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A Unified Experience

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·59m 32s·analyzed·Jan 31, 2019
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Blockade hosts analyze pinball physics fidelity and call for Zen Studios' mobile app unification.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss Star Race restoration updates, virtual pinball physics accuracy in Zachariah apps vs. Zen Studios implementations, and critique Zen's fragmented mobile ecosystem across multiple pinball apps. They advocate for unified terminology, UI, and monetization across Zen's diverse mobile offerings to create a cohesive competitive and casual experience.

Key Claims

  • Zachariah pinball apps on Steam accurately emulate the floaty physics of original 1970s-80s Zachariah tables after playing the real machines at In Deeper Dreams event

    high confidence · Chris played real Pinball Champ and Pool Champion at Southern California Pinball event and compared directly to Steam app; confirmed Magic Pixel dev Mart that real table matched app behavior

  • Star Race will be placed at EKKA (Royal Agricultural Society Show) 10-day pinball event in Brisbane with 50/50 revenue split between operator and event organizers

    high confidence · Jared explicitly states intent to place Star Race at upcoming Brisbane Masters/EKKA event with stated revenue model

  • Williams Pinball mobile app uses inconsistent terminology (Pro Mode/Pro Difficulty/Advanced Physics) compared to console/Steam versions (Classic Zen/Tournament), creating confusion across platforms

    high confidence · Chris detailed multiple platform UI inconsistencies; critiqued as barrier to cross-platform tournament organization

  • Unlocking all tables in Williams Pinball mobile beta required 2-3 weeks of grinding when daily challenges rotated every 1-3 hours; estimated 5-6 weeks with standard one-two daily challenges per day

    high confidence · Chris provided specific timeline from beta testing experience with documented challenge rotation speeds

  • Williams Pinball mobile table pricing via Zencoin (~$11/table) is significantly higher than traditional Zen pricing (~$2.99/table), approaching Stern Pinball Arcade pricing

    high confidence · Chris directly compared pricing tiers; noted Zen still tweaking balance but current pricing already implemented

Notable Quotes

  • “They really did do a great job and really managed to capture what those real machines are... the physics of the ball itself and how it's behaving... you guys nailed it. That's awesome.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~16:30 — Validation of Magic Pixel's Zachariah app physics accuracy after direct real-machine comparison; surprised approval from dev Mart

  • “I'm putting on the hat of a free-to-play customer here... you want to just smash out a quick game of pinball and then get on with your day.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~35:00 — Frames mobile pinball use case as short-burst gameplay suitable for commuting; justifies short daily challenges as appropriate for platform

  • “If I'm talking about the app and I say, oh, I'm playing in Pro Mode, well, that doesn't translate to somebody that's playing on another platform... It needs to be Classic Zen. Absolutely. Just unify the language.”

    Chris Frebus / Jared Morgan @ ~24:00 — Core critique of Zen's ecosystem fragmentation; identifies terminology as tournament/community coordination barrier

  • “I honestly don't think it's bad... what it's giving me is these really short games... which tends to be what you want to play on mobile anyway”

    Chris Frebus @ ~32:00 — Defense of mobile grinding model as appropriate to platform; differs from Jared's skepticism about paywall necessity

  • “It's almost like you have to climb each rung of the ladder... you can't bypass eight rungs. You've got to keep on climbing one rung at a time.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~49:00 — Analogy explaining Bethesda Pinball matchup ranking system limitations; illustrates slow competitive progression

Entities

Chris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonStar RacegameMagic PixelcompanyZen StudioscompanyWilliams PinballproductBethesda PinballproductAliens vs. Pinballproduct

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: EKKA Brisbane Royal Agricultural Society Show hosting 10-day dedicated pinball event with commercial operator placement model; test case for location revenue-share events

    high · Jared confirmed event details, revenue percentages, and intent to place Star Race if coin mechanisms sourced

  • ?

    community_signal: Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective organizing commercial location event (EKKA) with revenue-share model to encourage operator participation and machine placement

    high · Jared stated explicit intent to place Star Race at EKKA 10-day event with 50/40/10 revenue split

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Magic Pixel successfully replicated floaty physics of 1970s-80s Zachariah machines in Steam app, validating era-appropriate physics as design goal rather than technical limitation

    high · Chris played real Pinball Champ and Pool Champion at In Deeper Dreams event; physics matched app exactly; confirmed with developer Mart

  • $

    market_signal: Virtual pinball app ecosystem requiring unified mobile strategy: consistent terminology, UI, monetization, and upgrades that carry across titles to enable cross-platform competition and reduce user friction

    high · Chris explicitly advocated for unification throughout segment; noted Skills app's universal money bucket as positive example; criticized Bethesda, Williams, Aliens apps for separate systems

  • $

    market_signal: Zen Studios pricing Williams Pinball tables at ~$11 via Zencoin vs. traditional $2.99, approaching Stern Pinball Arcade pricing tier; shift toward premium monetization on mobile

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.179

0:00
this is a blockade podcast with your hosts chris and jared you are listening to the blockade pinball podcast i'm your host chris freebiss aka shut your trap joining me as always halfway across the world jared morgan g'day mates howdy howdy howdy it was australia day here what is Australia Day? Australia Day is well it's a day that's a little bit contention filled at the moment because of recent things but the idea behind Australia Day is we celebrate what it's a little bit like I guess Independence Day or one of the national holidays you guys have like a founding of the country day yeah but it's a founding of the country when the English invaded Australia and you know displaced all the indigenous people of Australia. So it's going around scooping up all the Aborigines and locking them away and then unleashing all the criminals on the land. Yeah, basically. Unfortunately, they arrived back in 1788 when Australia was colonized.
1:17
They considered the Aboriginals as fauna. They actually did. Way to go, Britain! Until I think 1960, Aboriginal people were still considered as fauna. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I know. It's similar to the ridiculousness of slavery. No, that goes beyond. At least they were recognized as human, not plants. Yeah, or animals. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Just terrible. So, you know, back in the 60s, I'm pretty sure it was the 60s. Happy to be corrected on that. But it was, you know, they weren't able to vote in elections. they weren't able to, they were treated as animals. So isn't that terrible? That's a bad part of Australia's history. All I know about Australia history, I learned from listening to Midnight Oil.
2:03
Well, that's not a bad crash course. They have enough songs that kind of dictate their detail, all of it. Peter Garrett was pretty political, the lead singer of Midnight Oil. So it's not a bad way to sort up on some of the bad parts of Australian history. listen to our musicians sing about it. While bopping your head along to it. It's like, oh, this is catchy.
EKKA
event
Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collectiveorganization
Pinball Champgame
Pool Championgame
In Deeper Dreamsevent
Zen Pinball FX3product
Pinball Arcadeproduct

