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Episode 73 - Expo 2018 & VG News

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 39m·held·Oct 22, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Expo 2018 recap: Monster Bash remakes priced competitively; Oktoberfest early/unfinished.

Summary

Dennis and Tony discuss Pinball Expo 2018 coverage, focusing on Monster Bash Remake pricing ($6,000 Classic Edition), early code status of Oktoberfest Pinball (30% complete with 4 of 14 modes), and critical reaction to Oktoberfest's playfield art direction. The episode also includes extended personal anecdotes from both hosts about work, gaming, a legal garnishment settlement, and community engagement initiatives.

Key Claims

  • Monster Bash Remake Classic Edition priced at $6,000

    high confidence · Dennis cites confirmation from Pinball Star and Casey Pins operator; notes this is below Medieval Madness pricing

  • Monster Bash Remake expected to start shipping within 1-2 weeks

    high confidence · Dennis references Pinball Star write-up on shipping timeline

  • Oktoberfest Pinball is approximately 30% complete in coding

    high confidence · Dennis cites interview with coder Josh Kugler on Head to Head Pinball podcast

  • Oktoberfest has only 4 of 14 modes ready, missing three of four theme music tracks

    high confidence · Dennis reports details from Head to Head Pinball interview; describes it as 'almost pre-alpha'

  • Monster Bash Remake features remolded toys and plasma cap pumpers as cosmetic improvements

    medium confidence · Dennis notes cosmetic changes and mentions toy improvements, possibly related to Universal Monster licensing approvals

  • Oktoberfest Pinball playfield art is heavily criticized for muddled, chaotic visual design

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony discuss community comparisons ('unicorn ate Crayolas') and Pinside forum feedback; Dennis critiques font choices, grass, and side cabinet design

Notable Quotes

  • “it looks like a unicorn ate a box of Crayolas and then vomited on the playfield”

    Dennis or community member (cited by Dennis) @ ~53:30 — Vivid summarization of widespread criticism of Oktoberfest's art direction

  • “Sega and Alvin G had a baby and Alvin G won”

    Tournament player (cited by Tony) @ ~54:15 — Community characterization of Oktoberfest's visual style as dominated by classic arcade DNA

  • “you don't play the art so I don't really care how the art is however the art is bad it is the art is bad”

    Dennis @ ~54:45 — Dennis asserts functional gameplay priority while acknowledging objective quality issues with art

  • “I've gotten back all of the money that I sued for from the project and then some”

    Dennis @ ~39:00 — Resolution of three-year legal dispute; sets context for potential pinball machine purchase

  • “Monster Bash is a good game. And having a new in-box Monster Bash for six grand is going to be a huge, huge draw to people.”

    Dennis @ ~49:15 — Market analysis of Chicago Gaming remake positioning against boutique competitors

Entities

Monster Bash RemakeproductOktoberfest PinballproductDennispersonTonypersonJosh KuglerpersonCasey PinspersonJack DangerpersonChicago Gaming CompanycompanyStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Monster Bash Remake's $6,000 Classic Edition positions Chicago Gaming competitively against Stern Pro models and boutique manufacturers

    high · Dennis notes it's below Medieval Madness pricing; predicts strong Classic Edition sales due to price-to-feature ratio

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Oktoberfest Pinball playfield art receives heavy community criticism for visual chaos and poor design choices

    high · Multiple community comparisons ('unicorn ate Crayolas'); Pinside forum discussions; Dennis acknowledges art quality issues despite functionality-first philosophy

  • $

    market_signal: Chicago Gaming remakes demonstrate strong market demand validation through pricing confidence and quick production readiness

    medium · Dennis notes Chicago Gaming 'already know there's demand for all the titles they're choosing'; expects Monster Bash to 'do fine...probably very well'

  • ?

    announcement: Monster Bash Remake officially unveiled at Expo 2018 with shipping expected within 1-2 weeks; Classic Edition priced at $6,000

    high · Dennis cites Pinball Star confirmation and Casey Pins operator report; specific pricing and timeline provided

  • ?

    product_strategy: Oktoberfest Pinball revealed in very early state (30% code complete) despite being announced for Expo; significant asset delays noted

    high · Josh Kugler interview indicates 4 of 14 modes ready, missing most theme music tracks and graphical assets

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.298

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, October 21st. This is episode 73. I'm Tony. And I'm Dennis. We're going to talk to you about, you know, new stuff. There might be some pinball-related something or other and some video game-related this's and that's. I mean, it's not like anything really big happened this weekend. No, there's no pinball expo going on or anything, or having recently wrapped up, because I believe, other than the tournament, Sunday is now actually officially not expo anymore. So, because everyone left then anyway. Yeah. Or that's the rumor I hear. We're not there, and we're not going to cover every play-by-play of expo, But that's pretty much going to be just about the entire pinball segment because anything that is of interest was happening out in Chicagoland.
1:02
But that just means we're going pinball news. There's been lots of interesting stuff that's been happening around here, starting with you, Tony. Starting with me. What's going on, Tony? What's been happening? It's been two weeks. And I know nine times out of ten when this starts, my first thing is, I've done nothing but work. Here's the truth of the matter. There we go. I worked a lot because we got a lot of rain, and my job is one of those jobs that is heavily affected by the weather and when there's lots of rain that involves me having to work a lot of extra time. So I put in a lot of overtime. But with all that said, I actually did a lot.
1:39
I have buried myself deep into the loot pinata that is Diablo III. I picked it up again for the first time in, I haven't touched it in like two years, Not since Reaper of Souls came out. I hadn't touched it since before the Necromancer release. So having noticed that it's just coming out on Switch, and I'm not going to double dip and buy it on Switch because it seems like a game that would be terrible on the Switch platform just because I like how a mouse and keyboard works with it. But it did make me want to play again. So I started firing it up again and playing it, and I went ahead and picked up the expansion that added the Necromancer class because I always liked that from Diablo 2. And it's been a lot of fun. I've been playing through the new season, and I've cleared the new season, and I've just been remembering both why I love and why I hate that game.
Pinball Expo 2018
event
Pizza Westorganization
Pinball Starmedia
Head to Head Pinballmedia
Pinsideorganization
Medieval Madness Remakeproduct
?

product_concern: Oktoberfest Pinball revealed in preliminary development state with acknowledged gaps in code, audio, and visual assets

high · 30% code completion, 4/14 modes functional, only 1 of 4 theme music tracks implemented; described as 'almost pre-alpha'

