy that, it's tied to your P3 account. You can't sell your copy of Ranger in the Ruins to someone else. It's following what I consider the traditional DLC model. Permanent access to the license for the person, only the original buyer. and that's where ultimately I definitely could see Deep Root being able to sell things like that because it's just people are going to do it and it's the same thing happened with and those that doubt I mean I understand there are a lot of people in pinball that are going to hate I mean especially those that are quote-unquote pure pinball people that are not into video games they're going to struggle with this concept but the video game folks struggled too and in the end the publishers won I mean DLC is a permanent fixture the argument though that was different that i've not seen on pinball is in the video game side this was what the the manufacturers the excuse me the publishers told us this is why we got to stay at games at 60 for like 20 years was because they were making up the difference on the dlc side right pinball machines are going up every single year still so unless these companies are going to draw a line and say, okay, now we're not going to raise the price of the pro a hundred dollars every three releases. It's like, they don't have the same incentive because the games are just getting more and more expensive, even though the pinball is growing more, you know, it's, that's the, that's the weird rub, you know, the, the market, an analyst in me says, you keep pointing out how you're, you're seeing like 20 to 30% growth year on year in your sales yet where's my economy of scale that's holding the prices steady why does price keep going up you can tell me copper wire keeps going up in price or whatever but you're selling more and more games so it's not you're becoming more and more profitable every year i don't need to see your books to know that because i'm not i'm not an idiot i only play one on podcast so i'm just i mean i'm just saying the more and more you sell of something the less pressure you should have to have to raise the unit price. So I just, I find it disingenuous. So I could see DLC taking better hold if they actually make that argument and put their money where their mouth is. But with companies just being like, nah, we're just going to double the price, almost double the price of toppers and stuff and do that sort of, you know, just gouging tactics. I don't think anyone will trust that they're going to do anything but continue to jack prices and this is just yet another monetary stream that they've taken a cue from on the video game side but there won't be any i mean video games did hold the price on the retail they did they did they held the price for years and even now the prices are still pretty held there's only been a few companies that are increasing uh with the new consoles and stuff so far though i'm expecting to see more of it we're still setting at 60 and it's been that way forever yeah yeah and like when we were kids what were nintendo games like 50 i mean right for inflation it video games it shows where the growth held the pricing down and the arguments whether or not they would have held the pricing down without the DLC shrug But they did hold it down So we will give them credit for keeping their word about that. Pinball has not made any such overtures. And I doubt that they ever will. Well, and pinball is also not going to have and is never going to have the kind of sales figures video games do just due to accessibility issues. Of course. Of course. And so that's why – that's where back to our discussion of Multimorphic, why you see Rangers in the Ruins at $150 and not $60. Right. How many can Nick sell? Because there are only so many people that can afford to buy those. he'll never sell 100,000 copies of Rangers because there'll never be 100,000 P3s out there. It's just impossible. It's mathematically impossible. So speaking of pinball, though, because we're in the pinball segment, I want to jump to our final segment, our sad segment. And that is the end of the Replay Foundation as we know it. So for those that do not know, the Replay Foundation is a nonprofit entity. I believe it was formally established in 2012. And they're not going away outright. They're still going to maintain a virtual presence, but they're most known for organizing the major convention, Replay FX, which hosts or I should say hosted the largest pinball tournament in the world, Pinberg. and so I want to talk about this because this is pretty big news. I do want to say a few things. First, because of the way this is going to go, and I know a lot of people loved Pinberg, you and I, we never went. No. We've talked about it for several years and we kind of hoped we'd get to do it last year or this year. And then, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, a couple of years ago we thought about it and that was the year that there was a position opening for you to go for the promotion, which you did get. So congratulations again. But because of that, that time of year was not good for you because of what was going on because you were doing some work-related stuff. And then this year obviously was moot because we knew once Texas was gone, there was practically no way that Pinburgh was going to be able to move forward. So I didn't even seriously look at it this year. And now there is no next year. But I do want to say that while I never got to experience it, I know a lot of people, read a lot of people posting online about all the work they did as volunteers. volunteers all the work that they helped put the event together and so I want to say thank you to those individuals and while we will be discussing a bit about replay foundation and their decision here and some of that discussion will be critical I do want to say that I don't mean anything disparaging to the those that volunteered their time and their work on this and ultimately obviously their governing board made the decision that they thought was right I just wanted to declare that up front because we're going to we're going to talk about a few things here that aren't going to be feel good stuff. And speaking of that, there are a couple other podcasts that have already covered this topic. I have links in the show notes to both of them. One is to the super awesome pinball show. They