high · Chris confirmed $11/table pricing in beta, noted Zen still tweaking balance but current implementation already live

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jared implementing systematic light socket hardgrounding mod on Star Race to improve reliability and brightness before glass installation; anticipating 10-day continuous play test

    high · Jared detailed soldering bypass technique, mentioned applying systematically across all light sockets before final assembly

  • ?

    product_concern: Zen Studios' Williams Pinball mobile app uses different terminology (Pro Mode/Pro Difficulty vs. Classic Zen/Tournament) than console/Steam versions, creating community confusion and hampering cross-platform tournament organization

    high · Chris detailed multiple UI/naming inconsistencies documented during beta testing and current app state

  • ?

    technology_signal: Virtual pinball community recognizing that 1970s-80s machines naturally have slower, 'floaty' ball physics compared to modern Stern games; context for appropriate app physics modeling

    medium · Chris and Jared discussed how both Star Race and vintage Bally/Gottlieb games share same slow/floaty behavior; confirmed through multiple platform comparisons

    • 2:26
    It's got a good beat to it. Except Paul Peter Garrett had a bit of trouble dancing. I don't know if you've seen clips with him dancing. Well, you know when you're what? Six foot seven?
    2:37
    And all limbs. And all limbs, yeah. It was very unique though. It actually became a real trademark for him.
    2:46
    Own it. Dance awkwardly and own it. That's right. Yeah. We didn't really do much for it. We just played pinball in the garage. Yeah. Cool. Actually, a little mini update before we launch into all the deep stuff. Star Race? Star Race, yeah. So I decided I sourced a piece of play-filled glass for it, and it was pretty cheap. I got a good deal on it. It was through – this will only be relevant for people in Brisbane looking for play-filled glass, but we seem to have a little bit of reach now, so it's good to give props out, but it was a company called First Glass in Hemant, and they do a sheet of super wide glass. They'll even not put the stamp on it, the tempered glass stamp, which is sort of like pretty regular on a lot of tempered glass. They'll do that for, I think it's $86, which that's cheap. I think some places we're looking at around $150.
    3:41
    So, yeah, I've got a good piece of cheap glass on the way, well, getting made, and then I can go and pick it up next week. So that led me to doing a bit more ruggedizing of some of the light sockets underneath the play field. So one big problem with old light sockets in games, I don't know if you've seen this in your games, but they sort of flicker and they're a little bit, like sometimes you get intermittent lights going on in them. Well, the way you can fix that is rather than relying on the conductivity in the barrel part of the light socket, you can actually so what happens is you know where the barrel part joins the flat bit on the bottom where all the socket is well what happens is the barrel just starts to flop around and gets loose and you lose your earth from the thing that goes back to the playfield the little bracket that goes back to the playfield so what you do is you just bypass the bracket altogether and just directly solder a wire onto the barrel and then put that down to earth and it fixes a lot of the light problems that you often get so what i've done is i've been doing that systematically throughout the game just running wire basically wire looms across all the different light sockets and just like hard grounding them so it makes them a lot more reliable and it's really made a huge difference to the brightness and hasn't really cost me much certainly cost me a roll of wire and a bit of solder nice so it's cheap so yeah i've been doing that before the glass coming because really once i get the glass on i don't really want to have to take it off again um and because it's heavy it's like A super wide piece of glass is heavy. I've taken the glass on and off my machine so many times.
    5:21
    And it's like the first couple of times you do it, you're all precious about it and not wanting to get fingerprints. And then you're just like, I don't care. I need to get in here real quick and do something.
    5:29
    Well, you know, I've got to be careful because it's in the garage. I don't want to put tempered glass on concrete. So I've got like this little channeled piece of wood that I use to rest the glass in when I take it off. And it works really well. Tucks it out of the way. make sure it doesn't get broken i always hate it when you have to pay though that much money for something that is like i always do this in my mind i'm like okay this is a lump of steel that costs the same amount as this bit of electronics that you know does all these flashy whizzy things you know and it's always this weird disconnect in my brain where i'm just like yeah fine aluminum costs a lot but it's still just a hunk shaped into a certain you know bend and that's it yeah you shouldn't cost that much I could buy 50 buttons with that why do I have to pay so much for it I know yeah this is one of the things I'm thinking I'm pondering and this will depend largely on if I can actually find a $1 coin mech and a coin entry shoot for the game but I'm thinking of maybe putting Star Race into the Brisbane Masters this year and actually putting it into the It's in the R&A, the Royal National Association Agricultural Show. They're having a 10-day event of pinball attached to the ECHA. And the way it works is that if you put a machine on site, you'll get 50% of the cash box takings. And then 40% goes to the ECHA and 10% goes to the Brisbane Pinball and Arcade Collective who are organising the event. So, you know, it might be a way to recoup some of the costs if I can actually get it out there. and get it on site. And I think it would actually probably take a fair bit of money.
    7:14
    And then you're going to be like, you know, another world could have this for a little while. Well, this would be the really big test for it. I mean, we played it for like maybe, we played it pretty much for the whole afternoon yesterday, and it was fine. Like we were playing game after game after game on it all afternoon, and it held up really well. So 10 days of continuous play is a very different scenario from a machine of its age. True. So, you know, it'll be a test to actually see how ruggedized it actually is and how good Mr. Grist's board work is on it all, which I have no doubt is very solid.
    7:55
    So, yeah, I just, I don't know if anyone out there has a coin entry for, a coin shoot entry for a Gottlieb System 80 coin door or a $1 coin mech that they would be willing to loan me for 10 days.
    8:10
