I got common sense. I know God made man. And the sun sets on a life where we focus on things that we cannot control. And accumulate so much regret. By the time we decide to live, we're practically already dead. So I go to sleep with the thoughts of 45 years living in debt. 45 years can't pay rent. 45 years just for a pension. I'm too old to enjoy and go spend. 45 years working and slaving for rich men with no time for my family and friends. Then I wake up and pray that it ends. Living in the next world. With an old soul Big Richmond, North of Richmond Lord knows it all Just wanna have total control Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up Welcome everybody to Canadian Pinball Podcast Happy November 1st Hopefully everyone had a great Halloween with the family I can't tell you what yesterday meant to me Watching Killian running around the block being out of New York City and in a community for once has meant everything to me. And I've been through a lot the last like few weeks and I've been thinking a lot about this hobby. I've been hearing from a lot of you that are having issues with your machines. I've been thinking about how much these games cost. I've been thinking about the themes that are out there at this much money. and I've just been doing a lot of reflecting. I've been thinking a lot about how I wanted to do this show because I wanted to make it just a little bit more meaningful. I don't want to fanboy everything. I don't want to discourage people from loving pinball. I want to just have a conversation about where my head's at and see if you guys feel the same way. And so here's what I'm thinking about lately. I've been thinking about these games coming to consumers before they're ready, before they've been play tested. There's no way anybody should be spending six to $13,000 on a product. You open it up and it doesn't work right. And then you got to wait weeks, if not months, while the company tries to fix it. We never should accept that. I don't care how transparent the company gets. I don't care if they show up on pin side. You sold me a product. It's incomplete. It's both incomplete in its software and it's incomplete in its hardware. And there are no excuses. None. You would not accept that in anything else you buy in life. And yet for some reason in pinball, we make apologies for these companies as if we should be the guinea pigs for the products they make. Look, if one of your games is delayed and you have to rush another game to market to keep your line moving, that's fine. But maybe you shouldn't do that if that means that the people who are going to buy the product are going to have to absorb that accelerated time frame and then absorb some issues that you didn't catch at the factory because you rushed the game to market. And that's what I'm seeing with the Uncanny X-Men. And there is no way around it. This auto-plunge issue. The fact that the game doesn't play right is a big issue. The fact that they're making hundreds of them a week without a fix in place means that every single person that unboxes one who's getting them made right now is going to have the same issue. How is this even remotely acceptable? Again, they should just stop the line until there's a fix, but they're not doing that. And so I feel the pain of people that are spending $13,000 on an X-Men LE. The design is amazing. The design is ambitious. The design is creative. It's outside the box. But clearly, a design that's this ambitious needed more time to catch some of these issues. And it's quite clear that because they rushed this game to market, the code is not complete. There's mechanical issues left and right on the game. And everyone who bought one is now a play tester. You're a beta tester for this game. You're the guinea pig. You know, look, I don't even want to say wait and see because it's like pouring lemon on the wound. But I just don't like this. It's not just Stern doing it. It's other companies do it. It's like, look at Jersey Jack. They sold everybody on a collector's edition with a major feature of UV lighting and three UV inks that are going to glow like the bioluminescent world of Pandora. And they can't even get it to work. And they sold you on the game. They took people's money. The games are supposed to ship this month and the major feature in the game doesn't work very well. And once again, here we are making excuses saying that, hey, if they're transparent and they're nice guys, we should just forgive this stuff. And I'm just here to tell you right now, November 1st, 2024, pinball machines are ridiculously expensive. I walk around this community. People live in homes that cost one, two, three, four million dollars. They don't have pinball machines in their homes. But I talk to them about the stuff they do love. And usually it's like sports and cars. Those are the two things that most men will break the ice over in a suburban town. What are you driving and what team are you following? That's usually where it starts. When you get down to pinball, yeah, there's some curiosity. And then you tell people how much they cost. And there's a lot of like, wow, I didn't realize they're still around and I didn't realize they're that much money. And if you were to explain to these people, how would you like to buy something that's this much money? And there's a good chance you're going to unbox it and it's not going to work right. You're going to have to fix stuff. You're going to have to wait for the company to fix stuff. It's inexcusable, ladies and gentlemen. And as a community, I mean this as a community. There's a difference between little out-of-the-box tweaks and major mechanical things in the game or major features that just don't work right. And this is why, at this much money, none of it, none of it, none of it should be accepted by the community. I'm sorry. On day one a game should be code complete sure you can make some updates to polish a few things but we not talking about polished people Let use a cargument here This isn car polish just to make it a little bit shinier and better They're releasing these games and they're