Welcome to the Collected Gamers Podcast. Today is Sunday, January 8th. This is episode 184. Hey Tony, I'm Dennis. Hi Dennis, I'm Tony. It's good to see you. It is good to see you. There's been a lot of stuff, and I'll have you start off. But first, let me go ahead and do our thank you to our Patreon, because, you know, we're very appreciative of them. We're up to 43 people total, so that's a gain of one. So if you were worried about the pressure of the 60th threshold for another 5K, on this current pace, you probably have about seven months to get ready. I need the work. So we have the one new Patreon member we have is Johnny at the basic support level. But then we also had an existing Patreon member, Procco, who has moved up from basic to the intermediate support tier. So thank you, Procco, for the additional support. We appreciate it. And, Tony, what's been going on? It's been a couple of weeks. We had our year-end review as our last episode. It was a nightmare in terms of length. It wasn't that hard to edit, but it was a long episode. I was in the chair a lot making adjustments, as I thought back. And I was like, did we really have to cover all of these companies? Most of them didn't do anything. No, but people like to hear that. That's true. They want a celebration of, I guess, of failure. So anyway. People wanted any reason to celebrate 2022. You know, I was on the Flip N Out Pinball YouTube channel stream. Joel Engelberth hosts that. It's kind of a modification of what he used to be doing over with the Pinball Network. And the discussion came up. And at the end of it, we had and we'll talk about Bond 60th, of course, on this episode, which was the bulk of that of that video content. But I did ask him when we were kind of talking about pinball awards and stuff, because, of course, a lot of the balloting is going on and such for a couple of the awards. And I asked him, Joel, do you think that actually asked all the panelists, do you think that 2022 was better, worse or about the same in terms of quality of pinball as 2021? and you know i don't know if i remember everyone's response it seemed at least the majority of people felt 2021 was a better year than 2022 i wonder just personally if with how the pinball industry has been moving if pinball awards should maybe be a every other year or every third year just to get enough stuff so that one game doesn't dominate everything it's an interesting point I can say from because I work on the on the pinball awards, I can say logistically, even just doing one year, it's almost at least for us. Maybe the twippies and other groups don't have the same problem, but it is almost shockingly hard to even be sure we captured all of the 12 month ones. I mean, like we went in, we had someone take a first pass at at doing the ballot structure. and then we had two different meetings where we were still debating about what other games maybe should have been included. The trick isn't so much knowing what got announced as knowing if anyone ever had the opportunity to play it. Because we usually, we for pinball awards, usually go off of shipping. Well, like this is Spinal Tap. Has it shipped or not? I'm not entirely clear until I did see a post, one post from the Pinball Hall of Fame in Vegas saying they received one. So we put it on the ballot because it's like, OK, it's out there. It's out there somewhere. But maybe that's the only one that hit the U.S. And like, how do you how do you make anyway? It's a it's a thing. But speaking of things, you've probably been doing stuff. I have done some stuff. I've done a thing. Oh, no. Our patrons have already heard about it. We leaked it earlier to them. That was my fault. I was like, they want to know. I think the patron deserves to know early. They deserve to know early. My employer is putting together a team to take part in the Special Olympics Polar Plunge. Now, what is a polar plunge? because I had actually not, I think I knew what this was, but I had never actually heard the phrase. The polar plunge is where you jump into a lake in the middle of winter because there's smart things to do. Obviously, being a fat, hairy guy, it feels like the right type of thing for me. I feel much more comfortable doing this than, oh, say, running a 5K. So I went ahead and joined the team. and it has donation goals. I set a donation goal of $500 is what I'm looking to raise. I know like our team's overall goal is $5,000 for the team as a whole. Wow. From everybody who's joined in. But I thought that this is one of those things that I was interested in doing and I figured I would put it out there on the Patreon and then we'll put it out on the Facebook and everything else. So anybody who has any interest in donating to Special Olympics can support me in my insanity of jumping into a lake on the 18th of February. It'll definitely be great. It was like four degrees on the 18th of February last year, so I'm sure it'll be like 60 this year. Apparently there's a theme. so this part this part was very surprising to me i've seen people jump into cold water before right but apparently there's a a theme of rock and roll so i've been debating costuming um i've debated the obvious fat elvis uh you know the white jumpsuit and all that because you already have the jumpsuit so well that would be the easiest that would be the easiest to do And then from there, I thought about Eddie from Rocky Horror. Oh, okay. It was played by Meatloaf, which immediately transitioned me instead of Eddie just straight to Meatloaf. Because like all the videos for like Mad Out of Hell and Paradise by the Dashboard Lights, He's on the very, very similar ruffle front 1960s, open almost all the way to the navel, tuxedo shirt with suspenders and dress pants and the long hair and stuff. So I've actually been looking at maybe doing that because that makes the most sense to me and is a bit more out there than just the classic going with Elvis. the only problem is I'll be meatloaf with a mustache because I'm not shaving my mustache so your commitment is pretty weak actually my commitment is kind of weak when it comes to that I did have a third thought that would not require me to shave the mustache and that would be Live Aid era Freddie Mercury okay but that's one super simple because it's a tank top yeah it's like a tank top with white pants or some white jeans yeah and they well i mean it would be very obvious if you have the the weird little uh microphone he liked like with the weird little stand with the little i think he used that at live aid yeah he'd been a while since i've seen it yeah it's because but it was just It's like white denim pants and a studded belt. Yep, and a tank top. And a tank top. Yeah, pretty straightforward. Yeah. So that one could be simple. I'd just be Fat Freddy Mercury. That's his most famous era. His most famous era. So, but since you put that out on the Patreon, there have already been several people who have donated in addition to yourself. and so I would like to thank everyone who's already donated and yourself for those donations. We've already moved over a quarter of the way to the goal at this point. Like I said, if anybody's interested, they can go ahead and donate. We'll put the links out there. Dennis is going to take pictures and video of me because my wife refuses to go because she thinks I'm going to die. Wow, well let's hope that doesn't happen Because the video would be real bleak Oh it would be, it would be That would be kind of a bleak video But look at all the donations you could get from it Yes For the kids Anything else besides your prep, your polar plunge prep Because that's over a month out That is, the only other thing other than that Is I was on vacation Between Christmas and New Year I'd maxed out so I took the time off And Dairy and Steam had their sale and I found a game called The Riftbreaker, and I've been playing it pretty heavily since I found it. It's an enjoyable little game. It's like an adventure slash RTS base building type thing because basically it's like an RTS style base builder, like Total Nuclear Annihilation or one of those base builders where you control an actual character that you have to move around. but there's no like units to build you just build your base and you go gather