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Ep 169: The Future is of Pinball Connectivity! | Pinquest
1.2k Plays10 days ago
Pinquest is back! Want to compete across multiple games from different manufacturers and win some free Swag doing it?! Then download Pinquest app on your Apple or Android device. What are you waiting for?
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Transcript
Introduction by Josh Roop and Scott Larson
00:00:07
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Kitchen Ball Podcast. We are on episode 169. I am Josh Roop. With me, my co-captain. Scott Larson. We've got an awesome episode
Where to Buy Pinball Games?
00:00:16
Speaker
today, Scott. But before we jump into that, there's been plenty of games revealed, plenty of games showed off.
00:00:21
Speaker
Where are you buying your games if you're going to get a brand new game in box or even used? Yeah, just call Zach and Nicole minute. You flip it out, pinball. They've always been really helpful to us. and They have new games. They've used games.
00:00:32
Speaker
They have your accessories. They have all that. And so reach out to them. They're always, that they'll give you a great deal. And they'll always be able to find, even if you have that grail machine that you're trying to get. um I actually just ordered a Godzilla premium for my friend.
00:00:46
Speaker
So they, uh, so they're going to be hooked up with Zach and Cole. So again, flipping out pinball. Awesome.
Special Guest Neil Shelton and PinQuest
00:00:52
Speaker
Today we have a special guest on the man is named Neil Shelton. He has done some amazing stuff like specifically with pin quest. If you've been listening to loser kid for a while now, you remember competing in, we did a tournament years ago for the app and you got to win a little trophy or whatnot.
00:01:09
Speaker
And pin quest kind of went dormant for a little bit. And, uh, we want to talk about, what he has planned for it, and the amazing stuff that's coming out with it. And yeah, i don't want to I don't want to give too much away, Neil.
00:01:22
Speaker
Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, guys.
Origins and Evolution of PinQuest
00:01:24
Speaker
First off, okay, where you originally did this concept back in 2019, 2018, right? and Yep. And back then, you had this idea of like kind of doing online scores and stuff like that and competing nationwide.
00:01:39
Speaker
um Where did this all come from? What made you decide, hey, I'm making an app, and this is what I want to do to help pinball? All right. So backtrack to 2016, approximately. I bought a bunch of machines.
00:01:51
Speaker
ah My wife was like, what the hell did you do to our house? um Why are all these machines in here? Found a brewery, put them in there, started operating just by pure chance. Um, I had no idea what the pinball community was like, that there were so many good players out there.
00:02:06
Speaker
What I witnessed was a handful of wizards showing up, blowing up the high scoreboards. And then that was leaving the casual players really nothing to do. You know, there was no online connectivity or anything at that point in time. so um, I've always had a very entrepreneurial thought process in my, my head with stuff. I always look for solutions and I was thinking, you know, how can i make this more engaging for the average player who's not going to be likely, you know, posting high scores on machines. I came up with the idea of, you know, a reward system essentially. So the original concept, um, was, um,
00:02:41
Speaker
it's the The foundation's pretty much still there, but we've just expanded on it a ton. But the original concept was offer a series of quests. A quest um was compiled of missions. Missions were target scores.
00:02:55
Speaker
Once somebody achieved all ah the target scores, they completed a quest. They would then take their phone up to a bar staff or ah arcade staff. They'd punch in a little code, see that they did everything, and then the bar could reward them a prize.
00:03:11
Speaker
So that was foundation one of the app. Um, what we learned early on in the app is that locations, uh, the staffs did not want to have to deal with doing stuff like that.
00:03:22
Speaker
So we kind of put our hats on and honestly put the the app dormant and went back to the drawing
The Relaunch and New Features of PinQuest
00:03:29
Speaker
board. um we kept a couple beta locations in Colorado running during that point in time while we built up, uh, everything that, um, you know, people had asked for uh,
00:03:39
Speaker
We got through COVID, ah we got through all of the PinQuest team having kids, and we're excited to do our re-relaunch with a ton of exciting and new features that we've added onto the app.
00:03:54
Speaker
So for people who don't aren't familiar with PinQuest or have never used it, tell me about PinQuest and tell me what it does now. Okay. All right, so there's a couple layers to this. So PinQuest is a mobile app available on Android and Apple App Store.
00:04:10
Speaker
ah So there's there's a couple different buckets here. So the player. The player is, you know, your average player. You go to a location, you're looking for something to do. ah That is the player role.
00:04:21
Speaker
um you can compete yeah You can complete quests where you can earn what we call quest bucks at specific locations. ah Some states we aren't able to offer that service, um but you can you earn those quest bucks. You can redeem them for swag.
00:04:36
Speaker
The swag gets drop shipped to your house when you do earn that. You can compete in high score challenges on a monthly basis at a location. Locations don't have to reset the high scores each month. The app keeps track of it.
00:04:48
Speaker
And then at the end of the month, it rewards first, second, third place trophies inside the app ah that users then you know have drop into their digital trophy case. um They can participate in
Benefits for Operators Using PinQuest
00:05:00
Speaker
leagues. ah The software fully runs leagues. So a location can run a full-blown league ah You can manage everything from sign up to check in to score entry all within the app for a location.
00:05:13
Speaker
um And then you can also participate in tournaments. We have a full blown tournament software in there as well. So the app is really an all in one app for players to essentially engage with a location.
