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Episode 25 - Happy 2017!

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 42m·analyzed·Jan 2, 2017
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TL;DR

New Year 2017 podcast covers designer tournament results and American Pinball crisis management via silent treatment.

Summary

Episode 25 of the Eclectic Gamers Podcast, aired January 1, 2017, opens with New Year reflections before pivoting to pinball discussion. The hosts report on the conclusion of their 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designer Tournament (Pat Lawlor defeating Steve Ritchie 62.5%-37.5%), Superman pinball restoration completion, and American Pinball continued struggles with unfulfilled Magic Girl commitments and radio silence, contrasting this with a low-profile traditional advertising strategy via parts distributor flyers.

Key Claims

  • Pat Lawlor won the 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designer Tournament with 62.5% of the vote against Steve Ritchie

    high confidence · Dennis and Tony, discussing tournament results at the start of pinball segment

  • American Pinball included a holiday-themed flyer in Pinball Life distributor packages advertising Houdini appearing 'soon in 2017'

    high confidence · Dennis, describing a flyer received with a Pinball Life order for Superman restoration parts

  • American Pinball had promised to ship Magic Girl games by end of 2016 but as of the day before this episode aired, no recipients on forums had reported receiving them

    high confidence · Dennis, citing forum observations from afternoon before episode

  • American Pinball indicated one individual would receive their Magic Girl at Pinball Expo, but that did not happen

    medium confidence · Dennis, discussing unfulfilled promises to Magic Girl customers

  • American Pinball has gone silent on social media since Pinball Expo but is still engaging in traditional advertising outreach

    high confidence · Dennis, comparing AP's strategy to No Man's Sky post-launch damage control

Notable Quotes

  • “I don't want to tell the listeners that they were wrong, but I think I have to. Just like morally, that this was not the right result.”

    Tony @ ~32:30 — Humorously expresses disagreement with Pat Lawler defeating Steve Ritchie in the designer tournament by such a wide margin

  • “I'm going to blame Adam's family. They're everywhere. They're still everywhere. And everyone overrates that game so much that they just think that he is the greatest thing ever.”

    Dennis @ ~33:15 — Jokingly attributes Lawler's victory to Addams Family's cultural ubiquity and player appreciation

  • “Superman is the widest wide body that was made. It's the super wide, sort of.”

    Dennis @ ~26:45 — Technical note about Superman pinball machine dimensions relevant to collector room configuration

  • “in terms of the damage control stuff, I agree with you. I don't exactly know, though, why they're bothering to advertise Houdini specifically if they don't have a release date”

    Tony @ ~48:30 — Questions American Pinball's marketing strategy when no concrete launch timeline exists

  • “you have an instance with a company that was seen as making a series of promises and the promises weren't kept”

    Tony @ ~49:15 — Draws parallel between American Pinball and No Man's Sky regarding broken promises and trust damage

Entities

Pat LawlorpersonSteve RitchiepersonDennispersonTonypersonAmerican PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyPinball LifecompanySupermangame

Signals

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community preference for Pat Lawler over Steve Ritchie as greatest modern designer shifted dramatically—Lawler won with 62.5%, surprising the hosts who expected a much closer race (55-60%) favoring Ritchie

    high · Tournament results and hosts' reactions indicating unexpected landslide victory

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball adopting low-profile strategy post-Pinball Expo: social media silence combined with traditional distributor advertising to minimize reputational damage while staying visible to collectors

    high · Holiday flyer in Pinball Life orders; no social media activity since Expo; Dennis explicitly compares to No Man's Sky damage control

  • ?

    product_concern: American Pinball failed to deliver promised Magic Girl games by end of 2016 despite explicit customer communications indicating December 2016 shipping; game orders remain unfulfilled as of episode date

    high · Dennis's forum monitoring; specific mention of promised Pinball Expo delivery not occurring; no reported deliveries despite end-of-year deadline

  • ?

    product_launch: Houdini: Master of Mystery advertised as 'appearing soon in 2017' with no specific release date, creating ambiguity about actual production status

    high · Holiday flyer language; Tony questioning why AP is advertising without concrete timeline

  • ?

    machine_intel: Houdini: Master of Mystery by American Pinball confirmed in production pipeline with 2017 release target; first official confirmation in weeks

    medium · Holiday flyer included in distributor orders explicitly listing 'Houdini, Master of Mystery' as 'appearing soon in 2017'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.308

0:00
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. This is episode 25. It is the 1st of January, 2017. 2016 is finally dead and in the rearview mirror. No more ghosting. no more DLC that you have to pay for to get features you should have had the video game when it launched no more Kickstarters that don't ever actually happen and they just disappear with your money or we can hope anyway right yeah oh yes I'm Dennis by the way yes finally happy new year Tony may this one be better than 2016 was yeah I was so done with 2016 last night that the wife and oldest daughter were talking about staying up till midnight, and I was looking at the clock, and it was like 9.30, and I was like, you know what? F*** it. I don't care. I'm going to bed. Oh, crap. I cussed. We don't normally do that. Well, that's what my censorship tools are for, so don't worry. Everyone heard nothing but kindness. Okay. I don't ever swear. That was a total breaking character. That's right. No. This is what 2016 did to you. It's what it really did to America and the world, one could say. It did. It broke us all. I even heard that at the last point there were still famous people dying at the very end. Yeah, I was over with my brother-in-law and sister for New Year's Eve, and I think one of them said that one of the MASH stars had died. Yeah, that's what I heard.
1:44
So anyway, yeah, it was just, yeah. You know, we always, you lose, obviously, you lose celebrities every year. This year just seemed particularly rough for a lot of people because there are a lot of major icons, you know, from going all the way back to David Bowie and Alan Rickman, up to the more recent, obviously, Debbie Reynolds. Carrie Fisher, Kenny Baker over the summer. That's right. And then what's the wham guy? George something? George Michael. Thank you, George Michael, more recently. Yeah. So, I mean, there's so many, I can't even keep them straight anymore. And so let us just try and move past as best we can. Um, though it wasn't all doom and gloom in 2016, a very strong year for video games, which I know we'll, we'll hit upon, I believe in our video game segment. Yes, we will. But I guess, uh, let's go ahead and it's a new year, but we're following the same old format. So let's go ahead and go formally into the introductions and we'll start with you as we typically do. So Tony, what's been going on outside of not staying up till the new year? Well, I've been, uh, doing a pretty good job of keeping up with my podcast, which is really impressive considering the last week of the year, as always, was Giant Bomb put out their Game of the Year discussion, and I really like how they do their Game of the Year because they don't just go, well, here's our 10 best games of the year. They do a whole bunch of categories, and they put out a podcast every day for the last five weekdays of the year that's discussions over, you know, they normally do like four categories a day, and each podcast is like three or three and a half hours long because it's them, it's the entire Giant Bomb crew in there basically discussing slash arguing slash horse trading for what games they think should win in each section. I've always heard good things about it, but I have never been able to overcome that time period hurdle because everyone also has been very upfront that they talk that much that long, and I have a lot of trouble thinking that you can actually have that much content. that I would want to sit through. So I've always just sort of shied away from listening to the in-depth discussions, even though I think a lot of them would probably be fascinating. I don't know if I would want to sit through it for every single category of every single game. I would have a lot of trouble with it, I think. Yeah, no, it's definitely, it's long. And I said the categories are all different. I mean, they're not all just best game because they normally, they do worst game of the year and best game of the year, the last two categories they do. but I mean like the last show which I finished yesterday was almost four hours long and literally the last hour of it to like hour and twenty minutes of it was discussing like the final order of the top four games for game of the year because everything else below that they'd locked in so So it's just, I like because it's, you know, a really behind-the-scenes view of those type of lists put together with people actually talking about it, not just putting out the list. And that's why I enjoy it. And this year they did more because they actually, their main podcast, they do video and they live stream when they're recording the podcast. And they put the video up so you can watch the video. so they did video of the entire thing this year, too. So you can see the people's faces as their hopes and dreams die, as everybody shoots down what they think the best game for a thing should be. How many people are the team? How big is this group? That group is a group of seven. Seven people. Okay.
Houdini: Master of Mystery
game
Magic Girlgame
The Addams Familygame
Pinball Expoevent
Firepowergame
Star Trekgame
Twilight Zonegame
Giant Bomborganization
No Man's Skygame
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
[name withheld pending review]organization
Pinsideorganization
IFPAorganization
  • ?

    community_signal: American Pinball's reputation severely damaged by Magic Girl delays and broken promises; community sentiment parallels No Man's Sky post-launch controversy—both companies over-promised and under-delivered

    high · Dennis and Tony's extended comparison to No Man's Sky; discussion of pattern of broken commitments

  • ?

    competitive_signal: 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designer Tournament concluded with Pat Lawler decisively defeating Steve Ritchie 62.5% to 37.5%; results suggest community values Addams Family-style accessible design over Ritchie's complex mechanics

    high · Official tournament vote counts; Dennis jokingly blames Addams Family overrating; Tony notes surprised by wide margin

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: American Pinball appears to have stalled on both Magic Girl production and Houdini, with Magic Girl deliveries missed despite customer promises and Houdini lacking any concrete production milestones

    medium · No confirmed Magic Girl recipients as of episode date; Houdini timeline vague ('soon in 2017'); flyer suggests damage control rather than confident production push

  • ?

    collector_signal: Dennis completed Superman restoration and repositioned entire collection by height and spinner configuration, indicating active collecting and machine curation among enthusiasts

    high · Detailed description of game room layout changes; Superman placement between Star Trek and Firepower by height; organization methodology by spinners

  • ?

    industry_signal: American Pinball shifted from direct social media marketing to indirect distributor-based traditional advertising, suggesting recognition that social media engagement was causing reputation damage

    high · Dennis's explicit observation of distributor flyer strategy; comparison to No Man's Sky; discussion of damage control rationale