2:36
I haven't even played since before Reaper of Souls came out. Yeah. It's still a fun game, but it's definitely one of those games that once you get geared right and you get everything, your rotation set up, and everything settled in right, you can definitely, you know, watch TV shows and movies and stuff while doing it with no problem.
3:01
Well, that's good because I know that's how you like to have a lot of games that allow you to do that. Yeah, I'll do that. I mean, if I'm playing a more serious game, of course I don't, but with a game like this, yeah, I'll stream some Netflix or watch Amazon Prime or something and play. in addition to that I hit a weird spot on YouTube and I know how I got there is because I was listening to a bunch of music I was listening to a bunch of post-modern jukebox watching a bunch of post-modern jukebox videos and one of the recommendations at the end of one of the post-modern jukebox videos was for a barbershop quartet that was doing like a parody song so I watched it and it turns out it was part of a channel that is just like all they do is it's like the national championship barbershop quartet competition things and they just it happens in the middle of the summer and then a couple months later they post all of the video footage of all of the stuff up on YouTube for you to watch so I've been just chaining barbershop quartets for like five six days now Wow. That's a lot. I don't know why, but for some reason, I'll be sitting there and it's like, I want to listen to some music while I play some Diablo. I'll just start, oh, it's the semi-finalist. I'll just start the playlist of the semi-finalist, and then I'll play some Diablo.
4:32
Interesting. Yeah, no, it's that weird spot. And the last thing is just hilarious, and my wife is going to slaughter me for saying it. She may not know. She might not know. She might not know, but the last time I did one of these things where the wife might not know, I actually ended up listening to the episode back, and she walked in the room somehow just as that part came on when I made something joking at her expense. But I got home from work yesterday because I was working the weekends, and before I went to play pinball with you last night, she was getting ready to take the girls and go shopping, but she went in and took a shower. the doorknob broke.
5:15
Fell off broke? No. The retractor inside that retracts the bolt broke. The bolt couldn't retract. Okay, I had that happen. She was locked in the bathroom. All of the screws and all of everything to the handle are inside the bathroom. So she had to go and scour the bathroom until she found a little bit of metal that would fit in to the Phillips screws so she could start unscrewing them from the inside. Because she didn't have anything to even knock the hinges off the door. Right, right. Right. Well, she did that, and I was sitting there, and I was talking to her and laughing. And she got it off, and she pulled the handle out. I was like, okay, the handle's out. Now the door will open. Door wouldn't open. The bolt was broken and jammed into the thing. It wouldn't come out at all. We couldn't get it to move. I ended up sitting there with a multi-tool and a screwdriver and a hammer. And I had to go in and shatter the entire, break the bolt off, the back of the bolt off so I could get enough room. I could get in there with my pliers and grab the bolt and pull the bolt back through. Which, I mean, she was locked in the bathroom for like half an hour.
6:30
You got through it pretty quick. Yeah, it wasn't bad. Well, I went and played pinball with you. She went to Home Depot and bought a new handle for the bathroom because that's hers and the girl's bathroom. I've got my own separate bathroom. I wasn't sure that was like a landlord thing, though, where they would be responsible for the handle. It's not worth the time or the effort to call the landlord when you could just go buy a $10 door handle and put it back in place. Fair enough. Sorry. I was just glad that it was her that had gotten locked inside instead of one of the girls. Yeah. Or, yeah, that would have been.
7:12
Now that you'll never, they'll not trust doors, maybe for years. Maybe. Maybe ever. Maybe. I'm thinking maybe I need to put an 11-in-1, just keep it in the bathroom in case it ever happens again. Somebody can release themselves. Yeah. or just a little long screwdriver and a hammer and give them, like CPR training, give them some, here's how the hinges come off these doors. Yeah, exactly. They're hollow. They're very light. Just knock these things out and then pull really hard and try not to let it fall. And you tuck and roll when it falls on you. Tuck and roll.
7:46
Cover your head. Cover your heart, Indy. Cover your heart. Oh, wow. So you've had quite the adventure. It's been a pretty awesome two weeks. Okay. Well, that's good. I had a work conference, annual conference. So this year was the last time we were relatively nearby. In the next couple of years, we're planning to be a little bit further out in the state, more centralized. I like how you changed from saying out in the sticks. Yeah, no, well, we require, because of how we do it, we provide a lot of training for local officials. So we have a lot of challenges in finding a location that not only has, you have to find a city with enough hotel rooms. And that's not too bad. We need about 600 plus, though. Then you need a facility that has an expo-type hall for your vendor show. Because we tend to have around 100 booths of vendors, and these are 10 by 10 feet booths. and then we also need a place with enough just individual hotel workshop rooms so that we can run concurrent educational sessions and the challenge is finding a place that can do all three of that we've got plenty of cities in kansas that could give us the hotel rooms right but most of those places can't give us the hotel rooms and have a hotel that could actually handle the number of workshops and the issue is that a lot of our affiliate groups have their annual meeting at our conference. So we need enough to accommodate all of them that want to do that. That's like 10 rooms, 10 conference rooms. And so historically speaking, there are only three cities that have the capabilities to meet our requirements. And we only use two of them because one of them's run down, not the city, but I mean, the city is run down, but the facility is so run down that my boss and the prior conference planner did not like using it. They felt it was too schlubby. I'm pretty sure, not certain, I know exactly which one you're talking about because I've attended conferences there. And rundown is a good word for it. Yes, it is. It's bad. A lot of people are suspecting maybe they're just planning to tear down the expo hall near it and everything. I don't know if that's true or not. So anyway, had all that earlier in the week. And then, so we were getting ready for pinball. I can't believe in your intro you didn't talk about how you did at Pizza West. No, I'm not. You're like, nah. Nah, it's only your best finish ever. It is my best finish ever. I had a really good night. You couldn't even bring, you had to talk about the doorknob. That was funny. It was, but victory tastes... It wasn't victory. It's like savory. You got money back. I got money back. That's like victory. That's a victory for your wallet. That's a victory for my wallet. Yes, no. Why didn't you talk about the disgusting pizza you ordered? It wasn't disgusting. It looked like crap. You're right. It looked like it should have been disgusting. I ordered it, and I didn't even know how good it would be, but I had hopes for it. And it was amazing. I intentionally ordered that pizza a little larger than I'd wanted because I was going to take some home for the kids to try. And it was so good, I ate the whole bloody thing. It was amazing. I'm telling you If you get a chance I know it sounds insane But a properly well done pizza That's covered in Mashed potatoes And cheese and bacon And chicken and green onions Is amazing It had no right to be that good I'm sorry that you are so set in your ways You won't try new things I tried a new thing I never had the pasta with garlic and olive oil before At that place Pasta with garlic and olive oil. Yes. That's such a big change from your normal pasta with pesto sauce or pasta with Alfredo sauce. It's a pasta place. Or pasta with marinara sauce. You just insulted all of Italy with your mashed potato Irishification of pizza. I'm not trying to be that way. I'm just saying that I go in there. They have a pie of the day. As long as the pie of the day is not covered in a bunch of stuff that I find disgusting, I try it because I'm trying new things. Well, I'm not getting sour cream drizzled on a pizza. It worked really well. It's gross. It was amazing. It's not even good on a taco. You're right. That's the thing. I won't touch sour cream on tacos. Of course not because it's gross. But it worked well on that pizza. No. It did. No, I looked at it and I knew. The moment I saw it, I thought, no. They never sell these. You were the only one to buy it that day. I wasn't.
12:17
The waitress was like, tell me. No one really eats this stuff. That's a lie. She flat out said, and I quote, it's the bomb.com. Oh, my God. She did say that. And I wanted to say, get out. But since you worked there, what authority did I have? I had none. I have no power. It's very frustrating. It was very good. But, yes, I did well in the tournament. I got fourth place is what it is going to end up being. Yeah, probably. We'll find out a little bit later in the week, I think. But it's going to be up there. I've never placed that well there before. And I just, it was just one of those nights where for some reason I was hitting almost all of my shots.
13:00
It's like, well, this is what it feels like to be a winner. Yay! You're a winner. Well, a couple other things. I have not done a garnishment update in a long time because there hasn't been a lot to update. So I'll go ahead and do that now. I know the intro is getting a little meaty at this point, but people just have to accept. uh so okay so last i think i really had mentioned i had a small claims judgment against someone who failed to finish a deck building project on my house and this was now over three years ago late last year i finally got him back in court because i found out where he was. And we started to do garnishments. Those garnishments made a lot of progress, but the last garnishment payment I got was back in April, end of April. So I contacted his employer because I'm thinking, okay, well, where's my weekly check? And they'd sometimes been a little spotty with the mailing and stuff. Like sometimes they piggyback two checks together, which was fine. It's just, There was no consistency, so it was hard to know if it was their fault or not. Well, his hours had been cut back. So while that's going on, he indicates, I'm looking for another job because they only have me working 23 hours a week. Eventually, he gets a job at a Jiffy Lube franchise.
14:24