    I would, because I wouldn't, I mean, if there's one out there that people want to sell me, I could buy it. But otherwise, I would totally give it back just for the purposes of this event. I think if I can get those two things, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to pull the trigger. Cool. Get this thing out on location because it's a game that probably no one has played here in Australia. I think I looked on the owners list for Star Race and I think there's one other Star Race in Australia and it's in a private collection and the guy is not willing to sell it. Right. So this would be the only one around that's playable.
    8:48
    Do it. I'm going to do it. I really want to find that dollar mech. I reckon Jimmy could probably hook me up with a spare dollar mech from his collection of mechs, but it's funny that coin entry. Maybe Ed might be able to help me out with that. I'll have to contact him.
    9:04
    So last time I went into detail about the Inever Dreams in Southern California pinball event out there in Banning, and one thing I forgot to mention, and I really didn't want to skip this because I was quite impressed. I got to play two different Zacharia machines that were there oh yeah which ones so I played pinball champ and pool champion oh yes pool champion unfortunately the left flipper I think it was not flipping or it would flip and then not flip back down I mean it was very intermittent as to I mean to the point of just being plain unreliable you couldn't count on it at all but Pinball Champ I was able to play fully, and that happens to be a table that I had been playing a lot in the app itself. So I was quite familiar, at least, with the feel and everything. Now, my impression of the Zachariah Pinball app that you can buy on Steam has been that its physics were kind of floaty, almost of the same nature as Pinball Arcades.
    10:16
    Just the ball kind of lingered and kind of was lazy in how it went, and it had this weird bounce off the rubber and off the slingshots and stuff.
    10:26
    And I just kind of attributed to the, you know, well, they were just kind of emulating the physics that were on TPA or you're kind of going with that. And I've been playing so much Zen now that I'm completely used to Zen's physics and the Williams Zen physics are spot on. So that was kind of like, I don't know, It was kind of lowering my opinion of the Zach app, just kind of like making it feel dated.
    10:53
    So I go and I play Pinball Champion or Pinball Champ, and I'll be damned if the physics weren't exactly the same as what's in the app. Really? Those tables are so floaty. It's weird.
    11:07
    And the bounce the ball has, the way the slingshots fire the ball, it's just a very lopey archy kind of feel to it and I realized that I'm kind of being susceptible to what I complain about people that do this with built Bally and Williams tables that are older tables like if you play a Bally Flash Gordon I'm sorry those flippers are there's a little bit of lag in them when you flip them they're not that powerful the ball doesn't go rocketing up to the top of the play field it's a different sensation and a lot of people are like oh there's you know that's they want it to play like a modern stern basically well I hadn't touched a Zagoria table in years so I had no basis to judge the app off of in comparison other than what I'm comparing to how a Williams table would play so it was cool getting on there and just being like, oh my gosh, they really did do a great job of nailing it, nailing the feel, at least on that particular table. I got to believe that it's that way across a large swath of the Zachariah pinballs.
    12:24
    And the same thing was true for even playing with one flipper on pinball, our pool champion. It had the same kind of feel to it. so I just wanted to say that the guys over there at Pixel Magic or Magic Pixel Magic Pixel, Pixel Magic, you know same thing right they did a great job and really managed to capture what those real machines are their nudging is still wonky it still feels like you're nudging a boat but rocking it in the water per se but the physics of the ball itself and how it's behaving.
    13:07
    After doing that, I was just like, okay, that's great. You guys nailed it. That's awesome. The funny thing is I mentioned that to our contact, Mart, that is over there with Magic Pixel.
    13:24
    He was kind of surprised. Oh, really? He was saying, well, it kind of depends on the table and how it's set up and everything. I was like, well, as far as I'm concerned, the setup of the real table that they had there was exactly how it is. It was spot on.
    13:41
    He was just kind of like, wow, okay, well, thanks. Cool, I guess. So anyway, I just wanted to point that out. That was rather... I've only ever played Zachariah on Android because that's the only one I've got entitlements on.
    13:58
    And it's always felt floaty to me as well even on android but i've come to realize that machines of that era um like the 80s like late 70s early 80s that's kind of how they all played like the like even though i've got i've got extra leg extenders on star race they jack up the play field a lot higher and it's still slow and still floaty and whenever it hits the solenoid the ball as rockets, very much like Flight 2000, when you're playing it in pinball arcade. It's floaty, floaty, floaty until it hits a powered surface and then the thing just goes, boo! And rockets everywhere. It seems to be that's just the thing with that era of pinball machine. That is actually how they play I was going to say if you ever touched a future spa or one of those other Bali Wides the Paragon Oh, yes.
    15:01
    Not Paragon, Embryon. Yeah. Anyway, those Super Wides, man, they are just so, so, so, so, so. You could always go and have a sandwich between each shot. Yeah.
    15:14
    It's true. yeah they just seemed to be that transitional game before they actually started getting ramps and stuff in them where everything was still playing like an em yeah but it was still in state but it was still em um style um gameplay to it it's yeah very interesting speaking of apps i i briefly touched upon it last time and uh jerry had to run so i kind of did an abbreviated version but I kind of want to dive a little deep because I've been playing the various Zen apps a lot.
    15:48
    It started with doing the beta for Williams Pinball on iOS, which, speaking of, folks, you're going to want to pay attention to digitalpinballfans.com over the next week or so. I'm not sure when it's going to happen, but Zen is about to put out the open beta, or not open beta, but... Deep beta. Right, right. Taking names for the beta for Android, for Williams Pinball. So if you want to be a part of that, you're going to want to pay attention because that's where they're going to collect the names from to be able to join in.
    16:20
    But anyway, so I've been playing a lot of that. And that got me to – I've had the Aliens vs. Pinball app on my phone, and I haven't really messed with it that much. I have the eSport edition, which I've messed around a lot with. And I didn't realize that Bethesda Pinball was also a free-to-play, so I downloaded that and started messing around with that. So I have currently six different Zen apps of pinball.
    16:55
    Six different Zen experiments. Right. And that's exactly what they are. They're kind of experiments because they all do different things. So, like, eSports edition, that's entirely for skills, you know, to play for money.
