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Leaky Pinball Valve

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 4m·analyzed·Jul 10, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Steam leak reveals pinball game download stats; forum rebrands; hosts review digital pinball ecosystem.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss a Steam data leak revealing pinball game download statistics, forum migration from Pinball Arcade Fans to Digital Pinball Fans, logo design challenges, and a detailed survey of pinball titles on Steam ranging from established platforms (Pinball Arcade, FX3) to obscure indie titles. The hosts analyze pricing, mechanics, and community reception of 15+ pinball games across different platforms.

Key Claims

  • Pinball Arcade leads Steam pinball downloads with 555,716 unique downloads (ranked #545 overall), but PS4 is its top platform, followed by iOS and Android.

    high confidence · Chris analyzing Steam data leak showing unique downloads by game with achievements

  • Pinball FX3 has only 66,500 downloads on Steam despite being a major platform, ranked #2,263 overall.

    high confidence · Chris reporting Steam download data extracted from leaked user information

  • All DLC for Pinball FX3 costs $220 when not on discount.

    high confidence · Chris citing current Steam pricing for FX3 DLC packages

  • Pinball FX2 has been completely pulled from Steam, though VR version remains available.

    medium confidence · Chris noting FX2 absence from Steam download list and discussing licensing implications; Jared confirms belief it was pulled

  • Yoku's Island Express has only been out for two months and already has ~3,909 downloads despite $20 price point.

    medium confidence · Chris analyzing Yoku's Island data and commenting on its relative newness

  • Digital Pinball Fans forum (formerly Pinball Arcade Fans) is expanding Zen Pinball discussion sections to match FX3 structure (Marvel tables, Star Wars tables, etc.) due to reduced Pinball Arcade content output.

    high confidence · Chris explaining forum reorganization rationale: last Pinball Arcade table was Banzai Run with unknown release date for next

  • The Digital Pinball Fans logo redesign is seeking community submissions with only one volunteer currently.

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing Gord's request for logo designers and current submission status

Notable Quotes

  • “Oscar season. I like that.”

    Jared @ early in episode — Light banter about Southern California weather and seasonal cycles; sets conversational tone

  • “It is all about editing to simplicity. It is throwing out absolutely every unnecessary detail right up until the point before you completely destroy what your image is.”

    Chris @ logo design discussion — Core principle of design philosophy referenced from Netflix series Abstract; relevant to forum branding discussion

  • “Ideas and thoughts are cheap. Everyone has them.”

    Jared @ logo design section — Commentary on community feedback challenges for design work; reflects industry knowledge of design process difficulty

  • “You're actually better off just starting with pen and paper and learning how to actually do art before you try and throw in a program because the program's not going to make you better.”

    Chris (citing Stern designer) @ design fundamentals discussion — Industry perspective on design craft from Stern Pinball; emphasizes fundamentals over tools

  • “Well, it's because it's $1.99. Because of the $1.99? Probably. Probably. And people will buy on price, even if it's a crap game.”

    Chris and Jared @ Steampunk Pinball 2D discussion — Commentary on price-driven purchasing behavior in indie game market

  • “It's 3D, but very flat.”

    Chris @ Malsby's Pinball Collection review — Critique of indie pinball game visual design and lighting execution

  • “That's absolutely not pinball. That's just someone trying to cash in on the pinball craze at the moment.”

    Jared @ Liquid Pinball discussion — Community gatekeeping perspective on what constitutes legitimate pinball mechanics

  • “Oh, who wants this long, narrow cabinet? Screw that. Let's make it wide like your monitor so that we can fill up the entire thing, and let's make all sorts of lanes.”

Entities

Blockade Pinball PodcastorganizationChris FreebuspersonJared MorganpersonDigital Pinball FansorganizationGordon LaceypersonJessica Lee DonatopersonDr. John CossonpersonPinball ArcadeproductPinball FX3productPinball FX2productStern Pinball Arcade

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Design community awareness of gatekeeping challenges; forum leadership seeking professional logo designers but struggling to attract quality submissions

    medium · Chris discussing thick skin needed for public design feedback; Jared noting lack of professional submissions and suggesting direct engagement with site owner over public solicitation

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Digital Pinball Fans forum rebranding reflects declining Pinball Arcade content output and need to accommodate multi-platform community

    high · Chris stating last Pinball Arcade table was Banzai Run with unknown release timeline; forum restructuring planned to expand Zen sections

  • $

    market_signal: Low-priced indie pinball games ($1.99-$2.99) achieve higher download counts than premium titles, suggesting price elasticity drives adoption

    high · Steampunk Pinball 2D (18,400 DL at $1.99) outperforms Stern Pinball Arcade (9,877 DL at $70); ASCII Pinball cited as impulse purchase at $0.99

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball Arcade still dominates digital pinball with 555k downloads, but FX3 underperformance (66.5k despite being newer) suggests market saturation or price sensitivity

    high · Chris analyzing Steam leak data showing FX3 ranked #2,263 vs Pinball Arcade #545; discussion of $220 DLC costs

  • ?

    product_launch: Pinball FX2 pulled from Steam, suggesting licensing/platform shift strategy by Zen Studios toward FX3 consolidation

    medium · Chris noting FX2 absence from download list; Jared confirming belief it was removed from platform