did an interview with the sharp brothers who they don't work for replay foundation, but obviously they're very involved. Uh, one of them won Pinberg one year. And so they, they know about Pinberg a great deal. So there's a good discussion there. And then more recently, The Slam Tilt Podcast had an episode that went into a lot of the discussion that you and I, Tony, had with the Kansas City folks on the financials from 2018, which I also have a link in the show notes to the 2018 990 for Replay Foundation. The 990 is the tax form. This is a 30-page document. Most of you probably do not want to read it. But if you are curious about the latest financial information that was publicly released, that's what we have. 2019 will probably drop within a few months. So anyway, but it is very interesting. So all that said, you and I, Tony, we went – we reviewed a lot of this. I remember at first I thought they were relatively break-even because I looked at the wrong column. And you were the first one to go and say, hey, wait a moment. In 2018, the Replay Foundation in their 990 listed a loss of $470,000. And it was noted in their – not in the announcement itself, but in the frequently asked questions about how they were ending Pinburgh. They were refunding the tickets. Oh, so for those that don't know, when Pinburgh 2020 didn't happen, the initial statement from the Replay Foundation was, okay, don't worry. They even referenced force majeure, so I'm assuming there was no penalty from their convention center because they flat out used the phrase force majeure, which would normally mean their contractual obligations are suspended because of an act of God essentially. And that no one needed to worry. All the tickets would roll over to 2021, and people would – they wouldn't have to go and buy them again or anything like that. So everyone was disappointed but reassured that, okay, things were a go. And then there was this new announcement saying, nope, we're selling all our assets. So that means they're selling the pinball machines. Last I heard, they've already sold over 100 of them for sure. They're selling all the video games. They're selling everything. Everything must go. Fire sale. And they're just going to operate online like they have their pop-it tutorial videos. The Professional Amateur Pinball Association is run by Replay Foundation. And they were getting out of all this. The people would get a refund of their replay effects tickets unless they want to donate the money to the replay foundation. They may choose to do so because it's still existing as a nonprofit. So you may do that. And, you know, it's all done. They're just not going to organize events anymore. So they had and they noted that in the frequently asked questions that they had struggled to break even. And the 2018 990 proves that struggle was very, very real. and looking through, well, they had a number of assets and they're selling the assets to satisfy their debts. So, you know, there were a couple of debts on the 990 for 2018. One of those debts was to a bank that was already due by the end of 2019. So I'm assuming that that obviously was already satisfied because the maturity date had passed. But the lender, the president of the Replay Foundation, Kevin Martin, also loaned over $400,000 in 2018 to the Replay Foundation. And that was due, that was coming due December of this year, 2020. So I'm assuming that was a piece of debt that still had some amount. I don't know what the balance was because we don't have the 2019 990s yet that needed to be satisfied. And there may have been another loan as well, you know, since 2018. So there was clearly, I see why the board decided to do what they did because there were they were sitting on over a million dollars in assets they had almost in 2018 they had almost a million dollars worth of pinball machines and over a hundred thousand dollars worth of video games and i heard on the slam tilt podcast that in 2019 they had acquired a lot more of the and by video games we're talking arcade games right they had acquired a bunch more of those so i see where the logic was we don't know what's going to happen in 2021. We're not breaking even or making money as a foundation running Pinburgh. Let's sell the assets, deal with all this debt so no one is left holding the bag and just quit running events and in the future, say we're doing it virtual and then in the future, decide how we want to move forward. But I've kind of talked for quite a bit there. So what are your thoughts? well I think that they were kind of between a rock and a hard place I don't think that they really had much choice in the matter running at a loss for the last several years and having so much debt coming due this was about the only way they had to keep any form of existence is to sell off and get rid of the cost of rental space get rid of the cost of machine maintenance get rid of everything pay off as much of the debt as they can and then just survive as a virtual entity. After looking at those numbers, I don't see where they had any other option because based upon what we saw when we were talking with the Kansas City Pinball Group and going through stuff, it looked like even their large events were net money losers for them. Yes. They lost money on Pinberg. Pembert cost more to run than they made out of it. So at no point were they ever going to get back ahead when the only primary big, huge event you run cost you more money than you put into it. And you're already sitting on tons of debt. I mean, there's no way around it. You were not going to catch up. You were not going to make things better. And having one year canceled and then the possibility of a second year canceled with amounts coming due, they were in a no-win situation. I don't think there was really anything they could do. I think they did the absolute best that they could with the situation they had gotten into. Okay. I disagree. I think that the decision they made was the easy way out of it and the safe way out of it. So I'm not saying it's a wrong decision, but there was another way, in my view, there was another way to do it. They just didn't want to put in the work to do it. And I don't really blame them for that. But their decision to just sort of out of the blue say, this is what we're doing. We're not going to run it anymore. And not turning to the