resource and it's a resource man i've been having a lot of fun with it okay yeah i used to play i remember in college you were you had a lot of baseball like Total Nuclear Annihilation which i had played but it wasn't a game i really got into you and uh one of our uh roommates aaron were big into that game we played a lot yeah well cool okay so rift rift war the rift breaker rift break rift war is a completely different thing that's true that is that's probably why i remembered it series yes which i'm trying to remember i even read it i don't think i did i have read large chunks of it i won't say i've read all of it i think that series is actually now complete and i think there's like over 30 books in the total series there were a series of video games put out about But two in the 90s, that was the Kron-Dor, Betrayal at Kron-Dor. Oh, okay. Those were based around that. Another mutual friend of ours, Shane, was real big in the book series, I think. So I've read all the books. Okay. Well, cool. Well, not all of them. I know there's been some that have come out, but I read all the books up to a certain point. Let's go with that. Well, much like you did, I also took vacation off between Christmas and New Year because I was at CAP. and so it was nice to have some time off. I always hate the first couple of days back after though because I'm just like, look at all the stuff I get to catch up on because there ain't no one else doing it. See, we had major stuff happening at work and when I got back and like halfway through the day, I was talking to my boss and it's like, I should have just scheduled a half day back. I think I'm kind of done already. It's like lunchtime and I'm kind of done at this point. Yeah. I just needed to ease into it. I actually didn't have all that many emails because a lot of people took time off during that period. The problem was not only did I have to catch up on what did come in, but because it was the start of the new year, I had so many transitionary sort of activities like seeding the new board, getting those changes up on the website, submitting the new corporate annual report. Kansas requires nonprofits to submit a corporate report every year. Some states are like every other year, but we have to do one every year. So going onto their system and typing in all that stuff, which, again, it's not hard. It's just tedious. There's all this tedium. So anyway, but most of that's out of the way. And, of course, legislative session, which is always a big stressor for me just because ever since the pandemic, we've had so much anti-public health legislation. I don't expect as much this year, but we've already seen one bad bill prefiled. And it's from someone that didn't. I was sure he would still do something, but I'm hoping this year won't be – last year was awful. Last year was the worst I'd ever seen it. But now that we're past the election for the house, the state house, I think a lot of people – and the governor got reelected. So it didn't work as a campaign strategy is my point. So given that, I think they're going to move on to other hot-button issues, and that's going to lose interest because we are not doing major control measures that anyone gets upset about anymore. But in terms of fun stuff, I did finally finish Far Cry 6. Good. That's right. I was proud of myself. And all the DLC? No, mine did not come with the DLC, and I was sort of Far Cried out. So Far Cry went on the shelf. I did receive a game for Christmas called Judgment. It's in that Yakuza game realm. Oh, yeah. So I'm not playing as a Yakuza, but there are Yakuza in it. And the only Yakuza-style game I ever played was the Laika Dragon, which is a turn-based RPG format. This is the action combo fighting combat, which I guess most of the games are in the line of. But you're playing a former lawyer now turned private eye, you know, like they do. And so there's this big kind of interconnected case or cases that are all unified by like this. A silver thread ties them all together. But then there are all these other little side cases and stuff, and you get to have the minigame modes are tailing people without them seeing you and identifying, looking for evidence and identifying what it means and picking locks, like detectives do. Like detectives do. So I've been playing that. Wasn't it like a dragon where you pulled out your cell phone and called in super attacks? Can you do the same thing in Judgment? No. It makes me sad. You can pull out your cell phone and call in a super follower for a sting operation. I can pull out my cell phone and I can use it to manage my inventory, which includes immediately drinking extracts and stuff, which you can make, which can give you superpowers. Or because I guess this counted as the day one edition, I came with infinite certain power-ups that you can – they're on timers and they only run for a certain period when you use them. but there's like i got one which is just like death blossom and so i i use it to like oh wait there there are 12 guys i have to fight at once no like private eyes do yeah like private eyes do so i'm like nope dead just solve it like that kill it with fire i have fire as well where i my fist catch everything on fire yeah you know i remember that episode of magnum pi yes yes i would say you see if it wasn't rock you could go as tom selleck if you weren't doing rock and roll for your brother plunge tom selleck you just need a hawaiian shirt you see oh did he ever did he ever ever so many actors had a band did i don't think he ever did he should have that would be the key that would be the key and and the last thing really that's happened since then is uh i sold tna so i had someone who listens to the show so hey uh jacob if you're listening uh thank you i hope you enjoy the game uh came out from uh way in more central area missouri i think it was out of columbia area came by and and picked that up last week and so i i'm still trying to sell firepower but uh once that's gone i will finally be back at the proper size of a lineup which i like to keep a seven game lineup so so speaking of pinball let's get into it there's really only one major pinball topic uh which is good we had a really long episode last time i think people marathon Runners aside, I think most people are like, please don't. Please don't make it super long. So the game, of course, that everyone is talking about is the long-awaited Bond 60th anniversary. I do have a link in the show notes to Nap Arcade. It has several articles, actually, about this, but the one I'm linking is the one that actually is the discussion of the reveal, and I chose that one for the audience because it's got the close-up photos of a lot of stuff so people can get get a look at it just in terms of running over the very basics of this game i think a lot of people have probably already heard about it but this is a single tier level there aren't multiple skews like it's not a cornerstone with three different you know tiers of pro premium le this is just a limited to 500 units single level game it comes with according to the flyer a topper which is um is lit but it's not it's not animated like the lighting does stuff but that's all it does as near as i can tell uh it has a shooter rod with a with a union jack on the on the handle uh anti-reflective glass a powder coat shaker motor saw some people say it didn't come with They didn't think it came with a shaker motor. The flyer says it comes with a shaker motor. Ten drop targets are in the game. It has four opto spinners. That does not include the spinning disc, which sometimes gets labeled as a spinner, which has the hat, the odd job hat on it. It has a LCD screen in the play field. And the mock-up images or what we thought were mock-up images on that Bond store site were actually real. reel there there are there is a score reel or a series of score reels in the backbox just the way they laid it out in those distant photos made it look like they were digital they're not they are real well that's good but the but the look is the look um they don't have four sets for four players there's just one set of reels um stern sold a few of these directly on their website. I don't know how many they sold. They did initially sell out. Stern priced this at $20,000. Now, since then, I've seen a series of discussions. I've seen people sharing screenshots from various places where it looks like distributors priced initially. And again, I not done my own comprehensive review of this so take all of it with a grain of salt But it sounds like distributors initially also kind of price matched around the I noting that because this was a call for price sort of thing and there wasn't a standard MSRP issued by Stern. So even though Stern sold their copies of the game for $20,000, they didn't actually say that that was the manufacturer-suggested retail price. but it looks like a lot of distributors did sort of rally around the 20,000. But as of the time of this recording, distributors still have these available. And I've seen pricing fall as low as the lowest I think I've seen was around 18,000. So I don't know how much these are costing distributors. Obviously, there's a price they have to pay to be able to acquire them. So I just thought we should probably have a bit with all that context out of the way, We probably should have a bit of a discussion. And I think the thing I would start with first is the art package, which is very collage. It is all the collage. We've got a collage of the movie posters on the sides of the cabinet. You have a collage of the bonds on the back glass. And then the play field, relatively clean, towards the lower portion, lower to mid, You basically have another just collage of the Bonds. And other than that, you really have a more of an EM style in a way, you know, a lot of just lines pointing towards where all the shots are. There is around the odd job hat a series of Bond villains are sort of circling represented by inserts. So that's why they're there. But other than that, it's it's not really a people oriented play field. What do you think of this art package, Tony? I'm not a huge fan of the collage style art packages. it kind of feels like they handed it to someone and just said, well, here's the assets. You can't make any adjustments. Just use this as is. It reminds me of the discussions we had with Wonka where there were parts on it where it was like the exact same asset just used and reused it. You were honking on that really fast. I know you complained about it. Why is Wonka always in the same pose and same pose straight off the lunchbox? Right. Yeah, and that's very much what this is. It's all the characters. They're all just cookie-cuttered in whatever the classic considered pose for that character is. And it just feels very not good. I don't like it. Okay. I actually think you're being pretty generous. I think this is one of the ugliest art packages I have ever seen. I don't think it works. I agree with you completely that I cannot fathom this being anything other than the licensors said this is exactly what you're going to do because Stern has way more experience at this art layout thing. And they normally, while not always being the best art package of the year, they usually have very respectful art packages. Other than when we've heard licensors have had a heavy hand, like Star Wars, for example, where it's like you're going to use the traditional poses and sort of stuff. The movie poster stuff is just crap. The posters are the worst part. The back glass is all right. I mean at least they kind of segmented it out in each of the bonds it's kind of in its own triangle so it doesn't feel like they're overlapping whereas with the posters it was like let's use snap tools and line up the posts and of course the posters have different color schemes and stuff it's like you've got a yellow poster representing a view to a kill over on the right side of the cabinet and abutting that are sort of like black and white almost for Spectre and No Time to Die and then a whole bunch of orange down with another with a pierce brosnan era uh they're actually his seem to have a lot of orange in them generally until no time to die so it's just like you've got all this weird mix of colors and i it i don't like it also the sides of the backbox where they're just listing all the names uh in all the i guess poster fonts of the movies i don't think that looks very good either. I mean, at least it's all one color. So the text is one color and it's on black. So I think they did what they could with it, but this is not going to win any awards. Oh, no, not at all. Except for Razzie. I find it interesting that they did all the darker colored or almost all the darker colored movie posters on the right side of the machine and all the white background movie posters on the left side of the machine. Yeah. That at least gives each side a little tonality. That's definitely one of those doing the best you can with the absolute crap hand that you were given. Yeah, no. Stern did what they could with it. I think you can tell because, again, when you look at the left side, as you noted, there are a lot of white posters that ended up over there. And then just like on the right side, let's stick the really, really yellow movie poster all the way at the back corner to try and make it not break everything up. Right. But to make it even worse, I didn't notice this at first because I'm guessing of poster sizing or whatever. There was a blank spot on the left side where they just had to leave it black and just go in 00760. Yeah, when I was doing that flipping out video, someone was pointing that out. Yeah, there was this gap there that they just had to work it in, and it's just like, so unfortunate. It's so bad. What do you think of that topper? There is a video of the topper flashing and changing different colors. I don't care. I don't care about toppers. I don't either. I guess it's nice that it comes with it. Yeah, it comes with it. It's not a $57,000 topper, which is where they're directly moving towards. I will say. From $2,000, the next one's going to be $57,000. You heard it here first. Rumor corner. Rumor corner. That's what they're going to do. But I don't really. As far as toppers, the topper war was won with Whirlwind. And it's all been downhill since then. Yeah, pretty much. I'm not huge on a lot of. I mean, there have been a few that were, well, all right, I'm always a sucker for a good beacon. So like TNA's beacon. Right, or Getaway's beacon. Or Alien even, its beacon lights that they have. Those, I think, are always nice because the player can appreciate them while they're playing. Right. And that was what Whirlwind's strength was. Well, I think like the Batman topper that puts the bat signal up on the ceiling is cool looking. When you're playing, it doesn't mean anything. Right. It's just for others to enjoy. All right. Now, moving past all of that, I think maybe talking a little bit about the layout. So I'm not going to go in on that. There is a rules card. Someone had a photo where you could kind of make out what the rules card said. It's got a lot of multi balls, but I'm not going to focus in on the rules because, of course, we don't know if it's going to come out code complete and whether or not they end up doing any deviations from what that listing is. i actually like this layout i've always been a big fan of single level design in general i mean there are bad single level games you're wrong but the 80s and 70s are littered with them but but this i do think i really would like to play it so in terms of the things that are interesting i know one of the areas that a lot of people have really focused on is where the flow shots are which are basically the far sides. So the most interesting aspect is probably that far left shot, which is actually a figure eight. So if you look at the image of the overall play field, you'll see on the left there are the bond drop targets. If you shoot to the right of those, it actually will feed into this figure eight. There's a spinner up there, and then that loops around, comes back around behind the bond drop targets, And there's another spinner down there that that activates. That then goes down to the left flipper, which will allow you to shoot up into the right orbit, which has another opto spinner. And that will go around past the the top lane targets and go out basically down the middle to the left of the pop bumpers, which has the fourth opto spinner. And the video of this, there's