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.194

0:00
this is the blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebus aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan guten tag oh german today huh okay Yeah.
0:27
You say so. You know how you're always throwing out, you know, if I throw out a temperature, then you try and do the conversion into Celsius and all that jazz? Well, the states right now, if you looked at a map of what the weather looks like, all 50 states are just red. Because it's... So what is it? Like 100 degrees? Yesterday in my city in Southern California, it was 113 degrees, which is 45 Celsius.
1:01
See, I almost made you spit your coffee out once I threw it into the Celsius. You didn't have to do the conversion. Today, it's a balmy 99, which is 37 degrees Celsius. Wow, that's very hot. That's some tropical temperatures we get every year. Well, the beautiful thing about Southern California is, yeah, man, but it's a dry heat. we don't have the humidity here but oh my god if you were anywhere else it would be miserable because of the moisture in the air basically us in summer is how that would be so yeah rather unpleasant but your dry heat is okay you just feel like you're in a blast furnace what's interesting is because there's a slight breeze it's not terrible as I described it there's two different types of heat where sometimes it's yeah it's hot but it's not terrible and then there's when the air is just still and so you feel like you're in an oven and yeah that's miserable and not a fan forced oven see if you've got the breeze it's like a fan forced oven exactly it's not it's just like a big fire pit basically so yeah it's basically it's been hey why don't we just not leave the house let's just stay right here otherwise when we go outside we will literally burn to a crisp we'll dehydrate of course when you do leave the house it's good slurpee weather oh yeah absolutely and friendly neighbourhood reminder here folks for those of us in the United States where we use our date where it's month and then day and then year 7-11 is right around the corner that's when you eat your free slurpees Oh yeah, true Is it though? In November? For you it's in November, for us it's here in July Oh yeah, that's right Because our date reads 7-11-2011 Which means the 11th of July Yeah, true As opposed to yours where it's 11-7 Because it's summer, which would make sense No one wants to sleep in winter Although the thing is Really, even here in Brisbane There is no such thing as winter Last week we had about a couple of days of quite chilly weather that meant that we had to put on, like, what I'm wearing now, which is basically a jacket. And in the mornings, really, in the lunchtime, you could actually just walk around the city and not have a jacket on. But, yeah, it was – that's about it. And then maybe in August when the wistly winds come in from the outback and they bring in all the cold air in from the outback, that's when it can get a little bit chilly as well. It's around the Royal National Show, which is like our agricultural show. Yes, we have an agricultural show here in Brisbane. And it's big. It's a big deal. It's got like, you know, the whole side show and rides and, you know, animals. And I think there is even some farm equipment and stuff there. I don't know why they bring that in, but they do. So the city folk can see what the farm equipment looks like.

Chris @ Zombie Pinball critique — Criticism of design choices that abandon traditional pinball cabinet proportions and layout

product
Yoku's Island Expressproduct
Zacharia Pinballproduct
Momonga Pinball Adventureproduct
Steamorganization
Brisbane Pinball Cluborganization
Bells and Chimesorganization
Netflix Abstract: The Art of Designproduct
  • ?

    technology_signal: Indie pinball game proliferation on Steam showing wide variance in quality, mechanics interpretation, and price positioning

    high · Detailed review of 15+ digital pinball titles ranging from $0.99 ASCII version to $20+ 3D adventure hybrids