00:05:25
Speaker
So that's kind of the location level. Now there's an additional level. If there's no participating locations in a region, we have the PinQuest National Location where anybody in the US is able to participate in activities. We can do quests, we can do these monthly high score leaderboards as well.
00:05:43
Speaker
And we can also host ah virtual leagues, which we will talk about with you guys in a little bit for a a little bit of a special announcement there. but That's the national level for the PinQuest location for players.
00:05:56
Speaker
um For operators, this is really an all-in-one marketing suite um to help drive engagement at your location. Again, you're able to offer your users these quests. You're able to offer the high score challenges. You're able to offer the leagues. You're able to offer the tournaments.
00:06:14
Speaker
ah You're able to offer that redemption ah gaming aspect of it that, you know, gives people, ah you know, something to come and play for. It adds so much more when you're able to play for some sort of award. um People really enjoy that.
00:06:28
Speaker
um And it's just... that I obviously have built this um to, to help nurture ah traffic at my location and the the joy it brings me, like seeing people using something, the people that don't know me when I go in there and I see everyone pulling out their phones and completing quests and doing tournaments and stuff like that. It's, it's just so, so cool. And um it feels really good that, you know something like that is happening. You guys have questions about, I spit out a ton of stuff right there.
00:06:58
Speaker
One thing I want to point out, and I don't know if you really touched on this, I didn't hear it, but you're also the owner of Silver Ball Swag. And one of the perks is these Quest Bucks can earn you specific swag for the locations.
00:07:10
Speaker
And... that's really cool. I'm a big fan of silver ball swag. As you can tell, I'm wearing the eight bit shirt. You can get it on silver ball swag.com slash lizard kid. I think it's awesome for operators that don't want to manage the product, but they want to have a product that is promoting their, their site or their location or their overall brand.
00:07:31
Speaker
But yet you're kind of taking that on, on the backend with, with taking care of, hey I'm doing shipping. I'm doing all this stuff. You just got to be part of the app and you get that perk essentially. like Yeah, exactly. so you hit the nail on the head. Locations that are are able to offer the quest bucks, we handle everything. There's no inventory that they have to to manage. When a user redeems their quest bucks for a prize, it all gets automated. it gets created on demand and drop shipped to the user's house.
00:08:00
Speaker
At that point in time, a location gets charged for that merchandise, but they're not having to keep, you know, 30 shirts on hand and all different various sizes. And of course, you never have the right size that somebody wants when when they actually come to redeem it. So it really helps out a location not having to keep that that physical inventory.
00:08:18
Speaker
And yes, you are correct. We we did take over the Silver Ball Swag Shop ah just a little bit over a year ago Um, we were integrated with silver ball swag and, will came to me and was like, Hey man, I, I think, uh, I, I, I'm
Silver Ball Swag and Merchandise Management
00:08:33
Speaker
going to be done with this. And I was, know, but you were, we're closely tied here. So i was wondering if you would like to, uh, consider taking it over. And of course it's, uh, what will and those guys built over there is, is awesome. You know, the first in, um,
00:08:47
Speaker
you know pinball apparel shop to my knowledge, and ah we're happy to keep it running and keeping it alive. So for those that don't know you know, check out the website. We work with a lot of different content creators such as yourselves.
00:08:58
Speaker
You can get all kinds of cool apparel and swag and support your your favorite content creators on there. Well, the other part too, like you talked about this earlier, like you had these locations where they're redeeming stuff at the bar or whatever, and the bar doesn't really want to do that. Like Keto's is one of our favorite places in Utah where it's the pinball machines are owned by someone else, but Keto's is its own thing, right? It's just kind of a help draw the people in sort of situation.
00:09:25
Speaker
Um, uh, And that way it's like you can still build your merchandise and they don't have to, like the bar doesn't have to deal with it. The brewery doesn't have And that's a really, really cool concept because then it's like,
00:09:37
Speaker
When when stuff and have it shipped right to your door. So I cut you off, Scott, what were you going say? Oh, no. And I was actually just going to show one of the great things about it is you can get really cool things. Like I'm putting the lose airs up right now.
00:09:50
Speaker
so you can see they are in my size and I doubt they're going to have a whole bunch of different colors of these. So I just custom ordered them there. They're 12 and a half or 12 or something. And so I was able to get these in the color I want and just little things like that make it so much better than,
00:10:08
Speaker
you know, a bartender is not going to care. Like the they're not going to be engaged in helping you out. So if you are interested in integrating pinball and merchandise and all that kind of stuff, being able to use this app is great.
00:10:20
Speaker
And the one thing that is nice about your app too, is it's not brand specific. Correct. You can use it on any of the machines. um Anything that has a ah score display, obviously, is is what you can use it on.
00:10:34
Speaker
So to touch a little bit on you know how we we go about collecting scores and ah verifying data and stuff like that. What happens is we geofence.
Verifying Scores and Increasing Engagement
00:10:43
Speaker
So when somebody is at a location, um they have to submit a photo proof of the of the score that they have achieved. Unfortunately, you you know, we don't have the ability to tap into all of these machines and extract data.
00:10:56
Speaker
um You know, that is where you know Stern has a grand slam with the ability to be the manufacturer and have access to all of their data and stuff like that. And that's awesome. We'd love to be able to do stuff like that. Any manufacturers listening?
00:11:09
Speaker
always open for conversations. If you ever would like to talk integration, that's my little pitch in there. um But the way we do it is someone snaps a photo of the the score screen, geofences them to make sure that, you know, you're not earning quest bucks at location A. Meanwhile, you're at location B feeding their machines regularly.
