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LBX Collective
Sound Off #95 - Transmedia LBE, Olympic Hedgehog, Zombies, and more!
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Sponsored by Alan-1!
On this week's episode we discuss the idea that amusement and location-based entertainment must think like transmedia businesses, using brand collaborations, smart memberships, and flexible programming to drive visits and resilience. Then, as we continue to dive into trends from tariff shocks to XR’s next act, we break down what actually works on the floor.
• McDonald’s x Street Fighter and Disney merch proving transmedia pull
• How facilities leverage film, TV, and sports IP without owning it
• Tariff uncertainty and strategies to protect margins and planning
• Sega’s Sonic youth push and Olympic tie-ins for venues
• Multi-attraction models: mini golf plus escape rooms plus cocktails
• Why weak memberships fail and how to build real value tiers
• XR headsets in transition and the content fatigue problem
• Eventizing sports and films for differentiated, social experiences
• AI for ops, pricing, and insights, not low-quality “slop” assets
• Industry leadership shakeups and the case for operational discipline
• Tribute to Paul Williams and a call to care for our people
Keep up to date with the latest information in the Stinger Report. We cover the competitive socializing sector in the Entertainment Social Arena.
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Are you on the edge of your seat? Because we're about to start with Eli Will. Covering today's latest trends in location-based educators. Brought to you by the LBX Collective. Your community collective is inspired. Alright, everyone. Let's buckle up.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Well, welcome everybody to Sound Off with Kevin Williams. This is number 95 for October 21st. Ready to do it. How are you doing, Kevin?
SPEAKER_03:Well, autumn is definitely being felt here in London. So yeah. It begins.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, for sure. I'm in Boston for this recording, and it's great because I get to see leaves changing color. So I don't normally get to see that. So it's got some beautiful reds and oranges and yellows out there. So it's great.
SPEAKER_03:Leafer.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, indeed. Well, uh tell me, how are we uh how are you going to change my mind this time?
SPEAKER_03:Well, uh, following on from uh my visit from the brand licensing uh Europe Expo, uh as well as what's been going on in the news, I think we really do need to uh define the amusement industry as a transmedia uh business. You know, there are so many corporations now that uh are using uh our brand, as it were. And we're we're we in the traditional trade don't seem to be benefiting from this, while I think the brand owners have suddenly worked out how important this is and are jumping on board. So there I give you the example of a mashup between McDonald's Japan and Capcom, where they're actually using the Street Fighter characters uh in a commercial for their uh local audience. And if you go onto the Friends of the Stinger Report Facebook, or if you go onto my LinkedIn, you'll actually see uh the advert in full. It's really good. It's playing off of the arcade roots, um, it's promoting the Street Burger uh uh concept, but they know their audience and they know that it's appealing. You know, our friends uh at Disney pushed very hard to make sure that the popcorn buckets were suitably themed for the Tron Aries, and we even had an arcade container, not a bucket, an arcade container with uh illumination and working parts that was very popular. Uh, seems to be even more popular than the film itself. It is this transmedia, this ability to have a media brand that can transverse multiple different things. And you know, we know from location-based entertainment that our friends at Netflix are looking at that prospect of having their brand represented in VR games, but also you know, owning the facilities themselves. We're seeing that from other companies. And we'll be talking about not this week, maybe not next week, but within the next couple of weeks, we'll be talking about another major brand that will be jumping in to want to have its representation in the bricks and mortar, in the video games, and in the faces of the players.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think it's important to call out you can no longer rely on your brand or your IP being in just one area of media. I mean, we've seen amusement and classic arcade IP moving into media, um, and both from location-based, like physical, you know, location-based entertainment, but also just other media onto YouTube and to movies. And we're seeing the same thing happen inversely. So you have movie IP and TV IP moving into uh LBE and attractions as well as amusement and arcade pieces. And so, you know, you really have to think about developing your brand. Or if you're a facility, bringing these in, taking advantage of the different things that are happening out there. What could you do to promote these types of like when Tron comes out? What can you do to have that type of experience and sort of Tron pop-up experience inside of your facility potentially, right? Things that obviously don't violate IP conflicts and things like that. But you know, there are ways to take advantage of these opportunities as well, even if you aren't a brand owner or IP owner yourself and you're just leveraging the IP and brands inside of your facility.