a very brief gameplay video in the of gameplay, I should say, that you can see in the trailer. it is possible based off of hitting those in combo to get all four of those spinners going at the same time. And because they're optos, they spin forever. That's cool. Yes, really cool idea. That's cool. It is a really cool idea. And then, of course, in the realm of games like 8-Ball Deluxe, Frontier, Fathom, Centaur, we've got inline drops in this case. They're to the left of the right orbit. I like inline drops. I do too. They're there. It's a nice, fun, classic thing. And so total total count of 10 drop targets on on this game. And so one of the things I think is it's interesting to me because I think this game is going to be really, really brutal. So you've got those two flow shots for the spinners that I mentioned. Everything else about this is risky to me. So you've got the odd job hat, which is blocking the MI6 drop targets in the middle. middle drop targets like that are usually pretty dangerous to shoot anyway um because you know when you bounce off a drop period you don't have control of exactly where the ball is going to come back and feed so the bond targets are going to put you at risk the mi6 target is going to put you at risk the inline drop target is going to put you at risk the odd job hat is going to put you at risk and so in a 80s style uh single level game fashion i think this game is going to play really really hard i had heard someone again when i was on the the flipping out uh stream mention they had heard elwynn or someone asked elwynn because the there was a look at the the score reels and the score reels only go to like nine nine nine nine and so it's like okay well what happens if you get a hundred thousand like our our million points or whatever and i think there are some lights on there kind of the old school fashion yeah um but uh someone had asked about you know like well so what happens though when when you get past when you passed a hundred thousand points and i according to this person he had said like his highest score has been 20 some thousand wow so again it's not set to be a high scoring game in the millions of points realm obviously but uh it doesn't look like this is a game that's set up to allow you to easily quote unquote roll it so so i and i think um based off of what i see with this design i think it's going to be a very very hard game you know it's not you're not going to be able to do everything you want just by figurating your way to victory so and those are the only shots that seem to kind of feed back to a flipper but again we don't have ramps to give you those nice crisp little trap up moments so i actually really like that about the layout but uh do you have any initial thoughts looking at the layout images? I think you've hit some of the most interesting things on it. I'm actually really interested in this layout. I kind of feel bad that it's such a limited edition because of how interesting I find the layout to be. I kind of really hope to get a chance to play it at some time. What do you think of the screen in the middle of the play field? It'll depend upon what they do with it. I think if they do something interesting with it, But for the most part, I've found that the only thing I've really liked screens on the play field for is like during tournament play. It helps you when you're right on the cusp to know easier without having to look away from the play field that you're finally getting over the top. Yeah, I actually I like the idea. Yeah, I guess that was probably the one thing I really liked out of Highway was them doing that because I do think it's easier to just glance and not have to move my head than it is to look, especially if you're going up into an area where you think you need to still, at least in your periphery, keep track of the ball. Like you thought you put it up in a place where you're going to have a couple seconds. Obviously, if you're trapped up, looking at the screen is no big deal. The main screen is no big deal. uh but yeah i i mean i and i see where it's mounted and stuff i i imagine it's gonna be very easy to level that plexiglass if there are any you know that's the usually the the biggest concern is making sure there's not like a lip that the ball is going to get hooked hooked on or cause the ball to airball or stuff though looking at the video of this there were some air balls um as is because you know stern flippers aren't like the old flippers uh they're they're pretty snappy uh and i think there were some air balls off of those inline drops in the video even So I think that's going to play pretty fast. So let's go in the discussion on this with, of course, what you brought up, the unfortunate aspect of the limited nature of it. So what do you think about the 500 game count, the price point that Stern chose, the demand for it? Rumors are – not rumor corner rumors, but generalized rumors are that this game was – I think it was based off of an interview with George Gomez that the licensor had asked for a more old-school style game and I guess of a more limited ilk than the mainline ones, which does fit. I mean, you mentioned months ago about the motorcycle that came out that was Bond-themed, which is limited. Omega, the major luxury watch manufacturer, has a limited Bond watch, which came out. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that is high-dollar and limited that's tied to the 60th anniversary. So it would make sense to me that maybe this was at the licensor's behest that they did this, but that doesn't mean we have to like it. So, I mean, what are your thoughts? I mean, I'm sure that's the reason why it happened. I don't like it just because I think it actually looks way more interesting to play than the actual Bond game, than the regular Bond. Oh, the Gomez version. Yeah. I think it looks more interesting to play. It's just too bad about A, the limited nature, B, the art package, and C, the sheer cost of it. For a single level game, even with limited nature, that's crazy. yeah i um i wasn't too surprised at the at the twenty thousand dollar price point actually i had someone message me saying uh before i had even i was so busy with work the day this dropped because this dropped on tuesday which was my first day back and they were like you got the you you got the price right on it i'm like i don't even remember what i said anymore quite frankly over on the pinball show and they're like you you said the twenty thousand i i guess i'd thrown that out a hypothetical like what if stern prices it at 20 because at the time before this came out a lot of the hobby that i saw was guessing 25 that the ask was going to be 25 000 um you know i think the price point and the limited game count is very oriented if we think about the motorcycles and the wrist watches and everything else of a licensor that thinks this is for hardcore bond fans They're not thinking like this is for pinball fans. And I think it's really unfortunate. I understand their perspective. But what's unfortunate about it is this single level game with this sort of layout is so designed for pinball aficionados, not bond collectors, that it seems like such a waste that it's such a high dollar amount where people like I've seen every James Bond movie, but I'm not a James Bond fanboy. I would look past the art and all of this for this layout if it plays as well as I think it's going to play, but it's not going to be $20,000 worth of fun or $18,000 worth of fun. Not at all. And so given all of that, and obviously a lot of pinball people are going to get ruled out even if they think that the layout is intriguing because it doesn't look like when you look at it because it's the limited aspect and the bond theme or what the limited aspect of the bond theme that drives that price. Because even though you've got arguably a higher bill of material on this than, say, Gomez's L.E. game, it doesn't look like you got like $8,000 more worth. Right. I mean, yeah, you got four opto spinners. An opto spinner costs three times as much as a regular spinner. But don't make yourself think that an opto spinner is a $100 part either. I mean, you know, that's the thing. So, yeah, it's got a lot of drop mechs and stuff. It's got some score