00:11:29
Speaker
quarters. So when someone goes to submit a score inside the app, it's a ping in their phone. And if they're not within, you know, a ah specified range of that pinball machine, it's going to say, no, you're not at that location. You cannot submit this score.
00:11:44
Speaker
Um, sorry, Scott, what was the original ass there? I derailed myself. I was just saying it's nice that i okay. Insider connected. that's right yeah It seems that to take over a lot of what you were doing anyway, like your idea, but it is Stern specific and it's specifically games that have been upgraded to you know, the insider connected thing. So you are limited to a certain era of machines and a certain brand of machines.
00:12:11
Speaker
And so the the nice thing about the way you're doing it is you could even back back and and be able to do all these other games that are never going to be connected to the internet.
00:12:23
Speaker
Correct. Yeah, you can absolutely. Like I said, anything with a score reel, you can snap a photo of that and and snag your score proof. um What happens, just so folks know on the back end, is locations are getting ah copies every time somebody completes a quest. They get an email, hey, user XYZ completed a quest at your location. It has all the photos. It shows the geofencing, where the photos, what time the photos were taken.
00:12:46
Speaker
That way they can verify that um you know, the scores were actually accurate and submitted correctly and appropriately. um And then, you know, one thing um to touch on on the ah competition side of things, you know, what I honestly came up with, is it's not that novel. it's just the first time it's been brought. And there's a lot of smart people in this industry. And I'm sure, you know, other manufacturers have been already thinking about this for a long time. So I don't want to ever make it seem like there's any animosity or anything like that for other manufacturers doing stuff like this. I'm, I love insider connected.
00:13:23
Speaker
I'm excited for any other manufacturers that, you know, bring stuff like this. I'm good friends with the score bit guys, what they're working on is cool. Uh, we've, we've all kind of had conversations and, you know, even early on when pin quest was starting Stern was extremely supportive of me.
00:13:36
Speaker
Um, when I, I did some trade shows and they, they gave me prizes. They thought it was a really cool idea. And then, you know, when they started doing their own thing, we, uh, had a nice, uh, separation. There was no hostility or anything like that. i appreciate the stuff that they do. And i I, just want to make it clear that there's like no hard feelings across the industry for, for anything along those lines. And I, I really appreciate the innovation that companies bring.
00:14:02
Speaker
Sure, of but as an operator, this is a nice way of rewarding patients, not patients, sorry. That's my other hat. Your doctor's showing. yeah Yeah, sorry. You're rewarding ah clients or fans to come and actually patronage your place because we know that a lot of locations,
00:14:19
Speaker
It's a synergistic relationship. They're typically not making a lot of money off CoinDrop. However, when people are in the the facility, they're buying food, they're buying drinks, there you're you're generating an environment in which they can spend money.
00:14:35
Speaker
And so by having this and being able to send out quests, achievements, things that they can do at your location, then it's a great way of, of generating a small interested group that will hopefully branch out.
00:14:50
Speaker
And they'll like, Hey, by the way, this is, this is a, this thing's going on at this location. why don't we go ahead? We'll drop some coin in. We'll see what, see what we can do. And there are, know, The games are going to be fun to play, but people always do want those achievements. I'm always surprised because I'm a little older in the demographic. Like I don't understand achievements like other, other generations, but the younger generation, that is absolutely what's driving them to do things. they're like, oh it's, there's, there's a, there's a challenge at noon today.
00:15:23
Speaker
We need to go down and do that. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Um, and that kind of just touches on another point, the, the marketing suite from the operator perspective, like you're able to, well, users are able to subscribe to your location and anyone that subscribed, you have the ability to directly message them, uh, promotions. So in the app, just like you said, you could send out one that says, Hey, you know, if you come in with this, uh, this message on a Tuesday, you know, we'll give you a free roll of quarters or something along like the lines of that.
00:15:52
Speaker
um When a user checks into a location also there, there's a bulletin board feature in there. So user launches the app to see which kind of quests are happening at that point in time, little bulletin board is going to pop up where you can put notes like, Hey, we've got a tournament on the, you know, XYZ of this month, go over to the tournament section, sign up and ding.
00:16:12
Speaker
ah Now you've notified them that there's a tournament that they can register in the app. And then on tournament day, they show up, they check in, You can, you know, mark them as paid, ah get everyone checked in. And then, like I said, fully run a tournament or a league right from the app.
00:16:29
Speaker
One, the other cool part too is, is so the company um I live in a smaller town, I live in a but a town, about 30,000 people. And there's a company that is actually starting to place pinball machines in locations throughout my city.
00:16:42
Speaker
My thing is there's only like three or four in my town. So they cover all the way from Idaho through Utah, a little bit of Wyoming, little bit Colorado. So a product like this, you know, if, if they were to tie all their stuff together and, and do it as their amusement app,
00:16:59
Speaker
um There's like a maintenance
Maintenance Reporting and Game Management
00:17:01
Speaker
thing too. So like I go to play the game and I know the people, so I just called them said, hey, by the way, did you know like the rubber ring on your Congo on the top flipper broke off?
00:17:11
Speaker
You really need to come fix this because it's absolutely useless if you can't play with that. And it's shoved down into the trough so the ball can't get back in there. And with them living up in Idaho, it's, it's not the the closest drive, but yeah you know, if if you have this app, people are more likely to be like, Oh, is there a problem?