SPEAKER_03:It's a two-way street. Uh, and you know, as I reported on when I visited uh Gravity Maps recently, you know, they had themed their mini golf uh through a partnership with Coca-Cola. They had themed uh their social uh entertainment space, their bar and uh AR Dart space uh through a Heineken relationship. These are the things that we need to be mindful of, though again, you also should have a unique brand that can become its own transmedia experience.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Well, coming up right after the break, we'll dive into the latest trends of the economy.
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SPEAKER_03:Thank you, Alan Wan. And moving into the trends regarding uh the economy, and the big one that seems to have the uh the largest ramifications for us in the industry compared to all of the other tariff-related uh ramifications, has been the announcement of a possible, I have to use the word possible, uh, 100% tariff on China. As of uh presenting this, we uh are still in the black, or the dark as it were, uh, towards working out how the Chinese will re uh respond to this and whether this is a ploy towards uh uh building negotiations. No one knows. We're all uh you know fumbling around in the dark, is what I'm trying to allude to. Uh and there is concern already. You know, I've spoken to a couple of Chinese-based uh corporations, one in particular I was speaking with, that is uh concerned that they can't make any serious decisions about what they're planning for marketing, presentation promotion, and shipping until they know where their uh their parent operation, China, uh stands regarding this. What's the point of putting anything on a ship to ship? What's the point of making any uh payments if you've got a 100% tariff uh repa you know hanging over you? It is seriously concerning uh that you know this kind of brinksmanship is being played with an economy, especially at this late stage going in towards uh the holiday period.
SPEAKER_01:And the issue here as well is not just the 100% tariff itself, because that certainly has a massive impact if it goes into place, but it's the uncertainty and it's the whiplash effect that his mercurial nature does to the economy. Uh he wakes up one morning, reads a tweet, decides he's gonna throw 100% tariff because he gets upset morning because he hasn't eaten his Wheaties yet. And now we have a potential 100% tariff, and we don't know whether or not that's actually gonna go into place because it might make white wake up the next morning and be totally fine with uh you know lowering the tariff back down to uh you know 25% or whatever. And so the industry has all industries, but ours especially, you know, or specifically in this case, has a hard time having to deal with it. I know for the Intelliplay, for example, we manufacture our PCBs for our smart bands in China, and immediately we now doubled the cost of our uh of our bands um that we're gonna bring in. Are we gonna raise the cost for our customers? Uh probably not, or maybe we'll have to, depending on what this looks like. So it impacts small startups like the one that I'm a part of, and it impacts large organizations that are shipping massive amounts of uh cabinets across the ocean.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's uh I I think I I get a feeling that uh this um uh changeable nature is uh going to uh uh come a cropper over this kind of attitude because the economies and business relationships do not like inconsistency. Uh I think you made a major mistake though, Brandon. I can't see the President of the United States eating Wheaties somehow.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. It's steak and eggs every morning. There you go.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, definitely. Moving on to the biz, uh, and kind of reflecting what I was talking about previously, a transmedia representation, Sega signed quite a major agreement with uh the International Olympic Committee, IOC, uh, regarding the use of uh Sonic in their branding for the next couple of years. It is clear that they really want to try and uh attract a younger audience uh as well as a millennial and a Gen Z audience to their Olympic events. They have been suffering from uh poor retention and poor promotional retention, and that impacts the advertisers. And so uh the deal with Sega, hopefully uh having Sonic slapped over everything, especially his popularity with his next cup in films, uh, will uh generate what they need to achieve.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh, you know, again, this comes down to that transmedia uh discussion we had at the beginning, right? This is exactly what uh what we're seeing is the popularity of these characters in IP now rolling into massive global uh you know, global uh attention in brands.