So I get the new employment information, get the judge to sign new garnishment documents. It's a whole ordeal. And this franchise is not based in Kansas. It's based in Texas. So they wanted the garnishment documents to be sent directly to corporate, which I did. And just like in the first employer, they don't follow the rules on the form. They're supposed to get back with me in a month, and they don't. So I start calling them, and eventually I get the confirmation about what's going on. And they say, okay, we've processed it all, but you won't be getting a check this month. He doesn't work enough hours. And I'm like, this is July or August-ish, probably early August. I'm like, what do you mean he's not working enough hours? He told me he was shifting to Jiffy Lube because it was a 40-hour-a-week job plus probably overtime. That's why he – I mean, I don't think he wants to just keep working part-time. But there are federal rules on how garnishment can be collected. He has to make above the minimum wage, and that is the minimum wage times 40 hours a week. So even if he makes more than minimum wage, if his hours are too low, it won't meet the threshold, and I can't get the money from garnishment. Doesn't mean that he still owes me the money. He's still obligated to try and come up with a payment plan and pay me. But we're doing garnishment because he was having so much trouble saving. So I go and I'm like, OK, I don't know what to do. So I call or I send him a message and I tell him, OK, they're saying you don't work enough hours. And his response is that doesn't make any sense. And now I'm confused. I'm like, are they looking at the wrong employee file? is he not telling me that he's not working enough hours because he doesn't want to be garnished i mean that in a way he doesn't want to probably be garnished uh so anyway i give it a couple weeks and then i follow back up and i'm i said okay i haven't still haven't received anything from them he indicated he was going to talk to his employer about the issue so i'm like what'd your employer say? He goes, oh, I quit. This is the part where I throw my pen. There. That was my attitude. I'm like, all that work. I mean, it's a huge pain. I have to fill out a map. What about me, Tony? What about me? Every garnishment requires a massive packet of documentation that I have to fill out, go to court, pay them money, get the judge to sign it, send the debtor a copy so that because he can contest it, he could appeal that the garnishment's wrong and send it to the employer who then doesn't respond within the 30-day time period that they're supposed to respond to because they're like, whatever. But I can't do anything about that until I think 90 days and then I could try and take the employer to court and shift the debt onto them. That's how it works. I never have gotten to get to do that. You'd think eventually this keeps getting drawn out. Whenever I go to the court, they look at the date. They write the court case down wrong because the court case number starts with a 15. Because 2015 was the year I did this. And they're like, you don't have this money?
17:34
No, I don't. Help me. No, we can't intervene with that. That's your job. It's small claims. You do it. So that's the rule. All right. So last month, I contact him and I say, all right, what's going on? Do you have a new job yet? If you give me the information, I don't need a whole new asset form. I'll just fill out another garnishment packet. He's like, I do have a new job.
18:03
When is the interest? See, I've been threatening the court interest because the court mandated when I won the case that the way it works is on the judgment, the principle, basically, the balance of the judgment. It's 12% a year interest. So the way I've been calculating it is on an annual basis, 12%. So when he finally started, before he started paying me, we had 24% interest, which added like 500 and some dollars to the bill. So I told him, okay, well, October 19th is the third year anniversary. That would be when I would assess the 12%. He said, I think I can pay you back by October 19th. And I said, do you want to do payments? Are you saying all in one payment? He goes, in one payment. I said, okay, I'll contact you in a month. Because that was the time period, a month. So I contact him on the 19th. No answer.
19:08
I didn't see that he'd seen the message yet. On the morning of the 20th, he did answer. He said, I wasn't able to get all the money put together, but he got most of it. So I went and picked up a check yesterday for $1,200, and it cleared according to the bank today. So I don't know how they do it with it being not a business. I think it's all different now with the mobile deposits. Yeah, and everything. So, because he asked me how much, to figure out how much interest there would be, if we could maybe count the $1,200 first or whatnot. I said, here's what I'll do. Because with that amount, plus all the garnishments I got, if we were to count first dollar to principal and not to the court fees and the interest, I've gotten back all of the money that I sued for. Yeah. from the project and then some. So I said, let's do it like that and let's not assess interest. I'm not out to be punitive, but I want the rest of that money because it took you three years. So supposedly November 3rd, I'll get the remaining amount, which is a balance less than $600. But regardless of what happens, I did get back the money that I sued for. What PML machine are you getting? That's not enough for anything What could you get anymore? You can't even get us stars Because Ron and Bruce of the Slam Tilt Podcast Inflated the cost of all the sterns So what's there left? A Dolly Parton? Probably Maybe Dolly We'll see I don't know I haven't decided yet Hopefully I'm glad he's got his new job And he says it's going well And so I'm glad that he's in a good spot But once you get your last check You don't ever want to talk to him again I'll be more than happy to – I don't think we'll ever be friends, but I'll be more than happy to have a conversation with him. But I won't be contracting with him for any work. Let's put it that way. But, hey, I can move past this stuff. Money can fix a lot of things. I can be bought. You can buy my tolerance.
21:19
And so I've always tried to be sympathetic, but that's where all these fees come into play. This has been very arduous for me. but I couldn't just let him get away with it. And even if his claim was, he's given me, I'm not going to go into all that. We've already gone on for over 20 minutes, but not on just this topic. So anyway, I understand where he's coming from. He knew what he did was wrong. He's making it right. It's way later than it should ever have been, but it's getting right. So I'll be okay once it's completely rectified. But I was in a very good mood myself yesterday because I finally got back everything I had asked for. And I went in not expecting interest or getting court fees. I didn't know that I could get those. Right. So that puts me in a relatively good mood. And I think he'll be happy once I get the rest of it. Because you will be stalking him. I'll cancel. The judgment will be listed as satisfied. Yeah, he might be tired of my messages. But also it will go off of his credit rating and stuff. It will no longer show that he still has outstanding legal debt, which I believe basically precludes him from getting anything from a credit card to a bank loan. So that's been some of the influence I felt I've been able to bring to bear. But I think for quite a while he wasn't in a position to even ask for loans. Right. So very challenging. The final thing is I want to go ahead and plug our Twitch channel, which we've mentioned. but I've been streaming a lot more trying to at least a couple times a week streaming pinball games and people seem to come in and like to watch it the reason I want to plug it and it's at the bottom of our show notes now always anyway is we would like people to follow the channel we're trying to get that's the last thing we need to get the numeric amount up to move us into affiliate status and the reason I want affiliate status is it gives us a priority on the transcoding and because we're going to do the commentary at KC Game Con, I'd like to be able to hopefully accommodate the people who are watching on a mobile device and trying to control the amount of data that their plans are using. And we will have a very unlikely chance of being able to offer transcoding if we're not at least an affiliate. So I've met all the other conditions. Our average viewers are good. Our amount of streaming and different stream quantities have been good. It's fun to do, but I do need about 20 more followers and then I think it's basically automatic. It's not like Twitch partner. They let any old trashy person be an affiliate. Become a partner and make money and this and that. Yeah, that's for the Jack Danger of the world. We're not after that but I wish it guaranteed the transcoding. I'd be like, guys you will follow or we will never podcast again. It's that simple.
24:05
What would you do without the 10th best pinball podcast? You would be sad. That is what you would be. So speaking of pinball, Tony, let's finally move into pinball news. And that is Expo. Pinball Expo 2018 has, to my knowledge, essentially just wrapped up. The tournaments may still be going on at this time we're recording, but no one cares about tournaments anyway. So let's talk about news. And I'd say there are pretty much four main things to hit on, a couple of which won't be taking too much time. The first I'd like to bring up is, finally, Monster Bash Remake has gotten its full-fledged unveiling.
24:43
And they're supposed to start shipping very, very soon. I saw a write from I believe Pinball Star today that the mid model I believe is expected to start heading out in one week maybe two Well better at this point depending upon what the holdups were If the holdups were not rebuilding everything, then they should have everything been ready to go since the announcement was originally planned for TPF. Yeah. And so, did you get a look at any of the changes? I saw the topper and I saw the monitor, the new bigger monitors and this and that. Yeah. It looks good. Yeah. A few other changes. I haven't heard anything about, and I haven't looked super closely, but no one that I've seen is talking about anything about a new code, new set of rules that some people thought might have been the delay. And other people like me were confused because... Monster Bash has good rules? Yeah, I mean, it's not modern rules, but it's perfectly sufficient. It's not Cactus Canyon. It's not unfinished. It's a fun game, as is. It's not like you feel like you're missing something. Right. So a couple other cosmetic changes. They have the plasma caps, if anyone's ever seen the plasma pop pumpers. They have some sort of plasma lightning-looking thing on the play field. And a lot of the toys were remolded. Maybe those were the delays to get the approvals for those new Universal Monster looks, which they look better. They look like nicer toys. So very, very focused on a lot of cosmetic improvements.
26:22
And a very interesting thing I saw, we heard about this from our operator, Casey Pins operator, who runs the Pizza West tournament, who owns those games, mentioned. And I, again, in that same email I noted from Pinball Star, saw that confirmation. The classic model, $6,000. That's amazing. I think everyone thought Monster Bash was going to be more than Medieval Madness was. And it's got too many toys. Right. So it's going to be more than Medieval, and Medieval was more than Attack from Mars, which everyone thought made sense. But no, it came in below.
26:58
Yeah, that's amazing. I think for that reason in particular, a lot of people might not settle for the classic edition. They'll want that big screen with a beautiful color display. But regardless, it puts them in a very good competitive space against the stern pros of the world. So I'm glad to finally see that that game has moved forward and people who want it will be able to purchase it. Because the nice thing about the Chicago Gaming remakes, they already know that there's demand for all the titles they're choosing. So I'm sure it will do fine for them, probably very well. I think that more than any of the others, this is the one I think has the best chance to sell decent amounts of the Classic Edition because of that price. Monster Bash is a good game. And having a new in-box Monster Bash for six grand is going to be a huge, huge draw to people. It's going to be something that people are going to want. and I can understand it. Yes, if I had the choice and I had the money, would I rather have the awesome LE version with the topper and all the extra bells and whistles? Of course I would. But $6,000 for a brand new one? Yeah. Yeah, I'd be fine with that. And operators are going to like it. Monster Bash is a popular game. Yep, I agree with you. Okay. if I were the other boutiques, I'd be getting a little worried. Yeah, when the prices start hitting that, especially because for all of the talk about the weird color issues and weird this's and that's that we've heard about, I remember when AFM first came out, there was some coloration concerns.
28:44