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Community sentiment on Pat Lawler vs Steve Ritchie remains mixed among informed observers; Tony's personal preference for Ritchie contrasts sharply with public vote, suggesting generational or aesthetic divides in designer appreciation

    medium · Tony's stated personal bias toward Ritchie despite Lawler's 62.5% vote; discussion of Twilight Zone complexity vs. Addams Family accessibility

    • 5:38
    Yeah. It's the main, basically, it's the cast of their primary Giant Bomb podcast and the Beast cast. They all come together. They all fly over to San Francisco because that's where they're based, and they come together, and they all sit in one room and hash it out, like, all day for a week. And other than that, the only thing I've done otherwise is during the Steam sale, I picked up Doom and started playing Doom.
    6:03
    And, wow, that game is awesome. I'm amazed at how. So, yeah, it was a Doom, it's Doom. I was like, it's Doom. But I just kept hearing how awesome Doom was and how awesome Doom was and how awesome Doom was. And then I picked up Doom, and yeah, Doom's pretty awesome. I haven't even touched the multiplayer. I hear the multiplayer's crap, but the single player is amazingly awesome. Yeah, I haven't tried the multiplayer in it yet. I have not finished it yet, actually. I was playing it a few days ago, but I hit roadblocks. I believe I'm playing on the default difficulty, but it's so different from what I play nowadays. I'll get to areas, and I'll be running out of all the ammo, and I'll have missed too many shots, or I stood still. Standing still is death and doom. Oh, yeah. It's very challenging, but it's got a great look. I think its frame rate is really good. It's very competent. So for a game that maybe should have come out sooner than it did, it's a really stellar example. If we were to compare it to when Gearbox finally pushed out Duke Nukem Forever, which is a truly terrible game. Oh, yeah, it's bad. This is not. And like you, I've not tried multiplayer, so. Yeah, no, like I said, it's very much the old school feel of, oh, you don't have to reload. And you know how often that I hit R to reload a weapon in that game when it's like, oh, I have a second and it doesn't do anything. Or it changes what my secondary weapon is because you don't reload that game. You just hold the trigger down and spray. Yeah, I know.
    7:45
    I'm so reliant on reloading, I constantly am pushing it when I play D.Va in Overwatch, which is pointless. It's just how I play all these games anymore. It's like, oh, it looks like I've got a few seconds of spare time. Let's reload so I have a full clip. And it's like, oh, yeah, I don't reload in this. I mean, on the other hand, it's also really satisfying to go to the chainsaw and cut people up and get tons of ammo.
    8:12
    Yes, yes. It's visceral and cathartic. Very much so. But that's about all I've been doing. What have you been up to?
    8:21
    Well, not a whole lot. I haven't been working since just before the start of the Christmas period due to days off at the office schedules. Plus, I typically just take the days in between Christmas and New Year's, so I don't have to. There's usually next to no work to do anyway. So anyway, I've just been messing around, watching a lot of Twitch, watching a lot of Overwatch streams. I found them quite entertaining because there's a lot of people that will play and give their commentary that are higher level players. So it's an interesting way to pick up strategy. Yeah, I've started doing, when I watch Twitch anymore, if I turn Twitch on, I tend to be watching Overwatch streams. Unless it's a Monday and then I watch Bob Ross. Ah, yes, Bob Ross. Yeah, I saw him on during Monday. Yeah, Overwatch, historically, it's mostly been outstream fighting games. Because they have a pretty active commentary community. And let's face it, it's almost like pinball. They've got a tournament going almost every weekend somewhere. So there's commentary going for those sort of things. But speaking of games, though, I did get a number of games for Christmas already. Most of them I haven't started. I'll talk about the ones I have started when we get to the video game segment, and those would be Gears of War 4 and Final Fantasy 15. But games that I have received, I've installed them all, but I have not actually begun playing them yet. XCOM 2, which I'm really looking forward to.
    9:47
    I enjoyed it. I know you did. That's why I was on my list. Mafia 3. I enjoyed the second one. I've heard some really good things. I've heard the opening of that game is amazing. The whole game is not bad, but apparently the opening is just like it could be a movie. It's so well done is what I've heard. Yes, I've heard mixed reactions on Mafia 3. that essentially it's a competent game, but maybe doesn't live up to the full breadth of storytelling that Mafia 2 had, which Mafia 2 was a really, I thought, a really enjoyable story.
    10:25
    Dishonored 2. I had someone ask me why I asked for that game, because they thought I didn't like the first Dishonored. And I don't know if I've commented on Dishonored ever on this podcast, but if I have, I want to clarify. I never disliked Dishonored 1. I thought it was an ugly game. That's not the same thing. I mean, aesthetically, I find it unappealing. And I thought the story was pedestrian. I didn't understand why. There were a lot of people who were talking about how great the story in Dishonored was, and I just thought it was okay. And the last game was Seven Days to Die. And I think I read some good things about it. I didn't remember it all that well. I know because I get it mixed up in my head with Dying Light, which was disappointing to me. Yeah, I don't think I've even heard of Seven Days to Die. It was a fairly low-cost title. I'm not even sure it retailed originally at $60. But anyway, I like that sort of stuff. Maybe. We'll see. The survival horror type stuff.
    11:31
    I mean, it really just depends on how they handle it. So some of the types I like, some of the types I don't. So that's the slew of video games, and I tend to rely on Christmas and birthday for most of my video game, major video game acquisitions. And so obviously this is going to be a lot of content to play through. So there's that. Superman Pinball, the restoration project is done. It's in the lineup. It works. So that is out of the way now. I'm once again project free. I've still got a few minor things like I didn't have fuses of every ampage that they needed so I had to order some where I need to be using 7 amps I'm using 10s right now I'm cheating a little bit but well you know what it had a 30 in there so I think I'm being a lot kinder than whatever was going on well I'm trying maybe it was a 50 Actually, no, no, I don't. One of them had the wrong size. That one, the 7 was actually correct, but when we were testing because there was a problem with the fuse block, that was what was causing all the board issues.
    12:46
    So even though it was hard, you couldn't just pull the fuses out. They're really in there as they should be. Once they're in, they were loose. So the connections were really bad. So I have a multimeter, but my dad came over because he's got one that does AC and DC. And so we're testing all these points, and everything was working on that, except there was a voltage loss related to that 7 amp. We would only ever pull – actually, some of them are in a chain, so it gets a little weird. But bottom line was there was voltage missing. There was voltage missing, but we couldn't figure out anything that was on that was sucking the voltage away. So it's like, OK, well, it's the problem with the power supply. That's what you'd think. So we're looking around trying to, you know, we're going and you're checking point after point after point. And the book, the manual's got all these ranges for voltage and it's just not it's not in range. It's just too short. It's too small. And so ultimately what it completely turned out to be, which was not what either of us had thought it would be, was that the fuses were loose. and so there was a connection but it wasn't a very good it was intermittent in a way so like every shake of the game would make a difference and uh well yeah it's a pinball machine so well and it's just so yeah so sometimes it worked and sometimes it wouldn't and a lot of times it would just constantly keep firing the coin lock mechanism so i'm looking at the mechanisms i'm trying to figure out if something's shortened uh you know and that's just what it turned out so so after getting them in better and tightening that up some those issues went away and then i moved into the game room and the issues came back so i checked the fuses again and then that solved the issue so ideally i'd probably just replace that entire fuse block but i'm pretty yeah i'm gonna say does it just need a fuse block or is it a no i think that would be just it i mean i i would have probably been more inclined to pull pull it if they they looked like they were just uh clamped on but apparently they're all soldered so i was like honestly i probably just could go once i pull i could pull the fuses i don't actually i have no fuse puller i really yeah it's on it's on order you'd think i would have had one with as many fuses as i've worked with but nope i've never had one i always use a screwdriver so once i get that uh because it's hard to reach back there i think i'll take some needle noses and do a better job about just tightening those. They just need to be squeezed together more is really what the issue is. But anyway, so waiting on that. But the project's finished. I put a final picture up on our Facebook page, facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast.
    15:24
    I want to know real quick. Where did you put it in your pinball room? Did you have to pull some more stuff out? Because I didn't think there was enough room for a wide body in there. Did you end up pulling that door? The, well, the door, which door? I thought you were talking about taking the game room door off to make a little bit more room. Oh, I did that months ago. Oh, okay. Yeah, that door was already gone. My niece saw it, and she almost freaked out because I made a change.
    15:52
    And she got really upset that there was no door. It's because she always was shutting it. But, you know, I pulled the door when I got Firepower. But, yeah, no, it was rearranged. The couch and the table are not in there anymore. They're in the garage.
    16:11
    And so those are out of the way. And the mini fridge. The mini fridge is in the garage as well. Because the virtual pen is now where the mini fridge was all the way at the very end where that wall sticks out a bit because that's where the vent, the HVAC stuff starts. And so that's there. And then because I don't have to pull the glass off of that all the time, the main cabinet is at the other wall counter to it. So they're across from each other. So you can only play one of those two at a time. But they're at the very end now. That gave me enough room along the wall so that Superman could join the lineup. And I don't have the games as close together as I used to. And so if I were to consolidate those spacing a little bit more appropriate, like what you'd normally see in a lineup, I should be able to get one more standard body in that row. Not another 29-inch wide, at least. Probably not another wide at all. Because the virtual pin wide-by is only about 27, 27.5, I think. Superman is the widest wide body that was made. It's the super wide, sort of. All the Ataris were 29. You know, saying things like Hercules, but, but. Well, yeah, but that's kind of a. Like Paragon, that's Paragon wide. That's most, most wide bodies standard. What people, what you think of a standard wide body is more of that 27 and a half. So anyway, but no, Superman way too big. No more wide bodies, I hope. So anyway, yeah, there's enough room now for another pen because the virtual pen is now where I used to never put a pinball machine. But that's how it worked. And I stack them by height, so Superman is in between Star Trek and Firepower because that's the height. Yeah, it's by height. It has nothing to do with stacking together your favorites. Spinners. It's all about spinners. Spinners are stacked together. Jurassic Park is on one end because it doesn't have any spinners, and Skylab doesn't have a spinner, so it's on the other end. So, yes, it's themed by spinner, as one would logically do, if not stacking by height, which they are also arranged by. so yes so that is finished up and then as i was noting a listener of ours uh jason sent us a message uh and maybe you had heard of this but i answered the message and i had not it's a youtube series called critical role do you know it uh i do now that i read the message and i hadn't heard of it before it's a yeah it's a geek and sundry uh i guess uh series that they put on. And I'd heard of Geek and Sundry before. Yeah, I watched a bunch of Geek and Sundry stuff. I've never seen this one. Cool geek stuff. But anyway, the concept is really cool, though. It's these voice actors from video games playing RPGs. Like tabletop RPGs. So I've started watching it, but they are long. And he noted that some of the Overwatch voice actors are involved in at least some of those episodes. So there are a number of episodes. I'm including a link to the first one in the show notes. It's over three hours long.