00:17:31
Speaker
You take a picture of it, you send it into the maintenance thing and you're notified instantly as an operator, of like, hey, your product's not working properly. And sadly, there if if you live far away from machines that you operate throughout a a state or whatever, that helps you a lot more because you're obviously not in that town and you can't be checking up on it every weekend or even once a month.
00:17:53
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, you're exactly right. So it's a report maintenance feature that we have in there. So when someone's using the app at your location, uh, they can tap a little icon that says report maintenance, pull up. So, uh, it'll pull up a list of all their games. They select the game, they type out what's wrong with it. They hit submit. And just like you said, ding email pops up for the operator. They now, you know, have a record of what's broken on a game. And, uh,
00:18:18
Speaker
In my opinion, nothing is better than an actual user submitting something like that. You know, a switch, you know, check switch notifications. Nice. um But when someone's telling you exactly what's wrong, like, hey, there is a ball stuck under that ramp that helps out immensely.
00:18:34
Speaker
um So, yeah, thanks for thanks for touching on that. Yeah, i think I just think that it's a brilliant idea. like really there's It's funny to me that this hasn't been done yet because there's so much of like common sense use to this app.
00:18:49
Speaker
And and in in this day and age when it's hard to make coin drop, depending on machines and stuff like that, we were talking before the show, certain games start make certain coin drop. but And if that game ever goes down,
00:19:01
Speaker
And this is a passive income. you know If this machine, if you haven't checked up on it a month and it broke in the first week that you went out and checked it, that's three more weeks that you didn't you didn't know it's working. And so it's just awesome stuff like this that can help give an advantage to the operator to squeeze a little bit more dollar out of their product.
00:19:20
Speaker
A hundred percent. Before i I had this in my own app, I would go in, you know, once a week and and check on the games and there'd be out of order signs on, you know, sometimes five, six games. And I'd be like, oh boy, my Saturday is going to be a blast.
00:19:33
Speaker
ah Now, um you know, I get those emails and hey, ball's stuck under that ramp. Hey, flipper rubber's broken there. I know exactly what I'm getting myself into when I go in. And if it's something easy, I can, you know, take a quick trip over to my location and and fix it. So I don't have to go into six repairs on my hour of scheduled time.
00:19:52
Speaker
um but a couple other features that that just, you know, made me think of is we actually have a maintenance log for the operator built in as well to where they can track maintenance that they do perform on their machines.
00:20:05
Speaker
So, you know, if you wax, up ah you know, i got a jaws behind me. If I wax my jaws today, I can take a little note. So I, you know, don't wax it too soon. Or I look at my log and like, Holy crap, I haven't waxed jaws for six,
00:20:17
Speaker
you know, six months, what the hell that one needs some, some love and care or, uh, um, you know, change the, uh, um, the flippers, replace the flippers, um, on this guy, you know, a month ago, instead of me wasting a brand new pair of flippers or,
00:20:32
Speaker
you know maybe I let flippers go too long. So that log is really nice to be able to reference the maintenance that I perform on that machine. then the other side of it is we also have a full ah counting feature where locations are able to track their counts and it graphs everything. So they can see how each game earns historically. They can say, hey, this game's, you know, become a dog that's been trending down. Now it's at the bottom of the earnings.
00:20:57
Speaker
Time for it to go. Um, so that, that's and something that is really helpful and, you know, weeding out which games, uh, need to need to go when it comes to be that time. So again, that's, uh, that all of that is included in the, uh, the operator side of the function. and And just so people know, we have a couple of packages,
00:21:16
Speaker
um We have a basic package. So for operators that have no interest in providing the, um you know, the quest aspect of it and league and stuff like that, we do have a basic package where they can just do maintenance tracking as well as the um counting.
00:21:31
Speaker
um So kind a little handy, you know, pocket tool there. That is $10 a month. And then for locations that do want the full suite of PinQuest, If they're in a state that allows redemption, it's $29 a month. If they're in a state that does not allow redemption, it's $24 a month.
00:21:50
Speaker
So we do have options there. um And just to briefly touch on ah why some states can and can't, this was actually something that kind of delayed our launch. We we didn't really realize how ah gambling and redemption laws, how how broad they were.
00:22:08
Speaker
So, um, got in touch with a, a redemption attorney. Awesome guy would actually be someone great for you guys to even interview. Just he's, he's in his eighties. He's worked for Sega and all kinds of big manufacturers over the years and just really cool history.
00:22:22
Speaker
ah but talking to him, you know, made it really clear that we needed to make sure, you know, all of our, uh, T's were crossed and I's were dotted because, um, you don't want to put yourself in situations where, you know, gambling commissions or anything like that get involved.
00:22:38
Speaker
That's awesome. Actually, I, I think the maintenance would be a huge plus for an operator. um do you have so like on my car, I hop on and it gives me a light and it says, Hey, you may need to check the oil or you may need to rotate the tires.
00:22:54
Speaker
Do you have features like that too?
00:22:58
Speaker
Uh, as far as automated. Yeah. i Just automated. Hey, like, uh, you can say I get heavy play. I get light play. And these are just brainstorming ideas that, Hey, maybe you should schedule like a waxing job every eight months. If you have a light play every, every two months, if you have a heavy play or something along those lines.
00:23:16
Speaker
Sure. And two years replace the batteries on shadow because they're going to bleed all over your sleeper board. Your battery's going rancid and blowing out your board. Yeah. Yeah, no, nothing as far as scheduling goes. um we You know, we we are always open to suggestions and stuff like that. You know, something I'd like to add to is an inventory section. So operators know exactly what parts they do have on hand and if they need to place another order.