Yeah, on the play field. On the play field and medieval madness. There had been a few quality control concerns here and there. There haven't been that many. Most of the stuff has been incredibly minor nitpick And it's not like some of the other stuff Where it's like hey look All these screws fell out when I opened the game Yep So no I think they're in a good place And I think they are moving ahead Quite well Well we'll move ahead then to What I guess I'm guessing because we're not there But when people go back to say what At one expo I wouldn't be surprised If they say Oktoberfest pinball I think its full name is Oktoberfest Pinball on Tap. And the reason is it's the only new game that was relatively unknown or unexpected. It was known it was going to be revealed at Expo, but everyone knows Monster Bash already. Right. This is the only brand new game that was completely new being revealed. There's footage linked in the show notes. Deadflip, Jack Danger, showed streamed gameplay of it. So people got to see. It's very preliminary. I heard with an interview, one of the coders, Josh Kugler on Head to Head Pinball, I believe he indicated that it's especially the assets that are behind. So I guess overall, if I'm remembering right, they see it as about 30% of the way there in terms of coding.
30:08
Wow, that's almost pre-alpha at that point. Yeah, they only had, I think, maybe four of the 14 modes ready to go. The two main multiballs are in. A lot of the graphical assets are not ready yet. There are supposed to be four main theme music songs that play in the background when you're not in a mode. Only one of them was in.
30:28
So, anyway, I don't know if you had looked at any of the shots yet of Oktoberfest. I've only looked at static images. I haven't had a chance to watch any video. Well, that's been where a lot of the discussion's been, is regarding the look. It's because it looks like a unicorn ate a box of Crayolas and then vomited on the playfield? That could be one comparison. Another comparison I read on Pinside, I'm sorry I don't have the user handle memorized to give them credit, was it looked like Sega and Alvin G had a baby. Or as based off a discussion with someone at our tournament last night, that Sega and Alvin G had a baby and Alvin G won.
31:11
It's the dominant genes, which is for the better for this. yeah so as I've noted many times and I'm not changing my philosophy on this you don't play the art so I don't really care how the art is however the art is bad it is the art is bad I think the play field is the best part of the art only because yes I do because I think at least the color choices were good but it's a weird mix of is and you have to look at it from far out and then it looks okay. When you zoom in and you start seeing how they've laid out everything, different font for different tent names, the grass, it just all of a sudden becomes like this muddled mess of a thing. But I think the side cabinet, not so much the back box, but the sides of the cabinet I think are terrible. I actually think that's the worst part. Really? Yes. It's got this weird thing with the logo and the characters and I just think it just doesn't look like it was balanced at all. And then I put the Translight in between because on the Translight it's like this weird blend of Photoshop people, like real people as Easter eggs and then hand-drawn creepy uncanny valley crap going on. And that really bugs me. The Translight, that whole back box that bothered me. All of it. So I say the Playfield's the best because it's got the least uncanny valley going on because this is such a mess of everything else. It's like this smorgasbord unicorn crayon color everywhere. Yeah. But I think the individual shades, I'm trying to say something nice. The individual shades, the color choices doesn't seem like it's oversaturated or anything. Right. It's not like that. It just is a little... It's bad. Yeah.
33:01
I don't like it. I'm not saying it's a bad game. There's some stuff on this game that looks really interesting. I would never not own this game even with this art. It's not It doesn't offend me, but it's not good. Right. It's just not good. I mean, I think the wire forms look good.
33:19
I'm always a fan of a physical ball. Like, if this game plays good, cool. I just think the arc is not my cup of beer. Well, I watched a lot of the gameplay that Jack was streaming. My initial concern when I saw the wire forms was, is the ball going to stay on the wire forms?
33:39
Assuming they engineered it right, it should. But it was an initial concern of mine. I was in the gaming on 10 minutes a week discord and got into a debate about randomness, which, you know, we've touched on and they've touched on extensively.
33:53
And because there were some arguments that balls randomly falling off ramps would somehow be a good thing. It's like, no, that's not that. That would be a design failure. If you want randomness, just take out the ramps. But if you have a ramp, a ball needs to be hit or make the ramp spit the ball out somewhere. in the middle of the play field like Dial In does on the left side. But it was very weird. Huh. I can actually see the argument. I don't agree with the argument, but I can understand the argument. If a ball is falling off a ramp randomly, it just means the engineer didn't know how to make a ramp. That's my problem. It would never have been on purpose. Right. But, I mean, I can see where the whole randomness, where that sometimes happens, would be kind of like the randomness from a pop bumper. I can see the argument. I don't agree with the argument. And they've done that.
34:43
I think it's a valid argument. Not on this game. But Laser War has a ramp that doesn't have to dump into an inlay. There are ramps that don't dial. Then it has a ramp like that. Laser War has a ramp like that. Gladiators has a ramp like that up at the top. So, yeah. But that's not what this is doing. Are you going to buy Gladiators with your garnishment money? I don't even know if anyone owns Gladiators.
35:07
So, anyway. But mechanically it looked fine My player concern is These are The ramps look awesome It's like Baywatch when it comes to wire forms But the problem is With all these corkscrewing around and everything That's a long period of time For the ball to not be in play Because it's not being randomized And you're not flipping it when it's on a ramp And these are some long ramps especially that corkscrew ramp. So I don't know how long it would be personally for me to get sick of waiting for the ball. How many times is it fun to watch it go around and around? Because I'm not a toddler. I want to play pinball. Right. But at the same time, I think that's going to come back to how fast are the ramps. Right. And so far, I don't have a good enough feeling. Some people have said they felt it was slow. I didn't think it was. I think it would be pretty consistent, whatever it is, because of just how they balanced it.
36:07
So in terms of how it plays, everyone who's played it that I've seen comments from and from what I was able to watch are in agreement. It's got a lot easier shots than Houdini has.
36:20
There are maybe two quote unquote tight shots in the game, one of which is a standard size scoop hole. So you think a scoop shot is hard, then you'll say that's a tight shot. If you think a scoop shot is an easy shot, then you'll say there are no hard shots because the scoop's the hardest shot. So, it's got, yeah, it's going to be, and that showed in the line of people at Expo, because this plays long. Oh. This is a long player. It's not a flow game, but it is more flow than Houdini. It's like maybe a 50-50 flow stop and go style, which, I mean, aside from Hobbit, which, as we both agree, is a complete failure of a game, Balcer doesn't really do full flow styles, usually. And that's fine. Flow and go. That's fine. Stop and Go There are great Stop and Go games out there I mean I favor Flow But I want there to be Stop and Go games too Because I want there to be a variety So overall And I enjoyed Houdini when I played it I was pleasantly surprised by it But I think this looks fun to shoot I do really want to shoot it For me I don't think the layout looks amazeballs If you like my little pun there With pinball And it's a little double entendre Definitely little. Oh, so mean.
37:40
Did you read about the MagNav? Yeah, there's the one at the top for hitting the lanes at the top, and there's another that's an out-lane save. It's not an out-lane save. It's for the upper right flipper. Oh, yeah, to place it for the upper right flipper. Do you remember like on Simpsons Prennball Party where that upper right flipper is? Right. And there's like a little gate that always slows the ball down. This has a magnet to catch the ball instead. That is player controllable. Yes. Yeah. But it's above the flick. So it's not like roller games where it preps it at the tip. This one is just so it can pause it and let you get ready to do your shot. And according to Josh Kugler, that ramp shot is wide and not hard. And it's designed that way. I'm interested to see how that goes. I also like the – I don't know. Okay. Likes the – I'm interested in the fact that, from what I read, it does have a stealable multiball lock. That, as you informed me, it sounds like can't be shut off? From the interview on Head to Head, my, yeah, Josh, at least as it's coded, Josh Kuhler indicated that beer barrel multiball lock steal is not, it's not disableable. It's always on. and it is deliberately designed to not tell you how many balls are already in it. So you're supposed to be paying attention if you're planning to do a locks deal to know whether or not you want to go for it or not, but it's not going to show you how many balls you've already locked. I don't know if that's going to be on a status screen somewhere. See, that was an interesting thing with the head-to-head interview because Josh made it very clear that he and our last episode guest host, Joe Schober, come at pinball coding from very different perspectives.
39:36
Josh is into the entertainment style. Let's have fun. Let's have the funny rules and all this unique, crazy stuff going on. And Joe's sitting there going, you can't do that. That'll piss tournament players off. This is what you need to do. And here's where we're going to add multipliers. And here's where we're going to give an option so people can collect these steins and they're going to help advance their score in some way and so i'm very interested to see how this turns out as i noted with joe and i i've i've noted it here before i don't i don't like i don't like blowing smoke on people they need to know where they need to know where i stand i really liked what he did with the rules on alien yeah i think because of his involvement heavy involvement in oktoberfest these rules will be better than houdini's rules and i was not impressed with Houdini's rules. I don't have enough time on... I did not have enough time on Houdini to comment a lot on the rules. But Josh is definitely the guy who's putting in these massive monologue instructions, because this game has some of those, too. And they, in my view, need to scale back on that. It's nice to spell things out, but that's what you have a screen for. So we don't constantly need Otto to tell us what every flipper button is to do, in my judgment. Right. But some of the multiplier things, Josh explains, Joe's got things like you're collecting these beer steins. They do things that help with the modes. They also confer other benefits. There's an interesting idea where they had a difference of opinion about your gathering. You eat food at Oktoberfest and Joe has it. So the food is like it's a points. I think they call them. They use the term accelerators. It's an accelerator to help your score grow. So the more food you eat, the better your scoring is. But if you eat too much food, you've gone into a food coma.
41:33
And so Joe wanted to put in this option so that, which I guess they have, where you have to basically go and burn, you got to go to the gym or whatever. You got to burn those calories off. You ate too much food. You had too many wienerschnitzels. Well, I guess the way Joe would have done it is, or excuse me, Josh, I'm saying, there's too many J names in this. Kugler, let's just use the last ones. Kugler came up with that idea, but he was going to have it so if you ate too much, you had to do all that, and then all the calories would have gone away. And Schober was like, you can't take away the accelerator. You can't take points. You can't take things away from players like that. The tournament players will not forgive you. So basically, if you accidentally eat one too many calories, you've lost everything. Right. So the compromise was the game's going to keep track of calories consumed, which is your accelerator, but also calories burned. Because you have to keep within a certain amount. There's going to be a magic number you're going to aim to maintain to maintain the best acceleration of your score. Yeah. It's basically, I guess, as I understand it, in theory, it's one calorie short of food coma is what you want. But I don't know exactly how it will. And they're still tweaking a lot of the scoring. They're watching how it went at Expo because they want it to be relatively balanced. Yeah. So I think the code is very exciting. I think the layout is okay.
