Transcript
Speaker: Thanks for tuning into loser kid pinball podcast.
Speaker: Merry Christmas.
Speaker: It is that time of year.
Speaker: And you know what?
Speaker: We're on episode 156 with you.
Speaker: My co-captain as always.
Speaker: Scott Larson.
Speaker: And Scott, it is Christmas time.
Speaker: It's time to get those pinball machines in your house.
Speaker: And if you're going to buy them, who are you going to buy from?
Speaker: You know, I go with Zach and Nicole at Flippin' Out Pinball.
Speaker: They've always been really good to us, and we're happy with our relationship.
Speaker: I know I actually just ordered the Metallica topper, so interested in that.
Speaker: I've always got, you know, accessories and games.
Speaker: And so whether or not you need, you know, a shooter rod or your speaker lights or anything to upgrade your games or also...
Speaker: They sell used games.
Speaker: They sell everything, but they're really easy to get a hold of.
Speaker: Messaging is probably the easiest way because he gets about 150 contacts a day.
Speaker: However, just reach out, flipping out pinball.
Speaker: They've always been really good to us and they'll be good to you.
Speaker: They're amazing to us.
Speaker: And I want to tell you, so last Wednesday, Tim Lee, good friend of the show.
Speaker: Good friend of the show.
Speaker: A lot of people know him because he sucks at pinball.
Speaker: But he messaged me.
Speaker: That's not special to him, but he does really stink at the pinball crew.
Speaker: So he messages me.
Speaker: He says, Josh, I want a Metallica.
Speaker: Do you think you'd get me one before Christmas?
Speaker: And I kind of laughed.
Speaker: I was like, we can see what we can do.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: We shall see.
Speaker: I messaged Zach.
Speaker: Zach said, I can get one.
Speaker: He's like, we'll get you squared away.
Speaker: Tim sent over the payment the next day.
Speaker: Mind you, this was on Thursday.
Speaker: Zach gets the payment on Thursday, gets the Metallica on the truck, and guess what was in Tim's?
Speaker: In his garage in Pennsylvania Monday morning.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Metallica premium.
Speaker: That is how amazing Zach is with customer service.
Speaker: Merry Christmas to Tim and his family as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, Scott, I'm going to turn over you for introductions now.
Speaker: Okay, so this is, we're really excited.
Speaker: We have Seth Davis today.
Speaker: And Seth, it's interesting because he comes from the world of Disney.
Speaker: So he's been working in Disney forever.
Speaker: Now he's come across.
Speaker: Seth, how long has it been?
Speaker: A year?
Speaker: Two years?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, three.
Speaker: Three years now.
Speaker: Wow, three years.
Speaker: So he's come from Disney into the land of pinball to be the president of Stern.
Speaker: He's young, cutting his teeth in relative pinball terms.
Speaker: And we are so excited to have him on because I actually was able to corner him and talk to him a little bit about Stern.
Speaker: about things in the expo.
Speaker: And it was fun to talk about a new perspective of pinball because although Seth is quite experienced in the business world, he is still figuring things out.
Speaker: Well, okay, that's not the way I want to say it.
Speaker: He is still opening his eyes to the manufacturing world of pinball.
Speaker: And it's really fun to see his new perspectives because there needs to be some shakeups in pinball to keep things going forward.
Speaker: And so we would like to welcome Seth Davis as the president of Stern to Loser Kid Pinball today.
Speaker: And we are so thankful that you are able to come on and we are going to talk all things pinball.
Speaker: How are you doing today, Seth?
Speaker: I'm good.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: I'm glad to be here.
Speaker: So one thing,
Speaker: This is the Christmas time.
Speaker: I'm assuming that you have, you have been anticipating because Christmas has to be one of your bigger times of the year, because there's going to be people who are looking for that game room piece that they're putting in there.
Speaker: So here's my question.
Speaker: How do you decide what games you are going to prioritize when you're manufacturing for the Christmas rush?
Speaker: So a lot of that comes from the orders from folks like yourself and also comes from the orders like you talked about Zack and Nicole at Flippin' Out.
Speaker: You know, we work with them very closely about what are people looking for?
Speaker: What do they want?
Speaker: Obviously, we have some new games that we came out with, so we're definitely going to make the new games that we had.