community at all was a decision. It wasn't – they were not forced to do that. They chose to do that. So I'll give you my – here as a scenario, what could have happened. And let me start with – and I'm going to try and – I don't want this to sound snotty. It might sound a little snotty, though, but as a trained public administrator, this is what people like me are for. And I think the biggest mistake that the Replay Foundation has is they don't have an executive director. I think that's a very valid point. This – looking at this 2018 990 and the decisions that they made, this looks to me like this is what happens when you have a volunteer board that's making all the decisions. and you don't have a hired professional that is making short and long-term recommendations to that governing board and is a career focus to try and make the nonprofit successful. And I have worked with, and I don't mean just under, but like in tandem with dozens of volunteer boards. I have worked for volunteer boards my entire career, and I have worked in partnership with organizations that are volunteer boards that do not have staff. and those without staff inevitably are always worse run than those that have hired staff. And usually the more hired staff, the better. But it's very, very, very difficult for nonprofits to do that. So there's no way faults the board. They attend board members. These are people who are volunteering their time. But all these people have, you know, they have their own jobs, their own careers, their own lives. They're not compensated to be board members. There's only so much time you can ask of a volunteer board. It's very stressful, especially if there's a lot of work that needs to be done. And I have seen boards put under a great deal of strain, and it's a struggle even when there is the staff to turn to. And that's why I fundamentally believe that if you want a successful nonprofit, ultimately your best bet is to have at least an executive that is around to make the day-to-day decisions and then answer to the governing board and the governing board hold them accountable. because even when that's the case, these governing boards, in my experience, working for so many of them, most of the time, you're lucky if you have two or three board members that are highly engaged and the rest, they'll show up to the meetings, they'll do the votes, they're interested in the mission, but they're just, they're so busy, they can't like do a lot of homework. Does that make sense? Oh, that makes total sense. And I fully agree with you that that would definitely have been a, something that they should have done years ago. But I mean, that's just whether it was financial. But you see, that's the thing. They're losing money. How financially feasible? You're not getting an executive usually. You're not getting an executive director for free. You'd have to hire someone. So that's a struggle in and of itself. Let me because I mentioned that I thought that they kind of did the easy solution because what I think the board did is a solution. I don't blame them for it at all. Here would have been what I would have suggested if I were their executive director. So I'll put my money where my mouth is and be like, okay, well, what would you have done differently, Dennis? Here's what I would have done. I would have suggested to their board for them to evaluate. And they may have very well discussed doing this and just decided it wasn't financially feasible. But I would have said, okay, after the decision to not run the 2020 PINBURG, I would have recommended one, refunding the replay tickets outright with an option for the people to just donate them to the replay foundation in the announcement of pinberg 2020 not happening i would have publicly declared how much money needs to be raised by the organization to satisfy the debts i think the board's decision to pay off the debts was smart and i think that needed to move forward no matter what right so i think a statement would have been and i don't know how much the debt load currently is so let's just for the sake of argument uh let's just say that it was six hundred thousand dollars Okay, so let's say, all right, we need $600,000 or else replay will not be able to put on PINBURG 2021. You're a nonprofit organization. It's okay to be public about this. I think it's very difficult for organizations to want to admit that they have high debts and that they need to raise certain amounts of funds. But in this scenario, it would have been key in order to generate interest amongst the community to do donations. Because according to this 990, they don't get very much in direct donations. It's not their model. They haven't. I mean, and the line one of their contributions, gifts, and grants was $4,600. Yeah. So they're not, and that's fine. They're not designed to be someone that normally takes donations. But, you know, we're in crisis. So as executive director, I always said we're in crisis. We need to ask the pinball community for help. So let's ask them to donate their tickets. Let's refund everything we can now because we don't want to carry that as a liability and get what donations we can from that. Then after that, give it like a two-week period for people to decide. If they don't choose to donate, they get their refund. Say how much you still need publicly. Organize a fundraiser. And that means go to the manufacturers, see about them being willing to donate things, do some major like auction some stuff off your nonprofit. You can run things like auctions and such. Do something like that. If Special and Lit Podcast can do a 24-hour marathon stream for Project Pinball Charity and raise over $50,000, we could have raised over $50,000 in a one-day event for replay. We could have. Yeah. It could have been done. So you do that. Then you, again, update people. Here is what the debt load is. Here's what we're down to. Then give a deadline. All right. We need to raise the rest of this by November 1st, 2020. anything that is not raised will be closed out by selling assets now because of all the steps we've already taken you should in theory have raised some money from the from the the donated replay tickets and your fundraiser so now you don't need to sell everything you might need to sell most things but not everything so ideally you get more donations coming in during this time