    19:21
    That's pretty normal for those type of role-play podcasts. That's why I have only a limited number of them. I tend to watch more of them on Twitch or YouTube because I like being able to see the players while they're doing stuff. But yeah, they tend to be long. You tend to be looking at three hours, pretty standard. Yeah, and I think they stream this on Twitch and then they put the recorded version up on YouTube. I think that's the approach. Or at least it sounds like that's how they started doing it. But anyway, thanks, Jason, for the suggestion. It's a very interesting idea. I just want to hear the Lucio actor do one where he's just telling everyone to break it down when they're fighting. It's a small dream I have. But intro's done. Let's move on into pinball. Oh, boy. Are you ready for some pinball? We are. We are ready. We are ready to flip for you. And what we are going to flip with first is the end of the 2016 Modern Era Pinball Designer Tournament. 2016 is over. This tournament is over. I closed the voting off in 2016. We're just reporting it at the start of 2017. So as listeners know, it was down to the two arguably great greatest and the votes definitely put them there to confer what we had thought. Or I should say concur with what we thought. And it was Pat Lawler versus Steve Ritchie. And the big winner was Pat Lawler with 62.5% of the vote. So pretty handily winning over Steve Ritchie. Yeah, I don't know. I thought I was expecting, well, as I said last time, a 50 or 55. And I thought it would go to Ritchie, but that's my personal bias. But the fact that it was by such a wide margin, it just shocked me. I mean, I thought this was going to be a knife fight, not a blowout. I think in that episode I had suggested that I thought it might go as high as 60, like 55 to 60. But like you, I thought it was going to be Richie. So I was actually more wrong because I was such in the other direction.
    21:29
    I don't want to tell the listeners that they were wrong, but I think I have to. Just like morally, that this was not the right result. I don't know what to blame. I'm going to blame Adam's family. They're everywhere. They're still everywhere. And everyone overrates that game so much that they just think that he is the greatest thing ever. Or they are tinkerers, and they have a Twilight Zone, and they love having to fix 50,000 different mechs. Those are my two working theories. But he is a really great designer, so it's not undeserved at all. So congratulations to Pat. I'm just – I'm really, really shocked. But those are the tastes of the world, and who are we to argue other than the ones with the microphones that we get to?
    22:21
    Next tournament. You're wrong. You're just wrong. Look, internet, Reddit, whatever ones you were, you guys, you chose poorly. But this isn't Last Crusade. It's not like you're going to be rapidly aged or anything for making a mistake. We forgive you. and I think ultimately I'm going to make a page for these tournaments where I have those final bracket results, because I've been keeping a bracket on this. I just haven't been posting the image over and over because I don't think it's particularly, especially in a setup like this where there were so few people, I didn't think it was necessary, but I do have one, and I'd like to get that one in our 1980s pinball tournament up on this. Put up on... Yeah, I think I'll just stick them all on the same sort of page. Our web presence is very simplistic because I maintain it, But it can be it'd be nice for people to go back and look instead of having to always just listen to the episode to know what we were talking about when we keep referring back to things. But speaking of the tournament stuff, I should note, I'm probably going to start the wide. We're not starting that today. I actually have already built the whole voting form system for the first round. So it's ready to go. I just don't want to start it yet. I'm thinking we'll either start it next episode or the episode after. It depends on how we want to do it. Next episode is our one-year anniversary episode, so I don't know yet if I want to work that in because there are just so many match-ups that I'm going to have to say where I just drone on. And we can tear through them pretty quick. But we need to decide what we're going to do for the next episode still. So we plan ahead, folks, but we don't plan that far ahead. Yeah, we're not people who – we don't have everything planned out like five months in advance. No, no. We have a loose skeleton, basically, but we've got to attach the muscle and sinew still. Speaking of muscle and sinew, let's talk a little bit about American Pinball. The transition didn't work, but I didn't know what else to say. The American Pinball, the last death of 2016.
    24:22
    Well, it looks like that they're actually still at least on life support into 2017. Of course they are. Yes. This was sort of surprising to me, and I noted it earlier for listeners who follow us on Facebook, on our Facebook page. But I had an order from Pinball Life. They're one of the pinball parts suppliers. I use them to get all my rubber rings and stuff. And so I was ordering things for Superman, and my package came in the mail. And when I opened it up, normally there are flyers. Like you might see a flyer for an upcoming pinball festival or like Tilt Amusements, which sells pinball machines. I had a thing from them, a sticker from them, and I think I've gotten things from them before. But also included was an American pinball flyer. It was holiday themed. It said Happy Holidays on it on one side. And then on the other side was some information about the company, just sort of like that they design and make amusement arcade games and pinball machines. And appearing soon in 2017, Houdini, Master of Mystery. And then some contact information. So obviously while we had noted in a prior episode that ever since Pinball Expo they essentially gone radio silent on social media they still obviously engaging in some form of what I consider traditional advertising reaching out to the pinball community in a maybe less direct manner So instead of them doing a big marketing push that that I normally associate with pinball companies, here they are, including flyers in with orders with a distributor who does aftermarket. things, aftermarket maintenance sort of stuff. Honestly, I don't think that's such a bad idea. I know there's been a few other groups that have done, especially when they've had something that you could just consider a real crash and burn, will go silent on social media and stuff until they can put out something decent. I know they did that after the trash fire that was No Man's Sky. They went completely silent until they released their big foundation patch that they did back in early December. And I think for a situation where all the social media is doing is building worse name recognition and hurting you more, that sometimes totally disengaging from it and just letting that roll down the hill and gather steam and be what it is without you tying into it is about the closest thing you can do to damage control.
    27:06
    Yes, I would be inclined to agree on that. And it's, yeah, in terms of the damage control stuff, I agree with you. I don't exactly know, though, why they're bothering to advertise Houdini specifically. if they don't, I mean, obviously they don't have a release date other than they're planning to get it out this year. Though I will say the flyer says appearing soon in 2017. I guess you could be open to interpretation. I would say you can't define soon as anything after halfway through the year because how could it be soon if over half the year is done? Yeah, no, I'm going to be interested to see, I mean, what we're going to see if they're going to have any presence in any of these early shows in the year at all, or if they're just going to stay away until having kind of learned their mistake and just stay away until they can have a flipping machine for people to see.
    28:08
    I think overall it would make a lot of sense, at least in terms of the show slash festival scene, for them to engage in that sort of strategy. But you had mentioned No Man's Sky earlier, and I think they've ended up, they being American Pinball, are in a very similar situation to the No Man's Sky scenario where you have an instance with a company that was seen as making a series of promises and the promises weren't kept. So in the case of No Man's Sky, I mean, there's all the criticism about how the final product plays aside. The big criticism that I continue to see about No Man's Sky is they feel the developer went out in public and told a series of lies, saying that the game was going to do certain things that the game is not going to ever do. It's not meant to do. He promised things, implied certain multiplayer, MMO-esque aspects that are just not in the game. It's not how the game was programmed. And so it's like, why did you say all that stuff instead of saying this is what it's going to actually be? No Man's Sky is a fascinating game to me. It's one for I followed for over two years from when I first heard about it as E3 as a game, I thought, wow, that makes me wish I had a PlayStation or at the time a computer that could actually play that game to a game that I have absolutely zero interest in ever trying. Yeah, I actually still have some interest in trying it, but it is more of a point that it's like, you know, when the price gets down to something. And kind of hoping, because I still had a lot of hopes and dreams for what it would be, and they got shattered. And like I said, I didn't pick it up immediately. Definitely a very parallel situation between the two companies with where they are at and the kind of damage they've done to themselves. Yes. So in the case of American Pinball, pivoting back on that. Okay, Houdini, salvageable? Sure. Let's just say yes. But the issue is they had gone out on social media, gone and indicated that they were producing Magic Girl games. going and for anyone who's joining who's not familiar with it i don't want to go into the whole thing but basically the designer on houdini had his own company he tried to put out a series of games uh one of which was called magic girl and the magic girls he never got any games out he never finished and so the thought was because american pinball has this houdini game that was designed by this guy that maybe they were doing like a quid pro quo sort of thing where he's bartering his skill and in return instead of you know his money is essentially his pay for houdini is being put into them actually making magic girls to fulfill his obligations from his prior venture they indicated that they were producing those they showed a picture of a bunch of empty cabinets a story of that magic girl owners are oh so familiar with the dreaded empty cabinet then they indicate to individuals in communication that these Magic Girls were going to be shipped by the end of 2016. Now, I have not gone and checked the pinball forums today, but as of what I saw yesterday afternoon, no one had indicated that they had yet received their Magic Girls. They had even said that one individual was going to get his Magic Girl at Pinball Expo, which was sort of the last period of time that they were engaged in social media or at a pinball event though that was probably the last major pinball event you'd have expected them to be at for the year anyway yeah so like again like no man's sky well i get the idea of the radio silence sort of the soft reboot and maybe even still engaging in a sort of traditional advertising keep their name in in the idea of houdini in the presence of pinball people or get it in front of pinball people who maybe do not participate in forums or go to the shows, but they like and collect machines. So they're going to buy things like rubber rings from pinball life. And so that's a great way to reach those people. But that isn't going, none of that is going to deal with the problem they created on the magic girl front. So I'm not seeing how they, I don't see how they fix things until they come out and actually deal with what they said on magic. I mean, some people are assuming that they've washed their hands of that because at Expo they were telling people to talk to that designer, John Papaduke, about anything involving all that Zidware Corporation, Zidware Limited stuff that his company, you know, ask him, ask him, ask him. Well, no, you came out on social media and said stuff about Magic Girl. You've not ever clarified on social media anything about, so some people, that's all they've seen. I didn't go to Expo. I didn't listen to their presentation. They need to come on social media to tell me what's going on with Magic Girl if they want me to think anything other than they made a bunch of promises and now I'm hearing from other segments of the community that none of those promises were kept.