    17:12
    Bethesda pinball does the matchups that you can play in FX3. Alien vs. Pinball, that one was all about reaching goals.
    17:24
    So your daily challenges style thing? Well, no, it's not even – it's not the daily challenge thing, but it was they had score goals in order to open up eggs. Once you open up three eggs on a table, that unlocks the next table. Open up three, that unlocks the next table. And so it was score goals, reaching those, and then you – and sometimes it would be reach this score over the course of however many games you need. Just collect that many points. Then it would be reach this score with only one ball.
    18:01
    And then it would be reach this score within one game kind of thing. So, I mean, there was various scoring brackets.
    18:11
    But Alien versus Pinball didn't have any component of you competing against anybody else. Whereas Bethesda with the matchups, you are competing for rank with other people. Okay. Then there's the Williams Pinball app, which I'm testing out. Now, that one has your daily challenges and the ability to earn all the tables for free. Right. Okay. Because basically what you do is you're collecting table parts by playing daily challenges. You get these little tickets that you can flip over. Some of them are table parts. Some of them are like it will be specifically, say, fishtails table parts. Okay. Collect enough table parts. you unlock an upgrade, if you will. There's four star levels of upgrade that you can do. By purely getting to the second star upgrade, you now can play the table for free.
    19:09
    But that's in the, what I would call the Zen physics. Mode, yeah. If you want to play with the, and this is what I'm kind of going to drive at, is that there's no unification of anything. So, okay, if you play in FX3, you have single-player mode, and then you have single-player classic. Single-player classic is the new physics within Williams Pinball games that match those of the actual table. Yes. Within that, you have arcade and tournament as your choice, and that determines the setup. Whether you're playing regular rules or tournament rules. Tournament rules, right. Yes.
    19:56
    Well, within the Williams Pinball app for mobile devices, they have Pro Mode and Arcade Mode. Pro Mode, I think that's what it's called. I'll take a quick look. But pro mode is basically the new physics. Right. Sort of. Right. Because it's broken down even further because there's pro difficulty.
    20:32
    Right. And then there is – I'm bringing it up right now. But my point is they don't use what the terms are being used in – In their Steam and console apps. Exactly. Hmm. That seems weird. That's going to make it really hard to draw up tournaments, right? Yeah, okay.
    20:53
    So, yeah, there's... Okay, so they have pro difficulty, but under that there's a symbol that one is like of a controller. Okay. That's your regular Zen physics. And then there's one of a trophy, and that would be your... Advanced physics. Advanced physics, yeah, if you want to call it that. Now, okay, so they have pro-difficulty and pro-physics. So I'm guessing pro-difficulty is more your rules, and pro-physics are the physics. Your tournament and your regular play. Right. But the problem is if I'm talking about the app, and I say, oh, I'm playing in pro mode, well, that doesn't translate to somebody that's playing... That's right. It needs to be classic Zen. Exactly. Just unify the language. Absolutely. I reckon they should totally do that, because, yeah, it's going to be really hard for people who are playing on mobile platforms to converse with people who are playing on other platforms. And I really thought that that was the whole idea behind Zen's ethos is they're creating a game ecosystem, like, you know, an actual universe that everyone can, you know, work together in. And essentially having this split in language is essentially you're going to need to learn a new dialect in the same ecosystem or world to understand what's going on. and that's a disconnect that they need to solve.
    22:14
    So my point being, though, if you want to unlock the visual extras, visual extras being the ability to see it in Zen enhanced mode or not,
    22:24
    that's where you have to earn more stars. Right. Now, like I said, earning those first two stars relatively easily. You're not going to have to grind that much. You'll be able to then play the table for free. You want to get all this other stuff? There's a lot of grinding. You've got to grind. I was grinding. And here's the thing. I was grinding when it was easy for us in the beta to collect this stuff. Before everything was leveled? Well, it was before everything was leveled. The daily challenges were rotating every hour to three hours. Right. So you were getting multiple daily challenges within a day-long period. It still took me about two or three weeks before I had unlocked every single table.
    23:10
    That's a long time. So you can imagine if you're just only getting one shot at a daily challenge, maybe two per day. That's probably like about five or six weeks. It's going to be a lot of grinding. Yeah. Well, so in order to – here's where the paywall fund comes in.
    23:28
    You can buy the upgrades, skip having to grind it by buying Zcoin. Yep. The Zcoin is significantly more expensive than the other apps if you want to just outright buy a table. All right. Okay. So how much more expensive are we talking?
    23:46
    Well, if normally they were charging like $2.99 a table, now you're looking at maybe $11 per table. Oh, geez. Okay. That's getting towards like, you know, Stern Pimple Arcade pricing for tables. Right. Yeah. they're still tweaking the balancing of what the cost is of everything i think that's probably going to be tweaked a little bit down it might be tweaked a little bit down but here's the thing i honestly don't think it's bad you don't think it's bad do you think it's better to actually grind and like participate in the way the game's supposed to be played on mobile well and here's the thing yeah i enjoy the grinding on mobile because what it's giving me is it's giving me these really short games because the daily challenges are at most, if you're playing a five-minute game, five minutes. Otherwise, it's single ball and stuff like that. They're going to be relatively short games, which tends to be what you want to play on mobile anyway, right? I think it's like being in the bus, right? Like you're on the bus or the train. You want to just smash out a quick game of pinball and then get on with your day. Exactly. Yeah, right. Exactly. Now, so I'm sitting there playing Aliens pinball. I've now unlocked all three tables if I want to play a table outright not in a shortened form but play all three balls and everything it's either I have to watch a video I have to fork over some tickets if you will or I'm going to have to pay for the table outright there's no way of actually just plain earning the table scot-free without any adverts or anything like that.
    25:29