period, you reach November 1st. If you did not raise your $600,000 in donations, and you probably didn't, then you say, okay, we still need $300,000. So now we're selling assets to close that gap out. Now, during all of this, you would have been communicating in transparency, okay, if we have to sell assets, Pinburgh 2021, if it happens, we'll not have 1,000 plus players. We have to shrink it because we're going to have less games available. So it's just a math game. And that's part of the reason why you had to refund the 2020 tickets up front, because as executive, I would have gone into this saying, I do not think we'll be able to fundraise the full amount of money. We're going to have to sell assets. We just have to assume it. So there's no way we can assume we can run at the same size. You do all of that. You end the year with reduced assets, zero debt load. We still hit the goal that the board had. There's now no debt. All the loans are replayed. You go forward, plan for 2021. If 2021 did not happen at Spenberg, obviously you're in a bind. You repeat all the same steps I just did. Let people offer to donate their money. It should be less. You'd still, you know, you have your storage facilities and stuff, but you won't have any of those loans due anymore. So you have to raise less in 2021 than you would in 2020. So maybe you could do it all with a fundraiser. If not, you still have assets. you liquidate what more assets you need to and you just you you contract the non-profit until you're able to run events again and those events may become a pale imitation of what they were in 2019 but you're still alive and you still have assets you could still do public events you just had to shrink it's not ideal but shrinkage is better than death right yeah they live on as a virtual entity, but they would still be able to organize and run a PINBURG. And that would be the other thing that I would, and this obviously, this would have been very different, especially if I was an executive earlier than this. But when planning for 2021 PINBURG, you got to raise the price. I don't know what the strategy was, their glide path to break even. I think it involved getting sponsors on board. This is, while this is a nonprofit, This isn't a charity. There's no excuse in my mind to run and subsidize ReplayFX, the event ReplayFX. Right. Pinburgh and ReplayFX should at least be paying for themselves. Honestly, they should be generating you enough revenue. If that's the only major event you run, they should be making you enough profit to pay for your operations for the entire year. and if that means you need to double the price of the tickets then that's what you need to do and if that means there are certain people that can no longer attend it's unfortunate but organizational survival has to come first as you onboard sponsors then you lower the price those would have been my i mean that those would have been my recommendations to the board that would have been my strategy and i think my strategy would work i i think your strategy She would have had a good chance to work, especially if it had been implemented earlier. Right. Because if they're ever set up, well, you noted in the 990. I'm sorry to sorry to cut in, but you noted looking at the 2018 990, how much they lost, like hundreds of thousands, like a couple hundred thousand or something. Yeah. Almost 200 grand. Yeah. And that's your one. That's your big event. If you're losing money on your big event, you've screwed up already. that event should never have lost them money. I mean, even, and this goes back to conversation you and I have had, uh, talking with people who run small conventions, small local conventions. They typically don't lose money. I mean, the smallest of the small do, but typically they make just, they, they have enough profit to keep everything open and to make the reservations for the following year when they roll out of the thing and to start the planning. And yeah, they need pre-ticket sales and the sales at the, at the convention to maintain and finish paying everything off, but they can typically roll out of it without being in debt. And for what, in all honesty is the premier event in pinball to have been costing the organizers, $200,000 is insane yeah I was absolutely flabbergasted when I saw I had to go back through those numbers like 5 times because I could not believe they were losing money on that event I was like you said they should have been honestly I figured that that event would have covered most of their rental fees and storage costs and all that stuff for a year because that's the whole purpose of that event. And the fact that they were losing money on that event means they were doomed. I mean, if it was a one-off, I've not looked at any of their others, but the fact that they had loans of such size and the issues they have, I don't think it was a one-off. They should have been making large amounts of money. No, they noted in their frequently asked questions on their website relating to this announcement that at least most years they lost money. Maybe in 2019 they didn't. I don't know because we haven't seen 2019. Yeah, if you're losing money at your premier event, the event that actually brings in all your money, then you're doomed to failure. The question is how long until you collapse? Right. And according to the Slam Tilt podcast episode, it was noted that a lot of it seemed to be that the Replay Foundation's president, Kevin, he was sort of subsidizing a lot of this. out of generosity. So that's how they close the gap. But again, as an executive director, going into it, I'd be like, okay, but I want a model. As a public administration professional, I want a model where I don't need to rely on the generosity of a wealthy board member to subsidize the organization. The organization should be self-sustaining. so right why isn't the organization self-sustaining you look at the whether numbers are like you know this is like a two million dollar budget but it's pretty straightforward there's one big event and the big events costing money so the solution is to create the big event and either drop the big event but that's what you're known for or make your big event make you money and it's honestly it's that simple you already have a good because it's run for so many years you have a good sense as to how much this costs