    33:25
    So it's like, I don't know why to me, and I'm not a marketing person, so don't take this with a whole bag of salt, but I don't understand why you even are still trying to keep Houdini on the minds of people until you can untangle yourself from this mess of Magic Girl. I mean, keep working towards Houdini, if that's your plan, to release it. But I mean, if they don't fix what they, they chose to entangle on Magic Girl. I don't know how many people are going to be willing to say, oh, you've brought in Joe and John's not doing stuff now. You've brought in Joe. He's redesigning Houdini. Houdini is still John's idea. It's still his initial design. Do people want to buy something that John Papaduke worked on when John Papaduke's last three pens were no-shows. They were vaporware.
    34:17
    Here's the question. What do you think if they never said a word on social media or anywhere about Magic Girl? If their answers to Magic Girl questions was, we hired a pinball designer. His background, his issues, they're not our concern. If you have any questions with that, talk to him. But that's not our problem. We just hired somebody who was available for hire at the time who had a pedigree and, uh, if they'd washed their hands of it from the beginning and never even done anything like they were going to, uh, make things right for the magic girl owners. Do you think they would be in a better position now with how things have gone and with their showing at expo, uh,
    35:05
    then what things actually ended up happening? Uh, Interesting question. The short answer would be yes. The long answer would be it's more – Yes.
    35:22
    The longer answer with more words would be yes, but they still wouldn't be in a great position. Because let's just set aside – just briefly. Let's just set aside for a moment. Let's assume that all happened. But let's still assume that the show is what the show was. I mean, a lot of the show, it still would have been, they showed up to Pinball Expo with a play field that's not in a cabinet. Nothing about Magic Girl made that happen. So that still would be the case. People still would have walked up to this diorama, and they would have taken their photographs, and then they would have put them on pin side, and people would have zoomed in enhanced. And then they'd have been like, why are there all these Zidware part logos all over this thing? It was built with Zidware part. See, it's still intermingled.
    36:11
    Yeah. And so those problems would still happen. Here's what I, even setting aside them going to Expo, here would have been that problem. I still think it would have been a better position because they wouldn't have been seen as breaking any promises. Then their only issue would have been, there would have been part of the pinball community that would have been encouraging people to boycott purchasing from American Pinball because they were employing, essentially, a designer who on his own burned so many people. That's not American Pinball's fault, but to punish John Papaduke, I think a lot of people who got burned by him would have tried to rally the troops to not support this new venture. whether or not that would be successful overall enough that like american pinball would not be able to stay in business i have no idea but that would have been that would have been the discussion that would have been the entire scenario was why'd you hire a tainted designer instead of why'd you hire a tainted designer oh you're going to bail him out oh now you're not keeping your word on bailing him out like you said you would which has got everyone's hopes up that we're in on magic girl and now their hopes are dashed again or some of them are still clinging to it but but i mean that's that's a that's a cling cling of a desperate person so so that's that sort of i mean the only as i think i said when we first discussed american pinball and knew about the tie to john papaduke the in my mind the best chance they ever had to be successful would have been to not have him as the designer in the first place had they gone to joe i agree with that if i'm saying his last name right and from the get-go and said hey you've worked on a number of big games you're just coming off of jersey jack pinball you know i get it his name isn't as known or as worshipped in pinball circles as john papaduke's name is but he's a competent designer bring him in and have him give you a theme have him you know do houdini or whatever you are don't do houdini i'll do a different game it probably would have been different without john because he came to them with an idea and that idea doesn't work that's why joe is having to rework the thing is because it doesn't shoot and that still would in your scenario of them not promising any magicals that's still it would still be the everything else would still be the same houdini that can't play good job yay and who's going to fix all that sort of thing and at john popaduke speed probably no one but Joe can do it but I don't know if they'll last long enough yeah can they hold out have they dug the pit I remember I don't remember exactly but I remember when we were first talking about this so many months ago that was one of the big questions we talked about how deep is the pit and can they survive in the pit long enough to get out and become something and like you I think that the pit's just too much. I think that they're too deep. I think trying to do... Going with J-Pop in the first place was a mistake, but having done it, I think attempting to make Magic Girl right was their only way to hope to really survive. And I think they just messed everything up so bad that they're just... I think they're going to end up being DOA. I could be wrong. I hope, especially for the Magic Girls owners, that I am wrong.
    39:38
    Well, not owners, because owners would imply that they had one, the Magic Girl purchasers. But I think that this is going to be one of the big things we see in this coming year is what happens with American Pinball. Yeah, I would say they're the boutique that's in the most trouble. The only thing that's been going on that I feel is to their credit is they have not taken pre-order money. that would have especially with john being tied to it would be exceedingly difficult but that they have not they've not asked for pre-order money so no one has their finance no one's you know in getting an ulcer over this regarding america maybe the owners of american pinball uh because no one's no one else's money is on the line but as we've seen you know through the research, they did take mortgages. So I don't think this is just a person with a bunch of money to throw around who's going to be able to just keep trying at this forever and buy his way through all his problems. I think there's going to be that breaking point. And I think 2017 is going to be when we see it. But obviously, they're still trying to keep themselves somewhat in the public eye. I just thought it was an interesting thing to get a flyer like that. And it really surprised me because I thought they were going to die the slow quiet death, but they're still advertising. So they're still making a go for it as of last week at least. So anyway, interesting. Always interesting. So we'll have something to keep our eyes on throughout this year, but I know you have a number of hopes for this year. And it's an interesting concept to do for the show for our segments. So I'll let you go ahead and kick it off because I didn't come up with it. Okay. Well, I was looking for what I'm looking forward to in 2017 because 2016 was a big burning ball and I have these hopes for 2017. So I thought I would share them. When it comes to pinball, my hopes in 2017 is that things are calmer in the community. There's less anger. There's less hate. There's no ghosting. Games hit when they're supposed to actually launch instead of getting pushed back and pushed back. and with these things part of the reason I'm hoping some of this is coming is going to happen is because I think we're starting to get at least in the online realm a lot of pushback from the fans about game announcements but not actually having anything for years and years and years I know Spooky's got a new game that they're announcing at Texas which I'm planning to be at and I'm looking forward to find out what they're coming next and probably my biggest hope for the year is to see what Stern does going forward now that they are starting to use LCDs. I know there's rumors that the next music pen coming out is going to be Aerosmith and there's rumors about a Star Wars pen and there's rumors about a couple other pens, but I'm waiting to see an actual announcement for something and see an actual what comes of it. And I have hopes for it. and that's my biggest thing is, yeah, we didn't see Batman 66 flipping until, what, earlier this week.
    43:03
    Yep. Yeah. Did you catch that? Did you catch the dead flip stream on it? I didn't. I was busy, so I didn't get a chance to watch it, so I was really disappointed. I caught some video clips of it, and it doesn't look bad.
    43:15
    Yeah, no. I watched about 10 minutes of it, I'd say, to get a feel for it. we can dissect the game at another point. But the LCD integration did look good. Yeah, I thought it looked really good, and that's why I've got hopes. I mean, whatever you go for, and no matter what you talk when you're talking pinball, Stern is still the grand old lady of the ball in pinball. It might be more conservative and doesn't try his new stuff, but what the stuff Stern does tends to be a very solid product, excepting this year with their playfield issues that they've been having And I'm sure more likely than not it's a technical issue I know they haven't really talked about it Unless there's been announcements that I haven't heard It hasn't really been talked about that much So by them I should say It's been talked to death online So we will see what comes of it How about you? Do you have any hopes for pinball this year?
    44:13
    Yes but as I have learned long ago Do not trust a hope because it has forsaken these lands But yeah, sure. I mean, let's see. One of the things, one of my big hopes in pinball would be, I would, I really hope we see an effort by pinball companies to not just cater to the collector market, but to keep the operator market in mind. In other words, I'd like to see broader support for lower-cost pinball machines.
    44:44
    I've read that Stern had announced, so as of today, I guess, that another round of price increases had hit all tiers of their machines.
    44:53