00:23:39
Speaker
So, you know, we're always willing to take considerations for app features. And honestly, that's how we got the app to where it is. so We had so many people saying, add this, add that, you know, do this, do that, that it really made us step back and say, okay, we need to kind of shelve this thing. And until we get this thing to where we feel like we've covered almost as broad of a net as we possibly can, we're we're not relaunching this thing. I didn't want to put something out that was 50% complete, tell people that, you know, features were coming when in reality, I had no idea how long it was actually going to take to get these features out.
00:24:12
Speaker
Um, you know, none of the, the, the staff over here, this is none of our, uh, a full-time thing. This is a passion. um we all have our day jobs and, you know, when you're dealing with code and building apps out and stuff like that, it's, it's, it takes a lot of time.
00:24:26
Speaker
So, um, you know, just wanted to make sure that we were actually putting out a complete and finished product before we, we did go live again. that That would be interesting if you had like a, even a home option, because that that would be something that i I may be interested in, even like a low, you know, a low maintenance thing where I put my games in and I don't have a log of the last time I've waxed my games or or even
Features for Home Users and Reflections on Maintenance
00:24:48
Speaker
things like that. And so that would be just kind of an interesting way of encouraging people to say, hey, these are the expected maintenance things for the the use.
00:24:59
Speaker
And because I know there there are some pinball machines that are in and a retro arcade up north. And i went there and the Tron that they have, it's it's a Tron l LE and it is so black, you can't even see the play field because it's had so much use.
00:25:19
Speaker
and And so even for something like that, because I would bet a lot of operators have no idea what the basic upkeep is for a pinball machine, because it's totally different. I have an area 51 machine right next to me.
00:25:33
Speaker
There's no upkeep on that. As long as the, as long as the shooters working. Exactly. Yeah, I'd say that's the biggest, like, hey, anyone listening to this that's thinking about operating like. yeah Yeah, well, OK, but but that that's what I'm saying is you could give them this is like a ah training wheels for, hey, if you're thinking of opening up, ah you know, a few on location, here's just some basic things that you can keep your games running.
00:25:58
Speaker
and optimized because ah everybody knows it can be so painful to to play games on location, especially if you have games at home.
00:26:10
Speaker
Because your games at home, they're leveled, they're waxed, the flippers work, and half the time you go to a lot of these locations and there's like one of the flippers has no rubber, you know, one one of the flippers is like misaligned or the kicker's broken or something like that.
00:26:27
Speaker
And it, it discourages people from going to play those games. Oh, a hundred percent. And I think I personally believe that what might've, you know, helped kill pinball originally back in the day was bad operators. Oh, a hundred percent.
00:26:41
Speaker
I remember going places when I was a kid, put a quarter in, he never knew if the right or left flipper was going to work or both. Yeah. And, you know, that sure makes you want to plug another one in. So I think the, the, for the health of the hobby in general, I think it's awesome that all of us absolute obsessed enthusiasts have essentially taken over and, you know, become the operators of, of the modern day.
00:27:04
Speaker
yeah If I were an operator, I guess that these questions that I'm asking, these are things that I would hope would be future releases into the app to say, hey, hey this could be like training wheels to say, hey that hey, you're just getting into pinball. This is what you need to know.
00:27:20
Speaker
yeah you're You're right about going and playing pinball. When I first got into pinball, we took our kids to a Chuck E. Cheese, which I'm pretty sure has been condemned at this point. But my wife's like, hey, they have a they have a ah pinball machine over there. Because i that was when I had like three machines at home.
00:27:37
Speaker
Yep. And I walked over and it was a Pirates of the Caribbean. It was a Stern. And it looked like it had gone through the mail storm. Yep. It was completely like the rubbers were gone. The flippers were misaligned. i don't even know if the upper a flipper, you know, the getting up into the whirlpool worked.
00:27:56
Speaker
And it was so hammered. And i I don't think it ever had one bit of maintenance the entire life of this machine. I feel bad for this machine, wherever it's limping along somewhere.
00:28:06
Speaker
Yep.
00:28:09
Speaker
So I actually, I've been thinking of two questions. So the first one is you talked about costs and whatnot. Yep.
Free Features and Tournament Management
00:28:14
Speaker
the app is still free to the end user, right? Like the, if you want to play the tournaments, if you want to do the leagues, it's still free for everyone on the app store, right?
00:28:22
Speaker
hundred percent for the end user. It is absolutely free. It's free on the app store. No subscription, no cost. Perfect. Second question is you talked about tournament and you talked about like adding scores and stuff like that. One thing about match plays, you obviously have scorekeepers and then they can just play in at the app, like the score, you know, someone raises their hand, yep they come over, they type it in.
00:28:43
Speaker
Is that how this app works too? Or is this, how how does it work on that end stuff? Yeah. So there's going to be a tournament director or league director that has access to do all of it on, on, on the app, on either the iPad or phone. It even actually works on a PC. So the app is cross-functional, but yes, we do have to call somebody over um mostly for officiating purposes. um You know, with league, I toyed with the idea of,
00:29:09
Speaker
doing all the score entry as players go along. The problem is technology, you know, wifi signal gets lost after a bunch of league plays, loses all the scores, what's going to happen. So, you know, ultimately we ended up with just, Hey, let's use traditional league sheets, turn them into the league manager at the end of the week. And the league manager is going to input all the scores. All that is done in app.