SPEAKER_03:This is products and placements and brands from our industry. And if we're not riding on this wave, when in when are we going to see uh our facilities having Olympic themed uh components to uh to their branding and their advertising and their uh you know, even doing deals linked into sports events that are using these kinds of brands? These are the things that we need to be thinking about rather than wondering about how many tickets we can jam out of a redemption machine. Uh we uh charted uh our friends at Fun Labs uh before in Australia. They've talked about in open and shut their uh continuing expansion of their brands uh in Australia, and now that they're looking at Western Europe. We had first Holy Moly open up a number of their unique social golf uh mini golf uh cocktail environments. Now we have the first uh of the uh their hijinks command room or escape room experiences highly themed, now in a twofer deal. So kind of the beginning of a multi-entertainment experience. You don't just only have mini golf to select from, you also have the possibility of trying out an escape room experience, you have the social elements through their cocktail. The first facilities rolled out in Orange County, 35,000 square, quite a large slice. And we know that this is the beginning of a considerable effort in Western Europe.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Uh very excited to go check this out, as I mentioned on the open and shut a few days ago at LBX uh the LBX show. Um, and uh we'll definitely be getting in there the first week of December. Uh so I'll report back and say you know how it how it's been because I've been wanting to get inside of a holy moly and a hijinks hotel for quite some time.
SPEAKER_03:Looking forward to it. Then we have the latest of the spaghetti against the wall moments uh from uh certain of the companies that are becoming usual uh subjects uh for this presentation. And obviously, Top Golf. We talked about uh how they were branding themselves and how they were licensing and how they had turned uh to trying to do watch party business from there. Well, another way of trying to generate revenue is to uh run a membership scheme, and they've rolled out their topgolf playmore uh branded uh uh membership. Again, the marketing team stayed up all night for this one. Uh, and you know, I've looked at the deal that's on uh on offer, and you know, you you get quite a large number of free plays over a period for your membership. You get some discounting on food and drinks and on how many people you can bring into uh the bay at this discounted rate, but you know, fundamentally peel underneath the surface. There's the three questions. Number one, why does it take until now for them to do something like a membership scheme? Number two, is this across all of their facilities? Because remember, some of their facilities are franchised, or is this through select facilities? It wasn't made clear in the press announcement. And three, I think it's too little, too late. This isn't going to generate the type of revenue that they are going to need to sort out the mess that the new CEO has been uh mired in, and it still doesn't give us latitude to how long they are going to still be connected to the teat of Callaway Gulf. Uh, this is one of those um debt share on the Titanic moments that we're going to be talking about again, I think, in a couple of months' time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, this is probably one of the worst memberships uh schemes I've I've yet seen uh implemented. Uh we talked about this during the LBX show a week and a half ago, roughly. Uh so two weeks um LBX shows. And then we had John Keyes on talking from Center Rich talking about memberships and uh for our guest Gab. Um, but specifically this one, I mean, it is$20 for one round of golf, one hour of golf per month, plus an appetizer. So it isn't unlimited golf, it isn't even anything else. It is literally come for$20 a month, you can come and play golf once a month, and you can get a free appetizer for that. Um, and and that's it. I mean, there is nothing else that's a part of this membership. Um, it is uh it is again, like you said, either grasping at straws or you know, deck chair on the Titanic uh, you know, moment. And this uh they really should have given more thought to what type of value they could have built into their membership, even if it were slightly more, right? A$34 membership or$39 membership, but make it unlimited or come in five times or whatever, right? But put your actually add value to your membership here. This is a pathetic attempt.