    So that kind of diminishes my want of doing anything more. Once I was done with all the grinding of opening up everything that I could open up, now there's nothing to do with it. And now it's just back to just regular kind of play.
    25:47
    Like I said, that regular play now comes with, hey, well, you still got to watch ads. You still got to, you know, and so I'm like, eh. I like the idea of being able to actually just plain earn it outright. Bethesda pinball is grinding with doing the daily matchups, but again, there's no way of earning the tables outright. You're always going to have that. You got to fork over some coin if you want to play a regular game on it. Now, here's where the Bethesda pinball kind of bothers me, is that it's way floaty. especially when you compare it to how it plays in FX3. FX3, it plays great. It plays like all the regular Zen. The app, it's, again, it just kind of lopes the ball.
    26:35
    And so it's like I want them to go in and I want them to make all of these apps have the same kind of menu, the same user interface. I want them all to use the same upgrade systems, whether it's being Zencoin and tickets.
    26:51
    Go in there and make them all the same. so that whenever I open up a new app, I'm not going, well, what do I press now? Where do I go now? This is different from what I'm saying. Yeah. I guess that is only important if you, again, I know you're putting on the hat of a free-to-play customer here.
    27:14
    But, you know, of course, if you've got ZenFX 2 or Zen Pinball on Android, they're all there for you. But you don't get any of the competition, of course. Exactly. There's no matchups in those. There's no daily challenges in those. And you've got to pay your $2.99 per table. Right. Once you're unlocked, it's unlocked. Right. So, again, you're now with, you're still having all these apps if you want all those various options. That's right. So, Williams Pinball uses Game Center. Well, they all use Game Center, but I think for login purposes, Williams Pinball uses Game Center also. Bethesda and Aliens, they want to use Facebook to match you up with friends. So, again, I just want it all to be, you know, line through, straight thing. So I'm hoping, I'm hoping when Zen comes out with their mobile version of FX3, if you will, that it does just that, that it unifies everything, makes it all the same. no matter what app you open, that it kind of functions the same way, navigates the same way, uses the same upgrades, that those upgrades carry over. Because that's the one thing I like about skills. Whatever money I earn in the eSports edition of Xen, that money can be applied to any other skills game that's out there. That's pretty cool, eh? Yeah. I was really surprised when you were mentioning that when you were beta testing the Farsight version of this. Yeah. implementation i went oh so it's like a universal bucket of money yes very cool yeah that that's really good that would make me if i was like into that sort of competitive style play want to actually find more skills games or skills enabled games to potentially look at it would actually almost be in itself uh a uh an acquisition tool for for me to go ah what other games support skills because I want to earn more money in these and it would probably open up the genres for me because it might take me away from pinball, it might get me into, I don't know Matt Stree or something like that has skills components in it so it's an interesting add-on to games just to sort of broaden their appeal and broaden their reach because it would go for the same thing if there's other competitive people playing in other game genres and now all of a sudden your skills flash up a banner saying hey this is now available in pinball Come and try it out You know it another way people can get in
    29:51
    The other thing that's weird with, and again, I'll go with Bethesda, because you had to play a certain amount of matchups before you could unlock the next table. Well, once you unlock the next table, and again, those were daily, you got an allotment of three matchups per day. once you unlock the next table well now you have six matchups for the day so unlocking the third table didn't take long at all getting that second table unlocked took quite a while but those matchups so you start and you're like you're ranked 700,000 and you get three matchups to pick between. And if you look at their rankings,
    30:44
    just go for the one that has the best ranking because if you beat their thing, then you've beat that rank and now you're ahead of them, right? Yes. The weird thing is there's also a score that's associated with that person, and that's the score you have to beat. Sometimes the lower ranked person will have a way higher score than the higher ranked person. I don't get that at all. Doesn't make sense to me.
    31:07
    With my first table of choice was Doom. And I've gotten all the way down to, I think I'm now in the 20,000th ranking.
    31:20
    Somewhere in that vicinity. And the score, yeah, I'm 21,832nd. Wow. Okay. But here's the thing. The scores have barely moved that entire time. so the score I typically have to beat is say 1.6 1.7 million that's not that hard my ball launch is 1.5 million right so long as I hit the ball because I've got a boost multiplier on it right off the bat I get 1.5 million and then I go and the first thing I do is if I shoot the skull and that's where you hit your missions there's one called the hell and back which essentially is playing Arkanoid and I can beat that thing virtually every time and that's worth a solid 8 million. So I'm already up to almost 10 million without doing much. Yeah. And yet I'm still competing against scores of 1.6, 1.7 million.
    32:23
    And I'm like, when are these going to get good? When is this going to get competitive? It's almost like you have to, like it's a ladder system and you have to climb each rung of the ladder. So even though you're getting 10 million scores, you've still got to climb that single rung. You can't bypass eight rungs. You've got to keep on climbing one rung at a time. Sometimes you are able to bypass large chunks of ranking, but, yeah, it's taking a long time. It's not very rewarding. And that was my problem with matchups in FX3. It just didn't seem like you were playing against anybody real. It seemed like these arbitrary bot scores. Yeah.
    33:10
    And it was the same thing where sometimes the higher ranked person would have a lower score. I don't know where the score is coming from. I don't know. It doesn't make a lick of sense to me. Do you think it could have been the case where somebody like you had a really great game on a really, let's call it 10 million point score on a game and they had a really good game but they were also low ranked and they just had a great game that's why it's throwing out the score because that would make sense like their last posted score for this round their last posted score that they actually put up was this score and now they're competing against you in this tier sort of thing I don't know because it makes me wonder is there a score out there with my name attached to it, and what score are they using? Oh, yeah. That would be interesting, wouldn't it?