00:29:27
Speaker
um But to answer your question, yes, everything is done inside of the app ah for tournaments and league. But there is the admin, uh, actually inputting the information.
00:29:40
Speaker
you just I don't know if you've got this in there, but you should have like an IFA or IFA, I FPA rule book in there. Just, just because like, don't know. So one of my first tournaments I ran this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Like,
00:29:56
Speaker
That's a great idea. don I can't remember if I've told the story on, I probably have. So one of the first tournaments I did, ah we, I was in the final four. i had beat, I was playing third. already beat one and two on ball three.
00:30:09
Speaker
um and sorry, no, I was playing fourth. I apologize. I already, I already beaten one and two and then ball three, the gentleman got up there was so mad.
00:30:21
Speaker
He stuck his knee through the front of the game rage tilted it screwed up the whole game the other two looked at me because they'd never done a tournament before like we don't know why we do this the was so embarrassed he just left like he just grabbed his back ran and left and and we tried to start a new like but like oh you're supposed to start a new game i guess if if they had known they should have known that like oh like one and two had already like lost i think they'd already completed their game and yeah at that point you weren't gonna lose yeah
00:30:52
Speaker
Yeah, and so, but what happened was is we restarted the game. We didn't, we were able to get scores because we were told, well, that's probably what we should do. We didn't ask the tournament director because we were kind of sheepish about the whole thing.
00:31:03
Speaker
It was just a really weird situation. And in that situation, it's like, it'd been nice to have a rule back. I ended up, he hit the game so hard, it screwed up the getaway we were playing on. Like, you like it wasn't finishing games and like, it was doing funny things.
00:31:17
Speaker
So we had to move to T2, which I was having a hard time not on that night. And i I totally bombed, ended up taking fourth of the whole tournament when i could have taken first if I had just known the ruling on that.
00:31:30
Speaker
yeah you You didn't just call Josh Sharp? And I feel bad. I didn't know Josh Sharp at the time. know you didn't go Josh back then. I know. Maybe I'll add a phone Josh Sharp feature. Josh would love that.
00:31:45
Speaker
He would totally love this. You definitely endorse this idea, I'm sure. now you You know those annoying websites you go to that pops up it's like, we're live chat 24-7. You're going to ask me a question right now and type it in. You should just add one of those and it could be Josh Sharp and be like, go away or something. No, well actually, but there could be some way of like, okay, that's probably beyond what what you're looking for.
00:32:07
Speaker
But actually that's an idea for future, future operators to say, or, or tournament directors to say, Hey, here's a searchable database yeah for what the IPA rules are because they can be oddly specific.
00:32:21
Speaker
Yeah. Um, you know, it's funny you you bring this up.
Support Features and Creator Series Launch
00:32:24
Speaker
We actually do have a chat bot on the operator side that we uploaded all of uh, essentially, um, you know, how to tools.
00:32:33
Speaker
So if an operator has problems figuring something out, they can type it and we, we call it the support gnome. I don't know if you guys remember, um, a gnomes kind of my thing. You're going to see it on a lot of our marketing material. Um, like on travelosity.
00:32:45
Speaker
ah kind of, yeah that's that's kind of where it stems from. Um, It's going to go down a path, but ah essentially me and a buddy, when we would go out to bars and, or travel, we would take a little gnome with us and take pictures with people with the gnome was kind of just fun in college. But anyways, I've always had a little, you know, place in my heart for gnomes. So yeah, garden gnomes.
00:33:08
Speaker
Uh, I don't, i do have garden gnomes. Yes. Um, okay. Yep. Yep. I do. I have a few garden gnomes and they're, they're kind of hilarious, but yeah. Yeah. I love garden gnomes. Um, uh, but anyways, for, for one of the expos, I don't know if you guys remember this or not, but we, there's all kinds of different stuff you can do with our app too, just since it's, you know, all you really need to do is have a ah camera in the app. Um, someone's phone has a camera, like we did a scavenger hunt and at Expo in 2020 where I had a bunch of gnome decals and I hid them all over Expo. I put them on backglasses.
00:33:42
Speaker
And so that was one of the tasks. One of the quests was to find the 10 pin quest gnomes. um But anyways, that that's where this gnome kind of comes from and why our support chat gnome exists. So where I was getting there with that long, long route to get there.
00:33:56
Speaker
I could easily upload the IFPA rule book into this thing. It would analyze it. Then somebody could go in there and type, ah Hey, this is what happened. How do we handle this? And bam. So thank you for that idea. That's something I could implement very easily.
00:34:09
Speaker
i i got, I got donkey kicked and I can't walk. Yeah. That's why you have to stand back when someone's playing because some guys are crazy. Yeah. Oh yeah.
00:34:21
Speaker
Yeah. I didn't know. I didn't realize how, how competitive tournaments can get when I first did it. Like the first tournament I held, we had, ah we have a regular, he's one of my really good friends now. ah He said, Hey, you should hold some tournaments.
00:34:34
Speaker
And i was like, Oh, that's, that's going to be interesting. What the heck? Let's give it a shot. Yeah. Uh, I didn't know how to set tilt bobs. This is how new I was. i had like five brand new Sterns. Didn't have tilt Bob set the good players. and Did you have them in Did you even know just the stick, right? Just the stick. And I, I remember like watching people just,
00:34:54
Speaker
and i i remember like watching people just just throw the games around. and And my, my dad's my business partner on the operating side. And he, we were looking at each other like, what the hell is happening right now?