reels. The score reels are – those are – I actually think that's silly. I don't think that – that seems to be another licensor thing because I'm like, why would you put a score reel? Obviously, you need a little screen to be able to see everyone's score at the end now because you can't show all four of them on the score reel. So it's terrible from a competitive standpoint. People are going to be wanting to loom over your shoulder to see what their score is compared to all of that. So it's just not what it's geared for. It's geared for bond collectors. So, yeah, I'm not – I mean there's a lot of pinball out there, so I'm not worked up about it. It's just, yeah, it's a little tragic to have something this creative on the game design front to be paywalled so aggressively. But it is what it is. I said I'm hopeful that when we go to TPF, maybe there'll be one. But the line, can you imagine what the line will be like? You know, I think we're, do you think we're at the point where I or you should be able to just go up to them and say, you know what, like move the line and let us, I don't think so. I don't think. I don't know. I don't think we want to be that people. If we had vendor passes. Let me rephrase. I totally think that you can say that but I think anybody can say that Yes That true That doesn mean you doing the proper right thing I think the people would be mad Yeah Maybe this one if this plays as brutal as I think it will though maybe this line would actually move fast Because I remember standing in line to play some pretty long players like Kingpin. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Whatever happened to that Kingpin thing? I don't know. We didn't cover that in the year-end review because I don't even know if that's a real company. But okay. You know what time it is, Tony? It's time for rumor corner. Get that right, Tony. Yeah. All right, Tony. this this episode's rumor corner is short and sweet i have heard a rumor i think it's probably more wishful thinking but i'm gonna count it as a rumor i've heard a rumor that stern may in fact reuse this bond 60th anniversary layout at some point on another license at a more affordable price point and i go ahead go ahead i hope so i think it's wishful thinking especially depending upon how they set their stuff up with with uh the licensor yeah i but i think it would be great yeah i i would definitely classify this more as wishful thinking than as a true rumor because i cannot i cannot imagine that stern is actually that far ahead on a layout they just revealed publicly but here's how i could just hypothetically see it play out they could take this single level design and drop it into their commission catalog like where they have the woe nelly primus layout which has been reused several times and then let's not forget the ultra high expensive supreme layout was just the spider-man home edition done up and i think that was the same as what uh heavy metal did So they basically had, like, if people want to come in for a commissioned custom project, I think they've had two layouts available. They've got this kind of old home pin layout with ramps and stuff, and then they've got the single-level EMS Guonelli-style layout. And I don't think there's anything, like, the Bond licensor can do about the design. Like, they can't, I don't think they can own a Playfield layout. I think that's why you've seen so many clone, sorry, bumping the mic. I think that's why you've seen so many clones over time is there's something about you can't patent a layout. All right. So I could see where, one, people are probably going, gosh, I sure wish there was a version that wasn't $20,000. But I could also see where Stern would say, like, okay, yeah, we satisfied this, the licensor on this. You know what? We can make a lot more money with this layout. So here would be my projection. If this rumor turned out to be true, it would be after they're done running all of the bonds. Because outside of Rumor Corner, based off of everything we've been seeing about the whole launch and marketing of both of these versions of bond, I am projecting that Stern never works with this licensor ever again. I think that this was a disaster for them as a company because even if it's all the licensor's fault because of the arrangements and stuff, Stern has to just keep taking it on the chin over and over. Stern look like the losers in this. They're the bad guys. They're the ones that couldn't keep their own release date. They're the ones that don't have code out to 1.0 and dropped Bond pros out on locations for launch parties with like half the bad guys in it. I mean, it's all – all the rumors are that this is a licensor issue. So why would you ever work with them ever again? Plus, I don't know if the licensor on this controls other properties besides Bond, but if it's been as rough as this, like, we who follow the hobby, we've seen, like, the signs of a difficult licensor. Like, again, things like the Star Wars art and stuff. We've seen the instances where it's like you can tell, like, why they make it look so meh. And then you, but in this instance, I've, again, rumors. I've heard rumors of things like this multiball isn't allowed to stack with everything else because this multiball is from this one movie and the licensor won't allow that movie to contaminate into another Bond movie. Like that level of – again, I don't know if it's true. It's a rumor. But yeah, it's like why would you ever deal with them ever again? Your sales are – it's not worth it. There are so many other nostalgia licenses. this i think i i think stern thinks on retrospect this was a big mistake but anyway that's getting outside i will say that you should never say never again but that's not an official eon production i know that's what makes it so funny but overall i agree with you um i think this has been an absolutely terrible uh run for them an absolutely terrible hit in the publicity market for them especially considering they removed a cornerstone from 2022 uh they could not afford to take the kind of hit having already removed to cornerstone that they took over bond uh it's quite easily the worst look on stern in years yeah it's it's i mean yeah the look aspect in particular i mean i i would say i think they could afford to take the hit because they've had so many successes and they've still got a backlog of demand for things like godzilla premiums which you know they haven't been fully paid for yet because they're until they ship them out they don't like they i if i if i know the structure properly but but regardless it it reflects poorly because it's like you skipped an entire cornerstone and then this partially completed thing comes out and again i don't think it's i don't think it's them actually not having the work done i think it's the licensor is like taking forever as we covered on a previous rumor corner but you know no one knows the license like the average consumer the average pinhead doesn't know or care about the licensor it's like why is stern giving us this. This feels like the bad old days, like when Walking Dead came out with no code. That's what it feels like. But regardless of how it feels, we just want to know if you're rumor-tained. Are you rumor-tained? Perhaps. Well, perhaps you can video game-tain us. I will attempt to. Do not fail me. We'll see what we can do. It's 2023. Shmoog. it's 2023 that means it's the 20th anniversary of eve online a game that i've talked about on multiple occasions that ruled my life for a number of years uh post world of warcraft it became my go-to online game that i pretty much only stopped because it became another a whole separate job uh just to maintain anything yes but they have announced a large number of expansions and special events for this year since it is the 20th anniversary, including what is quite probably the greatest quality of life improvement for EVE Online ever. Direct Excel integration, allowing players to access and calculate everything from profit margins to battle strategy, pulling data directly from the game client itself straight to their excel forms so you don't have to have a converter or a scraper or manually enter the data you can just it's pre-designed to work with excel to pull the data out because