    34:03
    Because my scores have been so far and above beyond whatever the score is that I'm trying to beat. I can't imagine if somebody went to go play against me right now at my 22,000-whatever, and I'm showing a score of 13 million, well, that's significantly more than... And I haven't come across any score that's been even remotely close to it so i don't know it's weird so again i just kind of want this unification uh of it all so absolutely they've got the data they need from all these different experiments now it's time to actually unify the experiments into a more cohesive ecosystem on mobile at least because i think there's i don't know i think there is still going to be that division between console steam and mobile yeah purely because of the nature of those three platforms so it's going it's still going to be close but i don't think i don't know if the mechanics are actually going to be the same in each i guess ecosystem this it's going to be three three um major land masses let's call it that in in the world of zen pinball and each one will be slightly different but they'll still be in the zen universe because similarly with williams pinball and i mentioned this before there's all sorts of custom flippers that they've created custom balls custom ball trails and i'm like well why don't you put these in fx3 let us let's mess around with customizing rubber and you know customizing what the little sticker on top of the flipper looks like you know customizing yeah i want smoke coming off of my ball instead of fire.
    35:54
    I don't know why that kind of thing isn't put into FX3 other than the fact that they're looking at it as this is microtransaction kind of fodder and people on a console aren't going to go for microtransactions. No, no one's steam. They wouldn't want that either.
    36:16
    But it would get me to play the matchup mode in FX3 which I've completely, other than that first month it came out, I've never touched it since because I just did. To me, it was just, it was the Pimble Arcade tournaments grinding that you went through.
    36:33
    And I mean, to the point that you would see that what score you had to get in order to bump up to the next level and there was no way you were going to do it. So that's right. I think I'm still gold in the Pimble Arcade tournaments and I haven't played it for literally a year. and see Zen if you miss a week you drop see that's how it should be like I should be bronze and way down the back end of the field in bronze in Pimbalocade now but I'm not I think I'm still gold so I just don't understand it's one of the many things I don't understand anyway those are my thoughts on the apps in general to summarize let's get everything back onto a level playing field let's make sure the apps are all standardized as much as they can be let's wind up the experiments into a more um i guess more coherent package that if anyone switches between those particular um apps they're going to have a pretty similar experience using them because that's really the most important thing isn't it well because if i play if i bought bethesda pinball for the Zen Pinball app, is it going to play the same way that it currently is playing on the standalone app? Because if it is, then I don't like it because it's too floaty compared to every other Zen table. That's right. So even you need to standardize the physics across these things too. Yeah, basically if it's in the core app, then make it the same as the core app and then roll that out into the other ones. Yep, I agree. Make it standard. Yeah. Make it consistent. The other thing that I noticed, especially with Bethesda, the audio, if you're not playing with headphones, it crackles all the time. Like, it's just like, you'll be playing all of a sudden and go, like, the speaker can't handle it. So I plugged in my headphones. Well, yeah, there's a lot going on audio-wise. There is, yeah. and then the other thing that I noticed was with Doom, because I've never played the actual table or the actual game I should say but the music that they used in it, I was like, boy this sounds a lot like Nine Inch Nails and I know that Trent did the music for Quake so I listened to just a sampling of the music from Quake and was like, boy I think that they ripped it right off of that and went that's the sound we're going to use for Doom 2016.
    39:11
    Model it off that. Thank you and please. That's funny. I could have sworn that I was like, well, I didn't know. Maybe Trent did the music for Doom also, but no, he didn't.
    39:24
    That's right. So what else have we got to talk about today? What else do we have to talk about? Let's see. Things that have happened. My movie pass is officially over.
    39:35
    Okay. So I'm back to I'll only be seeing Plibian viewings of movies Yeah I'll only be seeing a handful of movies in the theater And everything else will be wait for video And renting it That being said I really want to go see Alita Battle Angel In IMAX 3D no less Oh wow that would be incredible Here's the thing I don't know if you know anything about it But Alita Was being developed back in 2000 by James Cameron and he basically had a script for Alita and he had a script for Avatar and he didn't know which one he was going to do. And he decided that Avatar was the more doable of the two. From a actual cinematography perspective? From effects. Yeah, where effects were and everything like that. Wow, okay. So he went and did Avatar and then realized that he was probably never going to get around to Alita. But he'd done all this pre-work on it.
    40:38
    So he has gone and teamed up with Robert Rodriguez who many people consider him an utter hack, but there's some brilliant movies that he's put out.
    40:52
    And he decided that he was going to make a make it as if Jim Cameron actually made it himself. So kind of throwing away his aesthetics and trying to duplicate gyms.
    41:08
    Cameron is full on board as a producer of this. The funny thing was Cameron was like, no, go ahead. Make it your own. He goes, no, you don't understand. I'm treating this as if I've never seen this is the Jim Cameron movie I was promised. I want to see that movie. I don't want to see my movie. I want to see your movie that you just didn't happen to make. All right. Okay.
    41:27
    He's using all the same effects companies that Cameron uses with Way to Digital and stuff. They also shot it natively. 3D, which is rare these days. Most people do post-conversion. Yeah, how does that translate back to regular 2D? Does it? Oh, yeah. Because they just use one camera's information instead of both cameras. But when you shoot something natively 3D, you're seeing it on set how it translates, and you frame accordingly. There is a different framing mechanism for shooting 2D standard movie versus shooting 3D. Right. And one of those things is if you have an object that is slightly off camera, which is done all the time in standard 2D, in 3D it looks odd because this thing is now out of focus, but clearly at the proscenium arch of the screen. Okay. So if you have that thing, though, all the way over, so that it's fully on screen, now your eye accepts the three dimensions much easier. Oh, so it's actually bringing it into more of a three-dimensional ocular view. Yes. That sort of thing. Yes. Oh, right. That is interesting.