Speaker: But when it comes to what games should we go back and do, like an example is we're doing a small run of some Star Wars comics because people want to see Star Wars comic that we can talk about that a little bit later.
Speaker: That's one of the titles we're going to take out of production here.
Speaker: But we wanted to make a few more because people have been looking for them and it's something they want.
Speaker: And that's really based on feedback from all sorts of customers.
Speaker: You talked about this marketplace.
Speaker: We've got commercial customers.
Speaker: We've got consumers and enthusiasts.
Speaker: We've got a lot of different customers.
Speaker: And so we really take the demand across those for what people want to decide what we're going to make.
Speaker: Well, and you've already brought up, I mean, this is one of the big questions that has hit the community here in the last week or so, is you've announced the vaults of taking these games and sticking them in the vault and maybe producing them over the next two years, but they could be gone.
Speaker: And these are some big title names like Star Wars and Deadpool.
Speaker: I mean, these are number movers.
Speaker: What made the decision to put these games behind the wall, essentially, and put them in the vault?
Speaker: So there's a couple of things there.
Speaker: One is part of the reason why we came out with this vault strategy and this vault communication is because, in my opinion, in the past, we haven't been...
Speaker: transparent enough or forthcoming enough with consumers.
Speaker: We tell our dealers what we're doing, but then it kind of filters out to our customers about what we're doing and what we're not doing.
Speaker: And people make decisions about what titles are being manufactured or what titles are not being manufactured.
Speaker: And part of the strategy is to just be more upfront with people about this is what we're doing.
Speaker: This is, you know, the time periods for which we're doing it.
Speaker: And after that, we'll sort of revisit these things.
Speaker: So when we look through our portfolio, we were getting feedback both from consumers, but very much from our dealers.
Speaker: that there were so many choices that it was hard for them to stock all the choices, have all the choices available.
Speaker: If a new pinball purchaser came in and here's like 20 some games for you to choose from, that was just really too many choices for them and really needed to be more focused about what our consumers wanted, what our dealers could support.
Speaker: and have a more focused portfolio available.
Speaker: So for a number of these titles, it is time to rotate them out, give them some time to breathe, and not have people have to stop those or worry about those so they could focus on all the new titles.
Speaker: I mean, we came out with four new titles last year.
Speaker: We can't just keep adding to the number of titles available.
Speaker: At some point we've got to call out and it'd been a little time since we had called out.
Speaker: So I just think it makes sense for everybody that we both do that focusing of the portfolio as well as communicate exactly what we're doing.
Speaker: Well, and this is just my perspective and, and, but I feel like games like Deadpool and, and, oh, and Iron Maiden and Elvira, these are all games that are moving a lot of numbers.
Speaker: What made you decide those ones versus like maybe Mandalorian or Black Knight or Rush or 007?
Speaker: So sometimes it has to do with the licenses themselves, obviously.
Speaker: I mean, one of the things that we did put in our note to the dealers, but it wasn't really talked about as much, I don't think, in the community is for most of the titles we're putting into the vault, you know, the licenses are going to expire.
Speaker: So when we say like they're going in the vault for a minimum of two years, that effectively is going to put almost all, if not all, these titles outside the license time periods.
Speaker: And so if we were to bring any back, we're setting a minimum threshold of it won't be in the next two years.
Speaker: It'll be sometime after that if we were to ever do it.
Speaker: And if we were to ever do it, it's going to be based on the fact that tons of people are asking for it.
Speaker: And it's worth us going back and reengaging with a licensor and saying, hey, you know, people really want this thing and they want to be able to get new copies of it.
Speaker: So let's go revisit this kind of at that time period.
Speaker: So a lot of it has to do with the licenses.
Speaker: A lot of it has to do with where we are in production and sales and all of that.
Speaker: And, you know, I think all of our titles are awesome.
Speaker: So when you have to call out, you know, seven titles or something, you're going to you're going to have to call out some winners in that.
Speaker: But, you know, look, it gives our title some time to breathe.
Speaker: It gives people an opportunity to focus on all the new titles that came out this year.
Speaker: And we're going to keep bringing our great new titles next year.
Speaker: So there's going to be plenty for people to get.
Speaker: And I think cycling is just healthy for the community as we continue to bring out more new titles.
Speaker: Now, one of the titles that you brought up this year was Metallica Remastered, which is, you know, it's a one.