to put on. It's no longer like, it's not like a surprise is happening where we're like, oh no, we, oh gosh, the rental was so much more than we thought. No, I'm sure this is all really well predicted. It seems like without, and I haven't talked with their board on this. So I, you know, I don't know. It seems like maybe the strategy was bring on more sponsors and keep growing the event and eventually volume, volume of attendees will make them be able to break even. But why, why do it like that? when you could just make it break even from the get-go by raising the price. Right. Because, and again, you know me, I complain about the flexing and gouging and expensiveness and cost growth in pinball all the time. So I understand in a way it can almost sound like I'm being a hypocrite here. But this is just organizational survival has to come first or else you can't keep putting on events. I mean, look what's happened just with one year. With one year, it all fell apart. so given all of that i would have been like no even if it means only wealthier people can afford to come to the event we just as we grow it we can lower the ticket prices we get sponsors we can lower the ticket price but we have to at least break even so that we're not put in a bind i mean you mentioned other smaller events i think when we're talking with the in the with the kansas city folks at carrie wing who organizes the kc pinball championship she has not lost money on putting those events together by design. It's like, oh no, we have to break even. We have to break even. I mean, most events don't have the luck of having deep pocket backers to prop them up through an issue while they make a slow climb to, I mean, none of these events should ever be making enormous amounts of money, but they should be able to pay for themselves. If the event can't pay for itself, I understand things are going to happen. There might be a year or, or maybe two where the event doesn't pay for itself. But if you can at least break even on the event, your event is either too cheap to get into or too large for what you can afford. Right. Yeah. And some of this may be like before, like how Pinburgh was being structured in Papa before the Replay Foundation. Some of this might just be like cultural, like they were used to relying on generosity to sustain what the event was happening. And that mentality didn't shift when they became the Replay Foundation. But in my judgment, my personal opinion, it should have. At that point, it should have been about, all right, this entity needs to be able to stand on its own as quickly as possible. and so again we're talking like since 2012 they they formed so i assumed like 2013 was probably their first pinberg uh as replay foundation there was plenty of time to ramp this you know have a couple of years where maybe there were some minor losses that they figured out just how much everything was and all that but by you know by now by 2018 they should have they should have been able to break even in my you would assume uh i do i do assume yeah i mean that's the thing and we've said it before and it came up in that conversation I was in shock It does not make sense for an event that large and that hailed an event that constantly wins the favorite of everybody It the one everyone wants to go to It is the pinball event to not be making money. Somebody screwed up. Well, and again, that's where I would point and say, and this is the big risk when you don't have You don't have an executive director. That was that process of trying to sort all that out and looking at those numbers and having a professional there to make recommendations about, OK, we're closing. We're still relying too much on board member generosity to close the gaps out. Here's our issue. This is the only event we're running. We either need to up this event or you need another event that subsidizes this. I mean, there are a few strategies you could do. I know what I would do, but there are a few different strategies you could do if you wanted to. So unfortunately, given the position that they were in once, PINBURG 2020 couldn't happen. And again, not to beat a dead horse, but to make it very clear, I do not blame their governing board for choosing the solution they have chosen. If I were on their board, I might have chosen this solution as well. Well, and the thing is, I think by the time they realized how much trouble they were in, I think it might have been too late for the other solution. It could have. And again, I'm trying to wear two different hats. Like what the logic of what they did as board members, I completely get. If I had been an executive director of the Replay Foundation, what strategy I would have done to keep the organization afloat would have been different. But it all depends on I have to, you know, in my in my what if because I'm playing a what if game in my what if when would I have been there? If you had tapped me in November 1st and said, now fix it, I'd probably be like, I can't. It's too late. You have debt due in a month. Your solution you've chosen as a board is your solution. Had you tapped me in June, maybe we could have tried to do the fundraiser thing that I presented earlier. And if I was involved before, like back in 2018, I would have looked at these numbers and said, I want the 2019 proposal to make money. Right. And I would have told you how I would – here's my solution to do it. Here's your attendance levels. Here's how much we need to charge on tickets to achieve that. Will you approve it? It's up to the board if they'll approve that or not. But that – I mean so when you get involved, there's a point of no return. And by the time we learned about them not doing anything other than liquidating assets and ending all their events, yeah, I think by and large – back to where I said I would have done something different than you. That would have been assuming immediately when they were still thinking they would be able to hold the 2021 event and said the tickets would roll over. That would have been the point where I would have done a different strategy. But by the time they made the announcement that they were ending, ending was probably all that was realistic at the – ending their in-person events. It's just – it would have been such a lift given just the one loan we know about in 2018 coming due in December. I just