SPEAKER_03:So I hate giving free consultancy. I will give an example of how much cheddar that they have missed out on. A membership scheme gives you uh latitude and visibility to your whales, your repeat visitors, because having a membership is a kind of means to force them to come again. The gym membership uh membership syndrome, burning a hole in their pocket, the card that you have created to give them as a member. If they're a member, they're a loyal visitor. If they're a loyal visitor, you give them special deals. If they're special deals, you then link them into special offers. If they're special offers, then you offer them more and more incentive to increase the level of their membership. This is a membership applicated and employed by an individual or a group of individuals that don't quite understand the industry that they're working in and have tried to come up with on the back of a wet napkin ideas to generate money, in my personal opinion, not the opinion of the company. Anyway, uh I'm not here to bury Caesar. Moving on, uh, and we have launch entertainment, and they've uh you know revealed that they're going to be uh increasing their expansion and their rollout. Uh, and while they're doing that, they're looking at securing new locations. And in the midst of this, they have announced uh changes in the C-suite, that they've taken on a new chief development officer, uh, as well as looking at um other changes within their management structure. This is now a trend that we're seeing across all of the major corporations in our entertainment sector, that they all seem to be shuffling the guard, as it were, within their operations, as if to underline that uh when in difficult times kick out the uh the top C-suites, uh, and only a matter of uh weeks since uh the departure of uh recent uh prominent uh executives within Six Flags, we have uh the disappearance uh of the chief executive uh as well as some other members uh of the group. And at the same time, we have a news story breaking, which is just bitching from uh one of the previous executives uh that has worked uh with uh CD Fair and uh just uh you know said that it's a mess around the boardroom. This is not good optics for a corporation of this stature. This is serious mess. And I expect by the time of uh Six Flags that either we will have seen a major shakeup in the way Six Flags is operated and run, maybe with uh a brand new board, or we will be walking into a very confused state for a major player within the location-based theme park and resort uh industry.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, if we didn't have to worry about antitrust issues here in the US, because we're already getting pretty close to that mark as far as these large parks are concerned. I would say that this is a point where Six Flags Cedar Fair grouping, right? It is all six flags, but you know, the Cedar Fair uh, you know, underneath that, um, starts to look for an acquirer, specifically Herschand or somebody like that, to come in and pick these guys up who are going to actually be able to operate them like real parks and be real adults around a table. Um, this is uh unbelievable that we've had this much senior leadership either pushed out or or um intending to resign themselves, right? And so you need to lose your executive chairman, an independent director who's your lead there, as well as then the your top two CEOs or your two CEOs from your two groups, all within the matter of weeks of each other is uh is significant.
SPEAKER_03:So, yes, the grown-ups in the facility is uh needed, and we're seeing a number of investment companies uh that control the boards, as it were, of the major entertainment groups looking at this. We will be talking next week about the news from Disney uh regarding their possible shake-ups, as well as other companies that I'm sure uh will be making major announcements of C-suite changes. But hey, watch this space. Moving on, and we have more investment for UAE uh development, our friends at uh Little Lion, who are known for their Crystal Maze experience, for uh their uh Chaos Cart Augmented Reality Experience live experience. Uh they're representative in the UAE. They've opened up one facility of their Crystal Maze uh live experience, which I've done a number of times uh in their UK offices. I haven't done the UAE version of this, but they've uh signed a 10-year deal uh where they'll be rolling out a number of these experiences. I'll be interested to see how much the UAE market can bear of the Crystal Maze. Uh, it is a unique escape room experience. I would actually call it the originator of the mission room stroke escape room concept. Uh it is the formula that many facilities emulate. Uh, and it is an experience much more than just throwing people into a couple of rooms with some padlocks. So, again, it is part of the immersive experience economy that we've seen an explosion in, though aiming at the UAE mask market, which I'm sure they see as untapped potential.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, and I think what's important here too is that this is a 10-year extension. So their first location opened in 19 or 99 uh, excuse me, 1996. In 2016, it opened in 2016, and uh, you know, clearly it's been successful for both parties, Little Lion as well as the Crystal Maze uh IP owners of Bana J. So um, you know, I think this is uh this is good. It's good to see these types of experimental experiences that were experimental in 2016, very early in the experiential immersive uh stage uh period of time. And now it's clearly been doing well in that they want to continue to both expand in locations, but also just continue to keep the existing locations operating.
SPEAKER_03:Well, we will we've already seen in the UK that uh Little Lions has managed to raise some funding towards rolling out three new facilities uh within that territory. So again, this is part of the world domination tour that we see from these type of corporations.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. All right. Well, coming up quickly after the break, we'll dive right back into some more trends with technology. Intercard is the only cashless system designed, developed, and manufactured all under one roof. They introduced cashless technology to the internet industry and have been leading the way for over 30 years. Cashless system to Intercard increased customer spending, debt satisfaction, and boost revenues by up to 30%.