eve online is also known as spreadsheets online well this is i think this is the first time i've ever heard someone tell me that a game's big improvement was the ability to export to excel but i guess there's a first for everything uh for eve that's that is a necessary quality of life issue uh i had many a spreadsheet yeah i remember you talking about many many uh various things running that game that i've never used on any other game i've never had nine different things open outside of the game to facilitate communication and work and playing in the game with, you know, other running applications before or since really. So on to the ever going saga, Blizzard, Blizzard, uh, Blizzard, Microsoft has backed off of their contention that their fifth amendment rights have been violated. and they've said that, yeah, we probably shouldn't have said that. It's like, no kidding. The FTC has announced that they have authorized their staff to engage in settlement talks with Microsoft, but there have been no substantive discussions at this time, but it's just after the holidays, so that's no surprise, which means more likely than not what we're going to see is what we thought we were going to see. there'll be concessions and payments to make, and it'll still end up happening once the concessions have been made. As part of their ongoing response, Microsoft has detailed several prominent games from third-party publishers that Sony has entered into arrangements with that specifically require that the games never be released on Xbox. I did see some news. So apparently several games like the Final Fantasy VII Remake, Bloodborne, Final Fantasy XVI, the Silent Hill 2 Remastered Edition all apparently have language updating that they just can't be released on Xbox. It was known none of these have ever been released on Xbox. Final Fantasy XVI is obviously not out yet, but it's known to be a PlayStation exclusive. The Silent Hill 2 remaster was supposed to be a PlayStation exclusive for a year, but from the sounds of it, it might be a PlayStation exclusive with a PC release later, but no Xbox release is what it sounded like. The Hitman games, the joyful games where you sneak around and you silently dress up and shoot people, or you just load up on a machine gun and you kill every living thing on the stage. you know it's sometimes easier it's easier to play around that way uh the third hitman game is out and they are going to rename it it's been out but they're going to rename it to world of assassination such a terrible name world of assassination craft yes i can't wait until i am the hitman panda when will they introduce panda hitman are they going to bring the nuns back from the old game so you have a burning crusade but they are going to be including all the maps from Hitman 1 and 2 they're basically setting it by changing it they're setting it up so people can get just one game and then get or download the DLC for all the others or purchase the DLC for all the others and all work through one game instead of having to have multiple games and it will give them a spot to work forward from as well so we'll see how that goes i don't know if anybody remembers but we have this lovely discussion right after cyberpunk 2077 came out where the investors decided to sue cd project red for how terrible the release was i remember uh that lawsuit has been finished they settled for 1.85 million dollars um and what that basically translates to is that everyone who had acquired publicly traded shares throughout 2020 is eligible for about 50 cents a share so okay well maybe some people some rich people that'll be significant like a few hundred dollars yeah okay honestly considering how high the sales of that game have gone yeah that's much how much work they've put into it uh uh it won an award for it won one of the steam awards for work of love or something like that this year because of how much work has been put into making that game playable and more like what it was supposed to be. Well, you know, the thing that was weird, like I understood the frustration and I remember the stocks taking this huge hit when it first came out, but the sales were so good, even when it was bad, a bad game, even when it got pulled from the PlayStation store that I was like, I don't know ultimately if they really have a case here because ultimately the game still made them a lot of money and the stocks recovered and all that. So I, anyway, I guess they settled. So it's, it is what it is. Yeah. And so, I mean, even without knowing the amount per, per share, uh, less than $2 million settlement on a game that did that. Well, I, I imagine the CD project was probably like, fine, this is nothing. This is nothing. This is probably cheaper than going to trial. Oh, it surely is. So, well, that's literally everything I have in the video game. So we're done. No. What? I'm resurrecting the tabletop section for a very special tabletop. I'm looking at the internal notes. This is a lot of bullet points. Wow. You are resurrecting. Resurrection. Yeah. It is a major step. It has been a major thing has happened in tabletop. now i think the last time we covered tabletop was when you talked about there was this like knockoff uh game cloning dungeons and dragons or something from wizards of the coast and that's still in still limbo yeah yeah still in court limbo uh this also involving dungeons and dragons okay wizards of the coast announced back uh right at the end of december that they are modifying their open game gaming license ahead of their release of one dnd which is their new edition of uh dungeons and dragons that they're dropping uh that is going to be backwards compatible with uh 5e but it's their new kind of streamlined version why are they doing the naming like microsoft xbox naming i don't understand why anybody does this silly naming i i'm sure somebody in their little think tank areas, well, this is bringing all D&D together, so it's back to one thing instead of different editions. We'll just call it One D&D. Because it's the only one you need. For real? For real. But, this is actually a fairly large and kind of complicated thing, so I'm going to go into a quick explanation of what the Open Gaming License is. The Open Gaming License is a public copyright license that allows developers to modify, copy, and redistribute some of the content designed for D&D, primarily game mechanics. This is the license that allows third-party developers to make and sell their own content that can be used with D&D. So third-party developers who make their own campaign setting or their own monster manuals or their own classes and stuff like that. They used this open gaming license, this OGL, because some of their things require them to directly use and print stuff from D&D. And this is what made it legal. Okay. So that they couldn't get this. I mean, and Wizards of the Coast put this out. They put it out with like 3 and 4 and 5E. It's been out since With only minor tweaks Since 2000 It has existed in this form But Wizards of the Coast Has decided that going forward They need a new version So they're calling this one The OGL 1.1 See this makes sense Numbering convention by the way It does, it makes just wonderful sense 1.0 to 1.1 All right. Yep. Basically, 1.0 has existed, as I was saying, since 2000 and was under 900 words long total. Oh, that's a very short license agreement. Yes. And it basically just laid out a few quick rules and left it very open to creators. 