Speaker: It was a huge seller for you when it first came out, you know, 11 years ago.
Speaker: And it came out, you know, it was a DMD title.
Speaker: It had basically the same layout, but with this release, you were able to upgrade it in many ways.
Speaker: One, the sound system, the lighting system, you were able to incorporate the LCD screen into the back.
Speaker: And it really, it basically made, you know, a modern-ish game like up-to-date.
Speaker: Now that has to, I'm curious as what is your response been?
Speaker: Because there are a couple of factors here is that Metallica was a hugely successful initial run.
Speaker: And so there has to be, you know, five to 10,000 of these games out there in the wild.
Speaker: And for you to consider revisiting this and making it, how would you like, how has the response been?
Speaker: Has it exceeded your expectations and what doors does it open with this release?
Speaker: the response has been tremendous.
Speaker: People have really appreciated this game.
Speaker: Look, it's a risk whenever you make these decisions.
Speaker: One of the things that...
Speaker: I think is useful for people to understand about this is we make these decisions almost two years before these products come out.
Speaker: So we're making bets about what we want to do and where we want to be like two years in advance.
Speaker: So, you know, you can do the math like we're figuring out what 2026, 2027 look like now.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Because you got to do all this work and all this setting up in advance.
Speaker: So it was a it was a bet and a risk.
Speaker: But here's what we knew.
Speaker: We knew Metallica really wanted to do it.
Speaker: They wanted updated product for the updated generation.
Speaker: We knew that the original game was a great one and was really well received.
Speaker: So it didn't really make sense to do something completely different.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It made sense to leverage the strength of what's there.
Speaker: But yeah.
Speaker: you know, how do you go back and do right by a product that's already existed?
Speaker: And that's really where, you know, with the creative team, we settled on the remaster idea of, you know, it had the DMD, it didn't have the LCD screen.
Speaker: We could do the LCD, we could add a ton more songs.
Speaker: You know, John Borg is still one of our active developers here and he wanted to do everything right by the game and, you know, make all the improvements they learned after the product came out to make.
Speaker: And then the other thing is that product was amazing when it came out.
Speaker: 11 years is a, in a way, it's a short time in pinball because pinball memories are really long.
Speaker: But I mean, I do have to at times at Stern say, which decade are we talking about when we have a history story about something?
Speaker: Because 11 years, like, just think about how you've all grown and changed in 11 years.
Speaker: The people that are in pinball, some of them are the same, but a lot of them are new.
Speaker: Like, think of the size of, you know, Texas Pinball Festival and Pinball Expo and California Extreme and all these shows.
Speaker: Like, how many more people...
Speaker: are in Pinball now, they all missed out on the opportunity to enjoy that product originally.
Speaker: And so, yeah, they could get an older version or whatever, but people want the new technology.
Speaker: You also see, and you're playing Metallica Remastered a lot now, it also shows you the differences that have happened in 11 years, right?
Speaker: In some ways, Pinball's Pinball, but in other ways, technology has come dramatically far
Speaker: We were really able to pay that off with some time-tested code and some time-tested layout that people really love, but hopefully do it in a way that people really, really enjoy.
Speaker: I know you've been having some fun with the game, so do you think we did it right?
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So this is one thing that held me back for a long time with Metallica is because it was old enough that it was still kind of in that incandescent period.
Speaker: And so for me to, it's, I like being able to see the whole play field.
Speaker: So when I would go on location, you would see Metallica and yeah, it's, it's great.
Speaker: It has the, you know, it has the songs, you know, has everything, but it does, it did feel a little bit dated a little, you know, compared to,
Speaker: what I currently have.
Speaker: So I have a great collection at home.
Speaker: And so, you know, the play fields are well illuminated.
Speaker: I have invisible glass on them.
Speaker: And so I love that playing experience.
Speaker: And when I would play the old Metallica, it was kind of hard to see the ball many times.
Speaker: And it was hard to see the art.
Speaker: And in many ways, the ball's moving so fast that you want to be able to illuminate.
Speaker: And that's why I think some of these aftermarket things that you guys have addressed that with your OEM options,
Speaker: is that it really does take it to a level where I can experience a great game that did feel not super dated, but old enough that I could add it to my collection and I could really experience the game because I could, you know, if I'm going to drain a shot, it's not because I can't see it.
Speaker: It's because I break it like I normally do.