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SPEAKER_03:Well, moving straight into the tech trends, uh and one of the uh developments that we've seen is the the last hurrah, shall we say, of the head-mounted display sector. We know in the consumer side that uh this is in a very transitional period. It has lost a lot of its luster, and a lot of people are sort of waiting for the next shoe to drop regarding uh where this technology is going. We've just had leaked pictures of Samsung's entry into this, a major electronics manufacturer. Funny enough, the manufacturer of most of the internal displays that uh all of the virtual reality headsets use. So while the company now, uh, after owning the cow, wants to own the milk as well. And so they've uh going to roll out their own system, and the pictures were leaked uh of their full system, the Galaxy XR. You notice XR rather than VR, they're going to be pushing a multimedia uh mixed reality approach rather than just fixating to the box on your head virtual reality experience. The interesting part here is that they've partnered with Google to create an operating system. So they really are pushing these headsets, mixed reality headsets, as kind of an extension of your phone and maybe the future of this kind of technology application.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, Google has obviously their Android platform, but they have an entire VR, AR, OS that they've developed as well. Um, you know, again, they found that sometimes building the software platform is the better path than trying to go and build their own hardware. So partnering with one of the longtime hardware partners of Samsung, um, that uh it makes a lot of sense for the two to work together here.
SPEAKER_03:This is a serious entry. Uh, if Samsung can't get this market to work, no one can. And we are at that next phase of development now where you can see the form factor has seriously changed with uh the headsets. They're all seeming to copy each other's homework, uh, as it were, to create the same kind of system. Though there is a danger that they may be building on sand here, because uh you know our friends uh at Meta went away and created a form factor system, the MetaQuest Pro, that had this kind of it tried to be the uh the Apple Vision Pro before the Apple Vision Pro came out, and it failed. Uh it's too expensive from the audience's point of view, and it came with too little features. So, from Samsung's point of view, this is a tricky market to enter. And talking of Apple, um, Apple has just launched an update to their uh headsets. Um they many people, many fans of Apple were hoping that they would listen to the cries and the pleas of their fan base and that they were going to create a thinner, cheaper, faster system. Well, sadly, Apple doubled down on what they'd already developed. They create, you know, they just created a better head strap to address the weight problem and then increased the weight of the new system and put in a faster chip, but didn't give you any new software. So it's kind of uh take it or leave it kind of approach from Apple. And you know, sources close to uh to the company have kind of revealed that Apple were not entirely happy with the response to uh their spatial computer system and that they've now pivoted heavily into the AI smart glass business. So I think we may be at a very important turning point. The only thing pending now is what happens with Valve at the end of this year if they come into the market with a uh Hail Mary approach, whether we'll still be seeing the same kind of support for VR and XR in the consumer sector, where if you look in the commercial entertainment side, we are still embracing VR and we're still seeing revenue being generated out of it. Uh, I know from some of the context I have in the consumer VR sector, it is kind of a uh you know uh a green eye of envy that our industry seems to have succeeded at finding revenue generation through VR where they've suffered a baptism of fire and quite a significant loss. But you know, in Japan we have uh operations like XR Center Gainspace, who are conglomerate of uh VR developers that have rolled out their own uh arena-based VR experiences, and they've just signed a deal with a major movie chain in Japan that is going to roll out uh a attraction, a cinema attraction based on their XR technology and utilizing their latest zombie shooter VR experience. Again, be mindful, this is the Japanese market. We in the Western market have already gone through kind of a period of uh uh of adopting VR into cinema environments, and it didn't go too well. So this is the difference in markets, maybe where they will succeed, where others have failed.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Uh the only thing, because we did talk about this briefly, so I shared some of my thoughts on the LBX show for open and shut, but uh I'm um how many different zombie uh experiences in games can we have, right? I mean, I don't I don't know when we're gonna decide that we can't have a VR experience without zombies, um, or that we can have a VR experience without zombies. Uh so anyway, I guess I'm just sort of tired of shooting zombies.
