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On the plus side, at least they weren't shut down, unlike some other Embracer studios.
Hopefully the restructuring will make them more sustainable in the years ahead.
We know that new products are coming, including another attempt at VR.
One has to wonder, what are you expecting? There have actually been a lot of new tables in the last few months.
It seems like someone is trying to farm Jester awards. Glad to see no one, as of when I make this reply, has risen to the bait.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/2328760/discussions/0/4338734905947849912/#c4345491756986801207
Amen. I've seen today's live service games that are completely dead on arrival; Pinball FX is not one of them.
Pac-Man and Arkanoid Battle Royale games on Steam, I'm looking at you.
Right with you there. Gotta admit, I'd much rather see more new content and bugfixes than VR support - especially given what a relative niche VR is.
It was the greatest all those tables.
idk how much money is in video pinball, that scares me for zen, maybe thats why we are getting no tables..i know 3 are coming but then what? Pinball arcade dropped 6 a month for a while i think. i dont wanna say this next thing, i also dont know jack but they should have stayed with fx3, they had alot of goodwill back then i thought, but what do i know, ive been gone for a while till recently and havent kept up.
As someone only interested in the Williams tables, this is disappointing but at this stage understandable and not just because the dev team has shrunk. They can do whatever they want with their own original tables, but the Williams recreations come with varying expectations that Zen have struggled to live up to and part of the problem here is Zen's attempts at trying to please everyone, casuals and hard core alike. The player base can't agree on what they want and because of this Zen kind of can't win. That isn't the case when it comes to originals, so I don't hold it against Zen for leaning that way now.
If I was in charge of that company I would split them into 2 different games - Pinball FX for Zen originals and lets call it "Williams / Bally Pinball Classics" for simulations. I'd market them differently and manage the communities differently.
On the surface it makes sense to merge both into the digital pinball salad like Zen have done but the community is divided by two very different audiences. That leaves Zen in a tricky spot.
I don't know if the community is as divided as you think it is. I think the issue might be a bit echo-like. People who communicate on forums like this one are usually only the most enthusiastic fans. These people who are that dedicated will include a disproportionate number of people who want hyper realism and/or have also played a lot of VPX and the like - and therefore are more familiar with older tables. Ditto the relatively tiny number of people who play with a virtual pinball cabinet, or VR.
The reality is that this is a vocal part of the player base, but I would be surprised to learn that they were a statistically significant part of it. Don't get me wrong, I think that developers should try and cater to as much of their audience as possible and complaints about physics by hardcore pinball fans not finding it 'realistic' enough have their place, and if these complaints can be addressed, then definitely, I'm all for it. But I suppose if I had to make business decisions for a company like Zen, I would ask myself: what is going to get me more customers, therefore more money and a better ability to pay my employees and keep developing the game? What is going to please the largest amount of people? Expanding the easier playing and accessible 'normal' physics or pushing the 'realistic' physics even harder? Pushing recreation of pinball tables from 30 years ago that people may or may not remember, or using licenses that can be promoted to a broad audience (the same reason that so many pinball tables use licenses in the first place) and making new tables? Trying to improve the game on all its platforms, or spend time optimising one version (PC) for use in expensive customised computers used by a tiny portion of that version's owners?
I have bought and played everything for Zen's games since FX2, as well as complete libraries in TPA, Malzbies, Neon Nights, etc., as well as VPX, Pro Pinball - hell, all the way back to Epic Pinball. I have played a huge amount of video pinball. I have never felt that Zen were going in the wrong direction, I have never felt their development was worthy of complaint, and I have never felt that the physics were an issue. They are what they are, as they always have been in all video pinball - a part of that particular game. No-one will make 1:1 realistic physics in video pinball, which is why it's a different game from physical pinball, why you don't see virtual cabinets making their way into pinball tournaments the way you do with emulators in speedrunning communities. They're just different. I would rather enjoy playing video pinball than demand greater and greater realism, because you're never going to get there. Maybe that's just me, but I'll bet that a lot of people are in the same boat.
Zen have said previously that originals-vs-real table adoption is split 50-50. But I think the Zen-only and Bally/WMS-only groups are small minorities.
And since Zen is such a small company, I think it behooves them to treat them as one customer base.
And that's we've seen from Zen; they've kept both types of tables in PFX, thankfully.
I really don't believe that Zen are circling the drain. They have considerable IP behind them, they have a valuable contract for the Bally/Williams titles, and they're producing serviceable products.
I think they could and should do better in a number of areas, and I get that people are disgruntled with the lack of Bally/Williams tables, but Zen are still our best hope for commercial digital pinball right now.
Zen's biggest problem is communication. Arguably, it always has been. Zen's management likes to control the narrative.
Every few years they come out of their shell, usually timed with a new product release, but then they revert to form, leaving the community to ask (all the same old) questions. This leads to frustration, and threads like this one.
Individuals at the company do try. But it's the underlying company ethos and management that gets in the way.
I'm not sure that secrecy is actually Zen's friend or best option, given its size and the niche nature of the product.
The phrase "circling the drain" was probably poorly used there but I was referring to the Williams side of the coin. In other words, its basically dead to me, even if its not for you. I think the originals will continue to flow because I think that's what Zen would prefer to focus on, for various reasons.
I would very much like to be wrong and I hope there's a long future for real table sims from Zen, but I'm managing expectations
I must admit, I've never noticed a significant playing difference between the two. Design wise, Zen have differences the way any pinball manufacturer would, and obviously theirs are digital from the ground up and take advantage of that. But I've never noticed a major difference between the tables, at least not so much that I would find it to feel like different games. Is it the designs that bother you, or are you noticing a difference in the physics that I'm not?
Split 50-50 in what way? Monthly sales? Sales Since launch? And what exactly are the "Zen Tables" in this equation? All non-Williams tables, including all the Marvel, Star Wars and other licenses, or are we talking about the non-licensed Zen tables like Tesla, Sorcerer's Lair, etc.?
They *ARE* one customer base. It serves no purpose to pretend otherwise other than trying to stir up the discussion in forums like this.
And if the Williams tables are really neck and neck with Zen designs sales wise, then obviously Zen has an incentive to keep them coming. However, they are undoubtedly more labor intensive and more time consuming to create, since they have to behave at least reasonably close to the original physical tables.
I don't think they are circling the drain either. The game industry is a lot of things but safe and stable have never been in the mix. You can't really draw any conclusions from the things you read here because the people who post represent a minuscule portion of the overall user base, and they are far from a representative sampling in most ways.
Speaking as someone who worked in the industry for many years, I have to disagree. While I do appreciate those occasions when someone like Akos posts here, Zen's job and highest priority is to develop and maintain the game. It's not impossible that there is a certain desire to control the narrative, but it's much more likely that they mostly just don't have time to participate in the sort of interactivity you want.
The signal to noise ratio involved in talking to the general user base, especially for game software, is insane and on those occasions when you DO engage with users, it's far too easy to get bogged down and distracted by a wide variety of little things that most users would never care about one way or the other.
Even just trying to keep customers informed of what you're doing can be a major time sink, and then you end up having to deal with all the noise some of them make when they don't get what they want as quickly as they want it.
When I worked at Sony (PlayStation developer support), I dealt with dozens of developers and there were really only ever one or two that had any concern about "secrecy" regarding anything. Most of them had people working there who enjoyed talking to users and getting feedback, but it was almost always a leisure-time activity they might do when they had an unexpected break from all the primary work stuff they had going on.