43:00
Art package is bad. Sound package. And I've already seen one of the people involved with American Pinball comment. They recognize the criticisms about Otto not even sounding German. Last night at our tournament I joked that he sounded Irish However online Comments are more that he sounds Jamaican So anyway They indicated that they're looking to Revise some of that A lot of people were getting very frustrated with the music There was very little polka That you could hear at Expo Currently that issue is primarily That only one main track Song was playing when you weren't in a mode Not all four So people are hearing the same song over and over and over. It's kind of a metal sound with some accordion in it or whatever. However, yeah, but ultimately, not even 50% of the music in the game will be polka. Most of it. And Joe indicated that to us when he had just mentioned there's not really going to be as much polka as people think there will be. That's not what's played at a lot of – yeah, people want their oompas, though. There's like a whole – this is Pennside for you. There's a whole Oompa faction that just wants it to be pure Oompa or they won't buy it. That's the new claim. There's always people that claim that. Now, here's the only thing I think that is important. When you activate beer barrel multiball, it has to play roll out the barrel. Otherwise, I won't buy it. Okay. I hope you told them that. Roll out the barrel.
44:30
The toys on the play field I thought looked good. Yeah, they looked fine. Roller coaster looks fine. Yeah. Otto figure looks good. The ducks are fine.
44:39
Hunting the ducks. Yeah. I mean, the objective, I mean, they, I feel that with what they're doing with the rules and the tents based around the Munich Oktoberfest, I think they're working within what the theme dictates just fine. I don't think this theme sells units though. I think this is a less attractive theme than Houdini. I didn't need to see it to know that. I'm standing by that statement because it's an objectively, measurably true statement. If Oktoberfest sells better than Houdini, I think it will be on the backs of two things. Primarily that the rules are better, and secondarily the layout may be better. Because a lot of people were very frustrated with the Houdini layout, and I don't think they can get frustrated with this one. It's like every shot is open. Right. I think we'll see. The question is going to be, is it fun? Is this game fun enough to make up for the art package and the theme? And we don't know. I hope so. I think it can be. I think you're right. I mean, it very well could be. It is not one of those games where you look at it and you look at the images and everything and you just go, what? It looks like it has potential. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's all I have to say on Oktoberfest. So let's go ahead and go to the third topic of Pinball Expo stuff that we're going to hit on. And that is the Deep Root panel. The link to Pinball News has a video of it. So I've linked to their YouTube recording in the show notes.
46:20
Not a tremendous amount to say. There weren't really any reveals of note that Deep Root made. I think a lot of people thought maybe there would be because like everyone was there. Robert was up there moderating the panel. They had J-Pop. They had John Norris, Dennis Nordman, and Barry Alsler. So they had their four main desires. Steve Bowden was up there. And they also had Quinn, I believe is his name, the guy who came from the comic book author side.
46:50
And so they sort of talked about what their, I guess, what their approach is. Robert has some pre-prepared questions about things like what's different for the designers working at DeepRoot than it had been in the past which I didn't think those really went much of anywhere some of them it wasn't really much different some of them it was just like with John Norris it's like oh we have we have resources because he came from Premiere yeah well I have help I have I have I you know I had dreams and I can finally do these dreams people didn't understand that there were dreams at premiere but we had no money couldn't do anything i had no team what are you talking about i don't know what is what everyone else is like yeah well you know i wore a brownie williams we did have this and this and this like i don't know what any of that means he didn't say it quite so shocked but it's just sort of like i think people forget you know he's the least known one of the four because all the other ones were at bally williams and everyone worships bally williams so that was interesting quinn had some interesting talks about you know He's doing all the storyboarding for these games and stuff. As near as I can tell, it seems like Nordman's got two games in the pipe. Okay.
48:05
J-Pop, I guess, has all three of the Zidware ones or in some process. Do you think that the whole attempted rehabilitation of him is going well? I mean yeah in the sense that it's going as well as I think it really could practically speaking Deep Root I feel has bought obviously not everyone is keen on it a lot of people still remain very and I understand it remain very angry that Deep Root hired him I from a strategic level think it was a mistake I don't think Deep Root bought them any advantage by bringing J-Pop on board. I think it hurts. No matter what, the choice hurts them. But when it comes to your question on the rehabilitation,
48:58
their willingness to bail out his Zidware customers, I think, has gone a long ways to at least letting people who might otherwise say, I ain't buying a single thing from Deep Root unless they fire him. Or I'm not buying a single thing from Deep Root because they should have known better than bringing him on in the first place too. I hope Deep Root succeeds. My dream from Zidware is already crushed, but maybe I'll at least get a game out of it. Even if it's not exactly what I was promised by J-Pop, at least I didn't lose everything. And there was no obligation for Deep Root to do that step. And obviously some of them didn't want to go that route and they sued J-Pop and they won their lawsuit. I mean it I sure tied up in appeal right now But so you had a choice there And I think that Robert decision to offer these terms to help alleviate the losses of the Zidware customers in particular has gone a long way to giving his company a not a pass but kind of a second chance look from people that would otherwise be very skeptical I still think it was a tremendous mistake to have bothered to try and do it. I think it probably stems from, well, when I did my interview with Robert back in February, he mentioned that J-Pop is his favorite designer. And I think that that's why J-Pop is with Deep Root. I mean, J-Pop didn't have any other options. So I understand why J-Pop leapt at this chance. But yeah, I mean, that's what I think. Do you think there's so much damage within the pinball community that his games sell weaker than the others? Or do you think that's going to depend upon how they look and how they play? Well, it depends on more than that. It also depends on the price. And that was something that did come up in the seminar.
50:54
Robert indicated that the Deep Root plan is for any given game, there's just one. One tier. No pro and premium and all that. But not every game is going to be at the same price. And they are planning on a range of games from those they're hoping to price underneath the Stern Pro cost all the way to those that are designed for high-end collectors. So if J-Pop's games are high-end priced ones, they're going to sell less no matter what. So it wouldn't be fair, really, to compare them if Dennis Nordman's game is beneath a Stern Pro price. Yeah. So the only way we'd be able to know is if all of the designers had a game at the same price. And then maybe you could try and draw some conclusions. But you still have to factor in, were the themes of equal quality and popularity?
51:43
And, of course, there's the factor of which are the most fun to play? Because, I mean, we don't know. Maybe J-Pops would have been, maybe it's not J-Pop, but maybe he actually designed the worst playing game. I don't know. So, I mean, my gut instinct is, yes, there will be people who, based off of the comments, and they follow through and they buy Deep Root products, might just refuse to buy any that he's given design credit on, but would buy any others. That would be my personal stance. I have no intention of buying a game from John Papaduke. No, I wouldn't.
52:16
I mean, I say that, but I know people love his games. Sure, that's fine. I never did, though. I think the game of his I like the most is probably World Cup Soccer, and I don't really like it all that much. I like that one a decent amount. But would I refuse to buy a Deep Root game where he helped, but he wasn't the lead designer? No, I wouldn't refuse to do that. That's just kind of my stance.
52:44
But, I mean, it's gotten more complicated because it's like, well, Deep Root was trying to give an out for everyone who put money in, And so I don't, based off of their decision to do that, I don't feel obligated to punish the company for bringing J-Pop. No, I respect the company for that. So due to that, I don't want to say that I, I mean, because I just have to be fair. I've just never really been impressed much by the design style of J-Pop with his long winding diverter ramps. And that's not the type of pinball I like. Right. So if you base it off of what types of games I like, Dennis Nordman would probably be the play style game I'd lean the most towards. Though I admit I'm extremely curious to see what John Norris can do with a budget because I don't think he ever got the chance. Except with arguably Rollercoaster Tycoon at Stern, which has a lot of really interesting stuff in it. I don't think it's the greatest player, but I think it's a very interesting game. And then Barry Osler falls somewhere in there. some of the Barry's games like Brom Stoker's Dracula and Pinbot I really like. And then like all of his Carnival ones I hate. So I just don't know. With those, you just hate Carnival. It's both. But like, you know, the paddle wheel on Maverick. Do we have the Ferris wheel on Hurricane or whatever? Yeah. No. Just no. Just no, Jim.
54:09
Sorry. That was a deep repent. Last and final news item in Pinball. and this one's going to be really brief because we only read about it just before we clicked record. Scott Denisey. Apparently, with a panel with Spooky, they talked about his next game. And the only thing I so far know about it is it's called Scott Denisey's Haunted House Party, which is a terrible name. Oh, it is. No, it's terrible. It's bad. It's, oh my.
54:37
I saw, I think, a comment in a pinball thread that, a pinball thread that mentioned this. That said, maybe it should have just been called Scott Denise's Haunted House. And just draw a direct comparison to the Gottlieb.
54:51
That would be really interesting if he was doing a triple play field. And it would just be like, I'm going to do Haunted House, but better.
55:00
One, that wouldn't be hard. And two, it's Scott Denise. I'm sure he could do better. Yeah, I'm sure. Even if I didn't think that Haunted House was grossly overrated in that game.
55:10
But, I mean, there's really not anything else. I don't know what they It looked like from the slide that I saw the photograph of That they were talking about their Kind of their planned release schedule of upcoming It's like you know everything on Spooky Is like on the slow burn so But I'm glad he's doing a second game I think he earned it with the Success of Total Nuclear Annihilation So I just say Good luck to him and I'll look Again just like with the art on Oktoberfest me hating the haunted house party name isn't going to affect whether or not I think it's a good game. No, it shouldn't at all. It'll just depend upon how the game plays. Yeah, it's all about gameplay. That's just how life is. Speaking of gameplay, Tony, before we go to our video game segment, we need to play 20 questions. 20 whole questions? That's right. For those who have never heard this segment before, where have you been? And secondly, this is how it works. Tony will get to ask me a series of yes or no questions. it'll be about a pinball machine that i know he has played before maybe only once but he has played it before it's a closed book exam through the first 15 questions but as of questions 16 through 20 he may access the internet he may go to penside ipdb and or any other source that he wants to try and sleuth out the answer so i'm gonna phone a friend you can phone a friend no you can't it's open books, not phone a friend. I'm not going to wait here for you to phone a friend. You don't have any friends.