Speaker: And so that's why the new one
Speaker: And even behind the scenes, like we have a group of friends and when this came out, everybody was saying, okay, you need to get the LE.
Speaker: You need to get the LE.
Speaker: It looks great.
Speaker: It looks, it's going to be so good.
Speaker: And then when we came out, Josh and I came out and were able to play it at Stern.
Speaker: You can just see it in person and the LE and the premium both,
Speaker: were so, so great that, you know, I'm glad I got the LE because I got all the extra options in there, but the premium is a great option because you can add all those things in there.
Speaker: So I would say that this has opened my eyes to ways that you can explore the back catalog and to consider, you know, Hey, and this is my wishlist may not be your, your, your wishlist.
Speaker: Lay it on me.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Lord of the Rings.
Speaker: I want a Lord of the Rings.
Speaker: I want to master Lord of the Rings because that has to be the number one thing.
Speaker: I'm with you.
Speaker: I'm with you.
Speaker: It's an amazing franchise.
Speaker: It's an amazing game.
Speaker: I'm with you.
Speaker: The call-outs are great and everything, but imagine taking that to the next level, and it would be so good.
Speaker: Tron, again, man, Tron is custom-made.
Speaker: I had one of the nicest Trons that I literally spent $6,000 after I bought the game to take it to like a $15,000 game, and it looked amazing.
Speaker: And if you guys did that OEM,
Speaker: wow, that would be a huge seller.
Speaker: You could also explore all the other music pins that would absolutely, they would take it to the next level when you have like an ACDC.
Speaker: And ACDC was really where you guys started turning that corner to say, okay, we're going to play with the big boys.
Speaker: This is going to be great.
Speaker: ACDC, Aerosmith, you could even argue if you could do it,
Speaker: uh pirates of the caribbean your version of the pirates of the caribbean was so good and oh that's another one i have in my garage by the way because my kids won't let me sell it because it is such a fun game um those are the ones off the top of my head josh what did i miss uh maybe since simpsons pinball party okay simpsons is another one i have i have a simpsons pinball party up there
Speaker: And it's, it's nice.
Speaker: Actually, the one thing I, I literally at expo, I just barely bought the color DMD to swap out the orange DMD.
Speaker: Because when I had that in my lineup, that was the only thing that was jumping out at me.
Speaker: But, oh my gosh, adding more stuff to that or, or pulling out Simpsons pinball or doing a Futurama game.
Speaker: My gosh, how amazing would that be to couple with the Simpsons pinball party?
Speaker: No, that's great.
Speaker: Yeah, look, we've, I've heard most of those before.
Speaker: So not a lot of surprises on that list.
Speaker: And this was something we were, we were clear about at the beginning of last year, we were looking at sort of bringing some of these back, we were trying to do it the right way, do it responsibly, do it away people like people really do seem to like Metallica.
Speaker: So we're going to keep looking at ways to bring people what they want.
Speaker: And that's, that's really what we've been doing.
Speaker: We're, we're,
Speaker: you know, look, we're taking some risks.
Speaker: Sometimes we nail it right on the head.
Speaker: Sometimes we don't and we learn from it and we move on and, you know, we try to deliver people what they want.
Speaker: So to your question about, you know, the response, the expectation, you know, it's been off the charts positive in terms of people's reception to this.
Speaker: And, you know, we didn't know because in some ways it's redoing an old game, which is, you know, been a touchy subject for people before.
Speaker: but we thought we were doing it in a way that people would really appreciate it.
Speaker: And that has really been the case kind of across the board.
Speaker: So I think it shows us what's possible.
Speaker: We've got to be thoughtful about it.
Speaker: We've got to be responsible.
Speaker: We also have to have partners that really want to do it.
Speaker: And, you know, it's a lot of work.
Speaker: It's,
Speaker: you know, most of the work that goes into a brand new game.
Speaker: And I think you see that when you sort of see the game, it's, it's, you know, George would say it's 80% of the work of a, of a full standalone game, right?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So you start with a little bit of layout, a little bit of code, but,
Speaker: You're doing almost everything above and beyond that and around that to make it a new game.
Speaker: So it does take a lot of work for us to do those.
Speaker: But, you know, we're listening to what everybody wants and we've been getting a lot of requests for, you know, some of these titles.
Speaker: And so we're kind of going through and figuring out what's possible.
