BlahCade 43: Timings on the Mind (TotM Talk)

Links

Stream/Download/RSS: http://shoutengine.com/BlahCadePodcast/timings-on-the-mind-totm-talk-15775

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/blahcade-podcast/id1039748922?mt=2

Blab.im: https://blab.im/BlahCade

T-shirts: https://represent.com/blahcade-shirt



Summary

With the BlahCade Tournament of the Month season drawing to a close, it’s time to put our minds to work on getting a new season started up. But we need your help. If you haven’t already taken a look at the option on the Pinball Arcade Fans poll, let us go through them for you and discuss a few things about them.

We also talk about Zen "Season Passes" and talk about the now-released Electro-mechanical tables in The Pinball Arcade.

Plenty of pinball again this episode. Enjoy.



Timings

• Intro
• Everything in Australia wants to kill you - 0:45
• Jellyfish Pinball - 4:25
• The most pop bumpers on a pinball? - 6:25
• Using the /Q feature on Blab - 7:25
• TotM Results - 7:55
• TotM Season Restart - 10:45
  • Tourney structure
  • Options to consider
  • Tourney format options - PinPortal?
• Zen Pinball’s "Season Passes" - 23:35
• New GI FX in El Dorado EM - 25:45
• EM vs SS El Dorado Behaviour - 28:55
• Fireball Physics Foibles - 30:20
• Tuning for the Fireball Skill Shot - 31:35
• Plunger Behaviour with Analog Sticks - 33:00
• Sound Effects and EMs - 36:00
• Pro Pinball price point - 37:35
  • 99c, or it’s too much?
  • Franchise familiarity makes it OK?
  • Pre-rendering adds to the cost.
  • Cost disparity between mobile and steam.
• Outro - 47:00

Totally agree with Chris about the pricing issue with Pro Pinball. There's no way I will pay €15 for one table. No matter how much in development a product will cost, there is a price you can ask for. People don't care how expensive development was. They are looking at the product and ask themselves, whether the game is worth the price it's asked for. Anything else is not relevant.

As a developer/publisher you need to find the price at which you will generate the most revenue. I don't think €15 is that price. It should definitely below the €10 / $10 mark.

About the TotM: I was quite happy doing the software for the TotM and I think with the number of tournaments we've had, the development time has paid off. As you both mentioned in the podcast, the whole program is heavily customized for this tournament, due to the many rules as well as the group creation etc. So if you want to move on to a complete different format, it might be worth checking the PinPortal or any other Software and create the tournament with one of the formats that are already supported rather than thinking about a format and then trying to make any software work for your format. I'm sure when you started the whole thing you didn't know what would hit you when doing the calculations after the first tournament ;-)

I can't guarantee I have the time, energy and motivation to build something new from scratch. Especially since I lost some interest in TPA/ZEN during the last few months. I'm still playing, but not as enthusiastic as I used to.

I think they should try to get it down to $9.99 at the most. It is a superior product in terms of physics, no question. It's the closest thing to playing real pinball, which brings the value up at least a few notches. It also has the full operator's menu which makes it like having the "Pro Version" of a TPA table, and the graphics are quite a bit better than TPA as well, so I think that makes it reasonable that they charge a few more bucks for it...but unfortunately like SYT said, it's going to be really hard to compete with the other pinball apps. I think if you haven't played it, you would be quite impressed by how good the physics are compared to everything else out there (as well as the light show), but you would never know that because you most likely wouldn't be willing to pay the entrance fee to sample the goods. Maybe they need to put out a playable demo or something so people can experience firsthand that it's a higher quality product.

Jeff Strong said:

I think they should try to get it down to $9.99 at the most. It is a superior product in terms of physics, no question. It's the closest thing to playing real pinball, which brings the value up at least a few notches. It also has the full operator's menu which makes it like having the "Pro Version" of a TPA table, and the graphics are quite a bit better than TPA as well, so I think that makes it reasonable that they charge a few more bucks for it...but unfortunately like SYT said, it's going to be really hard to compete with the other pinball apps. I think if you haven't played it, you would be quite impressed by how good the physics are compared to everything else out there (as well as the light show), but you would never know that because you most likely wouldn't be willing to pay the entrance fee to sample the goods. Maybe they need to put out a playable demo or something so people can experience firsthand that it's a higher quality product.

Click to expand...

Great idea about the demo - the original Pro Pinball - The Web back in 1995 came with a playable demo on a PC Magazine CD-ROM that gave you something like 40 secs playtime. As it was MS_DOS based you needed to re-boot the PC to play for another 40 secs. It made me rush out and by the game. The only problem nowadays, there are so many a**holes on Steam if they get that experience they would instantly rate it with 1-star which might screw the game too. I guess if the game makes it clear that the demo only last a few mins then that might work.

The iOS version had a limited score play and you could buy the full version in game.
And yes, many many as sholes gave it one star for that.

But I definitely think they should do something like that. At the moment I think cabinet features will one day come for free, so may be this could be the 5 bucks to lower the initial price and make as DLC.
What the heck, I gladly payed the full price.

It is important to note that I am notoriously cheap when it comes to buying software. I will hunt and scour and wait just so I don't have to pay full price. Strangely, not a fan of used. Go figure. Jeff brings up a good point that no matter how good the product is, if people don't play it they'll never know. I doubt anyone though would dig into the operator menu or briefly play with the lighting and think it justifies the price.

There's also something about it only being one table that needles me. Not sure how to express it, other than I feel the same way about an arcade that only has 1 or 2 machines on site. It some how diminishes the experience. It's a very abstract feeling that might not make a lick of sense to any of you, but to me it's a flashing red light.