    • 4:06
    Yeah, it gets chilly. See, I always joke that here in Southern California, we don't have traditional seasons. We have the wildfire season, and then we have maybe a week of winter, and then it's followed by mudslide season. Yeah.
    4:23
    And then we have summer, which lasts probably six months. And then there's Oscar season. Yeah. Oscar season. And then it repeats. So, you know. Oscar season. I like that. hey uh i before we kick off because we've got some interesting things to discuss the show yes i uh i did the pinball tournament at brisbane pinball club last week and i had a pretty good night actually of it i got fourth i had a tie a tiebreaker for a third and unfortunately lost because it was creature from the bank what table was that yeah it was creature my nemesis but But, man, I was doing real good on all of the tables meeting up there. But there was someone there that I have heard of on podcasts of the past that I used to listen to, and I actually got to meet her. It's Jessica Lee Donato. And Jessica is the person who runs Bells and Chimes over in the U.S. Oh, okay. So she's the group that looks at helping women get into the fun of pinball and break down barriers of what a lot of the time is pretty male-dominated activity. So she's actually had a bit of a rough trot recently. She got made redundant from her job. And one of Australia's nicest pinball people, Dr. John Cosson, who has a colossal collection in his house, about 90 tables,
    5:55
    he said, why don't you just come down to Australia on a temporary holiday visa and stay with me? in Australia. So she's down here for three months enjoying the sun. And keeping, well, not really enjoying the sun. Oh, she's on the Gold Coast. So yeah, technically we'll be enjoying the sun and having a great time. So it was great to meet her in person. Cool. Yeah, the other day. She's really cool.
    6:19
    Folks, in case you're wondering what activity has been going on recently now that we don't have the license issues you talk about, if you have tried to go over to pinballarcadefans.com the fan forum that we frequent and live on quite a lot and that Jared and I are moderators on among with a few others you will have noticed that there has been a name change it is now digitalpinballfans.com yes it is now I need to make that clear because if you are using Tapatoc for doing this, you might be having some issues trying to connecting to it.
    7:05
    And I believe those are trying to be taken care of internally, but somebody also, or maybe it was you, Jared, I'm not sure, had a workaround.
    7:15
    For Tapatoc, yeah. What you do is you just go and search for digital pinball fans and it'll come up. It doesn't have a logo or anything at the moment, which is a topic for another thing, I think. Yeah, we're going to get into that too. So it's Logoless, but it just has this word sort of logo at the moment, which is fine. So all you do is you sign up using your same credentials. You log in using your same credentials because the only thing that's changed is the domain name. So everything else is the same. The structure is the same. It's just literally a domain name change. So you go into Tabletalk, do a search, find the new forum and join it. Now, what's been happening for me, though, which is quite strange, is that when I've been looking at posts that have been coming in, they've still been coming in under the old Pinball Arcade fans TapTalk profile and not the new digital Pinball fans profile. So I don't know what's going on there. It must be like the plugin is actually doing both because it's on the same domain or the same IP range or something like that. so either one seems to be working at the moment like i can go to people like aid fans to have a talk and digital pinball fans to have a talk and both work for now but it might be worthwhile just setting up the the other profile just to make sure that you don't get cut off because i know all my email notifications have been coming in as digital pinball fans now so yeah yeah i think the because it's a plugin that you actually install on the site i think it it goes past the domain name so i don't know gourd i think i think the only reason why he actually has tap a talk on there is for me and a few other android people who actually use it i don't think it's actually used that much at all it is a good way of browsing forums in general but um it's uh it's a very quick way to do it on the run um but yeah otherwise it's uh it's seems to be working all right so and for those wondering why the name change uh basically there's been well it's kind of a combination of things with the reduced activity in pinball arcade regarding tables being released I mean you know it's been since Banzai Run since the last table was released we don't even know when the next table is being released but the combination of reduced content coming from them and then just playing the rise of so many other digital pinball games available to play in the various discussions there's going to be basically a slight reorganization and Zen is going to get a little bit more space to spread out. Probably similarly to how currently, if you look, you know, the tables are, there's forum sections divided up by say, Bally Williams and Stern and Gottlieb.
    10:03
    The same thing's probably, it's been being discussed that with Zen, that that might also happen in terms of, you know, Marvel tables, Star Wars tables, Yeah.
    10:15
    Basically how they're divided up right now in FX3. So that'll kind of expand, make it a little easier to find conversations that you're looking to have, but also just giving a little more equal time to other digital pinball fans because it's amazing how much non-pinball arcade talk happens on pinball arcade fans. Yeah, there's sub-forums with a lot more activity than the actual table forums. Yeah. So I think it makes a lot of sense to actually rephrase or reframe what the forum actually is for. Exactly.
    10:51
    So it's just kind of expanding the palette, if you will. Now, as for the logo, yeah, the current logo is basically the Pinball Arcade logo with the word fans written to the side of it.
    11:03
    So Gord is looking for new logos for the site. and there actually is a thread regarding this. Currently, there is only one person volunteering their services and it would be great if we had other options also to choose from. So if you are somebody that fancies yourself capable of making a logo, here's the challenge.
    11:32
    Now, I've done two of our logos for this website and this last go-around with the logo, It was just me and Jared discussing, and I did something like 80 different variations, and we were going back and forth on it for probably two to three weeks, and that was just us.
    11:51
    You put it into a public forum, and all of a sudden you get every Yahoo with an opinion throwing one out at you. So you are going to need a little bit of thick skin, that's for sure. yeah and any designer who knows what they're doing and who has a passion for pinball will have this thick skin on them already now the other thing and this is something that i've noticed just with what's being produced and i've noticed this on many different pinball sites they all kind of go for the same look which is throwing a pop bumper throw in some flippers Even our logo has a pinball on it.
    12:32
    But it's amazing how old-timey it winds up looking. There's nothing fresh and exciting about it. Now, to flip the script even more, we need digital pinball. How do you translate that?
    12:49
    And when you start looking at just logos in general, it's amazing how many logos are simple font with not an image but a graphic of some sort that conveys that thought of what the thing is and so yeah if you look at digital there's a lot of breaking up of pixels or circuitry anything of that nature so it's something that I would like to see within a logo something that really sells the digital aspect.
    13:24
    You know, it's logos or graphic design, they're different than illustration design. And to the uninitiated, they tend to lump both of those in together, and they're completely separate things. And within graphic design, fonts are a completely separate entity from that.
    13:48
    So, obviously, I don't expect any professional graphic designers to kick in, but hey, if you are one and you want to throw your hat into the ring, please do so.