56:44
I'm sorry. That was dark. That was too far. That was kind of harsh. Especially considering I was just going to pick up the phone and call your phone. No. I tolerate you because I have to for the success of it. If this was the Eclectic Dennis podcast, no one would listen to it. Oh my god. Why? That's horrible.
57:04
So, I am ready for you whenever you want to get started, and I will keep count as per usual. Is it a solid state? Yes. Is it a DMD game? Yes. Is it Simpsons Pinball Party? No. Oh, okay. I just had to throw one out there. You were just like, I'm going to own the record of fastest guessing. I was hoping. Hey, you could just keep guessing DMD games, and maybe you'll get lucky. Well, it was a game that we both played a fair amount last night at the tournament. Yes. with very different... It would have met all the conditions. It has solid state. It has a DMD versus all those electromechanical DMDs. Right. Is it a stern? No. Is it a bally?
57:48
Yes. That's question five. Does it have more than two flippers? No. Hmm. Yes, there's some dead air here because I've got some weird stuff going in my head right now.
58:02
Is it AFM? No, Attack from Mars for those that might not know the abbreviation I figured since you hit me with that hole Since the last time where we were both going at it You hit me with my grail pin there And you thought I would continue to do that I thought it was a possibility that you would go with it It just wasn't the right possibility Let's see Two Flippers Bally Williams DMD era That only cuts it down to like 500 games I'm going to go With Was it a Brian Eddy game? No Was it a Richie game? No Like how I phrased that so it covered Yeah that was clever Was it a Lawler game? No Wow. That's question 10. Is it a sci-fi theme?
59:07
Yes. Interesting. Was it 95 or later? Later as in newer? Yeah, was it 1995 or newer? Was it 1994? No. 93? No. 92? Yes. That's question 15. All right.
59:31
So much for getting my early jumps out of the way. So I can cheat now. It's not really cheating. It's not cheating. It's in the rules. I'm going to be mad, aren't I? I'm always mad. Well, I don't know.
59:46
I'm almost always mad, honestly. Because it's always like, why didn't I think of that one? I'll be really mad if it's one of the three that was running through my mind at one point. because there were three, besides the AFM and Simpsons, that were running in my mind. Because that wouldn't be the first time that I'd had a game title that popped into my head, and I didn't say it, because it's like, I don't know yet. And then it turns out to have been that one, and it's like, oh, I could have gotten it early. Was it Black Rose? No. Okay. Oh wait, that's Midway. Midway is Bally. Okay, you count Midway as Bally? Midway is Bally. Well, I know they are Bally, but some people consider them separate. Midway's trade name was Bally. No one considers them separate. Okay. If you look on the list, there is no Bally under WMS. It's all Midway. Midway and Williams. Oh. That's what I mean. Midway Manufacturing Company is a subsidiary of WMS Industries, and its trade name is Bally. yeah and I knew that was how they did how it was owned I just wasn't sure how it was how some people would consider the brand when Williams acquired Bally Midway as it's sometimes commonly referred to the pinball machines were either branded Williams or Bally but they all say all the Midway games say Bally on them maybe that's a better way to phrase it why would I have guessed that anyway because I already wiped out Brian Eddy that was a waste well trying to factor all these things in is challenging was it creature? yes 17th question that seems to be where I'm averaging is 17 questions that's why I hesitated when you asked if it was sci-fi because I didn't know how to answer that because the game is a mix it's a drive-in which is not sci-fi but there's a part in the game where you are trying to find the creature and I would say he is a sci-fi I would consider Creature sci-fi. Because I think the film counted as sci-fi. IPDB considers it drive-in and fictional, which doesn't really help. Yeah, no. But, yeah, so that was a Bally-branded WMS game, 1992. John Trudeau designed it. Yes.
62:11
And two flippers. Yeah. Obviously an early DMD title. And you've played it many times. I've played it many, many, many times. I'm glad it wasn't the other 92 games I'm seeing on here. Because Creature isn't one of the ones that was in my head. Fishtails was. Oh, yes. But Fishtails is not sci-fi. Right. And Doctor Who was. And Fishtails was a Mark Ritchie game, I believe. So it would not have been eligible. Yeah. Now, Doctor Who could have worked because that's Barry Osler and you didn't ask about him. No, I didn't. Okay, well, you did get it, so good job, Tony. That was wonderful. Your victory streak continues. Yay, my terrible, terrible victory streak. And everybody at home is going, you're an idiot. They might not be going that. You should be saying you're an idiot. As we learned when we had Jason on and when we had Joe on, it's much easier to play at home than it is when you're actually before the might of my microphone glaring at you. It is. I will agree It is much easier to do it From Somewhere else than Yeah Because then all of a sudden you're just like I can't remember Or why did I ask for this date I know nothing about this date Well with me that's like every I know nothing about that I always know nothing about that I noticed this time you went with a strategy of Not asking for the dates initially Right because I Open my pop here Didn't Because I'm terrible at the dates. The best I can get is I normally can narrow the dates down to like three or four years. Sure. Because I don't have that memory where everything's locked in. It's hard to keep track. I mean, when you consider the breadth of all these, a flipper pinball. Yeah. It's hard. It's hard to do. I don't have them all memorized.
64:11
Not all of them. Just enough of them. I have a few of them. A few of them. I have a few of them. What was I? You were probably saying, let's go to the video game side. Yes, because I don't think I'm going to hit you this time, because last time I hit you, I did very poorly. Also, I didn't look anything up yet. Okay. That's fine. So video games. We'll do a transition topic that kind of spans both.
64:40
It's not new news, but when we had Joe on, he's not really into the world of modern video games, so we didn't talk on some of these topics. So some of these have been out for a couple weeks. Here's a big one, though, that a lot of pinball people have been talking about because a lot of pinball people like virtual pinball. And that is the whole brouhaha about there being censorship of all these Williams tables and pinball FX3. And I have an article about that linked in the show notes. But long story short, Zen Studios, which makes Pinball FX3, has responded when people started to notice that dot matrix animations and some of the actual artwork on play fields and plastics and stuff being emulated were modified, removing things like pipes, blood, and other kind of things that might not let them, in their words, keep their E10 rating, which is what their goal is. They want to keep an everyone 10 and over rating. And they pointed out, because I got in a discussion about this, I think on the Gaming on 10 Minutes a Week Discord, about how I assumed that from the get-go it was about the rating, but then I pulled Pinball Arcade's rating, and Pinball Arcade had the same rating, and they didn't do these censorships. So Zen said it is about the rating, and went so far as to say Pinball Arcade was in violation of the ratings. Which is technically true. Or at least that's what they're arguing, is that the rating board missed all that stuff. And so what are your thoughts on this? Like, is this a big deal? People are very mixed. I know some people feel very strongly that these should not be modified.
66:22
And then there are other people that are like, it's fake pinball anyway. Who cares? I'm going to lean towards, more towards this. I'm not going to do the whole, oh, it's fake pinball anyway. But I will lean towards who cares. It doesn't affect the gameplay in a lot of situations. Not all of them, but in a lot of the situations, the changes are so minor you might not even notice them. And a lot didn't notice initially. And it's one of those things that I can, I think, as a parent, I understand the reasoning why rating systems got created like they have been created. And I understand that a lot of the rating is done and managed because they don't want harsher legal requirements coming down. So they create the ratings and maintain the ratings like they do. And I understand why. I do think most, I think ratings for anything under extreme violence and sex and this and that are dumb. The ratings on smoking and drinking are dumb People smoke and they drink It's real life, that's part of it And it's something that a kid is more likely than not going to see Or does see every day So I don't understand why it's a big deal violence this is another US thing or at least from what I've seen it seems to be a US thing is that weird crossover where well we can be extremely violent but if there's no blood it's not violent thing that I don't
68:19
understand that's graphic violence I understand what it is but at the same time, it's like, just because I just watched somebody break a guy's spine and he didn't bleed doesn't make that better than that guy who got shot and was bleeding everywhere. Or when people get shot but don't bleed. I don't understand why. Well, if he bled everywhere, the rating would have been worse. You just shot a guy, and in this case, this is more movies than video games, but It's like a guy got shot. It doesn't matter if you can see him bleeding or not. The fact of being shot should affect the rating, not the fact, oh, well, he wasn't bleeding, so it's okay. Well, I think the person getting shot does affect the rating. It doesn't make it an R is the issue. And that's because I assume it's because some people have a more visceral reaction to seeing blood. And that's the, it's not, if you had a lot of blood and no one died, they'd also get the R. It's that people get uncomfortable with seeing human life liquefied all over the place.
69:30
I'm not sure where you're going with any of it. The reason why they don't want cigarettes and stuff on things for younger kids is because if you have these protagonists doing it, then kids think that smoking makes you cool. That's why they restrict it. I understand the argument. When your parent smokes, you already know that they're not cool because they're your parent anyway. You're like No that's mom and dad they suck Because they don't let me do what I want That's a lie Because you're so uncool I couldn't do it But I liked her part But you know Every day you see Dad drink 20 shots Of tequila And beat your mom That's real life But no you do see people I mean, people smoke. I still see them. Even though smoking is down nationwide, I still see people smoking every single day. Now, I do know, I mean, things have changed. I remember when I first entered the workforce, I was the only non-smoker. And now there's only two smokers out of like 30 of us now.
70:36