don't know. Right. You want to go to that much because you have to – the issue isn't that your solution selling assets all of a sudden doesn't become viable. They still – they could have tried to do a fundraiser and then just sold assets afterwards, but you have to ask yourself, do you upset people? Do you damage people to tell them that, yeah, we're going to do – we're going to fundraise to have Pinburgh 2021? And then when you fail, you've kept all their money and don't run the event? I mean there's a reputation thing at stake too. Right. Well, that's all I had to say about it. It's really unfortunate, but I understand why the board did what they did. I wish they had had an executive. I think that would have – longer term, I think maybe it could have been avoided, but we'll never know now. I have seen some people speculate about replay eventually coming back and running Pinburgh. While there might be a Pinberg that's like – Replay licenses the name Pinberg to someone to run Pinberg, I do not think the Replay Foundation ever runs an event ever again, not after liquidating all their assets. But once they pay down all their debt, how would they ever acquire all these games again? They bought a lot of this stuff when it was cheap. This stuff is not cheap anymore. Right, and that's the thing. And if liquidating their assets includes liquidating some of those ultra-rares, which makes sense because that's where a lot of the money is going to be, then they're never going to have the starting point. Now, I think realistically licensing of the name is where they will have to go. And that doesn't mean they can't, after licensing the name long enough, move into doing their own thing somehow. but that's the only way it's going to happen in the foreseeable future. Do you think, I do have one question before we move to video games. Do you think Tony, that it makes sense for them to keep replay foundation as a functioning nonprofit operating in the virtual space or should they just go away? I don't see what they're doing now. I guess hosting like Bowen's Papa tutorial videos and the Papa website with the tournament guides and stuff like all that still living on. I mean, I think it's good to keep those things living on. Those are good resources. But does that necessarily need a foundation of that kind of size? Or is that something that could be locked down into an even smaller? Well, I mean, like operationally, that could probably rely on board members. I mean, when you think about like running a hosting website, if that's really all it is, they have all the paperwork filed. I suppose their board members could just donate enough money to, you know, that's cheap. It's not a big, not a biggie. I don't, I don't know if it's worth, I don't know if it's worth having the nine 90 having to be filled out every year for, for such little thing, but maybe they're, maybe that's something they internalize and have the board treasurer do instead of outsourcing it. Like I, I, I don't do my nine, nine 90, my nine 90 for my job. It's so much work. I outsource it to an accountant. But if you've only got a handful of expenses and your income is just a few donations and you're not running anything, maybe it's worth – I think right now they don't have a plan. I think they're doing that as a – and I think it makes sense. Hold the line, keep the organization going and regroup. But there a whole lot of questions about what replay and and papa can do for pinball moving forward it's like well they don't have their own games anymore so bowen in theory could still do new videos but he's probably going to have to record in other locations uh papa tv i believe is gone i think they're selling their av equipment i thought that was part of the like all assets are going so they're not going to run their twitch youtube stuff anymore or anything it's just it's it's truly is a shell of what it was i just i don't know what it adds really to pinball other than as a legacy storage site for stuff. Maybe that's good enough. Yeah, that's basically, it's a storage for the old stuff. It's almost more like a memorial for what it was than anything else. I'd almost say, look and see if another entity, be it a nonprofit, I mean, ideally, I suppose another nonprofit that either exists or forms up in pinball and then transfer the assets ultimately to them and then truly just spin down the entire nonprofit and shut it down. Yeah. I just – like I don't see them recovering from this. I just don't see how they do it. Well, and that's the question is do they even have enough assets to sell to make up their current debt? My assumption is yes, but I don't know what their loans and such look like in 2018. But I thought that's part of the reason why they were like let's do it now. That's part of the reason why this was the safe answer. Let's do it now. Pinball prices are high. They've got like one to 1.1, at least million dollars worth of just games, pinball and arcade. That can cover a lot, especially if they didn't have to pay any penalties to the hotel or anything. That could cover a lot of a lot of burden. I think they'll be OK. I think like financially they'll be OK doing what I think that's why they decided to do it clean like this and just get out of it entirely. But because that's the one I mean, that's the one huge thing they had. They had a lot of assets, a whole lot of assets. Right. And if they do pay everything off, yeah, they'll be OK, but they're just going to be there. They're going to exist. Papa will no longer be important to pinball. Right. Which is incredibly sad. I mean, when you think about the history of the organization, you know, dating back to the Epstein days and stuff. Yeah, it's and that's part of what was touched on the Super Awesome Pinball Show. So I think part of the reason why they had Josh and Zach Sharp on was Roger Sharp and working with Steve Epstein to form Papa. And here it is under Replay Foundation. Now it's still under Replay Foundation, but there's no plan to do anything with it. And, you know, yeah, it is sad. But 2020 has been sad for a lot of people trying to make a living in pinball, nonprofits or for-profits. And it's just, I mean, other than home sales, nothing's gone well. I don't know. We'll see where this goes. Well, let us take our podcast over into video games. I don't have a whole lot in video games