    14:00
    Well, yeah, unfortunately, graphic designers also like to be paid. Yeah, they do, especially if it's going to live on the site for a while.
    14:07
    I would expect that if, personally, if someone was going to create a logo for the site, that there should be some form of payback for them. because otherwise it's just like the amount of work they're going to put into this, as you've said, with like the hundreds of people weighing in, it's going to be a mission to do. I certainly wouldn't take it up if I was a professional logo graphic designer because it's just, it's thankless work. Well, and I wouldn't throw it out to the peanut gallery just yet. I would sending messages to Gord.
    14:46
    Absolutely. Gordon Lacey is the site owner, in case you guys are wondering who the heck we're talking about.
    14:52
    Yeah, I would just be firing personal messages off to him and be like, what do you think of this? Until you finally get kind of like in the ballpark. You're the owner of the site. I'm working with you. Everyone else.
    15:03
    Unfortunately, ideas and thoughts are cheap. Everyone has them. So, yeah. And it's one of those things where, man, you see these things every day. they look like they're the easiest things in the world. I mean, come on. It's a silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it. How long did that take to draw up? Couldn't have taken long at all. I can whip that up in my slip. Sure you can.
    15:27
    I found out the other day, there's for Australian customers that listen to the podcast and who are banking for a certain bank, we've got a couple of people who used to work for a particular bank in their past. and this particular logo that they were talking about for the bank has stuff in it that no mere mortal would even know was in there. Oh, yeah. For example, there's a halo around one of the objects in the sun motif, and it just looks like a normal halo, but it actually made up of 8 dots and each dot represents one of the branches or one of the customers or something like that Or no it like more than that It like a large quantity of dots And you wouldn even know Like you cannot see it in print. You cannot see it on TV. But if you are part of the company that has this logo, it's part of your brand DNA. So a logo says a lot, not just about what you can see, but what it actually embodies as well. So, yeah, they're non-trivial. There is a documentary series on Netflix called Abstract, the Art of Design. And they have two particular episodes that really kind of key into this. One of them is on, it's the very first episode, is about an illustrator and what he goes through with illustration. And then the other one is about a graphic designer. And that one hems closer to what it is like to make a logo.
    16:58
    But what is interesting about both of them, And actually, if you watch the entire series, most of the people say the exact same thing. It is all about editing to simplicity. It is throwing out absolutely every unnecessary detail right up until the point before you completely destroy what your image is. So just leaving the bare minimum that conveys exactly what you want to convey. This is more. Oh, and it is – the illustrator guy really talks about it and shows it well that he had an entire class, and he kind of shows his notebooks of here's what my first illustration looked like, and then my teacher just slammed me, and here's what the final result. And you're just like, oh, my God, it's amazing how much better – the first one, you're like, oh, that's really good, and then you see the finished product, and you're like, not even competition. Yeah. So it's it's quite fascinating. Again, they make it look so easy and it is so difficult. Yeah, absolutely. And that's not even that's not even the difficulty of manipulating the programs. It's just the design aspect that's difficult. I heard something the other day on a podcast that, you know, I think it was actually a pinball podcast where one of the designers at Stern was saying, look, you know, kids, if you think you can do great design and art with a computer program, you're wrong. You're actually better off just starting with pen and paper and learning how to actually do art before you try and throw in a program because the program's not going to make you better. You still need the fundamentals. It's not going to magically unlock this amazing skill that you have. You still have the skill to start with. So, yeah, I found that interesting. Not unusual, just the fact that people don't get that. No.
    18:58
    So let's move into something else that's rather interesting that just popped up onto my radar. Apparently, Steam accidentally leaked some information.
    19:11
    And what this is, is it's user information in terms of who's downloaded what game or how many times a game has been downloaded.
    19:23
    And somebody else then went ahead and extrapolated more information and put it together into real, actual, usable numbers to look at.
    19:34
    What this is based on is unique downloads with games that have achievements that were designed by the developer.
    19:44
    So there is something of the nature of 23,000 games available on Steam, and this only accounts for 13,000 of those games that are available. Wow. Yeah. So this gives us kind of an idea of, and all I did was I did a, Jared will post the information of where this thread was and where you yourself can download this information.
    20:08
    He'll post it in the show notes. But I imported it into a spreadsheet so I could quickly look and I then was able to search through that spreadsheet because I wasn't going to look at all 13,000 names. I just typed the words pinball and anytime a pinball was in the title of the game, it popped up. And so I discovered then a whole bunch of new pinball games. But to see how many people are using them, using in this unique downloads, it doesn't say if the game has been played or if it was just somebody downloaded it and that was it. It doesn't give usage of the game. any of that nature. It's just purely raw downloads.
    20:52
    For instance, if you're curious to know what the number one downloaded game on Steam is right now, it's Team Fortress 2 with over 50 million downloads. Wow. That's a lot. That's not surprising. Team Fortress is very popular. It's followed by Counter-Strike,
    21:12
    something called Player Unknown, I don't know that. Unturned, Left 4 Dead 2, Payday 2, Warframe, Counter-Strike again, another Counter-Strike. So a lot of your first person and multi-games. The other thing to notice is that this is... there's plenty of games that were out before achievements were available in Steam, so it doesn't have any of them. When did achievements actually become a thing? Somebody, I believe said they were like 2008, 2010, somewhere around there. Okay, yeah.
    21:48
    So in the thread that this was posted on Digital Pinball Fans, one of the questions was, there's no way that Portal 2, which has 13 million downloads, has more downloads than Half-Life 2, which only has 8 million downloads.
    22:05
    And I kind of went, well, it's perfectly possible because I've never played Half-Life in my life, but I've played both Portal games. and don't then have both of them. So it's more than possible. But he's right in terms of when Half-Life came out originally, how many people downloaded it. And that was pre-Achievements. Yeah, it's true.
    22:29
    So, but who cares about those games? We want to know about Pinball. Yeah, exactly. As our name suggests. Exactly. So this was really kind of fascinating to look at. Pinball Arcade, lines up, is the leader of the board here. It came in at number 545 on the list. Right. With 555,716 unique downloads on Steam. Right. And that would be pretty much dead accurate because the game was released after 2008. Right. right sorry now interestingly enough Steam is not the number one platform for Dimble Arcade PS4 currently is so and then I believe it's probably iOS wait yeah I think it's iOS next and then I think Android and then Steam so half a million downloads um what's interesting better than 545 000 doesn't it yeah it does sound pretty good yeah um what what is interesting is that in steam right now you cannot buy any down uh dlc so dlc is only available in game all right so they've completely taken all dlc off the shelf it's completely off the shelf and i did not see any ability to buy any of the got lead packs or anything or the steam content it's all in game exactly so moving on the next pinball title is pinball fx3 which is almost a year old now yes that comes in it uh 2263rd wow okay it only has 66 and a half thousand downloads wow i really thought was surprising, but it's only been out for a year.