    And whether or not that's the case, I haven't confirmed that myself. But that's what's being said, and that price increase isn't just on the new machines, but that is going back to anything, even doing the DMD stuff. and so that coupled with what we saw out of Batman what we saw out of Dialed In it's just that I get that they've recognized that there's a lot of money being left on the table I don't mind them making collector edition sort of things to capture that high end dollar but I'm getting worried that Stern's still the only one that seems to be pricing anything in the realm of oh this is what something that an operator can get a reasonable return on an investment on. But I think even the pro machines are moving beyond that. So my hope is that they do something keeping that in mind and not just Stern, but other companies start to try and bridge that to a degree because if you want pinball popularity to be sustained, I don't think it's going to be carried by the homeowners. It's got to continue to get to be on location. And that means the operator has to be able to charge a reasonable rate and actually make their money back. And it's getting harder. So I'm hopeful. I agree with that. I'm hopeful for that. I'm hoping that we actually see more, a better volume of new and different machines hit in 2017. Part of this, I know, is the stumble by Stern, which, you know, setting aside like VEs and stuff, it was really just Ghostbusters. And for them, I'm sure that made a lot of sense because I know Ghostbusters has sold gangbusters for them. but other than that practically every single new machine I'd say aside from Domino's from Spooky was a machine that had already been announced in a prior year or prior years and was like Hobbit and such and just waiting and waiting and waiting so while there were a number of machines that actually formally came out for the first time in 2016 most of those had been known for quite a while and had been announced by their companies quite a while and I would like to see a non-VE just year of diversity.
    47:00
    I've got hopes for that. If Aerosmith hits and they do something like Star Wars or some other new concept, Stern might have two new machines that are actually unique.
    47:10
    Batman, in a way, you could call is unique. I don't know. Because it's a quasi-rehash. It's not a VE, though, so I guess that would be new. So there are two right there, Aerosmith and that. Spooky, they get their next new one out this year as well would be that Aliens should, Alien Pinball should finally drop, but you know again, that's one that was supposed to be out last year, it was supposed to be out the year before that, it's just but dialed in, that would be you know, so I have, I think that's a good I think I have a reasonable hope that this one will come true yeah, I that was my big thing, it was too many things are announced too far out by the time they come out, nobody knows or has it's been there so long, I mean, it needs to be less time between an announcement and a release. And I think that's something Stern has done well in the past, about not announcing something until it's ready to, or almost ready, except for accepting Batman 66. They tend to make an announcement and then have the game appear in a pretty quick order. And I think some more of the other companies should get the same sort of deal going on. yeah and i and i hope that and i think this relates with that is i think there were a lot of uh for a number of the companies i think there were a lot of production issues i don't know if it was uh you know difficulty in securing certain parts or you know difficulty in getting uh uh subsidiaries or or con i should say contract groups is doing proper clear coding or such but i'm hoping those production issues have been sorted out enough that 2017 will actually be pretty smooth from a supply standpoint for the manufacturers and i guess my final thing would be if i want a total pie in the sky hope that's not going to happen but i really really wish it would is i would like to see another new entry a new into the arena i want a new fighter a new challenger has appeared i want a new pinball manufacturer something really yes but not boutique.
    49:11
    I don't like what, in a way, kind of like what I would have loved American Pinball to have been if they hadn't just blundered so badly in so many ways. But I'm going to, because I had to do a little bit of research when I got that Superman Pinball, I basically want a company to come in with too much money like Atari did and be like, hey, we've got all this money now. What should we do? Let's open up a pinball division. Wouldn't that be great? Sure. Now they crashed and burned Because I didn't know what they were doing. But if you had like a Blizzard Activision come in and say, you know what? No. We're doing this now. We got crazy money. We're Blizzard. We want to do it. We're going to come in. We're going to just poach a bunch of designers that are really good. We've got enough money to power through any mistake we have. And we've got a whole slew of IP that the youngins are going to eat up. And the oldins are going to as well. Because we remember the old stuff too. and just put that sort of corporate heft. And they'd be like, why are we doing it? Why is Activision doing it? It doesn't make a lot of financial sense because Blizzard makes financial sense for them. And Blizzard says we want to do pinball.
    50:19
    I want something like that. That would be amazing. I want something like that where they just come in. Or if you had like a Valve come in and just, they got that crazy Steam money. And they're just like, Gabe, Gabe, what's going on? I just like pinball a lot and I'm rich. This is what we're doing. Half-Life 3 is a pinball machine. That's right. Half-Life 3 would be awesome. And so because there are so many entities that could be, or you wanted something a little more, they don't have the money to do it. But again, I'm just talking pie in the sky hope. If you had like Zen Studios, Pinball FX 2 people, they have some great designs they've come up with. No one knows the names of those designers who work for them. But they've had some really good virtual machines. Now they do a lot of games that could never actually be physical tables. but that know-how the way those shots flow they could design you know real physical pinball if they had the backing it's just you know i want something with new blood but it has to be something that actually has the financial backing to be able to do it without having to rely on pre or bringing in a whole bunch of investors or anything like that And there are companies that could do it if they had enough pull and enough interest to make it happen And I just think it would shake up the – that would be the only thing I think that would truly shake up the landscape. And if you want to grow pinball, it would have to be a video game maker, I think. But anyway. Yeah, and with the IPs that the video game makers could bring in, it would be pretty good. I don't see it ever happening But it would be amazing And I think it would honestly be a great Thing for the community As a whole As we've seen with Blizzard In the past with somebody like Activision Blizzard I mean Blizzard tends to Walk into something That they don't do with anything That's super new They don't take the extreme risks They go huh Well this kind of works and this kind of works and this kind of works, so let's try this and this and this and this, and then they go and just make the perfect game in that genre, and then they walk off and find something else.
    52:19
    So something like that could be amazing. But, yeah, no, I don't think it could happen, but it would be amazing. No, no. Again, do not trust a hope. But if you want a true hope, that would be my big hope for pinball, would be a massive powerhouse player stepping into the arena brand new with all the financial backing because they just – they make – it could be a loss leader. It's all about promoting the brand. It's not – they don't plan to make money at pinball. They're doing it because it's a tool to them, and there are companies that could be in that position. But, yeah, I can't envision them ever doing it because there are so many better ways to promote their brands. But, hey, that's – it's a small dream. It's a small dream.
    53:02
    Well, moving to our bigger dreams, let's go ahead and hop on over to the video game segment. I thought I'd go ahead and just start with the two games I mentioned that I got for Christmas that I've started to play because we talk about games and what we've experienced. So I've only got two, though, to go through, and then we'll hit the 2017 hopes for the video game industry. But my first one I mentioned that I'll mention is Final Fantasy 15, also known as Final Fantasy Road Trip or Final Fantasy Bro Trip, however you want to refer to it as. This one wasn't what I call high on the list because the design aesthetic to it did not look appealing to me.
    53:45
    The story's all right as far as I am so far. I think I'm in Chapter 4. It's very much in the young adult vein, which is kind of where Final Fantasy has always sort of sat. So you've got this group of four characters. You only play one. The rest are handled by AI. They're all very cliche. They fit a lot of the JRPG tropes. You've got the obnoxious one, which he is the most annoying, but thankfully he's not constantly talking. You've got the smart one. You've got the strong one. And then you've got you. And since it's a JRPG, you're the emo one. So you're going along. But if you set aside the ridiculous styling, they're all wearing black, and Final Fantasy loves their buckles and stuff. The interplay between the characters does feel pretty natural. So they actually hit that well. I think that landed a lot better than I expected it to.
    54:37
    Side questing, some of them are sort of interesting that I've done. Most of the quote-unquote side quests are hunting missions, and they are extremely repetitive. I'm just getting a total Borderlands vibe out of it. So I keep going in the main story because the side questing, or at least the hunting quests, are just too dull.
    54:55
    And some of the other side quests seem to feel a little bit better because they have a story to them. but go out and kill five of these puddings is not, you know, that's not really much of a story there.
    55:08
    Combat, though, it's active-based. I'd say this is the first time that Square Enix through Final Fantasy has embraced a fully active combat system, though they do have a mode, I've not tried it, where you can go into more of a turn-based format, but that's not what they promoted in the tutorials. it's not working well for me i don't i don't enjoy the combat system it's i and it's just i'm not comfortable with it it's playing kind of like a dodge and spam attack hack and slash almost style which if i were to now i need to i need to admit though well i really really liked witcher 3 as an rpg i never liked the combat in it and this is falling in the same vein i don't think they whereas Skyrim or Fallout 3 and 4 I enjoy the combat in those active combat systems I don't like this format where it's just wait for the enemy figure out their pattern roll and attack to me that's a hack and slash mechanic and I'll play hack and slash sometime but I don't like it in my RPG so because then you know you got your skill trees and stuff and I'm not sure what I should be leveling because I'm not sure the best way to play it and so it's just sort of it works I don't hate it it's just it's not it doesn't resonate with me. I don't look forward to the combat. Whereas in some of the, like in fallout, I look forward to the combat. So it's not, it's not something that, um, kind of the smooth thing that you'd prefer. It feels like it's putting off the story almost because you, Oh, I've got a fight and I don't really enjoy it. So it's hurting the story and dragging it down overall. Uh, I wouldn't, I guess I wouldn't go quite that far. I, I would just say that it's not, I don't want to go, oh, it'll be fun to go and do this big boss fight or go and fight this thing. Because I just feel like I go and I figure out which weapon it's weak to after five seconds. You can scan them in the more passive mode, I guess. I've never gone into it because you just hit them one time and you'll see the color of the damage float up. And if it's orange, I know it's weak to it. So I figure out which of the four weapon types they're weak to. and then I just hold down the B button and slash them to death until they try and hit me, and then I dodge. And then you can combo in your AI characters and stuff with certain maneuvers, and I do those. And that part works fairly well, but you don't spam that part. So, no, it's just sort of like it's not a great combat system. I don't – it's just – it's a little too repetitive. It's not as – and maybe I should go to the passive mode. It's not as tactical as I had hoped it would be. Have you played any of the Tales games? No, no.