missing doors and they're missing wheels and they're missing major components, major elements of the game. And why? Why do you need it right away? Why do you have to unbox it before the game is complete? And now you've got an X-Men game. And you think about this game. I heard from internal people over at Stern, the code, the beginning of the code of the game was a tragedy. Wysen's code, absolutely a tragedy. Think about this game. When you play it, just ask yourself this. The whole game, like what's on the cabinet, the artwork, it's all about, you know, this alternative future in which the Sentinels take over the world and you've got to battle them and save the planet from them. Does the game code actually deliver that? Like it doesn't feel that way. There's a little bit of that in there. But for the most part, it's just generic battles back and forth, just like Deadpool. It's not telling the narrative that you're seeing on the cabinet, really. It's not. But again, before anyone even realizes that, you've handed them a check for $13,000. And you had red flags because the guy who coded this game coded the last X-Men game, and it was a disaster code-wise. And here we go again. And if you want to jump in early and grab these things early and deal with these headaches, that's on you. And I think everyone's just at a point now where the apologists are just the most annoying people in the community. It's not us. Is it too much to ask for? If a company's got two to three good coders, they should code everything. Every company needs their best code team. And if you're going to sell these products, I hate to say there's no room for mediocrity. There's no room for mediocrity. And no game should ever ship with mechanical issues that are not easily fixable. You know, easily fixable. I mean, sometimes, sure, things move during shipping. You might have to add a washer here or there to change something from going straight down the middle. But the problem now is like none of these games are really play tested. How can they playtest these games significantly in different environments, with different pitch angles, different wattage going to the game? If you think about it, if they made X-Men over 12 months, you know, probably the majority of that, 95% of the development cycle, is just figuring out the game. and once you've got the final design down then you should be spending a few months play testing it to make sure everything works right and everything's going to hold up over time because if you own the game you're going to play it over time and you're going to play it hundreds of times and they don't do that there's no way to do that sure they might have simulator machines that just keep firing at certain things to see if they'll break, but that's not what you need. Because how do you make X-Men and then launch it to the community with the plunger issue? Did you not catch it at the factory? This is the part that scares me. They didn't catch it. There's no fix right now, and they're making hundreds of games a week without the fix. That's terrifying to me. It's terrifying to me that Jersey Jack Pinball made a $100,000 launch video for Avatar and made the UV ink the main feature of the game, that eclipse moment, and they don't even know how to make it work right. And they brought it to a show and they had to add additional UV lighting and it still didn't work right. Does that not terrify you that these companies are either using us as guinea pigs or bait and switching us with their marketing videos? It's not the way pinball should be. Did they have to do any of that when they released Twilight Zone or Medieval Madness? Did they have to bring in additional lighting when Attack from Mars was launched? You know, sometimes we get into this myopic view of pinball and we're only looking at the companies right now, right? We only want to get into the new stuff and we don't want to zoom out a little bit and just ask ourselves, well, wait a minute, why is all this happening now? And when you look at the way pinball used to be, they would design a game, they would put it out on location, they would let people beat on it, the designers could go to the location and take notes and see what was happening to the game on location and then make the necessary changes to the game before final production so that when operators got the games, they had all of those tweaks before they sold them. The complete opposite is happening now. No games are ever put on location before final production because we got to keep every game a secret because we got to create FOMO and without FOMO, we're not going to get sales and let's get everybody to buy it before the thing is fully tested. And then when they buy it, it's on them. Let's make them wait six months to a year for the final code. Let's make the pirates of the Caribbean owners wait six years for the final wizard mode. Six freaking years. Keith P. Johnson, what's your problem? I mean it. How arrogant, how entitled are you to not finish a job that you made a game six years ago and you didn't sleep until it was finished and are we supposed to congratulate Keith P. Johnson on the laziest code update time frame of all time i mean i don't understand it i'm sure this guy is watching netflix shows and going to the movies and doing a lot of stuff in his free time the dude should not have had free time until finish the game. I don't understand this hobby. How do you get away with this stuff? Just lazily slumbering through the years and now you're going to get to that game. Godfather's not fully finished. Are they even going to get to that? It's like this weird thing, everybody. And I know, I know you just want to celebrate everything in pinball, but this is just really what I've been thinking about lately. All these games, not delivering the themes we want. I mean, think about the last three years of themes. Talk about mediocrity. There almost nothing you dying to own You know it You got to talk yourself into it The only thing that really made everybody go crazy is the remake of a 12 game So let's just shelve all these boring new themes and remake