    24:32
    And I'll tell you right now, I was not able to find FX2 anywhere on the list. Okay. So I don't know if that's... Well, I believe it's been completely pulled from Steam. You can't download FX2 anymore.
    24:46
    Or can you? I don't know. I think you would probably have to if you still got licenses for it. Oh, if you still have licenses for it, that's fine. But I'm talking... I don't know if you can download the game. I should look that up at some point. But anyway.
    25:00
    I know that the FX2 VR you can obviously get. Yes. And that's on the list here. We'll get to that. What is interesting though, if you want to buy all the DLC for FX3, it's going to run you $220 currently. At the moment, because it's not on discount, unless you're smart like me and doubled down and got everything on discount, which is what I did. Except for the Balls of Glory pack, because I really quite dislike that pack.
    25:28
    it can stay on board. Which is funny because we've now done three of the four tables in my weekly tournament. We just finished American dad.
    25:41
    Yeah. Okay. So right behind pinball effects three at 2,660th on the list is Zachary a pinball with almost 49,000 downloads.
    25:58
    Well, good on you, Zacharia. That's not bad. Not bad at all. And if you wanted to buy the Platinum Pack currently, which is half off at the very moment, they would run you $78 to get all those tables. Now, the reason why I'm mentioning these table prices is because these are the expensive ones.
    26:20
    What follows on the list winds up varying in price greatly and goes significantly cheaper. Yeah. So the next table that was next in line for pinball in terms of downloads, coming in with 18,400 downloads, Steampunk Pinball 2D, which I kind of went, what's that? It's a buck 99 app. I took a look at it and it is very Super Nintendo in looks. Yeah. When they say 2D, they mean 2D, and they're embracing that wholeheartedly.
    27:02
    It's a top-down view. Yeah. Definitely not my kind of game, but it's still surprising that it has that many downloads. Well, it's because it's $1.99. Because of the $1.99? Probably. And people will buy on price, even if it's a crap game. I think I downloaded this game called Jets and Guns 2, which is a shoot-em-up. and I had all sorts of problems getting the thing to run even on the computer because it's just so old. It doesn't do resolutions properly. Like you go full screen, it actually goes outside the screen canvas and stuff like that. It's just horrible to actually get set up, and I just can't be giving up on it. But it was $1.99 on sale. I went, okay, I'll shoot them up. How bad could it be? Turns out pretty bad. Pretty bad. But, you know, it's two bucks. I could deal with that. So sticking the landing in the top five would be the Stern Pinball Arcade, with significantly less downloads, though. 9,877.
    28:07
    Well, even less than a 2D pinball game. Right? By half. But, as you were mentioning, price. If you want all 11 tables that are in the Stern app, 70 bucks. That's what it's going to run you. Yeah, that's a chunk of change right there. Sure is.
    28:30
    I can imagine that one's going to be even less and less and less if what I've seen in the Android beta, which we'll go into later, is any indication. Yep. Yes. Coming in behind that would be Pinball FX2 VR with 7,127, which I got to say, that's pretty impressive for VR. Yeah, that's actually not bad at all. Entry price on that is going to be $15, and then there's three more DLC packs after that, which when all said and done, I think it wound up being like $60.
    29:07
    Right. But hey, if you're into VR, you're going to want content. That's right, and this is something really nice on VR if you've got an Oculus Rift.
    29:20
    Now, coming in next is something I don't know how I feel about. It's called Hyperspace Pinball. It's got 6,700 downloads. It costs you $2.99.
    29:31
    And it is a top-down pinball with very minimal layout, but it's vector graphics. And when I say vector graphics, it means it's kind of like if you imagine asteroids with the meteorites floating around. That's what's happening. Everything that you're shooting at is floating and bouncing within the table. Right. It says it has 20 levels, but every single level, the flippers are in the exact same spot. There's two at the bottom and two kind of three-quarters of the way up the table, and all that happens is, oh, look, there's now two pop bumpers. Oh, now there's three pop bumpers. Oh, hey, look, there's a lane up there at the top. So it's kind of... It looks like it's building the table in front of your eyes each level. Yeah, but it's so minimal that I just don't know if I can get on board with it. And it's very video game-esque in that you're basically shooting these things that are floating, and it's not traditional pinball in the least. Of course, they're not advertising as traditional pinball. Yeah.
    30:40
    After that, we have something called Malsby's Pinball Collection. Mal's Bees Pinball Collection. I have not even heard of that in my search for pinball. It's got 6,500 downloads. It'll run you $8 for the four tables that it has. They are 3D, like you would see in Pinball Arcade or Zen, but they are very flat-looking.
    31:06
    There's not very much texture going on, if you will, And the table angles that you're able to look at, it just looks compressed. And I don't know, it's very odd looking to me, very sparse.
    31:23
    It looks like somebody trying to do what Pimple Arcade and Xan and Zachariah do and not quite coming close.
    31:34
    I can see that. I'm going to look at the screenshots now. they're sort of, wow, everything looks very flat. Right, that's what I'm saying. It's 3D, but very flat. Well, except for some tables. Some tables have actually got decent perspective in them. The lighting isn't well, there's no shadow detail, it just is there. I'll tell you, I've seen worse on Android. True. This is okay.
    32:03
    Now, this next one might be right up your alley here, Jared, it's called ASC2 Game Series Pinball. And it basically pinball done with ASC2 graphics Right So it looks like a dot matrix printing
    32:22
    Oh, wow, really? Black and white. I don't think the physics are probably very good at all. It's the kind of thing that, you know, if you remember playing Snake on your old Nokia phone, it would have been like that.
    32:37
    Wow. I'm just looking it up on the mobile now. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. Okay. I love how it has a rolling demo, and the rolling demo is all in ASCII. Even the logo is in ASCII dots. That looks terrible.
    32:53
    That'll run you a whole whopping 99 cents. And that's probably asking too much. Oh, my goodness. Following that, we have Liquid Pinball with a little over 4,000 downloads. and this essentially is if you took a square board and you had a couple of obstacles on it and then you put some mercury liquid mercury on the table and you were trying to manipulate it into a drain so it's pinball in the loosest sense of the word oh wow yeah oh I see but it's still kind of I don't know no it's not pinball You say, okay. That's absolutely not pinball.
    33:42
    That's just someone trying to cash in on the pinball craze at the moment. All right, so that's your top ten, folks. Wow. What about things like, I mean. We're getting there.
    33:53
    Right after that, we get Yoku's Island, which I'm including as pinball. Yeah, that's definitely pinball. Like, that is well and truly pinball. Yoku's Island has looks like 3,909 downloads which isn't bad considering it's only been out two months I believe it's pretty new it'll still run you 20 bucks but it's a pretty good game, I enjoyed it so that's coming in at number 11 after that we have something that just makes my eyes hurt which is called zombie pinball.
    34:34