00:35:09
Speaker
So do, I mean, games got messed up. Opto boards got jacked up. Stuff came unplugged. And i learned very, very soon that pinball tournaments are a real thing and people take them super serious. And the really good players, they get there early and they figure out everything they can about a machine.
00:35:27
Speaker
Especially how, how much they can push it. Exactly. Exactly. ah And you know, you talk about the people that dance and stuff like that. Like there is an art form to some people. I'm going to call her out cause we're good friends, but Jen Rupert, if you've never watched her play, definitely go to a tournament with her there and watch her play. It is like an art form to watch her jump up and dance and everything while she's playing the game.
00:35:50
Speaker
It helps some people. yeah I, it's really funny cause we were, we were having this discussion with like, tournaments can be really boring especially when you're watching on streaming because some of them are just like so zoned in and they don't move yeah and but they're like we need some like wwe w kind of stuff some like talking to the camera and talking the smack and i was like i guess that's one way to grow it like i don't know but like i i'm one of those people i just stand there and like yeah i'll shake the machine if i need to to to nudge or whatnot yeah i'm i'm pretty still like a board but that's the thing too i gotta show up an hour really you're not still like a board
00:36:23
Speaker
I've seen you throw my games around. I'm like, dude. Well, in a tournament, I'm still like a board because I can't death save. oh okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, Scott's got out ah all LEs. I got to death save them, right? Yeah, exactly. Look, I had to move my machine eight inches after you played it one time.
00:36:41
Speaker
Yeah, I do move the games a little bit. But no, i'm what I'm saying is, is like, I don't, don't know. I don't dance like Jen does. See, I'm just crouched down in like the Roger Sharp position. So I just loaded the game you know.
00:36:54
Speaker
yeah it's It's any sport with me, though. I have to be there at least 30 minutes early to warm up because I will not do good. If I just show up and start playing, i don't show up I'm not showing up for another 30 minutes. It's like, well, my first three rounds are going to suffer at least. yeah But it's the same with when I golf and stuff like that, too. If I don't warm up, like...
00:37:13
Speaker
you guys are carrying me for the least first two, two, three holes. And you never know the identical game is going to shoot different. Flippers are going to be in different conditions. Pitch is going to be different. So yeah, it helps out immensely. if you're, if you're goingnna compete to bounces are different.
00:37:27
Speaker
yeah That's, that's one thing like, like a game, like fun house, you've got to know how that bounce comes out of, out of the the right scoop. Yeah. And every, I swear every right scoop's different unless if you've bought yours from, you know,
00:37:39
Speaker
flipping out pinball and it's brand new out of the box. But even them, like even those pitch readies are slightly variations from each other. So it's like they all play different. I don't know how many games I've played that are the exact same on even to drops and stuff like that, you know? Yeah, exactly.
00:37:54
Speaker
So we're getting way into the weeds. Yeah. We'll talk about different bounce patterns. Meanwhile, yeah. Tight rubbers. have for the three of you still listening to this. Well, let's talk about there is you've You've brought this back, like congratulations on the reveal.
00:38:13
Speaker
ah Hopefully if you haven't watched the video yet, little four minute spill of Neil going through all the stuff you can do with this, the new pin quest and everything like that. But let's talk about, you are doing special leagues for this app.
00:38:27
Speaker
yeah And we might know something about that. You want to you want talk about that really quick now? Yeah. So one of the things that we really wanted to do with the app is make it very pinball community centric. So um we have a little actually news section on the side that pops out with industry news and stuff like that. So we want to work with content creators and get RSS feeds in there to where we can help ah content creators get exposure um from people that honestly probably aren't in inside of the pinball community quite yet. People that are going to bars and arcades, um, you know, and, and playing on location pinball, um, from what I found, believe it or not, from like my leagues and tournaments, most of them aren't really involved in the, the stuff that we are all with, with regards to podcasts and YouTube videos and stuff like this. So it gives a great chance for exposure,
00:39:16
Speaker
um But with that being said, we we're going to be running a creator series of guest hosts. These are going to be 30 day um ah guest host spots within the app on the national location. So anybody can participate in these.
00:39:32
Speaker
um We're going to kick it off with you guys. you're going to be the first guest host in there. People are going to be able to earn Loser Kid digital trophies for completing quests.
00:39:43
Speaker
You guys are going to pick the games based off of your game bank. People can go to arcades. They can play the games at home ah for the the score submissions. There's going to be a high score leaderboard.
00:39:55
Speaker
And the thing that I'm most excited about is a ah new feature we have ah created called a drop-in league. Uh, some look at it as like a high score league. Uh, but basically the way this league works is each week, four games are going to be randomly drawn from the game bank that you guys are going to select.
00:40:14
Speaker
Players are then going to do their, their best to submit their top score. All of the scores over a seven-day period are submitted blind. So you're not going to have any idea what other people's scores are. You just submit when you think you have your best possible score.
00:40:27
Speaker
At the end of the seven-day period, all the scores are revealed. And then we assign points to first through however many people are participating in this. Each league is going to be four weeks.
00:40:41
Speaker
At the end of the four weeks, we are going to add up all the points. Top 25 are going to get a special limited edition Loser Kid a lapel ah style pin ah with PinQuest.