Ghostbusters, remake Batman, remake Lord of the Rings, and remake Tron. If Stern did that, if they just remade those games and made them better in Spike 3 format, they only would need to make one game a year and they would sell 10,000 of each let's just be honest that's the truth instead you're gonna get Dungeons and Dragons John Wick Venom you know Foo Fighters it's just weird to me where we're at they need to all wake up they need to get these products finished before we pay for them and we need better themes all right so what else is going on in pinball. So Pulp Fiction LEs are finally going out the door. They're finally going out the door. Apparently they ordered the figures for the topper and they were too big. Uma Thurman and John Travolta's characters were too large for the topper. How do you get that wrong? I was just thinking about that for a minute. How do you even get that wrong? You've had two years or more. You've already designed the topper. Who did you hand it to? Aren't they just making a mold from the pre-production topper and then making more? How do you get the scale wrong? It doesn't make any sense. That just sounds like such a weird excuse. And now the games are on the line. And that's good. Should we congratulate them that they released a game over two years ago and finally are making it? And now CGC is like all of a sudden being uber transparent. Now they're telling us there's going to be more medieval madness. is great. Awesome. Hey, CGC, why did you ever stop making medieval madness games? Why? Why didn't you just keep making them while everyone was waiting for the parts for Pulp Fiction to come in? I don't get it. I'm not going to give you credit for something you shouldn't get credit for. It's just so funny to me. It's like this stuff is so weird to me. And yeah, it does make me wonder why we're all in this hobby when these companies keep getting like a pass after pass after pass. You know, look, making pinball might be hard, but communicating is not hard. Being transparent is not hard. Being honest is not hard. Not revealing your game until it's on the line is not hard. So don't sell me on this. Like these companies are so precious that they can't treat us with some respect that they shouldn't take our money until the game is complete. I don't buy it. You know, I just don't buy it. Okay, so that's happening over at CGC. It's going to be an all new CGC now. Do you believe that? Do you actually believe that anything will change over at CGC? I don't. I think they're going to announce their next game after Pulp Fiction. It's going to be Halo by Mark Ritchie. I don't think anyone really wants Halo and I don't think anyone's going to want to put money down and then wait two years after reveal to get the game. Because what CGC has never told us is why does it take two years to make a game after you reveal it when everybody else can get the game out in just a matter of months, if not weeks after reveal. So that's Chicago Gaming Company. What else is going on in pinball? We're going to get spooky Evil Dead. I think it's Evil Dead 1 and 2. That's happening. I'm hearing Barrels of Fun's next game might be the Goonies. That's what I'm hearing. Maybe it's not. Maybe David David Van Es got that theme from Deep Root after they lost the license. So that is what I'm hearing might be next from Barrels of Fun. That's great. I can't wait to see the next game. I'm over Labyrinth. I'm glad they made Labyrinth for Labyrinth fans. Not a theme I love. I just don't get it. I want more appealing themes. I'm just like a lot of you I was born in 76 a child of the 80s and 90s where are the themes where's Karate Kid where's Total Recall where's Die Hard where's The Matrix where's Big Trouble where's G1 Transformers where's Akira all those would outsell John Wick all of them if you think that Big Trouble and Little China wouldn't outsell John Wick you're crazy You're crazy. It absolutely would. Heck, Bloodsport would sell twice as many pins as John Wick. Someone just has to make them and it will prove all the naysayers wrong. I know these companies all want to grow pinball. They want to expand pinball. You're going to have to do it by exciting the base. First and foremost, you know, I don't understand how anybody young, and I mean this when I say this, how does anybody young have money to buy a pinball machine? Do you know anybody in their 20s who can drop $6,000 to $13,000 on a pinball machine? The people in my company in their 20s are making around like $45,000 a year. All right, so think about that for a minute. You're making $45,000 to $70,000 a year. That's after taxes. You don't have much money. And all that money is going to rent. It's going to your lifestyle. You don't even have close to that much money for a pinball machine. And a lot of you have a lot more money than that. And that's great. And then the sad part is you have all this money and you're like wanting to give it to these pinball companies to release themes you really want. And instead, you're getting Venom. You're getting Cuphead. You're getting John Wick. You're getting Evil Dead. I just don't know. I don't know what to tell you. Maybe Gnade is just a little cranky reading everybody complain about X-Men issues. but something's got to give soon. You don't want Avatar. You didn't really want Elton John. I get it. Like we're kind of in this state now where like we just have to accept these themes but they're not stirring you emotionally. And when the theme doesn't stir you emotionally it's really hard for the game to create moments of wow because you're just not excited to begin with. And that's how I feel about Avatar. It's like as beautiful as that pin is, whenever I play it, I'm just not like wowed because the things that happen in the movie itself just weren't very memorable. And again, I ask most of you, can you name me four characters from the Avatar movie? You can't. Can you name me four characters from Star Wars? Star Trek. You can name me four characters from Die Hard. John McClane. Holly McClane. Hans Gruber. Mr Takashi the CEO right You can name me four characters