    And the reason why it makes my eyes hurt is it's, again, top-down pinball, but it's like they went, oh, who wants this long, narrow cabinet? Screw that. That's not the shape of pinball. Let's make it wide like your monitor so that we can fill up the entire thing, and let's make all sorts of lanes that you have to shoot into rather than having an open area, and let's have zombies then overlay over the top of your, like they're invading your screen itself and lots of bright flashers and all sorts of things that'll make your eyes just want to puke.
    35:14
    No, thank you. After that, something we've talked about on the show before, Snowball. Yeah. That has 2,600 downloads.
    35:22
    Runs you at $2.99. I'm not a fan. I don't like the look of it at all, but Jared said he had a good time. It'd be better than that zombie game, mate. I can tell you that much.
    35:32
    It'd be better than that horrible whatever the thing was, like, ASCII pinball. Right. I can tell you that. So, yeah, get Shrek'd. Next up, we got Momonga Pinball Adventure. Oh, that's a lot of fun. It looks a lot like Yoku's Island Express, except for it's more 3D in presentation. it's not side scroll no Momonga is something I've had on mobile for a long time and it is a short game for someone who's okay at pinball but it's a really fun, it's got a lot of different elements in it you do have a pinball aesthetic with Momonga which is like a little sort of a pandery thing and it rolls up into a ball the thing that frustrates me a little bit on that game is that the ball, when Momonga is actually the ball shape, it takes a while to get rolling. So if you've got the ball trapped and you're trying to line up a shot, you drop the flipper and the ball really starts rolling slowly and then starts picking up speed. So it doesn't really have an accurate sort of weight physics to it. Okay. And you've really got to do everything on a rolling shot, which is how I think the game is designed to be played. But as a pinball head, you tend to want to trap.
    36:56
    So apart from that, though, how much does that run you? Six bucks. Oh, it'd be worth it for six. And it came in with just over 1,700 downloads.
    37:06
    It's fun. I would get it if you haven't actually tried it on mobile. Now, I am shocked at how low this one is coming in next. Pinball Wicked.
    37:18
    Oh. Pinball Wicked. It only has 1,137 downloads, folks. Jeez. Now, I got to wonder if it was because of the price. Currently, you can get it for $10. That might have scared a lot of people. I did. My God, it is a gorgeous-looking table. It runs on the Unreal Engine.
    37:43
    And the lighting is phenomenal. The physics are pretty dang good. It's a really good layout for a pinball table. this deserves to be much, much, much higher. I agree. So much better than almost everything we've mentioned when we started, you know, dogging on tables.
    38:02
    It even, actually, it even gives, like, some of the stuff that FastSights put out a run for its money. Yeah. Even though it's a single table, it's amazing looking.
    38:12
    Yeah. So, anyway, that really shocked me that it was that low. And that's why I'm finding it interesting about this list, because it's just like, wow, people's taste. You really get to see a lot of it has to do with the money. It is all about the money. All about the money. And that's the really sad thing. Like a lot of these games where the developers have got to pay the bills and they've got to actually charge. And this is the thing that like shocked me a little bit when I joined Steam. It's like you pay a lot more in Steam for games than you do on mobile. but I think people for whatever reason they expect mobile pricing for PC games now and I had to rethink my perception of price value when I joined up with C because I mean I know that you know games like Yoku's Island and like Pinball Wicked they have a lot more going on in them than a mobile game can do and for that reason a lot more work has to go into them so you you've got to pay more but you know people the thing is that people will be probably quite happy to pay the two dollars to get you know crappy 2d graphics and and limited rules and whatever because it's two bucks and they don't really care like they don't want a deep experience they don't want shiny graphics they just want a cheap thing to play when they're i don't know at home bored i guess entertain briefly.
    39:44
    Now, following Pinball Wicked, everything else now has less than 1,000 downloads. So coming in with 951 downloads, Babylon 2055 Pinball. Yeah, I played that. It's rubbish. Yeah, it looks like rubbish. It's a top-down, looks like mobile. It is mobile. That's where it actually started. It's gross. It'll run you $4 and it's not $4. It's not even worth that. Sorry. again following in the next two are also top down the next two are done by the same developer actually yeah Babylon 2055 was and then there was another one then there's Quantic Pinball yeah gross 831 down yeah 831 downloads and then yeah yeah those two were the same and then there's Pinball Deluxe Reloaded that's top down but it's actually not bad it's got a more dimensional look to it It's top-down, but it's actually sort of like with modeled elements in it, not flat elements. Exactly. I played that one on mobile, but it requires you to unlock some of the other tables. But for a top-down pinball machine, it's actually probably the best top-down pinball machine out there. Runs you $8 for the whole pack.
    41:03
    That's about the same as on mobile. That has 725 downloads. Now, in next is a game called Pinball Parlor.
    41:18
    If you look this one up, Jared, it looks amazing. It's an EM. It is photorealistic. It's not modeled after anything, but apparently they got advice from John Popodayek and Steve Kordek. design. They actually built a prototype and put it into a Japanese arcade. What? Really? It's made by a Japanese developer which you'll hear when you listen to when you at some point you're spelling the letters Parler based on what you're reading. It's a definitive Japanese accent.
    42:00
    You can play the Whitewood version. You can play the Whitewood or you can play the fully graphic out version. it looks really good it does yeah is it's $13 what $13 for one table and it's not going to be anywhere as deep as Pinball Wicked I guarantee you that oh yeah I see you John Papaduke in the trailer yeah wow this one I don't even think came up on my oh wow yeah they did make a whole table I mean it looks really good right I mean, it has a small look. If you look at how the ball bounces and everything, it looks like an EM. Yeah, absolutely. It looks really realistic. Now, it's only got 325 downloads. And again, price, baby. Oh, man.
    42:54
    You ain't making back your development costs with that price and that few downloads. No way. I might actually just add that one to the wish list for the next time it goes on sale. because it looks like it could be a bit of fun. Yeah. But I don't want to do it for that much, for 13 bucks. The problem is it came out, I believe, two years ago. So it's not even like if we, you know, I don't want to hit them up and be like, hey, you know, how about throwing us a bone here and we'll give you some publicity because I think they're past. Probably don't want it. They'll be written off now.
    43:28
    Yeah. but it looks like they've actually put into the um the what i think it they've actually put into the photos the actual photos of the um the table itself not necessarily in-game experience unless that is the in-game experience and that everything looks almost like a real table like the textures on this thing if it is actually what i what i'm thinking like they've even got the rubbers with that sort of slight sort of crazed texture on them and everything.
    44:04
    Wow. If that's the case, then it's very photorealistic. But, yeah, for $13. No, I think this probably is very much like Pro Pinball Ultra, where you're only going to get one camera angle. It's probably pre-rendered. It doesn't look like it. You can get a top-down angle. You can get a complete top-down angle. Hmm.
    44:25
    But, yeah, I don't know. Like I said, for $13, I'm not going to find out either. No. For half price, yeah, maybe. Maybe. Yeah, maybe, if I'm bored. Now, I mentioned pro pinball. Pro pinball is not on this list at all. Wow, really? Because they don't have achievements.
    44:43