    57:57
    And for people who like the Tales combat system, they might really like this. I'm not sure. But I know in the Tales systems, at least in some of them, you could switch between various characters. And you didn't just have to play one. Here I can only play the main character. I can't be the guy with the gun. and I can level him up and give him stuff and make him better at what he does and give him new abilities, but I can't play that character. So I have to be the emo character and do his stuff.
    58:27
    So it just feels a little like I have less control and less meaningful choice than I did in older Final Fantasy games. That could be how I'd summarize it. But it's not bad. It's just, it's not my thing. It's not my type of combat.
    58:42
    And that's really it for Final Fantasy. Gears of War 4 same old same old would be my description I guess if you were worried about Coalition I think that's who did the new one taking it instead of being Epic Games I'd say don't it feels exactly like any other Gears game they did it in the vein of Gears 3 not Judgment which was the worst reviewed and that one wasn't an Epic Game so anyway I'm not surprised that they went that way so like the grenade mechanic is back to the Gears 1, 2, 3 format, not the Gears Judgment format. I've only been playing the campaign single player. I've never enjoyed multiplayer,
    59:24
    deathmatch multiplayer in the Gears games. I don't, it's just, everyone was just roly-poly. They just roll and try and get you one hit with a shotgun. So I don't like roly-poly multiplayer.
    59:35
    And like the horror mode and stuff where you're fighting against waves of AI, I've enjoyed that in the past, but I have not tried it in the new game.
    59:42
    The story and characters are as shallow as ever. So if you're hoping that the writing has improved, it has not. It is just you're bros, you're going out there, you're going to chainsaw some stuff and you're going to shoot things in the face. Let's be honest. If the writing had improved, would it be a Gears game anymore?
    60:01
    I mean... I think as long as it stayed corny, sure. I've not played a whole lot of Gears, but to me the Gears games have always had a certain feel to them, and that's basically what made them a Gears game, and it was just, you know, like, corny, over-the-top, and, I mean, really, it's a chainsaw bayonet on a gun, and that's all. It has a certain level of corn, and if you don't, if it was to be more serious, I don't think it would work as well. No, I would agree. I don't really argue that it should be more serious. It could still be better written. It could be more entertaining. The banter could be stronger between the characters. They could incorporate a lot more. In a way, it's sort of like one of the side characters in your group going along and he's just telling these... I mean, I guess they decided to give him the bad jokes. It was just not funny. I don't know. I don't know what I was expecting. Anyway, no. If you like the past ones, you'll like it. It feels great to play. It shoots well. It looks beautiful. So, yeah, if you like Gears, you still will. That would be my appraisal. And if you didn't like Gears, this is not the Gears game for you because it is not different. Well, that brings up kind of a just video game thought entirely. On games like this, how much do you want them to innovate and change with a working formula? like Call of Duties or Battlefields or Gears of War or Fallout or these big franchises like this. Do you want them to innovate a lot and move away and possibly change what made the game good or just innovate a little bit or just pretty much just make sequels that are the same general thing with new story? my my my preference is i want mechanics to remain relatively stable but i want dramatically different changes to encounters and thus story so my example would be in my mind the thing about a game the thing about what makes a game good is how it plays so if you've got a good game i it needs to play pretty much the same you can add you know you can tweak things and all that that that's all fine of course so like in this regard where gears is pretty much kept the same combat mechanics makes a lot of sense and i would never object to it halo you know they'll go in maybe they added you know jetpacks and stuff but still how it plays i think it feels pretty much the same they've made more innovations than gears has in the combat but it still plays like halo that's smart halo like when they got done with Reach and everything when Halo 4 came out they changed the enemy type. You weren't fighting the Covenant anymore. They had a few Covenant encounters but they gave you a whole new bunch of enemies with all new abilities. I like that. Whereas with Gears I don't want to spoil the Gears 4 story but so far I've seen some new creature types but I thought the plot in Gears was that the Locusts lost. Why am I seeing Locusts again? So you couldn't even bring out, you couldn't even come up with a new enemy. To me, that was a detriment. They should have not said, oh, you're still going to fight the same. Tell a new story. Give us some new things. And maybe later on there will be. I think Halo's done a better job of that, though. Or we go with like the battlefield in Call of Duties. Changing the war you're fighting in. Makes sense. The mechanic innovation is the same. They're changing the setting, so they're changing things up. Different weapons. But still, the game styles play like they have. battlefields been vehicle heavy Call of Duty's really just glorified deathmatch you know that's their things let them stay you know keep that but the stories can change the settings can change the weapons can change the enemies can change as long as the mechanics are pure that that's the only part I worry about staying the same is the mechanics yeah I can see that I can understand where you're coming from on that because I know like using Fallout for example Fallout 1, Fallout 2 are very different creatures than Fallout 3 and what came after going from the isometric type game to a first person shooter and I feel like that was a major change that worked really well and then within the after the major change there's been minor changes like with Fallout 4 I feel the gun handling is better and some of the changes they made to Fallout 4 I liked. Some of them I didn't like.
    64:58
    And then, of course, right smack in the middle of it, I thought, what I thought was the best combination of the done is, I still think, New Vegas was the best combination of the RPG stuff we saw in 1 and 2 in the first person style. And I would kind of like to see something using 4's better gun handling and 4's better, 4 was just a better first person shooter, I believe. And I'd like to see something with that. but adding the RPG elements that we saw in 1, 2, and New Vegas added to it. So it would be a maintaining engine, maintaining play style, but adding in more of the old game to it.
    65:39
    And I can see where a game like Gears could go from having that and then adding in just the iterative minor changes and adjustments and adding a little bit new in each time. If you have a camera I'm coming from. I'm not just randomly babbling like that kind of film. No, part of my problem is I'm trying to summarize what change I like to see, but it really does depend on the franchise as well. So, I mean, I give an example of the sci-fi-esque, in the case of Halo and Gears, where they had trilogies. They told stories. Those stories said certain things happened. I don't like, oh, and here's the sequel, and the thing that lost is back. No. You wrote yourself out of that as far as I'm concerned. It's real lazy to come and do that again. Whereas if you were to take something like Fallout, Super Mutants and all that, that's the world. That's the Fallout world. Always relying on that. It's like Final Fantasy. I expect there to be Chocobos, and I expect there to be Marlboros, and that's their approach. And so keeping the same sort of encounter types makes sense in that case. You can change up other things in the storytelling. Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, they tell dramatically different stories.
    66:59
    And so that is enough. Even New Vegas and Fallout 3, they mechanically weren't all that different from each other. Same engine and all that sort of stuff. So a lot of the things played the same. But I think Fallout New Vegas told a significantly better story. which was good. And then on the bad side, Fallout New Vegas was way more buggy. So it was just, you know, in the case of is it a good game or not, I tend to recommend it to people. But it's, you know, like you pointed out, that I normally would never recommend such a significant change as to take a concept and change its entire genre. But it did work out for Fallout. I think that's where spinoffs can also make sense. Like Halo Wars, Halo Wars 2 is coming out here soon. those are RTS. I enjoyed Halo. I've never been a big Halo person because I've never been a huge console gamer. I mean, I had a 360, but it's not something where consoles have been my primary gaming system since the PlayStation 2. And even then, I had a computer that I played more often than my PlayStation 2.
    68:06
    Yeah, it's just, you'd see certain, I mean, things are big enough and they want to branch out like that, but those are always, those have always been side side things there have been uh shmup style halo games as well those are isometric style it's you know that's all fine that's just franchise building that's that's different than the core stuff the core stuff always is still the spartan-esque style gameplay and that works for them and they've done i think a very good job about getting better on the storytelling bungie had a certain approach a more strong silent protagonist type and that's really changed a lot since 343. I think for the better with 343. I think they have allowed their characters to have more personality. That doesn't mean the story's always been better. I'm still not finished with Halo 5 because I found the story to be a mess and I just don't care about it. But anyway. Here's a hypothetical for you. Let's say we lift the entire story team from Final Fantasy 15 and drop them into the mechanical team from Gears of War and create Gears of Fantasy 56 and let them go to town, do you think that would be awesome or would somebody's head explode?
    69:20
    Gosh, I think it might be a mess. I don't know. Don't know if heads would explode. They already explode in Gears when you headshot.
    69:31
    Yeah, no. those might be a little too different this might be I mean that sort of stuff can sometimes sort of work I haven't played this so I have no idea if it worked or not but I remember at E3 there were those two guys came out on stage and they talked about they had done Far Cry Blood Dragon and then there was that Trials HD which is a almost a platformer where you're doing the dirt bike and they made Trials of the Blood Dragon, where you would do the dirt bike stuff where you're trying to stay balanced on your bike, but I guess you're shooting bad stuff from the 80s as well. And it was Trials of the Blood Dragon. And I remember when I saw that, my jaw dropped and I was like, what is this nonsense? I didn't buy it. But I bet that really, that sort of crazy resonated with people. Those people would buy your Gears of Fantasy. I would probably need to see a really series of great reports coming out that that actually worked before I would try it. But I tend to play it a little more conservative on my game selections. So for me, no. I just can't imagine it happening.
    70:44
    The road trip emo guy who's killing the aliens with his chainsaw shotgun. He's like, why am I the son of a king? Why are there locusts? Why do I have to chainsaw them? I don't want to get married.
    71:04
    It's okay. Do you like her? She's all right. What do you think of locusts? They're kind of mean. I'm sad. My dad doesn't love me as much as he loves the country.
    71:17
    I've got a friend who takes selfies everywhere. Even in the middle of a fight when we're getting our butts kicked, he's got to take a selfie.