SPEAKER_03:I was tired of shooting zombies about four years ago. Um so it it's it's one of those complaints I have about the limited experience calendar. That is being changed by some companies. Those companies that have remained in location-based VR are now looking at a much more broader palette, but they do seem to fall back to the shoot living dead, watch them spew green blood all over the place and jump scare approach. Uh it's it's sometimes uh uh indication of a stagnation in the market when you see the same thing again and again, but I don't want to pre-judge because at IalPra I know that will be the litmus paper really for how well VR is doing in our sector. Moving into the other aspects of uh XR and shared reality, uh we were a little bit quizzical of how our friends at Cosm would transition from showing the matrix uh uh experience to then jumping into the wonderful world of Willy Wonka. Well, we've seen the first tests of uh the experience that they're offering. Uh I'm still not blown out of my socks by what I'm seeing. Um it seems that they have done with the Matrix, uh, where the core central vista is populated with the film and the surrounding bezel, as it were, is uh is themed, and in this case, themed uh to each of the different scenes in the film. Uh whether this will be as big a wow as the Matrix was seen on the Cosm system uh I don't know. But again, we have seen the sphere in Las Vegas doing major numbers with The Wizard of Oz, which was a a film that I was also skeptical they would find the push from. But uh they seem to have found uh some strong ticket sales out of that, and I look forward to be proven wrong over uh Willie Wonko.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean look, I guess if they can have a big enough library of these uh of these films eventually, and they can do a 2 p.m. showing and a 4 p.m. showing in the afternoon, and then flip to one of their other um sports viewings later in the evening, like, okay, it's filling in some time. You've got the facility, maybe you have some of the staff there already. Um, but I really think one of the things that Cosm has done so well is that really enhanced sports viewing experience. And that truly is a differentiated experience. This is more like watching a film with some accoutrements on the sides, and a little bit not quite the same. Although Matrix, I do you know understand is was a much better, uh, you know, which was a much better experience and truly mind-blowing. But uh this one just feels to me a little bit more like they're just trying not hard enough, I think. I was gonna say trying too hard, but in this case, I think not hard enough to make a unique experience. And the way that you really get when you're watching basketball or football or soccer or any of these other sports in a Cosm Arena, it really is a phenomenal experience, and this just seems to be lacking.
SPEAKER_03:Uh if this is being done as a dead space filler uh and they're not paying through the nose for this uh film content and the redevelopment of this film content to suit their screens, then it's a very clever way of having uh time filler. But if it is an expensive process and an expensive IP, then they may be missing the point of what they're trying to do. But again, we will wait and see. Uh the company will have to show their numbers at some point. Moving into the AI trends, uh, and our lovely friends at Meta have uh decided uh a couple of years ago, some of our watchers remember that Meta demanded that all of their employees should be using the Metaverse and VR headsets uh while they're working to you know utilize the immersive experience to help their productivity. Now it's uh Meta is demanding that they use AI to uh increase their uh workload and uh be able to maximize their capabilities. Um whenever a corporation kind of forces its staff to do something, it tells me that the temperature within the company is not good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, there's a certain level of each your own dog food. So I understand like if you're trying to develop AI and you're trying to especially drive the superintelligence path that they're trying to do at Meta, and you know, obviously all these others, OpenAI, et cetera, are trying to do. Um, but it does seem to be a little bit too soon for all hundred hundreds of thousands of employees that work at Meta to be working, and maybe it's just the metaverse workers themselves, right? So not just all of the workers at Meta. Um, but uh still you know, forcing them to use a toolkit that may not be fully fleshed out and ready for them to use or fully rely on. Um, you know, it is it is improving every day. I use AI on a regular basis, multiple times, uh, certainly multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day in different use cases. But um to require somebody to use that, I think is still a little bit too soon. I'm not sure it's fully baked, um, but we'll see, you know, and you again, sometimes you just have to eat your own dog food and figure it out and make improvements along the way.
SPEAKER_03:Uh as a person that doesn't eat dog food, I'll pass it. I will use AI, but I will pass on the dog food. Cat food now.
SPEAKER_01:Moving on.
SPEAKER_03:Moving on, and uh, we have Attack of the Slock. Our friends at Taito, the amusement company in Japan, was lambasted by its uh fan base for uh using AI to enhance uh old photographs. So they've taken uh a considerable number of their black and white photographs of people playing on various of their classic machines and pushed them through the slop machine and outspat a brand new colorized version of the experience. Uh totally downgraded. Uh you know, the faces look uh uncali valley, and they've even had problems in some cases with some of the photographs of uh dealing with the text. Uh it was going to happen, and the audiences voted with their feet, and I think Tato will not be doing much more of this.
SPEAKER_01:No. No, this was just a funny one, too, because you don't need to run black and white films through AI to colorize. Like we've been doing colorization for black and white film for a long time. So it was just like a funny, lazy way, maybe, to do it. I don't know if they were trying to be witty or if they were whatever or ironic, but uh it sounds like it didn't work out very well for them.