    42:46
    And on set, they're playing with the dimension. How deep are you looking at? And it's one of those things that once you're in that 3D headspace, you're designing a movie for 3D. You're not just looking at your monitor, shooting, shooting, and then in post-production going, oh, yeah, now let's turn it into 3D. Because there's just different rules of cinematography for how you frame devices. But the other thing was they're specifically also making it with IMAX in mind. So they're also doing the large format. So that's one that I'm like, I think I'm going to have to go see that that way. That sounds pretty incredible. I think we, I don't know if our version of IMAX, there's only one cinema that I know used to have an official IMAX screen in it here in Brisbane. And that was a cinema in South Bank, which is sort of near the CBD. but I think some of the other theater chains are bringing out this format called VMAX. And I have a feeling that's probably the same because of course they'd want to cash in on the IMAX formats as well. Right. So it has to be VMAX must be the, the IMAX version or the brand, the IMAX brand that these companies are actually doing.
    44:11
    Yeah. The, the, the bummer is that most imax that even around me the majority of imax or what i call limax um they're not genuine imax they're not genuine they're not the they're not the six story tall screen they're not um taller than they are wide uh very few movies basically uh christopher nolan the only one that shoots through IMAX and utilizes that And those screens are also film projection screens They're not digital.
    44:48
    Oh, okay. And so usually what you're seeing is the digital projection. It's not even a 4x3 screen. It's like a 1.66 ratio screen. so you are getting a little bit more pop and bottom information but it's not the incredibly jolting difference between going from this 3x4 image all the way down to a 2.4.0 image and then all the way back wide which when I saw The Dark Knight it was just incredible seeing like that and every time you want to talk about 4K resolution on TVs or whatever.
    45:36
    When you see true IMAX using 70mm film, every time it popped into that, my eyes just relaxed. It was almost a sigh. That's the best way I can do it. My eyes just kind of went ah.
    45:51
    Because it was just so detailed and so easy on the eye, and there was no strobing. It just looked natural. It takes on a depth all its own, even without being in 3D.
    46:10
    It is one of those interesting quirks that so few people are going to do. In Southern California, I think we only have three true IMAX screens. Film projection IMAX.
    46:26
    None of those will be playing Alita, I guarantee you. Because for 3D, it's only being digital projected. It's not film projection. So that's the limitation. IMAX is not, it wasn't future-proof with 3D in mind. Because you actually have to have extra information on the film to... Well, IMAX cameras in general, IMAX film cameras are enormous. Now you do IMAX 3D film cameras. And there were IMAX productions for their educational series. that did this, those camera rigs were just massive, just stupid large. And they're noisy as hell, which means you don't get good audio, so everything has to be re-recorded. Oh, wow, okay. Because I imagine, because it's not like a digital, it's not saving to hard drive, there's a lot of chattering noise going on in those things. It'd be huge. Yes. Yeah.
    47:24
    Wow. It is, but anyway. It sounds like it's going to be a very interesting thing to see, particularly as the director essentially emulating another director's vision. Emulating my favorite director. Yeah. So this is good. Yeah. I could see you with your notepad and pencil going, ready to critique now.
    47:51
    Yeah. You know, it's like for all the complaints that people have about Avatar or about Titanic and groaning and moaning about Cameron with those, I still love him to death. There's nothing. I agree.
    48:04
    Everything he's ever done is gold to me. Even though Avatar is as Pocahontas as a storyline, it's still a fun version of Pocahontas to watch. Yeah, everybody always says, oh, it was just Ferngully. Well, I've got news for you. I never watched Ferngully, so I don't care.
    48:20
    That's right. It's an enjoyable switch off your brain, switch on your eyes, and watch the movie unfold. I mean, in truth, every single drama out there is just a rip-off on Shakespeare, but, you know.
    48:33
    This is true. Hey, one more thing before we go. I had a little surprise turn up in my mailbox the other day. Okay, what's that? So you might remember, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, maybe last week, actually, I mentioned that I got these really cool sort of enamel pins from this company called Nerd Pins. Right, they look like little tiny pinball machines. Yeah, yeah. And they're like, I had a few spare spots on my Netherworld lanyard of wizardry where I have my little wizard pins on. So I thought, no, I'd fill that with this Twilight Zone thing because it looks super detailed. And like you could see they even had like bits of the play field visible, like, you know, some of like the Powerball ramp and stuff like that. I thought, oh, that's really cool. All right. So I'll get one of these. I think they were like $10 US each, which for a large format pin is actually pretty good, pretty reasonable, really.
    49:29
    So anyhow, I took them along to Netherworld and I showed people at the pinball tournament. They were pretty stoked with it. And I just left it at that, really. I think I did a thing on Instagram and mentioned it last week in the show. So anyhow, this week, this little envelope, same sort of envelope that I got the first shipment of pins turned up. and inside it were four pins. And I went, why? Why do I have these things? And it turned out that Joe, the person who runs Nerd Pins, was listening to the show last week and sent me some of the latest versions of the Nerd Pins for us to take a look at. So for those of you on YouTube, here is, I'll hold it back far enough. Yep, that's far enough. That's Adam's family. so that's pretty cool he said that there'd be like this is a full color pin there's like probably about six or seven colors maybe more on this pin so then here is i guarantee you the cheapest way that you will ever own a big lebowski pin so you can get one of these for 10 bucks and it'll probably work better than the dutch pinball version anyhow so there you go get yourself a one of these ones you got to mount that one on a little tiny miniature rug yeah exactly right well i'm surprised actually you see on the back there the little card stock that you get you got a little picture on the back so it's got the boys from the movie on the back and the uh pins on the front but yeah right it does need to be on the rug i think you're right the last one that's the other thing they do too is they don't just do pinball um ones they do arcade cabs so i got two of the newest ones this one is um spaceys um so space invaders and it's like detailed all the way down to like the coin door it even has like a representation of the old style like nickel plated coin insertion with the little rocker on it thing it's very detailed so look thanks joe for sending them down um to um australia for me there it was a very nice surprise to receive in the post and I've put them all up on Instagram, so I'll link that in the show notes. And, yeah, do check out Nerd Pins because it's not just arcade stuff and pimple stuff that Joe's got up there. He's got lots of internet meme stuff too. So if you like your memes, get up there and check out Nerd Pins. It's a pretty cool site.