    71:24
    Yeah, he's leveling up his photography. It's higher than my fishing skill. Oh. My games in play, I already talked about them some. I've mainly been playing Doom and some other random games, like older games in my Steam list.
    71:44
    And I've recently gone through my Steam list and actually deleted from my computer games that I've beaten or not played in like a year or two. and I managed to clean up 320 gig on my computer nice I know right it's amazing what happened the number of games that I had installed on my computer that I hadn't played in years and years and years but I have to say what I have been playing has been it's been solid I like the story in Doom is kind of a minimalist story, but that really works for what it is. You don't need something big and fancy. It's literally, oh, hey, yeah, there's gates to hell open and there are demons everywhere. Oh, okay, that's what I do. I kill demons. And that's the story. But they put enough humor and interesting stuff in it that it works really well. And I've been enjoying it as a single-player, a first-person shooter campaign more than I have probably any other one I've played in the last several years.
    72:58
    I honestly can't think of the last time I've enjoyed a first-person shooter campaign this much. Maybe Modern Warfare, or, I mean, there had to have been something more recently than that. but like I said I've been playing a lot of that and I've been playing other little just kind of time waster games like Infested Planet and Creeper World which are both pretty similar type of games where it's hey look there's giant masses of enemies you need to kill all of them and slowly work your way around to kill whatever is spawning the enemies and then you just keep moving around type games I like those as kind of mindless slash pseudo-mindless background games that I play when I'm listening to something like a podcast or if I'm watching a video or something. I'll run them as something I do that doesn't require a lot of attention. Because I can't like if I'm playing Doom, Doom requires all of my attention.
    74:03
    So it's just one of those things. But those are the main games I've been playing lately. And the...
    74:16
    There's a new South Park game coming out. We talked about this at E3. Yeah, that one caught my eye. And it was supposed to have been out, and it got pushed. And there's been a lot of games that were supposed to come out at the end of this year that got pushed until next year. And I'm kind of looking forward to it, because in the South Park, Stick of Truth was a lot of fun. and so I've got hopes that the Fractured But Whole will be a solid game as well. It's probably in my 2017 hopes games that I'm most looking forward to next year.
    74:56
    There are a few games that came out at the end of 2016 that I haven't had a chance to pick up yet but I am looking forward to playing like tyranny. Have you heard about tyranny? No, I have not.
    75:10
    Tyranny is, let me pull it up so I can tell you read directly from the source. That way I'm not being all wrong and stuff. Tyranny came out in November, I believe.
    75:26
    Here it is. It is a... In Tyranny, the grand war between good and evil is over, and the forces of evil won.
    75:39
    And you're playing an underling force of the evil that won, and you are sent to control your portion of the world.
    75:53
    And it is a full-on RPG. It was put out by... Oh, what's the company name? I can't remember, Obsidian, who are fairly well known for their RPGs. Yeah, they're pretty big. Yeah. And it looks like a really interesting game. I've watched some videos of people playing it, and I'm a big fan of Obsidian. I have Pillars of Eternity, which I still have not beaten. I need to probably start that game over because I kind of got myself in a bad place and didn't really like my character. but I kind of like these big RPGs they're very old school type RPGs and I like that there's a company putting them out nowadays I just wish I had more time to pour into them but it's on my short list for next year with this new South Park game and they going to be part of my hopes for next year is that I will have more time to play And I'm also hoping to get games closer to release so it's not like Doom, where it's been out for almost, what, eight months before I bought it and tried it.
    77:16
    But overall, I think 2016 was a good year for video games. There were a lot of solid big games that came out, a lot of games I played that I enjoyed. And I think 2017 is going to be the same type of thing. We're going to see a lot of good games this year, and I really believe that. The question is, will we see any that really do everything we want to see? And there will be games that don't work. It always happens.
    77:44
    But I think it's going to be a good year for games. uh that would my hope is that it is my 2016 was and when i back at the beginning when i mentioned not everything about 2016 was bad what i was specifically thinking of was the video game segment because the video games there were so many well-reviewed well-received and well-enjoyed video games that i don't think 2017 is going to be able to live up to 2016 my hope is that i'm wrong and that the games in 2017 can actually exceed what we got in 2016. But there's not a whole lot on the... There's still things in 2016 that I want to try, like Titanfall 2, I have heard, got a really good single player and that it actually worked out being a good multiplayer game, which I had tried the tech demo the first week, and it was pretty clunky. I heard they improved that after the first week, but, you know, as a for example. But you think about that and Doom and Battlefield 1 and even Gears 4 and its combat mechanic and the Final Fantasy finally coming out. There is just so much that came to fruition in 2016.
    78:57
    2017, yeah, it's fractured but whole. I'm keeping my eye on that one. I'm keeping my eye on Cuphead, which should have been out by now, I think, but it's also been pushed back. But I mean, 2016 with things from Firewatch, which I still haven't played, Inside, which I still haven't played, you know, sort of epic indie storytelling games. For the PlayStation people, the Uncharted 4. It's just, I think there's just so much there, and I haven't seen enough major things on the 2017 horizon because most of the big stuff, we already know what's coming. So I just, I don't think it's going to be as big of a deal. but my hope my one hope is that I am wrong and that the one thing is obviously we play on different systems but the console generations are very defining on a lot of the AAA stuff because it needs to come out on everything the consoles are settled enough now, I think 2016 proved that, the good stuff is they figured out the tech, they know how to use it now, it's no longer those weird growing pains that happen during the console transitions so there's nothing that should prohibit 2017 from being better but I don't think so I mean everything hit perfectly on the in 2016 the way things dropped I mean because there were games that came out in 2016 that nobody expected anything I mean like Firewatch is an amazing story that was done with this beautiful artwork and I'm not normally an art type person but it hit me and I really enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to some other games that hit me in the same way I've heard Inside it has an amazing story as you said earlier and it's on my list of games to try eventually there are so many of those type of games that have been coming out lately that several of them I haven't had a chance to try and it will be good or hopefully will be good but I know next year coming out everything there's a lot of games that have a lot of hope in them or I should say there's been a lot of stuff played because as I recall isn't Sea of Thieves supposed to come out next year?
    81:24
    Well this year it's supposed to come out in 2017 and we got a lot of hype off that But, you know, I don't know. When we did our E3 episode, that was one of the games that none of us were excited about. Yeah, I know. But it's getting a lot of hype. I've seen so much hype on that game.
    81:42
    And we just got the announcement late this year about a new Marvel V Capcom for fighting games. And I think For Honor is finally supposed to drop in 2017. or did it drop right here at the end of the year? I don't know. Actually, I was going to ask you about if For Honor was out because I know that was on your short list. That was on my short list, but February 14th. So they do love us. Yeah.
    82:17
    And what was the – I'm trying to remember the name of the game with the robot dinosaur creature things and the lady with the bow. that was anything that we liked so much. Yeah. It looked so good. What was that? I don't remember.
    82:36
    I do not remember. There's so many things. I've seen so many things that it just doesn't. Here we go. It is, I think,
    82:49
    oh, Mass Effect Andromeda is coming. Yeah, that's definitely a big one. but I haven't even played Mass Effect 3. I probably should. I really liked Mass Effect 2. I liked 1 a lot also. Haters, don't be all yelling at me. Except 1's engine was horrid. So the whole combat, again, like Final Fantasy 15, the combat mechanics in 1 don't feel good to me. And unfortunately, it's a big detraction from the game. But it's a great RPG, aside from that. Aside from that. Horizon Zero Dawn is that game. I thought it had an H in it, but there's so many games. And that's coming in February too. And that's a PlayStation 4 game, which means I'm not going to play it because it looks beautiful.
    83:38
    But it looks beautiful. I mean, it's a game I'd like to see and hopefully someday it'll come on to something else or that or I might end up breaking down and getting a PlayStation at some point. Not just for that, but just because there's a lot of games coming out. There's a game I watched somebody play the demo of. It's called Nier Automata, and it's going to be on Windows and PlayStation 4, and it's coming out in, I think, March. And this game looks insane.
    84:14
    It changes as you play. It's a spinoff of the Drakengard series of games, but it's an action RPG, and as you play, it changes from being a side-scroller to being a top-down to being... I mean, it changes as you play and enter the different areas. I think I saw the trailer for it. Yeah, and I watched... There's a demo out there that people on the PS4 can play. I talked to Mike. Mike has played it. And I watched... I saw one of the people that I follow on YouTube played it, And that game just looked like it checked every single box of awesome.
    84:54
    So I'm hopeful. And since it's got a PC release coming, I'm probably going to put that on my short list for this year. Mm-hmm.
    85:08
    Yeah, I'm not sure what... I haven't really built up much of the 2017 list. I have a tentative eye on Crackdown 3. I thought the first two were fun. I've got a couple others that I've kind of wish-listed to somewhat keep track of. But I generally wait because I don't, as noted in past episodes and earlier even in this one, I don't normally get games on release. I usually wait for sales or I add them and just accept them as gifts, which means I wait. So, I mean, the only retail purchase I made this year where I got a game at release was Battlefield 1. That's the only one I did.
    85:50
    I don't have anything I'm planning to do that on 2017 so far. I did. I got XCOM 2 at release. I did not regret it. I got Firewatch at release because it wasn't horribly expensive and I'd read so many good things about it and heard so many good things about it. I went ahead and just, I took the dive and I'm so glad I did and I think everything else I waited for until they'd been out for six months or more and I had big sales, that's part of the reason my gaming is so far behind what's the new hotness is because I tend to wait I don't, I wait, I definitely wait for reviews because so often games sound good and they don't actually work but Yeah, we'll see. I'm hoping to get some games at release a bit more this year.
    86:48
    Not a whole lot, but there's certain titles that I consider high enough priority that I might grab it.
    86:58