SPEAKER_03:The backlash kind of uh shut that one down. Uh and the continuation of uh Hollywood ganging up on AI, though very interesting that uh Minimax is a Chinese AI platform that uh the uh the the war monsters of Hollywood have decided to descend on with legal action over the use of their IP. Um I'm wondering whether it's easier to go for the Chinese AI to start with and then maybe come back and do an under-the-table deal with uh the American uh AI and the European AI developers. We'll have to wait and see how the Chinese government takes to uh this onslaught.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know if I'm gonna go after somebody, I don't know if going after a Chinese company is the way to go about it. I feel like they just don't give a shit. So yeah, um they they probably whatever. Obviously, maybe they have some way to it.
SPEAKER_03:I am surprised that they've gone this route, especially after we reported previously that they'd already had success with one of the other uh American uh AI companies, or whether it's maybe politically easier to go for uh beat the Chinese AI, even if you get no response rather than attack the homegrown entities when they're so uh popular at the moment. But who knows? Uh it's that's what Variety gave us, and that and at the moment Reuters is running uh with this story. Uh I'm looking forward to seeing how quickly it will disappear from the archives. And then finally, to uh uh a talking point. Uh you know, it's uh uh transitional uh period for uh our industry, uh some ups and some downs, and sadly uh we had some bad news uh from our industry. A personal friend and colleague uh uh had passed on. Uh I was lucky enough to have worked with uh and uh dealt with Paul Williams of uh Sega Amusement International uh since he began in this industry, funny enough. Uh just a little rundown for those people who do not know who Paul was. Uh he was the head of uh Sega Amusement International, but before then he actually worked for the real Sega Europe operation that was uh uh in the UK importing uh amusement machines and also supporting the uh what was the Sega Amusement Facility business. Uh some people will be familiar that we had a Sega world in London and in Manchester, uh vast areas, and Paul was a comp uh a very uh competent uh accountant and financial director during that period, and then during the transition when Sega Europe uh was re-evaluating its presence in the uh UK uh and the West as a whole, uh he made a deal uh dealing directly with the Chinese, which was he was a master of, to get them to hand over the uh license for Sega's name and represent it uh as a amusement distribution company in both America and Europe and the UAE. Um he had recently set up uh a division, an umbrella operation that was covering all of that business under Kisen. Uh, and Kaizen Entertainment had also recently acquired uh uh Funbox, uh which was a or is uh a developer of amusement uh venues they work with companies like Gravity and uh Sega Europe was uh in the position of uh undertaking uh some major redevelopments uh towards building its presence in the market, more under the Kaizen brand than under the Sega Amusement International brand, which was uh taking place. Well, anyway, uh I had reported in a recent sound off that Paul had decided to retire from uh his position as uh founder and chairman, and uh we learned that uh he would the decision was forced upon him by his uh deteriorating health. All I really wanted to say was it was a pleasure to uh have known him. I wish the best of the team and I'm in contact with them uh regarding the way forward uh and uh all those people that have been touched by Paul's uh magnanimous nature in the market. Uh I wish them strength during this difficult time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, uh I only had the pleasure of meeting him a few times. I didn't know him well. He was I definitely didn't know him well enough to call him a friend. Um, but every time I think magnanimous is a great word used every time I spoke with him. He was always uh a great presence, very enjoyable, and uh just a good human being that had you know a love for this industry. And uh it's always sad to lose somebody so soon and so early in their lives, um, you know, somebody who had still many, many years left to give.
SPEAKER_03:We will uh make sure that uh his legacy carries on. Uh and uh I know that we're an industry at a certain period where we we have to be mindful that many of our executives uh are retiring and moving on. Um we wish everybody look after their health, please. You know, don't don't overdo it. Uh and I know that uh there will be some plans uh after the funeral uh towards trying to mark uh Paul's involvement in the industry, but uh we'll know more about that uh in the coming weeks. Anyway, that is it from me. Um remember that uh you can keep up to date with the latest information in the Stinger Report. We cover the competitive socializing sector in the other publications. And uh there's also the videos and the audios. If you have any information you'd like to pass on to me, obviously email or LinkedIn. Have I missed anything, Brandon?
SPEAKER_01:No, not uh not this time around. Then another great sound off with you, Kevin, and that we'll see you on the next one.
SPEAKER_03:See you on the next one.