    51:53
    Let's see. Is there anything else? I won't bore you with I just rewatched the entirety of Lost. Oh, God. All 121 episodes. Jesus. Right.
    52:10
    It was really fun, the first two seasons, and then it started becoming daunting. It was still enjoyable, but, man, am I glad that most shows are only 10 episodes long now for a season, because those first three seasons were 24 episodes each or something like that. Wow, that was the era of the super long seasons, right? Yeah. Which is still how network TV does. Cable doesn't do it that way. Netflix doesn't do it. But network TV, by and large, still does these full, giant... So they can kind of fit a series sort of into half a year, kind of. Yeah. Yeah, that's what they usually run for, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, and it's kind of why I don't watch a lot of network TV. I mean, hardly at all, because there's a lot of spinning of wheels. I mean, it's a different when you think about when that kind of model was back in the day when there was only three channels and TV shows weren't serialized at all. You didn't have to. You could have skipped three weeks of a certain series and come into the next episode. and who cares? The character is the character. It's basically Scooby-Doo. They're all wearing the exact same outfits and at minute 43, this kind of in the A-team, that's when they're going to build their big machine in a montage that's going to solve the day and your job's done. Formulate television. Yeah.
    53:41
    So, I mean, it was just a matter of just filling out content, but now you start getting all these shows where it's all serialized and you've got to pay attention week to week everything that's a long haul and a lot of storytelling of a consistent basis to go through yeah yeah it's yeah yeah for sure like it's yeah good good on the writers because that's the challenge it's not like a little standalone like digestible one week sort of thing yeah it's crazy so and then you think about you know like the simpsons has done something in the nature of they're almost at 700 episodes.
    54:22
    If I'm not mistaken. That's crazy, isn't it? It's, I mean, it's 25 seasons or something like that. Yeah.
    54:31
    There's so much, so much like Canon in that now. Oh, I know. Trying to, you're trying to have to keep track of everything that went down.
    54:42
    Jokes. Oh, I know some people do. That's some people's jobs. yes. Yeah, Exactly. Anyway. All right. I guess we'll get to the particulars that we always say for the end because, you know, you people don't want to get bored by them. But first and foremost, go buy a T-shirt. To do that, go to redbubble.com. Give a search for blockade. And there you'll find all sorts of you don't even have to just buy a T-shirt. If you want, you can buy a mug. You can buy a phone case.
    55:13
    Right. Stickers. You know, whatever. There's all sorts of stuff that you can spend, and that money helps us. For instance, Jared just sent me the bill for web hosting.
    55:26
    Yeah, URL, yeah. Yep, so that's what that money goes towards is keeping us up and running. We're pretty lean. As a show, we're pretty lean. Yeah. There's not a lot of expense doing this, but when they come in, it's like, oh, yeah, watch the bank balance. Basically, for anybody watching on YouTube, just look at my microphone. That's a pretty tiny microphone. It's not one of these pro-grade mics. Geez, I mean, I only upgraded to this thing recently because it was cheap at Costco. So I just went, I need something a little bit better than my little thing that sits on the top of the laptop. So I had to do it. Which I have to laugh. You can always tell when Jared's gone to Costco because all of a sudden there's a flurry of posts on his Twitter account. of all the things that shiny that caught his eye like the other day i went there and i saw like this amazing light up keyboard from cooler master and i went oh that's shiny let's do a video on instagram on that and then then a uh like a sous vide circulator um thing that you can use to like cook things in bags who would have thought that costco has that see i have a costco literally a block away from me so it's not like oh it's special um well it's just down the road for me too, but I never really get a chance to go there and just explore it. You know how big Costco's are. You never get a chance just to walk around it and go, I had no idea you're offering this particular car product that I have no idea that was there, but now I need. So I need to buy it now. Yeah. But you can only buy it if you get five of them.
    56:59
    Yeah. Make sure you follow us on Twitter. The show is at Blockade. I am at ShutYourTrap, and he is at JaredMorgs. And then you too can find what Jared has found at Costco.
    57:13
    Adventures at Costco. And then make sure you check out the website, which is blockadepinball.com slash episodes. There you'll find all the show notes as well as links and videos and pictures that Jared likes to post. It's all good stuff. Way to keep track of what's going on in the show.
    57:35
    There has been a question because, because in terms of, hey, do we know what is coming next from Xen? No, we honestly don't know what's coming next from Xen. We don't know when next is coming from Xen.
    57:50
    We did get a private notification that has us really excited, but we can't hint about anything of what it detailed.
    58:03
    But we can honestly say with our hands on our hearts, there is no details about tables or any of that sort of nature. None at all. We just kind of got some blog strokes that were very exciting. We don't know.
    58:19
    We're hoping, hoping, we'll see if we can manage this. Mel is currently in Budapest right now over at Zen Studios, and I'm wanting to line up an interview with some of the designers from Zen. And Mel's hopefully going to assist us with that. So we might have a special podcast coming up maybe next week or maybe the following week. We'll see when it shakes down. Enough is enough. We'll call it there. Thank you all for listening. We will be back again next week. Until then, bye-bye. Toodle-oo.
    58:59
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    59:14
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blockade is delivered to. We can't improve unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and play some pinball.