    Surprisingly enough, I did not get Civ VI at release. And I think this is the first Civ game I've not grabbed at release. And the only reason was just because I didn't have enough time to pour in that I knew a Civ game would require, because I can lose myself into a Civilization game for days and days upon days upon days. Yeah, I still don't have that. Actually, not all that long ago, I was playing Civ V, continuing one of my prior saves that I had on my old computer when I moved over to the new one. And I thought, oh, Civ VI, that's out. Why don't I have that? And then I went back to playing Civ V. Yeah, I have played Civ V within the last month.
    87:38
    So that's something that, yeah, works for me. Good. Okay, well, I guess we can move to our final segment, which is a tabletop. Our tabletop section.
    87:52
    Being over the holidays, there's been some tabletop playing around the house. We've mainly played with the girls, played the normal. They've got games they like that are not exactly what you would call the most.
    88:07
    They're not the most adult-friendly games, but they're fun for kids. So we played a bunch of those. Yesterday. Yes, including yesterday.
    88:16
    And we've been playing some other games. But my big things this year is I have attended, I only attended three local board game nights last year. And they're a monthly board game night that happens like two miles from my house. Yet somehow I managed to only go to three of them last year.
    88:37
    I'm going to try and do a lot more of those this year. They will, there's always a lot of fun games and always a lot of, there's a lot of friends. Those are the only times I see them, really, because of schedules and everything else. So I'm going to go to more of those this year.
    88:56
    I really want to play some more Secret Hitler. I need to get my hands on a copy of that game. And it's a long way off yet, but I'm already looking forward to attending CanCon again. And I'm thinking about looking. I know there's a couple other cons earlier in the year. I'm thinking about maybe if I can free up the time and stuff going to another con or two to get some more RPG play time in. And my big last hope is that I am going to finish up one of the like five different RPG campaigns that I've been writing down and building and actually play them with somebody and actually DM them. I mean, I've got the hero system one, or not hero system, but the superhero one is probably the farthest along that we got from that superhero game we played at Can't Con. Right. I've been working on, I haven't done anything designing a game for D&D. I've just worked on my characters for D&D. And then I actually was going through my stuff, and I've got several of the Star Wars role-playing game books. for the initial release. They've got three releases now. They've got one that deals with basically your Han Solo types, your outlaws and your pirates and smugglers and stuff like that. It's Edges of the Empire.
    90:28
    Then they've got one that deals with the rebels. You play as the rebels. and the last one that brings in Jedi and stuff like that.
    90:47
    And the systems are all very similar, and they all play the same. It's just Edge of Empire, they're all aimed at different things, and you have different goals and stuff. And I've got the first set for playing smugglers and bounty hunters and such. And I've been kind of knocking some stuff together for that when I've been in an especially Star Wars-y mood. So I'm hoping this year that I actually Follow through and finish One of these and at least get A game or two run because it's been So long since I've DM'd anything But I'm Hoping to play I'm hoping to Get back into it I'm hoping to get the time To get back into it which is the big The big thing I mean we pinball a couple times a month A board game night another time a month Plus all the normal family stuff and our game Night and work stuff and being on call constantly. It seems like my time, there's points where I seem like I've got tons of time and I'm just sitting down going, what should I do? And it's like, well, there's not really much I can do right now because I don't have enough time to set aside like a day to do something. I've got an hour here, an hour there. But hopefully things will iron out and smooth out throughout this year and I'll be able to get some more of this stuff in yeah time management is always a challenge for for things everything wants so much that's why that's all right towards the end of the year in particular uh on like on pinball for example i started to the tournaments it's like okay you're doing are you doing a herb style are you planning to have an event that's going to run eight hours i just don't think i'm going to do it sort of thing because it's just it's so much time and so much sitting and waiting and i just it's like i'm That's just a little too grueling for me.
    92:36
    Because I do a lot less tabletop than you. I don't really have high hopes. My simple hope is that I will be exposed to some more good, fun games that actually resonate with me, like how Secret Hitler did. If I could have a new Secret Hitler, that would be great. Something where it's just like, wow, this is really a lot of fun.
    92:56
    I am hoping to do Can't Con again. I'm hoping there are no scheduling conflicts or anything to get in the way. and be able to do that because that was neat.
    93:06
    I just am keeping these hopes simple. My pinball hopes, I had those super ambitious ones. I had my moderate video game ones, and these will be my simple ones. Keep it simple. Keep it safe. Keep it simple. Keep it safe. Yeah, that's not a hard thing to do. I know I've got several games I've kickstarted that are – supposedly going to be hitting this year. Several of them were supposed to have hit last year, but got pushed back. I know at least one of them is slated for a late January, early February release.
    93:56
    If I remember the thing that came out correctly, the update we talked about it before the noisy person cards yes that one sounded really interesting because of voices are special so yep it's looking to be out early this year they're looking to start shipping mid January is what they're saying so I should have it in a playable form by late February at the latest, I would think. Not for sure. I'm hoping to give that a try. I know there's a couple other games I've followed that are due out. The Planet Mercenary, they're looking at the first or second quarter this year, which has them pushed back from their original release date, but it's not been any doubt about that. they've been very good about keeping up with because yeah they were originally supposed to come out in May of 2016 and now they're looking at May of 2017 and that seems to be very normal I mean they've kept up the news they've told us exactly why they've pushed and what's the problem so it's not like there's anything that's gone wrong or gone bad with that So they do good communication. They do really good communication. I think that's a big secret thing.
    95:35
    Not so secret, but in Kickstarters are for the communication. Like I know one of my kids, I've given up on some of my older Kickstarters. I know like the Robotech RPG Tactics, I've gotten half of it. and I that's honestly I think that's all I'm going to get I don't think there's going to be any more because that game successfully funded in 2013 and I got yeah I got half of it which I guess is more than how do you get half a game I don't do they like rip it in half and just mail you half well it's a minis game and they sent out the starter boxes that had I mean I've got probably actually I ended up with probably more than half but not everything I ordered because they sent out the first round of stuff and then there was going to be a second wave that had all of the extra uh all the extra add-on stuff that they were adding later and that would be taking longer to put out than the main initial wave. And the second wave has never materialized. And I honestly cannot remember the last time I got an update from them. I think it was maybe pre-GenCon this year. I think they put something out.
    97:17
    Yeah. There's been nothing more recent than that. Well, let's hope that in 2017 you get more of your haves.
    97:28
    Yeah. Holist money. Let's go for holist. The only things I have outstanding currently is Planet Mercenary, which they've been pushing updates constantly, and I know what it is and where it's coming. Noisy Person cards, which they just put out an update and told us exactly how it's coming along And the Threadbare RPG that we did the interview with last year, they've put out updates. It's coming along very well. It's still looking to be aimed for March or just after this year.
    98:13
    And, of course, Battletech, which is not looking to be. It's looking to go into alpha or beta this year, but it's not looking for a release until probably 2018 is my guess. But that's to be expected for a game with a long build time like that.
    98:36
    That's no real huge surprise to me. All right. Well, I think we hit everything that we planned to hit. We have. We've made it almost a year. next episode is our will be our formal i guess one year will be will the next episode be the formal one year i knew it was one of these well i i think our very first episode actually released january 31st of 2016 was when we recorded it so i guess you know that would be that will give us next episode 26 because we do every other week so we'll actually have done a year's worth it would be. So the next one would be the anniversary date. The next episode would be the formal conclusion of one year of podcasting for us. Yes.
    99:23
    Doesn't seem like a year. Oh, it doesn't? It sure feels like it to me. Maybe it's because I get to edit all of it. Maybe. But yeah, it just practically writes itself. That's the convenience of just responding to the creative endeavors of others, criticizing them and tearing them down. It's a pretty good gig. It's too bad there's no money in it.
    99:49
    Well, there is money in it. You just not for, you know, us. You have to be huge and get a company back. This is what we do. We change this. We change this to the Eclectic History Podcast. We come out every other week with a new episode talking about some major historical thing where we well research it. We write an entire script. We read the script out. And then Casper Mattresses is going to come knocking saying, we need you to help us sell mattresses. And we'll be like, we'll be happy to help sell you mattresses. That's the dream. Casper and Audible. Those are the dreams, right? Yep. And yeah, I don't want that like Squarespace money. I need bigger money than that. we need to be EGP needs to be the coupon code to get you $50 off of a queen size mattress that's what we need right there it'll solve almost all of our problems we just need audible Casper money and maybe Dollar Shave Club maybe I haven't decided on them yet Dollar Shave Club or Harry's one of the ones I listen to it's Harry's I hear Harry's more on the podcasts, but I see ads like on YouTube for Dollar Shave Co. I don't know. Folks, if you need razor blades, get DE blades. Just go to Amazon or something and buy yourself a DE razor and buy yourself DE blades. They're like 10 cents a blade. Yeah, that's what I do. I just use a DE. That's right. That's what I've done for years. It's so cheap. I used to do the shave soap where you get the soap and you create your own lather and this and that. Nowadays, I just get a can of Barbasol because I shave so rarely.
    101:35
    But it works. It does. DE Blades. They're not patent protected. Anyone can make them. Anyway, enough about promoting the DE Blades that aren't giving us any money. Those fools. After all, we've done for them just now. If you want to reach out to us to talk preferably about games and not Barbasol, you can email us, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. you can also reach out to us on Facebook as I mentioned earlier in the show that's facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast we're available on Twitter and Instagram as eclectic underscore gamers and I think I should because I actually I think it's been a few months since I even plugged it please if you can go to iTunes and give us a rating and review it helps others who are like you interested in these sort of topics find the podcast so we really appreciate that and that's it until next time I'm Dennis and I'll say happy new year I'm Tony and I'll see you on our one year anniversary