    Oh, yeah, that's true. So they don't make the list. And I wonder if that's why I haven't seen Rollers of the Realm on there as well. Is Rollers of the Realm in there? I will look that up real quickly in a second. we're on down to our last table I want you to look at it Jared because it is the absolute utter piece of crap of the entire thing and it deserves to have fewer than the 138 downloads that it has because they're asking two dollars for this pile of tripe what it's called pinball 2018 oh yeah I saw that when I was doing my um uh search on uh uh on steam for pinball because does a pinball in the name. Yes. And let me just load this atrocity. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, this thing. I don't even know what this is. Like, it's like this... Oh. It is... Indescribable. It's two playfields side by side, folks.
    45:40
    When I say two playfields, it's basically two open spaces with little tiny blips for things to hit and a pinball that bounces like a Super Bowl. Yeah, like a Super Bowl in no gravity. There are no outlands. It's only center drain if you were to do that.
    46:01
    Everything about it is terrible. This is what happens when people that don't play pinball try and design pinball and they also have no knowledge of pinball. Basically, they looked at the zombies table and went, hey, what if we put two of them side by side? Yeah, wow. And then forgot to fill in everything.
    46:20
    Oh, geez. That is just terrible. Okay, you were talking about Rollers of the Realm? Yeah, Rollers of the Realm. Now, is that a pinball game? Well, yeah, it is. It doesn't have pinball in the name, but it is actually, if you look it up on Steam, it is basically, this is the one that a friend of the show, Jeff Strong, put me onto, well, ages ago, when I was still on mobile. This would be about two years ago now, I think. And he said he was having a really fun time with it. And I remembered when the sales were on. I thought, oh, Rolls of the Realm. And I was doing my search for pinball on Steam. I went, oh, that sounds familiar. So I loaded it up, and I think it worked out to, it hit me about, I think, $3 on sale. I thought, oh, I can take a risk for $3.
    47:08
    And it's fun. It's a little bit like my manga, Pinball Adventures, and the fact that it's like a 3D perspective of the tables. But you've got these characters that are actually balls, and it's an RPG, but with pinball. Oh, yeah, I'm seeing it right now. How about that? It's really good, actually. I'm having a lot of fun with it, and it's not as easy as it looks either. Here's what's interesting. It places directly behind Zachariah Pinball. I mean, directly behind it, whereas Zacharia has 48,795 downloads. This has 48,769 downloads. Wow. Nipping at the heels right there. So it's there, but it doesn't have Pinball in the name, so it probably didn't come up. Right, so it didn't come up. Yeah, it's a fun game. Like, I'm really enjoying it. And for the price, particularly when it was on Steam sale,
    48:02
    yeah, it's worth the money. It's a lot of fun. It's very story-driven. There's actually a voice narration in it, and all the characters have a plot and everything like that. It's well-constructed. Based off your description it almost reminds me of I used to play all these Oh jeez now I can even You know the match three crystals in a row kind of games Yes.
    48:32
    And there was one that came out on the PSP, and it was RPG style, though. So it wasn't just as fast as you could knock down three in a row. You would knock three, and then your enemy would knock three. and based on how many of the particular color you collected, that would then wind up hurting, being used for spells or damage. And so it was much more cerebral, much more slowed down, that style of game. And I loved it, but it was so very interesting because it was taking your classic column-style game and adding in RPG elements. So you're saying this is kind of like pinball, but with RPG elements in it, which is kind of... Yeah. The thing that's really cool about it is that you've got... But you've actually got, the balls have different attributes to them. So there's one ball that's like the rogue. And so if you're trying to build up your gold and mana from all the player characters on the table, you can basically, if you hit them from behind, you basically lift their pockets. You pick their pockets and you get all the gold out of them.
    49:35
    And then there's another character who is like a knight. And he's got really strong damage, but he doesn't, you can't really control him very well. So the thing with this game is that you can actually, like, you can move the ball around a little bit like tilt, but the table doesn't tilt, but the ball is actually guidable to an extent. Okay. So you can, like, and you need to be able to do that because there's some elements of the game that require you to, like, guide the ball through passages and stuff like that, and you wouldn't be able to do that if it was just pure table physics.
    50:08
    But it's, once you get used to that, it really, it's a really fun game. like it really is. It's great.
    50:16
    Well, that's it for the list, folks. If there are any other pinball games that you were thinking about and you want to look it up for yourself, again, we'll post the link for your ability to download this spreadsheet, basically.
    50:31
    Now, be aware that Steam quickly closed the leak. So this info is pretty much good for this week. And who knows beyond that? Download numbers are going to change, obviously. This is a snapshot in time. Yeah, but it was still very fascinating to see, especially just to see that I honestly expected FX3 to have more downloads than Pinball Arcade. I don't know why. Or at least to be relatively close. And for them to be skunked by almost 100,000, by almost 500,000 downloads is crazy. Very strange. Yeah, very strange. It's really crazy.
    51:14
    I gotta wonder in the coming months with fewer table releases and no William from Bali releases how that's going to affect the pinball arcade downloads and if people are going to start switching over to Zen. I don't know. It could be a factor because in the past that was a thing that people would have gone, oh well, I see this table has been released, I'll download the actual game to get access to it. Yeah. But there's nothing really coming out. I mean, we know what the next couple of tables will be in the proposed Season 8, and a lot of the tables, I mean, apart from Big Buck, Hunter, and Woe Nelly,
    52:01
    there's the tables that are already in Stern that will probably come over as well. And, you know, if people are rabid fans, they'll already have those in the Stern app, so... Well, they've already come over. That's caused some distress among people. If you load up TPA right now, you'll see that ACDC, Mustang, and Star Trek are available now. Problem being is that they're only available in table packs, which if you had already had table packs that you just purchased because you were trying to beat the deadline, well, now you already own everything that's in those table packs except for those three particular tables. And unfortunately, you can't single purchase the tables right now. They don't have that implemented yet. Yeah. This is on Steam. So there's some angry people. Well, I think it's across the board. I don't know. Well, maybe not mobile, but definitely on console. People on console are also complaining about this. Yeah, well, I could say that we're in the midst of beta testing an Android release, which does bring in the Stern tables in. and we've got the usual problems where the launch buttons aren't doing what they're supposed to do and all those sort of things that obviously are wired slightly differently in the Stern app. So, yeah, but they're in there, and I think purchasing is actually working correctly. You can purchase the tables individually in Android. So, obviously, they've taken that into account from the feedback they got in the console and the Steam arenas.
    53:38