So, I mean, there are major changes that have come down and there's more coming. I just have never fully gotten the way some of the ratings go. I accept it. I know why they do it. I just don't think it's a big deal. Well, I don't know if they think it's a big deal or not, but they think it's a big deal to keep their E10 rating. I agree that they should full-on try and keep their E10 rating. I think that this is fine if people want to get mad. And if people don't want to buy it, that's fine too. And most of those people are people who probably either wouldn't have bought it or already own it on the pinball arcade. Could be. I think that, well, first of all, people asking for the ability to go into the game settings and turn off family-friendly mode don't understand how the ratings work. Right. That's, you guys, I'm not going to say that you're dumb, but you need to read. It's as easy as going in and just flicking a switch. That completely undermines the rating system. That's stupid. Yeah. It doesn't work like that. That's not how it's designed at all. It's not a toggle. Okay. That's still just as adult. So you're being silly. Don't. That's not the answer. If you want to give it, you just don't want them to have the family friendly version. So just say that and they're going to ignore you. But you're not getting a toggle. That's not how science of how it works. The other thing, the other argument, which I don't particularly care for, is the the slippery slope or undermine the artist. This is commercial art, people. This is not the Louvre. Quit pretending that this is some high minded craft. it's commercialized art it's not about a statement it's about money you can like it if you want but it's lowbrow and quit pretending that it's something that it's not and trying to hang it up on the walls of museums it can be modified it's commercial they're not Yossi's not going to get worked up about it it's no you're right I get it you put your hobby on a pedestal but quit acting like even I'm not saying that these are not highly skilled artists but this is commercial art. It's different beast. This is like getting mad at someone changing someone's ad campaign.
72:46
Wah. Yeah, no, that's... Wah. I don't want to hear it. It's a terrible argument. I don't want to hear it. Terrible argument. We're done.
72:54
I don't have all these flashbacks to my parents beating each other after they had all their cigarettes and drinks every night. It was a violent life. How did I survive? Oh, we didn't even talk about the heroin. Okay. Speaking of heroin You have an update on Telltale It was a different time back then That's what I've been told We have to understand times were different back then Yes, there's been a lot of stuff In Telltale The Telltale saga Do we want to go with that? I kind of like that We didn't get to talk about it A lot of this came up before the last episode But it's just continued to roll And get bigger Telltale did find another company Skybound Games who is going to complete season 4 of The Walking Dead let's see Skybound this is a direct quote from the article I read Skybound Games is part of the company behind The Walking Dead comics which Telltale's adaptation is based upon we are so happy to announce that we've reached a deal with Telltale Games that will allow Skybound to continue The Walking Dead the final season.
74:12
We'll have a link to that article. But basically, the initial release was that Skybound was going to finish it. Then there were articles that came out talking about Skybound was in talks to use at least some of Telltale's employees to finish the game. And it finally came out earlier this week that Skybound will be finishing the game with primarily ex employees So at least some of them they don get a severance package or any of that stuff but at least some of them will be able to move straight into a job doing what they were doing before for at least the amount of time it takes to finish the final season of The Walking Dead. How long that takes, I don't know. From everything I've read They haven't put any timelines on it Because they're basically going to have to spend the whole system back up Okay, makes sense Yeah Overall that's good news Good news for the employees And I'll say secondarily good news for gamers And mostly I think people are being very sympathetic To the impact this had on the Staff of Telltale There were some initial reactions Of people going Well, but what about my finished Walking Dead It's like the priority, I think, for a lot of people who know the industry isn't going to be that you get the next two episodes of The Walking Dead. It's probably about the hundreds of people that got no severance and immediately lost their jobs. And their concern as people is not going to be that you get to finish your story with Clementine. Right. So, wah. But this is a nice, happy result. I hope it pans out. It probably will. I think this will be able to move forward. though I'm not highly familiar with Skybound. I'm not either, but... Now, I am somewhat more familiar with CD Projekt Red, and you've got another interesting thing here. What's this about demands? Why are there demands? Well, it came out several weeks ago again that the original author of The Witcher... Now, The Witcher series, The Witcher games, extremely popular. Especially Witcher 3 was just insanely popular. It was an incredible advancement over Witcher 2, which was, I heard, I didn't play the first Witcher. Yeah. But I heard Witcher 2 was a significant step up from the first game, and then the third game just went full open world. Right. And what some people, especially in the U.S., I mean Witcher fans will know, but non-Witcher fans probably don't know, is that the Witcher series is based off of a series of novels, Polish fantasy novels. and the original Witcher author,
76:57
Andrews J. Sapkowski. Wow, you said that perfect. Sapkowski I can get. That's easy because that's bloody near my last name. But he sold all the rights for the Witchers to CD Projekt Red for a lump sum instead of a percentage of profits because he thought it would be a failure and he wanted his money now. Instead of just getting a little bit of money later on, he'd want as much as he could get right now. Understandable. But then it turned out that the game was huge. And he actually sold it for chump change.
77:37
Now, this isn't like a lawsuit. He's not suing CD Projekt Red. But under Polish law, there is a provision to protect creators where if they sell their rights to something and it ends up being much larger than expected, they can put out a demand to try and get more money to make up the difference. So that's what he's doing. And he's specifically going for, you know, $16 million. Okay. to make up the difference between what he was paid and what he thinks it was actually worth.
78:19
From everything I've read about this and about a whole lot of other things, the author's kind of an a**hole.
78:28
But, honestly, if the law allows him to do this, I'm perfectly okay with it. If that's how the law is written because he... There's no reason I think somebody should get completely screwed over because something got way bigger than they expected.
78:47
Yeah, I mean, if this was under American law, this would be a joke. It would be a joke. But it's a different legal setup that the deal was made under, so I'm not going to judge it based off of the American criteria. It sounds like, from what you've summarized, the Polish law is probably on his side. the company made a great deal of money off of the Witcher I won't be surprised if they give him they might even give him all of this I don't know what their fiscal position is in they've been moving forward with a different game set up since they're not doing anything new with the Witcher but the company seems to be doing very well I'm like you if this had been in the US or somewhere like that I would have just laughed I'd be like you're screwed but since they've got laws that actually protect his ability to do this work within the law. Do what you can. There's no reason for you to not get yours if the law lets you do it. Yep.
79:46
So, moving from one massive game to another, you were talking about Diablo at the introduction segment because you've been spending a lot of time with it. So you've put in that there's some hype about Diablo and it's gone totally bananas. It has. The whole thing here is BlizzCon, for those of you who don't know, Blizzard, who is the creator of such unknown games as World of Warcraft and Overwatch and Diablo, games nobody's ever heard of, they hold their own convention every year. And it is coming up. And when they released both the map of the convention hall and the calendar of events, a lot of people noticed that the very first event in the queue in the main room after opening ceremonies of course was a large Diablo panel titled Diablo what's next uh they were next to the Diablo booth area which is set up directly next to the main event hall there's a large empty space. The last time a large empty space appeared on the maps of a BlizzCon like that was before the Overwatch announcement where they had playable copies of Overwatch. And there were some tweets and releases online talking about big news coming for Diablo fans. Obviously you can see where this is going. Yeah, where's my new Diablo? That's exactly where the fandom went. The fandom went insane with speculation. Up to the point, I saw speculation where people were talking about, oh, there will be playable demos of Diablo 4. It is here. It's at that state. It's going to be huge. All going insane. It went so crazy that Blizzard had to put out an announcement that was basically, whoa, guys. Seriously.
81:49
Calm down. Step back. take a deep breath. I'm actually going to read a section of the announcement from Blizzard's website directly.
82:03
BlizzCon 2018 is almost here and we've seen a lot of rumors flying around our plans for Diablo at the show. These are very exciting times. We currently have multiple teams working on different Diablo projects and we can't wait to tell you all about them when the time is right. we know that many of you are what many of you are hoping for and we can only say that good things come to those who wait but evil things take longer we appreciate your patience as our teams work tirelessly to create nightmarish experiences worthy of the lord of terror i'm going to take this and uh just in case you didn't fully understand what it means it was oh god no we're not giving you a new game that's like years out so please just calm down we're going to show you we're making a mobile game I don't know that they're making a mobile game I would believe they'd make a mobile game or maybe there's been rumors that they've got a Netflix project coming out I've heard speculation they might be remastering the first Diablo for modern systems I've heard the same thing about the second Diablo as well which most people consider to be the best Diablo. I would lean that way.
83:21
So I think that's the kind of stuff I think they're going to be pushing forward as what actually is happening. I think if they say anything about a Diablo next or Diablo 4 or however you want to consider it, the best you're going to see is going to be like the Elder Scroll cop-out at E3 where they just showed, look, here's random image of stuff and then assemble this as Elder Scrolls. Yeah, it's coming in like four years. Yeah, in two generations.
83:54
It'll happen eventually. We know you love it. We know you want it. It'll happen eventually, but not now. That's the same thing with this with Diablo. A lot of you, I mean, it has been six years since the last Diablo release. It's been two years since the last DLC for Diablo.
84:16
So, I guess it's possible they could be dropping a DLC as well. Maybe. But I doubt it. I think it's like we said, we're probably going to see some remasters or some other stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's still played. Blizzard likes to give long legs to their games. Yeah. Diablo, it's still fun, like I said earlier. And since they're running the season system they've created, it lets you buy into the game. Not buy into the game, but it gives you new content and new stuff.
84:49
Because the way they set up their season stuff, if you start a seasonal character, you start with a level one character with no access to anything else you've ever done in the game before. So it's basically like a new game plus mode. Okay. So it's fun. It's enjoyable. Now you have next up this weird one listed as Obama hates Pokemon. That's literally all it is. Obama put out a voting tweet that had a video of him talking about why people should vote.
85:22