1.1 is much larger and more involved. It's over 9,000 words. It's over 9,000. Over 9,000. and there there gets very involved um just some of the highlights that are in it uh it addresses blockchains and nfts uh specifically you're not allowed to make them oh okay i was like i was rolling my eyes and then oh those are those are nice those are not part of the license that is held by wizards. You're not allowed to make movies, video games, stuff like that. There's a whole different license that you have to apply for and get to do stuff like that. Right. Well, you're not really making a game at that point with this stuff, so I get it. It allows wizards of the coast to terminate the agreement with a third-party creator if They publish material that is blatantly racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, bigoted, or otherwise discriminatory. Kind of like that knockoff game thing, right? They were doing some – That was part of why the big problem with that game was. It also states that OGL 1 is no longer an authorized license agreement and requires everyone to go to OGL 1 which could be the sticking point for stuff that has already been created under 1 due to some of the stuff that is coming on later and because in the original OGL, the license was granted in perpetuity worldwide non-exclusive license. But it also said, may use any authorized version of this license to copy and modify and distribute any open game content originally distributed under any version of this license. So Wizards is saying this makes the 1.0 not authorized. so you can no longer publish stuff that was already put out under 1.0. You have to convert it to a 1.1 license. Yeah, I'm not savvy enough on it. Normally, you have to agree to a new license agreement. So if stuff was already established, as long as you weren't modifying it from what it was. People might often think, oh, they get to Unilad to really do it, but you forget they give you that little box to check to continue to use like an online service. They'll be like, here's the new agreement. You have to check or you can't play this new version. Like we've updated it so you're not playing the old version. But technically, both users agree to license changes. So I'm curious about like their actual ability to force the hand. Let's say if you printed something, you wanted to do another reprint, but you didn't make any modifications, whether that actually like I'm not sure that they could prevent you from doing it. But I don't know this area of law. And that's where I've seen multiple opinions going both ways online. But this is going to become fairly big because it separates the new OGL, separates creators into non-commercial and commercial with slightly different rules based upon if you're making money from direct sales or access to your work. So if you make stuff and give it away for free, that's non-commercial. But if you're one of the people or groups who makes something and then sells it, that's commercial. And they are putting a tier system, a revenue tier system on commercial users. So tiers are initiate tier for those that have generated less than $50,000 in a year. Intermediate tiers total revenue has to be between $50,000 and $750,000 in a year. expert uh tier has generated more than 750 000 in a year this is almost like they cloned our patreon tiers it is and incidentally if our patreon does get to 750 000 a year tony and i will commit to doing this full-time i mean yeah no but that would a hundred percent i just want to throw that out there 100 for sure we'll go to we'll go to lots of shows we'll do all sorts of It's like this will be a Monday through Friday produced thing. We'll probably even throw in video at $750,000 a year. We'll do all sorts of stuff. Just letting you know. But any revenue over $750,000 a year will be considered qualifying revenue, and the creator will be required to pay Wizards of the Coast between 20% and 25% royalties on all revenue over $750,000 a year. So if you make $750,001 a year, you have to give Wizards of the Coast 25 cents. This was specifically worked out. The 20 to 25 comes because Wizards of the Coast worked a deal with Kickstarter, making Kickstarter the preferred crowdfunding platform for Dungeons & Dragons. So if you kickstart something on Kickstarter and it is crowdfunded for over $750,000, all that qualifying revenue over $750,000, you only have to pay 20% royalty on instead of 25%, which is 25% with any other crowdfunding source. My assumption is the reasoning why this is being done and why it's going to be in court And the fact that they flat out say it in places inside the new OGL is that the OGL was not created and designed to support the competitors. and why I think it will end up in court is because several of D&D's biggest competitors, specifically Pathfinder, actually operates under the OGL 1.0 license because Pathfinder is a variant of D&D 3.5. And when 4 came out, Pathfinder was a modification of 3.5 that went its own way. It has become one of D&D's biggest competitors. and they most definitely make over $750,000 a year. So, lost my place again. There we go. They have set it up, in my assumption, in this way, is to cover themselves from this kind of competition, since their original creation is what is propping up their competition, to get a little something back on the backside. They do require that anybody using the OGL must report to Wizards of the Coast, give Wizards of the Coast a copy of the works that they've created with the OGL, and as I said, anything that generates over $50,000, they have to report their revenues to Wizards of the Coast. reportedly the new OGL will also give Wizards of the Coast full rights to any content created by the OGL and would allow Wizards of the Coast to take any of that content and publish it in official D&D material without permission or compensation to the original creator that's that's for commercial or non-commercial that is not laid out very well Because I've not been able to find a full copy of the new OGL. Because, I mean, who would make a commercial project which, if it became too successful, Wizards could just poach it? Correct. And that's my question. That last part has been reported as the way it read to certain lawyers. So that's how real is that? That's going to be a thing that will end up in the courts, I'm sure, to be decided. Wizards does claim that the royalties will affect fewer than 20 creators, and they are not starting the royalties fees until 2024, though people need to sign on to the new OGL this year and basically use this year for revenue, learning what the revenues are and calculations, and to give them a year, basically, if they don't want to use the OGL 1.1 to find a new home. I think this is primarily targeted at Paizo and some of the other big people, like Cobalt Press or Green Ronin, some of the really big things, because I don't think this is targeted at the D&D streamers, because, quite frankly, the only reason D&D is as popular as it is is because of D&D streamers. And I don't think Wizards would hurt their own sales. I would hope they wouldn't try to hurt their own sales by attacking the people who are why their game is being so popular recently. But we'll have to see. What are your thoughts? I don't think it's unusual to want to go ahead and do a license update, especially after 20 years of having an existing one. So that aspect of it is not very surprising. I'm sure their old license is exceedingly outdated to be able to address all of the new ways people want to use the content. So I think that makes a lot of sense. I also do think it makes a lot of sense that they would want to go ahead and make a modification for commercial categories of game production. And again, that's kind of where I think they're coming from on this is probably not people making, say, ad revenue off of doing D&D stuff, but rather probably those that are actually selling products, which is the space that they operate in. Had they been also streaming like official campaigns or something, then I could see it a different way. But otherwise, I think it's much like video games where the streamers are, even if there may be a legal right to go after them, most game publishers have absolutely no interest because all it does is generate interest in their games. Except Nintendo. Well, Nintendo is – I mean, come on. They've got Chris Pratt as Mario. What are we expecting? So in regards to this, and again, I'm not an attorney, and what legal stuff I've looked into, very little of it has been contract law. A lot of what they want to do here I think is a little suspicious, obviously – well, in terms of like legally suspicious. So in my opinion, my main thoughts are, one, I'm not sure about this provision that they refer to saying that they are allowed to publish any of this stuff that's developed under the license under their own banner because that kind of flies in the face to the royalty system as well. It sounds like if we don't want to take it from you, you have to pay us royalties. If we do want to take it from