this week. It's that magical time of the year where things are either already out or not coming out until after the holiday season, barring a few major things, because we are supposedly about 10 days from Cyberpunk, possibly, if it actually happens. Cyberpunk. So I think that's the only big release left this year because everybody was moving around. Everybody was moving away from it. So we'll see what happens. They've not exactly been great about hitting their expected launch dates. But at this point, I would think. And they did have a series of interviews that made it sound like that it is a definite go. they're not changing again. But they had those interviews before the last change too. So, we'll see what happens. There are some leaked copies already in the wild supposedly. Without their Day Zero patches that have somehow gotten out. And obviously all the physical equipment and physical media has already shipped. So, we'll see what happens speaking on because I know as we said I think it was last episode when we talked about it they lost a lot of money with the pushbacks they lost a lot of stock price and there was another earlier this month Square Enix had their big Q&A with the investors and those and the information from that has come out now. So for Square Enix, their HD games sub-segment of Square Enix, they're posted an operational loss due to Marvel's Avengers. It didn't sell. I heard that. I didn't know it didn't sell by this amount, though. Yeah, the loss is estimated to be $67 million. Jeez. And when questioned about it, Square Enix president Yosuko Matsuda admitted that absent Marvel's Avengers, the sub-segment would have made money. So that segment, its sales were good overall. but between the development cost and the marketing cost for Marvel's Avengers, they lost $67 million. And there is still a certain amount of, and that's a direct quote, a certain amount of development costs that remain unpaid. that they are hoping to recoup with increased sales because they have a DLC coming out this month. See, DLC saving the day. There you go. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah, they still haven't even recouped the development cost, let alone the marketing cost for Marvel's Avengers. And I don't really know anybody still playing that game. I don't know very many people who bought the game in the first place. I've talked to a few, but for an example of how bad that game is, and how bad that game has sold, when I purchased my daughter's computer for her birthday, I received a free copy of that game. This reminds me of the Fallout 76 bundle packs. right where they were bundling it with just regular any old oh it's a playstation that's why is this thing just taped to it uh i saw a photo i think it was from germany of an xbox that came with fallout 76 in the box and they also taped another copy to it on the outside of the box it's like what is this like they're just trying to get rid of it they're just trying to Get rid of it. Yeah. Give it to a friend. It's like, yeah, but you give them Fallout 76, you won't have any friends. But what's even more interesting is the next-gen version of that game doesn't exist, and it's not going to exist until next year because they're making improvements. I almost wonder if they should cut their losses. They're still going to be developing money into this game. Cut their losses and not – I mean, that's like, maybe we'll sell them on the next-gen console. I don't know. If I was executive director of this sub-segment, I might be like, you know, maybe we just need to say this is the best we can do and just leave it alone. Right. I mean, this feels like Diablo 3. You remember when Diablo 3 launched and everybody hated Diablo 3? And it wasn't, but the difference is Diablo 3 didn't lose this much money. and the things that people hated that was costing them money were things that they got rid of honestly fairly quickly within a year and to be fair to Marvel Avengers it hasn't been a year yet it's been I think September or August that it rolled but they also didn't make the major mistakes of having a real money auction house for in-game gear and the other issues that blizzard put on itself when it created the diablo 3 debacle myself having played diablo 3 since they patched all that stuff and got rid of that stuff years and years ago i actually enjoy diablo 3 it's a fun game. It's not as good as Diablo 2, but I think it's better than Diablo 1. But yeah, it is amazing to me that with everything that has happened in the movie world and how big the Avengers have been for the last decade, that a game this high profile listed with the Avengers from as high profile of a company as Square Enix has lost this much money and is this big of a failure. I figured name recognition alone would have pushed this game up to break even point. To be costing money is insane to me. Yeah, it's very, very odd for a AAA to fail like this. Yeah, I mean, this game has been talked about forever. And now this game had its share of speed bumps. When it launched, they had issues with, even before launch, people hated the art. I remember when the first trailer came out and everyone was like, what's this because they intentionally made the choice to not make the characters look like the characters from the movies, but they didn't make the characters look so different that it was obvious that they were trying to make them completely different. So it was kind of this weird in between land and the, a lot of the open weekend and the beta weekends have some really rough times, but yeah, no, that's a pretty hefty loss for Square Enix to come out with. And not the fact that they're relying on the DLC to make them break even is concerning. So if you're the like five people out there who apparently love this game, enjoy it while you can. And another interesting topic tied around cyberpunk, Google Stadia has been making a big push. Oh, Oh, that's still a thing, huh? It's still a thing. I know a couple people who have a Stadia. I don't know how much they use it, but I remember they bought it. But they've been making a big push around Cyberpunk with, you know, oh, if you pre-order Cyberpunk, you can get a special edition, and they'll send you special of their Stadia controller and special stuff. but I think it's interesting that they're pushing so hard makes sense, big AAA title