    I always just advise this. Patience, folks. Just cool your heels. Never be a first on the front line with a Farsight product because there's going to be a patch coming out. And you're going to throw a fit, and then you're going to throw your money down in rage, and then they're going to come out with the patch, and you're like, and it's like if you just could have waited two weeks, all would have been well. Yeah. The thing is that the other side of it too is that as a consumer that's not us, you know, and it's not living and breathing digital pinball and doesn't know the ins and outs of it and doesn't know the seven or eight year history of Farsight, they should make it a lot more apparent to the consumers what's going on. And they should probably not blow the cherry early and release stuff that they shouldn't release it early as well. You know, take that as Ben's book, actually roll out something properly. My favorite bit of complaining this week was from somebody complaining that they were like,
    54:42
    Farsight promised that I'd be able to buy the tables on Steam through June, and on June 31st I wasn't able to buy the tables. Was that June 31st, mate? Yeah, and I went, they pulled them on June 30th. I'm like, yeah. Yeah, mate. That's the day. Sport. Maybe look at a calendar and educate yourself there. June 31th.
    55:11
    Well, there's always someone. Right? Always someone. And part of the reason why it cracked me up was this person wrote a very, very lengthy post. Yeah. I mean, very lengthy. It was huge. and that wasn't the only very lengthy post that they've you know made either um so it was just kind of cracked me up uh i had a problem with the once pinball arcade updated for this new version of table packs and everything and that suddenly my avast anti-virus software it no lack pinball arcade dx11 version it sent it straight into the virus vault and I went why is it doing that and it claimed that it was carrying this Alexa 51 virus that is a nasty piece of malware or can be however apparently it's also a false positive virus that affects a lot of online or multiplayer games and all I can think of is that because Farsight wants you to log in that maybe that was triggering it and it while it triggered mine, other people were saying it wasn't triggering theirs. I don't know. I contacted Farsight. They were like, it's false positive. I downloaded a malware bytes to make sure that my computer was clean. It was clean. I tried deleting Pinball Arcade twice and redownloading it. Still kept on doing the same thing.
    56:45
    Eventually, I turned a vast oft and ran the program. And yeah, it ran and the malware bytes didn't find anything vicious. So I went ahead and made an exception within Avast for it. But the problem was it was stopping the execute file.
    56:59
    Oh, wow. But what was weird was it had no problem with DX9. Oh, so it was DX11. It was DX11 only that it was triggering. So, yeah, a little odd bit of stuff, but it's unsolved now. So that's all good. That's Windows for you, man.
    57:20
    Yeah, gee. I've been having a whole lot of trouble. Yeah. It's one of those things that if you don't have Apple devices and your kids have to use Apple devices for school and you want to set them up as a family account, and you did that when you actually had a Mac and it was working really well, and now you don't have a Mac and you don't have an iPhone of your own, it turns out it is actually impossible, impossible to manage an Apple family account without an Apple device and that is absolute bullshit luckily for Zachary next year he's going to a Surface Pro because apparently they only do iPads for the first three years here in schooling because they're quote on quote easy for preschoolers and young kids to use but yeah, Zach will be moving over to a surface book pro, which is great because Microsoft have their own family account system too, which is quite neat. Yeah. My, my son's school went to a Chromebooks. I Chromebooks. Yeah. So, which I, by the, I was reading a thing about how Apple has kind of dropped the ball on the school thing because instead they introduced the iPad with the pencil of which is just one more thing for the kids to lose. And it's not cheap to replace. And the iPad itself is nowhere near as durable as a Surface Pro or a Chromebook. And those are significantly less for schools to purchase than the iPad is.
    59:00
    Oh, yeah, exactly. Even with generous discounts that Apple offers education. And so here I am having to basically spin up Sienna's iPad because she's coming into the ePals program at the school. And I'm going, I'm going to have to do one of two things. I'm going to have to basically dual approve every single app that gets installed on her iPad. And I don't even think I can. I actually don't think I can set up a new Apple device without another Apple device. it is just it is absolutely terrible i just feel like going to an apple store and saying make this work for me and just going look i bought this thing i can't get this thing set up on a family account you're basically forcing me to go and buy an apple product to administer my family account like they're like surely there is some sort of consumer law that that is in Australia that would say that is absolute rubbish.
    60:14
    It feels like it is, I don't know, but it's very frustrating. So you see, even the big companies make boneheaded mistakes. Yeah. See, with Android, the thing that wouldn't bother me is that with Android you can set up multiple profiles on one device. So I could set up my account and Sienna's account on her iPad, and I could run both happily. I could just log in, log out, switch users, no problem. But with iPhone, it's one account per device. See, that would solve the problem. It would. No. So I'm very annoyed with Apple at the moment.
    60:49
    Well, what are you going to do? Fight Apple? Yeah, good luck. They got good lawyers. Unfortunately, I don't have a choice. I have to find some way of doing this. So I might have to actually, I don't know. I don't know what I'm going to do. Find a cheap Apple device, maybe. Like a junk. I was going to say, go find somebody's iTouch. Yeah. that's all I need because all I need is to be able to approve purchases yep and access the family stuff and I can do that on any iDevice yeah so I just need to go to Cash Converters or like one of the hock shops here and just get a absolutely stuffed iPhone as the admin portal for it and the thing is next year like Zachary's iPad will become available so like I can use that as a management tool for Sienna's iPad but I just don't want to I just don't want to have to buy something yeah it's crap anyhow alright well on that note folks we're going to part ways here but if you want to chime in on anything that we've been talking about why don't you go hit up our twitter at blockade you can also go ahead and follow Jared he's at Jared Morgs or you can do so with me I am at shut your trap shut your traps yeah that's what I have I really you know some of my things are singular some of them are plural and i always get confused but yeah shut your traps um or you can also drop us an email we are blah blah blockade pinball at gmail.com it's blah blah blockade at gmail.com oh my god i'm on fire today right why don't you just go ahead and give the website the address then because i know i'm going to botch that too so the pin the the the the the website for the pinball is for the pinball and the site thing is digitally pinbully woodley doodly.com forward slash pinballs it's it's blockade pinball.com forward slash episodes um or just go to medium and search for blockade pinball podcast because it's actually there yeah the website the url is just a url short now, so we can jump to medium sight. So, there you go. There you go. Alrighty, well,
    63:12
    who knows what next week holds for us? Hopefully it'll be something just as interesting as all these numbers.
    63:20
    Numbers and facts. Numbers and facts, they are. So, and you know, go check out some of these different pinball games that are available, and you might count yourself lucky with what we have available to us, discover something that is more your fancy that you enjoy. So to each his own, that's what I say. And if you want to go ahead and, you know, gift us Pinball Parlor, feel free to. Yeah, because I don't think we can spit it for 14 bucks. All righty. So until next time, thanks for listening. Bye bye.
    64:00
    WizardAmusement.com The site to visit for custom pinball shooter modes. Easy to install, totally unique. Mention Blockade Podcast for 10% off your order. Withremusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization.
    64:15
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blockade is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.