you, we'll take it from you. And the reason why I'm not sure that's going to fly is it gets a little tricky because the stuff that they are looking at, like Pathfinder and everything else, while it is a derivative product, there is also intellectual creation that has happened under that. And that's another aspect regarding this commercial and non-commercial and forcing people to the new OGL. Well, let's say you take a game like what was Pathfinder and based on D&D 3.5. It has been allowed to exist for so long. Are any new versions, quote-unquote, legitimately based on D&D anymore, or is it based off of their own prior versions of Pathfinder? And that's the question because Pathfinder, the second edition of Pathfinder with major changes from the original Pathfinder just came out in the last couple of years. And so I would think, perhaps wrongly, but I would think that companies that are at least long established would be able to argue, yes, we operated using stuff from Wizards of the Coast legally under the OGL 1.0, and our modern products are no longer based on beyond whatever that original core was, but rather are derivative or I should say iterative works of our own, evolving our own concepts. You cannot go back to the well 20 years later and say, oh, no, no, no, no, no. We were the – you used our base source code. You owe us money. The time to make a claim would have been if they had stolen that back in the day. But we know they were legally allowed to. It sounds like no one is disputing that under 1.0 they were allowed to do this. So I don't think Wizard has a case there is what I – like if they force it to – And if they're making over $750,000 a year on their game, I imagine they would take it to court and say, you know what? At this point, we're so far – I mean if they were to want to come back, like if Pathfinder were to want to say, we're going to do Pathfinder 3.0 and we're going to base it on D&D 1 or whatever, 1 D&D or whatever you call it. That would be a legitimate claim. I don't know when you've been allowed to exist this long legally under a prior thing saying, well, we're going to change the underpinnings that allowed you to use that original thing at this point. As long as they're not going back to Wizard for anything new, I'm not sure they can do it. That's the part that I – so those are my thoughts. And contract laws are so complicated. I mean, because it was a – they were operating under a license agreement. Wizard does have the right to change – update their license agreement, but Pathfinder is not obligated to agree to the new license. And I'm not sure you can take away their prior usage under the old license because they didn't agree to the new one. I think it could only just apply like moving forward. so that's where it gets unclear to me yes because because everyone knows pathfinder uses a core base of dnd normally the claim would have been they did it illegally but they didn't and i don't think you can just change the agreement and now say you've now done something like they're retroactively protected normally right normally if you do something and the legislature makes it illegal your grand like your past action wasn't illegal at the time so you can't be punished for it in this particular instance, I don't know, because obviously Pathfinder is going to continue to want to sell products. And that's, I'm sure that's where wizards is coming from. It's like, yeah, the money they made in the past, we don't have any right to, but now we're going to, now we're asserting under this new license agreement. But again, if Pathfinder hasn't gone to wizards for anything new, I just, I don't see how they can say, no, no, all your stuff's now under 1.1. Cause Pathfinder is going to say, I, we didn't agree to that. Right. So, and yeah, That's where I think the lawyers are going to be involved. Yeah, I think the lawyers will be involved. Maybe there's a settlement, but I would really, again, with all my ignorance acknowledged, I would really struggle to envision that Pathfinder doesn't have the upper hand in that scenario. It would have to be, in my mind, it would have to be if they were still relying on Wizard for something new since the 1.1 came about. If they pulled something 10 years ago, used under an old license agreement, unless Wizard gets them to agree to a new license agreement, I don't see how they do it. I just don't. It was legit at the time. So going back, they need to be pulling stuff new from Wizards, and I'm assuming that they don't. If they have been doing updates based off of Wizards updates, Wizard may have a good claim. But if they're not… Right, and I've not played the second edition Pathfinder, but from what I've heard, it seems very different than 5e. I would just be surprised at it because it sounds like it makes the most sense to me where you start with a core idea, a core basis from something, but then it's yours from then on and you're making modification. Like a writing exercise where maybe you start with a paragraph from a famous author and then you make the story your own. Sometimes people do that as a writing exercise. and it's like okay yes that first thing is derivative the work you could argue is derivative but the content behind the rest of it is not the original authors to do with as they please and if you had permission to use that original paragraph and let's say you published the book like you wrote a whole book and you use that original paragraph i don't think the author gets to 20 years later say if you reprint the book i'm gonna get money now i see that's why i I don't – because unless you went and used a new paragraph of theirs in a new book, I don't see how you can do it. I just don't. And that's what I'm applying here. But fascinating. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. It's interesting. One of the things they made sure in the new OGL to point out is that the OGL only applies to, like, game material. like it doesn't apply to any digital work except for like pdfs so it doesn't apply to if you write a novel then it doesn't apply to novels based on dnd if you create a website for character creation that doesn't fall under ogl there's they have a different license for that and that license revenue sharing is 50%. And like the number one online digital tools for D&D, Wizards has purchased in the last couple of years. My assumption is laying out and setting up for D&D 1 and these changes. That has been them laying the foundations for it. Like they purchased D&D Beyond. They worked special deals out with like Roll20 and some of the other major online playing things specifically. So it's going to be interesting going forward to see how this goes. I do agree with what they say, with what Wizard said, that there's probably less than 20 groups that are overall affected by the $750,000. Yeah, that's probably accurate. Yeah, I know there's been a couple Kickstarters that have been that while a single Kickstarter has not crossed 750,000, some of the groups I know have probably done 750,000 on Kickstarters from the three or four Kickstarters they had over the course of a year. But they're just the absolute largest groups putting out specialized campaigns and bestiaries and stuff. But it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting to see. I like it when something happens and we can bring tabletop back because I don't get to play tabletop very much anymore no it's your only touchstone back to the past as wizards bringing up stuff basically that's because this is now the Eclectic Law and Order podcast boom boom we don't have the license to use that that's why I did it in the wrong key that's why it wasn't right but that's all I have Okay, well, we will be back in a couple of weeks. Please go and follow the link that will be in the show notes to support Tony's Polar Plunge in February. You can reach out to us, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. You can also go to facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast to send us a message. You can also support us at patreon.com slash eclectic underscore gamers. We're available on Twitch, Twitter, and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers. And that's it. Until next time, I am Dennis. I'm Tony. Bye-bye. See ya. you