And you should vote. Please vote. I don't care who you vote for. Just vote. I feel really bad when you see some countries have like 92% voter turnout and we've got like 40. but don't worry that's as political as we're getting on yeah yeah no that's as far as we're gonna go uh but with how he they put out the thing of this video talking about how you should vote and bad reasons to not vote and one of the first reasons was well i don't like anybody running and he goes well i don't like pokemon but that doesn't mean that it's that there's not that that some people don't and that you shouldn't like take part in stuff that's literally it obama hates pokemon Huh. Well, that's not very nice. They're so adorable. I mean, it's just... Oh, well. Okay. He can hate what he wants. Yeah, yeah. It's not important. I just thought it was funny. Okay.
86:13
Well, then the last real news item we'll cover. This is actually from the start of October. I've not seen any more recent updates since then, but we had not yet touched on it, and I think it deserves to be touched on. It does. Would be, and we'll have a link to an article about it in the show notes for those that want to read more. But Microsoft has been reported to be in finalization on their acquisition of Obsidian Entertainment.
86:38
And for those that might think back to our E3 time period when we did our E3 episode, we mentioned the Microsoft presentation had a heavy, though it wasn't a heavy time focus, There was a heavy focus on pointing out that they had acquired four studios this year to expand their first-party lineup of games. This would be the fifth studio.
87:01
Reports are indicating that the negotiations were, as of the start of October, 90% complete, and that this is not a question of if, it is merely a question of when the deal will be inked. Obsidian I'd say most recently is probably Known for putting out Fallout New Vegas They also are known for their Knights of the Old Republic Games They have quite a pedigree Particularly on the PC side actually So I know some PC Especially for RPG games And so a lot of people that I've seen comment on this Have mentioned excitement because They feel Microsoft has been Weak in the RPG area especially given the loss of Lionsgate. Even though there's a lot of vast speculation that Playground Games, which is known for the Forza Horizon racing series, now that they have two teams, that the second team is going to be doing Fable, that this would add to their RPG bona fides, and also it might give them some good PC games as well, because Microsoft is not just focusing exclusively on consoles. They haven't for quite a while. So I liked New Vegas I thought it was buggy But I thought the storytelling and the world built Were better than Fallout 3 Agreed And so I liked what they can do on RPGs I was not a Knights of the Old Republic player But those games are worshipped They are Obviously EA currently has LucasArts Disney license right now But who knows what's going to happen When that ends In a few Three years or something Three years. Yeah, because reports I've been reading are that Disney is not happy with how EA has managed that license. And I can understand that because EA has done a really terrible job with that license. So I'm not saying that Microsoft then gets it. I mean, I imagine they'd want their stuff to be multi-platform, not just PC and Xbox. But nonetheless. But just because Microsoft owns Obsidian doesn't mean that Obsidian can't do multi-platform. Microsoft has allowed their controlled products to go multi-platform before and support it. Minecraft is perhaps the best case in point where they have readily encouraged it to be anywhere it can infect itself. Which is exactly what it does. But I think this was, while the E3 announcement was very big, my main issue with the E3 announcement was most of the studios that Microsoft acquired were pretty small. now with Microsoft resources that they could still probably accomplish quite a bit of stuff this is not to me small this is an independent studio they've been independent since they formed in 2003 but they are a powerhouse producer on the RPG side they are I would say in my personal opinion Obsidian is the best RPG game maker out there more than Bioware yes Bioware is good but I prefer like Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny the RPG stuff the stuff they did in Fallout New Vegas what they brought into their progression their stories and stuff is what made Fallout New Vegas my favorite of the new Fallout games I mean what they can bring and it's a huge it's a huge thing it's a huge purchase and i think it's a great idea for microsoft yeah i well i've already been leaning based off of what i've heard from phil spencer and what they did at e3 i think this is just more evidence that they are seriously going to make a bid to try and regain control in the quote-unquote console wars as of the next generation yes and regardless of that, that Microsoft is giving Phil the financial backing to actually raise the status of the games portfolio that Xbox players can expect to have. So that you'll actually have a compelling reason to not choose Sony for its exclusives. That they'll actually have some. And for the PC master race folks out there, Microsoft, assuming they continue to and probably will remain committed to their exclusives being available on Windows-based PC platforms, allowing those gamers to enjoy this stuff. They make money either way, so they don't care if you play on the console or you play on the PC. As far as they're concerned, they want you to cross-play across both anyway. So I think it's – for me, it's a positive because I've been in the Xbox ecosystem since the 360. But overall, I just think it's smart from a competitive standpoint that Microsoft, even with the four studios they acquired, they were still, I think, two or three studios short of what Sony has. This is essentially parity with this. I would think so. Them having Obsidian would give me pause in my, if I was to seriously consider grabbing a third generation, or not third, but the next generation consoles when they come out, I would give serious consideration to going Microsoft knowing that Obsidian could be putting out Microsoft only games it's interesting my intention to buy into this generation which I'm going to at some point well you did you gotta switch but my intention to buy between the big two will probably, at this point, if I did, it'd be PlayStation. Yeah, that makes sense. They won. This generation's over. Pretty much, yeah. I mean, even though there's a bunch of games coming out, there's going to be games coming out for years yet, the fight for the generation is over. Yeah, I think so. I don't see how anyone reverses fortunes at this point. No. Especially because this generation's not expected to last as long as the last one did. most of the reports I'm seeing about the next gen console development is already started but I don't know if it's started by Nintendo it has started at Sony and Microsoft and Nintendo's always run weird on that the assumption is 2020 oh I was thinking 2022 ish probably at least 2020 for the announcements of the systems so maybe out in 2021 but yeah basically one more full calendar year of not talking about that stuff and then probably moving forward to something new. Just so they can... Because obviously they did their progressives, their PlayStation 4 Pro, your Xbox One X, which kind of tacked on enhanced support 4K, but I think they're going to want everyone to have systems that can do it moving forward.
94:00
And there's been huge changes in graphics systems in the last 20 years. And for – I mean, I expect it from Sony as well, though. They don't have the history of it like how Microsoft has. But I'm sure Microsoft's new system, which I think is codenamed Scarlet right now, will be fully backwards compatible because they've been stressing. That's been one of the things that Phil's been doing. Not – I won't say quietly because they've been pretty prominent about announcing it, but it's not as important to a lot of people. But many of the 360 games can be played on the one and some of the original Xbox as well at this point. And given what I expect it for Sony as well, just because now that the architecture is almost identical, the x86 PCs, there's no reason not to allow backwards compatibility. Yeah. So I think with all that, Microsoft is going to want to move forward and say this will play all of the Xbox one games just from the get go. Plus, it will thus be able to do all the backwards 360 and originals as well, which Sony probably won't bother doing because they don't need to. They've got their streaming service. Right. So, you know, it sucks. I think you're right. I think that is something. At least, let's go with, I hope that's how they do it. It would make the most sense. We'll see. Personally, I would like to see Microsoft get one more. It sounds so greedy. One more studio. I know they got Ninja Theory, which is helpful, but I think that they should probably try and get either a Japanese RPG studio and just start owning part of that market. No, maybe it's not a big enough market to care about. I still think that they should buy Capcom and just say, we have Capcom now. It gets you so much IP. It does. It gets you so much IP, and anyone could run it better than Capcom does. Right. But it gets you Street Fighter, so all the fighting game players will have to buy your system. See, what you do there is they buy Capcom, they get Street Fighter, they take all the IP information for Street Fighter, they make a new Street Fighter game, of course they do, but they take all the IP information for Street Fighter, they hand it to Obsidian, and they turn out a Street Fighter RPG. That would be interesting.
96:20
And then they could also have Street Fighter cross all the other weird stuff Microsoft has. So, like, fight against Master Chief. It can fight against the Ford Focus. They can put out their own version of Smash. And it'll probably be just as cruddy. Probably. I don't think it'd be any worse. So, there's that. And speaking of being there's that, we're at the end of the show. We made it. We're done. For two weeks. So, that's it. Don't expect to have any guests. Actually, I don't have any guests planned for the rest of the year, really. No. So, it'll probably just be some jibber-jabber. Jibber-jabber. But hopefully entertaining. We'll have to see if there's any more news coming up. Towards the end of the year will be a rush of games. Everyone's talking about Red Dead Redemption 2. Of course.
97:03
And how they're destroying mom and pop video game stores. Yep, terrible. But that's not for us to weigh in on. All we can say is that I am Dennis. I'm Tony. And you can always email us at eclecticgamerspodcast.gmail.com or you can write in to us at Facebook. Yes, I was pausing. You can write in to us at facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're on Twitter and Instagram at eclectic underscore gamers. And before we end, we did get an email. So I thought, let me read it. We don't get them too much. This is from Eric W. So thank you, Eric W. I thought this one you would really like. I did write back to him, but he wrote, I was listening to your conversation about Pops, our Pop Bumper one, and it sounds like you were asking for a game just like Rob Zombie. I've always enjoyed the randomness of that game. Tony, what are your thoughts on Rob Zombie here at the end of the episode? It came so terrible. That's what I had to respond. I was like, sadly, I hate Rob Zombie.
98:13
Eric, I'm sorry. To be fair, because we are nothing if not fair. The pop bumpers are placed in very unique positioning. And I think Rob Zombie is a very challenging game on the plunge.
98:29
Before you initially get control. I think all the problems with that game are other designs. A lot of the problems with the game came from the rule set that relied upon you hitting that massively wide ramp in the middle. But the upper playfield was not well designed. It was an incredibly easy upper play field to keep the ball up there with the one flipper if you should want to, like in that stupid bucket of chicken mode or whatever, where you just keep doing the little loops. It just doesn't play very well, in my view. Yeah. I don't blame the pop bumpers for that. No. The pop bumpers do add randomness to it. The thing is, once you've gained control, you can easily avoid them, and there's no incentive to really have gone into the pop bumpers versus some other much safer strategies. So they just, it wasn't incentivized. But thanks for the email. We do appreciate it. And so until two weeks, we'll see you later. Bye.