00:40:53
Speaker
And then we're also going to do a a random draw. So 25 other people can win one of those as well, just in case they don't have the skill, just have some fun participating. And then we're also going to give away a ah trophy for the actual winner of it.
00:41:09
Speaker
And then also going to do a giveaway for some Loser Kid ah swag package ah from Silver Ball Swag. So this kind of an exciting way to get people familiar with the app.
00:41:20
Speaker
um you know, one of the challenges we originally had is people would download the app and say, there's no locations by me. Awesome. I just downloaded this app and I have nothing to do. So that's why we've come up with this kind of concept of having this national level location that anybody can do something in.
00:41:34
Speaker
So you guys have any questions, need any any clarification on that? We'll post rules, obviously. When, when we go live, the goal is to get this thing going on June 1st. Okay.
00:41:45
Speaker
That'll be the kickoff. I'm excited. ah this is This is really cool. Hopefully I can win my own lapel. ah There you go. yeah no I'm excited too because i do have a mix of games. and I'm trying to find at least games that people have more access to.
00:42:01
Speaker
sure um but I'm excited because I do have... you know I'm big CGC fan. I have all the all the remakes, which is great. but man i've I've been playing a lot of Metallica and a lot of Beatles and you know the L ones behind me too. so Scott's saying he's going to pick the games himself. And so he's going to pick like Wizard of Oz, Rush, Rush, Iron Maiden, Beatles and Jurassic Park for just one week. And then, you know, nothing but CGC. noscan Well, you don't get to pick each week. You get to pick the game bank. So you guys can put all of those games in I'll pick the game. I'm going to try to limit it to the ones that are more likely because I know the Beatles. they I don't even think they made the 1964. Forget that. We're doing nothing but doodlebug.
00:42:42
Speaker
Oh, my gosh. Doodle jump. Yeah. that I'm glad you just said that. There is something with regards to how this league works. It's going to take your top two games each week. So for some reason there is not a game or you go someplace and the game's broken, you don't have to worry about not submitting four scores. It's only going to take the the player's top two games each week, just in case circumstances, like you said, if someone can't find a game.
00:43:06
Speaker
ah One other quick note, people are going to be able to find the games inside of our app. ah Pinball Map has an awesome API. We really appreciate what those guys do over there. And we do integrate with their API. So, um you know, when when we're running this league,
00:43:21
Speaker
and they see a machine, people will just be able to say,
Integration with Pinball Map and Community Engagement
00:43:23
Speaker
hey, find this machine. As long as people have their pinball map updated, um you know you'll be able to find whatever machines were were thrown in here. So this is gonna benefit other locations as well um you know that aren't subscribing to the PinQuest suite. They're going to have players probably coming in there and and trying to complete these ah these league scores and quests to earn these ah these potential prizes.
00:43:46
Speaker
Awesome. Neil, this is amazing. like Seriously, I'm excited for this. I'm excited to see where this goes. like this is i would you You're doing such an amazing job to help build the community and offer something that is genuinely pushing pinball forward. and so just from all of us in the community, thanks for doing this. This is really, really cool. And I hope, I hope this takes off and absolutely support guys.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah. The, this is a great opportunity to cross boundaries with multiple games. Also, I, everything you're doing with silver ball swag, it's been so fun for us because we've been playing with it a lot. Josh has done some great jobs of getting some really unique stuff for our, ah you know, for us. And so,
00:44:30
Speaker
we've We've had a great time with it. So we really appreciate everything you've done for us. Well, thank you guys so much. I appreciate working with you guys. You guys are awesome and keep up everything you're doing. You know, we were talking earlier.
00:44:42
Speaker
yeah it takes a long time to build up what you guys have, a lot of dedication and consistency, and and you guys have done a fantastic job. Thank you. Thank you. Neil, if so, if you want someone to get ahold of you, what's the best way they can get ahold of you?
00:44:54
Speaker
Yeah, they can I can be emailed, uh, Neil at play pin quest.com. You can follow us on all the socials. Um, what we're going to start being a lot more active here once we, uh, once we launched this thing. So keep an eye out on us, you know, Facebook, uh, X, uh, Instagram, uh, that is the places to find us.
00:45:14
Speaker
Awesome. And how can they participate in our month of games? Yep. So you'll download the pin quest app and then you will simply, uh, click find a location inside the app. And then the national location is going to pop up right away.
00:45:29
Speaker
again, anyone in the U S can participate inside of this, uh, uh, challenge here. ah they'll be able to sign up for the league and then we will post those, uh, league scores.
00:45:40
Speaker
Um, we will drop the lowest week. So three weeks are going to count. So people will be able to join all the way up until the ah end of the first week. Nice. If you want to get ahold of us, we are loser kid, pinball podcast at gmail.com on all the socials. We're at loser kid, pinball subscribe to us on YouTube.
00:45:56
Speaker
Go to a silver ball swag.com slash loser kid to get us get some of sweet swag on there. I highly recommend the baseball jerseys. They are nice. They are sweets. Uh, and the shoes, the shoes have been fantastic. The shoes are great. Yeah. ive loved the shoes Yeah. We got to change the name to whatever you said. Loser air. Losers. Shout out to Glenn Wechter for coining that phrase. That is awesome.
00:46:17
Speaker
um Also, shout out to our Patreon members. Thanks for supporting us. You help make this content ah accessible and visible for everyone. And thanks also to Flippin' Out Pinball. ah Scott, give us our last words. Go play Pinquest and go buy some Losers.
00:46:34
Speaker
you