from Die Hard I hope that survey that Stern sent out really does alter things in this hobby We need it You know you need it And look I just want it all to come together I want the themes that are great I want them to be translated in the right way. Gang, I'm tired of seeing people unbox games and have issues. And I'm tired also of the overwhelming silence by the pinball content creators when that happens. There's nobody keeping these companies honest when there are issues. And this has been the number one reason why Canada's Pinball Podcast, I think, over the years is different is because when issues happen, I'm not going to let them go. I wish more people would be holding Jersey Jack accountable for what they've done with this UV lighting feature and how it doesn't work. Not acceptable. Stern Pinball launching X-Men with these issues, not acceptable. It's just the way it goes. And look, I want these companies to be successful, but the formula for success is not very hard. You know what's really hard in life? Making so much money where you have enough left over to buy pinball machines. There's a lot of money going out. It's a lot harder to make it. Everybody wants some. Geico wants some. The supermarkets are expensive. The gas pump is expensive. Man, people are feeling it. And I look at the stock market and I'm like, great, awesome. If we all invested in Netflix and Facebook over the last three years, we quadrupled our net worth. Did anybody really do that? No. There's a reality of what's hitting most Americans right now. Inflation is real. Everything is so expensive. It just seems like every time you step outside your home and you want to do anything, it's 50 bucks. It's 100 bucks. You want to go have a meal with your wife and get a few glasses of wine, $150, everywhere you go. I mean, heck, look at McDonald's. People are no longer going to McDonald's right now. You go to McDonald's with your family, you get a few happy meals and every $55 for McDonald's. Remember when there used to be a dollar menu? The thing is, wages have not caught up with the price of things. I don't know about you guys. Over the last four years, the cost of pinball machines has gone up 35%. 35%. Did you get a 35% raise over the last three to four years? I didn't. I don't know anyone who did, but the cost of everything else has been going up. What's inflation? Like 7% to 10% a year, and yet wages aren't moving. It's a weird time to be in. I mean it. It's a weird time to be in. It's all your vantage point. And this is why where I'm at right now. I have money to buy a pin. It's not like I don't have savings. It's not like I don't make a few bucks on the side. But it's also like for me to now buy a pinball machine. It needs to check every box. It needs to be a dream theme. It needs to work and be code complete on day one. I'm tired of waiting. It needs to have enough mechanical magic in it that makes it worth it. and it needs to just create moments of wow and magic. I mean, that's where I'm at. And it doesn't matter to me anymore. I mean it, I've changed my mind. It doesn't matter if it's beautiful, if it's limited, if it's a collector's item, none of that matters to me anymore. We're all gonna die, people. We're all gonna die. And we're not gonna be able to take any of this stuff with us. And every time you play a game, it should put a smile on your face. The reason you own it shouldn't be because other people don't have it. nobody's flexing with pinball trust me nobody is flexing with pinball nobody cares i walked down the street nobody cares it's at the point now where i was reading pin side and even the dude ice man who collected the most le's ever like he's got nothing but le's and even he's now saying like le's don't matter anymore nobody cares even the very people that love to collect these things have given up because they now know that nobody cares. And so in a world in which nobody really cares that much anymore about your limited, like, foil decaled pinball machine, the only way to make people care again is if you make a masterpiece. You make a game that really elevates the pinball experience somehow. You give people the wow they've been waiting for. I think Metallica has done that for Metallica fans. We need more of that. We just need more of that. And I want to see more of that. And look, no new pinball is totally new. Pinball is still like an old game. And that is why like if they remade Lord of the Rings, it would just make everybody happy. It would just make everybody happy because we know, we do, we all know this. That game is so special on so many levels that there's almost nothing, nothing of recent times that can even compare if you had a modern version of Lord of the Rings, the way that game makes you feel when you enter modes, the urgency and the call outs, the spectacular stuff the game does as you're going through the movie scenes, how well the mechanical aspects of that game mirror what's happening in the film. It's just perfect. Yeah, the ball times are maybe a little bit too long, so just remove your outlane posts. But there's a dirty little thing that nobody wants to admit. When you're by yourself in your home environment, you don't mind having long ball times. And hey, have a little variety. Right next to it, you could put a freaking Rick and Morty. You could put a freaking Elton John. You could put a fast game that doesn't have long ball times. And that's the best pinball collection. A little variety. You get the best of everything in different packages. And if you have like five different games like that, you've got all you ever need in pinball. Everybody, welcome to November. Welcome to Canada's Pinball Podcast. We'll see what happens next over the next few months. Evil Dead, new game from AP probably at IAPA. We might get a new game from Stern at the end of the year. I'm going to be here to cover it and I'm always going to be looking out for you. You know this. You know this. I'm never going to stay quiet when these issues pop up. Everybody have a great day. We'll talk to you soon. or itch me. Lord knows we all just want to have total control.