it's probably the most anticipated game of the year I think the only other game that I can think of that's probably as anticipated in 2020 as Cyberpunk is would have been Last of Us 2 okay I can see a comparison Yep, I can't think of any other titles that have people waiting so much for. And so it makes sense for Stadia to use a title like that to push their platform forward. What could be unfortunate for them is the fact that as they're making this big push for their 4K streaming video game system, But Comcast has just announced that they're rolling out their data caps nationwide to the states who didn't already have their 1.2 terabyte data caps. And for, you know, any gamer, but especially for streaming based game systems, this could be an issue. I mean, I just scrolling through what I've done in the last week just on Steam, I've downloaded 300 plus gig worth of games since I bought some new games and I had some games that I've got installed that have some very large patches that have come out. and if you're talking about and that's just me that doesn't include the fact that I've watched in this just this month I've watched five seasons of House on Amazon and YouTube and then there's three other people in my house who stream video games and watch videos and play video games and watch YouTube and Netflix and Amazon Prime and Funimation and everything else for families, this could be an issue. And for companies that are based around just having a pure streaming-based platform, this could be a pretty noticeable issue. Yeah, no. It's, I mean, the cap thing is what, and Tony and I were talking about this before we went on the air, But it's like it just totally undermines the goal that all these – well, the direction of everything in the 21st century. It's a streaming technology. We keep having more and more in the cloud. We're downloading more and more stuff. We're relying less and less on paying for physical media. And when ISPs do things like this, that holds it back. It's going to be a big problem for a lot of people where Comcast is their only viable choice. Right. And I think that's part of the issue is that Internet is a lot like cable, and a lot of them were still working under the rules when cable companies back when they first came into existence, a lot of them cut deals so that there would only be one cable company in a town. Nobody else would be allowed. No other cable companies would be allowed access because of deals that were cut. and that's a situation that has persisted. So you get a lot of places where there's one, maybe two ISP providers, and that is problematic when one of them is a company like Comcast, and they've got those caps. Now, they've got more expensive options, the unlimited options that don't get the caps, but with Comcast even then once you cross the cap you get slowdowns at least at one point in time yes throttling I'm not with Comcast I don't I don't know Comcast isn't even an option where I live which is fine I wouldn't take it if it was but a lot of times once you cross the levels yeah you're unlimited but you get throttled which again I mean I'm in a household with four people and it's not unusual for two of us, maybe three of us, to be playing video games online and all of us to be watching videos at the same time as we're playing our games or streaming music or any of a million other things. And I always have all my stuff set to auto-update, so all my games are updated as the updates come out. So this is a situation that for somebody like Stadia is going to be a problem. Do you think that anything might – I wonder, now that we see a new executive administration coming in, that FCC appointments and a change to – there were some moves back in the Obama administration, for those that aren't aware, to treat the internet as a utility. And then Trump's appointments kind of went in the opposite way and moved back towards treating it as a non-utility service, which meant less protections. I don't know if that impacts some of this stuff, but I'm assuming that Biden's appointments will be back towards more the Internet at this stage as much a utility as electricity and telephone is. I think it is, and I think especially 2020 has proven that with the sheer number of people who are working from home and capable of working from home, that it should be considered a utility because without that ability, all those people would still be going into their offices, still be going into work. the whole concept of working from home would not be a realistic option. You want to know a secret? I was going to say an interesting secret, but it might not be very interesting. Sure. I sent in my resume to the Biden administration saying I would be more than happy to serve on the FCC board. Oh, God, that'd be awesome. That'd be hilarious. it's like you know what i'm all about uh stepping up and taking care of it myself i'm like you having trouble finding someone i'll teach myself enough about fcc i'll do it i'll do it for you that is my gift to you so i'm just i'm waiting for that call any day now i'm sure my my zero years of telephony experience well i helped install a cisco phone system once so i do have that going for me yeah that's you're definitely any any any minute now um i i would definitely not move too far away from your phone yeah just i'm waiting i'm waiting for i'm gonna hear the call it's gonna be like will you shut up man and get on the fcc board you got it sir you got it so uh i think that's about all i have for video games right now well then well that's all we have for a fairly meaty episode, as it turned out. Yeah, it turned out to be pretty large. For those that want to reach out to us about the episode, you can always email us at eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com or visit us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. Or they're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And we will be back in a couple of weeks. Hopefully there will be less dramatic news to report on, but you never know with the crunch of Christmas approaching. We'll just have to see. And it's entirely possible we might have played Cyberpunk by then. I probably will not have because I'm not planning a day one by. But you might have. I might have. I'm considering a day one by. Until then, I am Dennis. I'm Tony. And we will say goodbye. Goodbye. Bye.