Speaker: Well, and just kudos to you guys, because I feel like Metallica was done right.
Speaker: Whereas to juxtapose it with the vault of Spider-Man, it wasn't super well received.
Speaker: You lost the voices of J. Joe and Jameson, which was such an integral part of the original game.
Speaker: You lost the charm of the original Sam Raimi movies, and it became a comic book, which comic book is timeless, and that art is great.
Speaker: But it seemed like it went in the wrong direction with Spider-Man, whereas Metallica, it hit on all cylinders, exceeded expectation, and went over the top.
Speaker: A couple of questions I was thinking about.
Speaker: So you came from Disney.
Speaker: So this is a little bit different.
Speaker: I like how you said that you're putting a bet on what 2026 and 2027 are going to look like.
Speaker: How is that different from because you came from the streaming side of things with Disney, right?
Speaker: So I was at Disney for a long time.
Speaker: Most of my time at Disney was in video games.
Speaker: And then towards the end, I was in streaming and places like that.
Speaker: So I've been in the video game world before and it's a similar thing, right?
Speaker: You make a bet and you develop a game to go see what's going to happen in the future.
Speaker: And so there's a lot of sort of similarities there in terms of, you know, making a bet and figuring it out.
Speaker: And as you guys know, game developers, you make a bet and you see what happens on launch day, right?
Speaker: Well, that's what I was going to ask, too, is because is it harder in pinball because you have a physical product?
Speaker: I know that like you are still getting a physical product with video game, but you can pivot a little bit by changing code and stuff like that.
Speaker: Where pinball machines is you make it, it's physical.
Speaker: It's hard to revamp the physicality of the game once it's in a house.
Speaker: You know what I'm saying?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's totally true.
Speaker: So I actually worked on a couple of products when I was at Disney.
Speaker: One of the things that I did and one of the reasons why I'm here is that I worked on some of the Disney products that were both physical and software.
Speaker: So you can see behind me, I've got a lightsaber, made an AR game where you could play an AR with a lightsaber and battle Darth Vader.
Speaker: I also worked on Disney Infinity, if you remember that one, the Toys to Life product where you had the toys that came to life.
Speaker: So I've been in the...
Speaker: Hey, you got to make a physical thing and you got to make a digital thing and they've got to come together world a number of times before, which is one of the things that's so much fun about being in pinball now is we do all of that.
Speaker: You're right, though.
Speaker: You've got a physical thing that must, you know, must get to the church on time.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You must get it done and it must be right.
Speaker: And, you know, if you make a mistake, it's a physical product that's out there in the world.
Speaker: And so.
Speaker: We do a lot of work and we have a very experienced team that makes sure this happens and it all happens predictably.
Speaker: We usually get it 99% of the way right.
Speaker: Sometimes there's little things we have to fix here and there, but I'd say our track record is sort of second to none at doing that.
Speaker: you know that launch shoot has to happen as that launch shoot happens in the in the software space you'll have you'll hear things like agile development and how they pivot and do things over time it's all waterfall things have to happen in sequence for these games to get made manufactured and it's you know it's a it's a miracle every time uh for any manufacturer and any manufacturer will tell you that and
Speaker: You know, you can see it in how tough it is for people to ship games, how hard it is to bring a physical product together with a digital thing and get it out into the marketplace.
Speaker: It's a heroic effort every time.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: So tell me.
Speaker: Go ahead, Josh.
Speaker: No, you can go for it, Seth.
Speaker: So tell me about the, like, you're at Disney.
Speaker: Your career path is going along.
Speaker: and this opportunity came up.
Speaker: So I'm curious as to how that came up, because as far as I understand, you didn't have like a huge pinball background.
Speaker: Is that, is that fair to say?
Speaker: So, I mean, I grew up in an eighties arcade, like a lot of people, so I played, you know, I played the star Wars game and then I'd go over and play pin bot and, you know, that was what we were doing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So for me, it was everything that was in an arcade was in an arcade and I played
Speaker: all of them sort of equally.
Speaker: I was not a pinball enthusiast collector, certainly.
Speaker: I did live in a too small house in California and didn't really have a lot of space for them and all of that and family and whatever else.
Speaker: So I did not come through it from the sort of pinball enthusiast space.
Speaker: I just came to it as someone who was very familiar and a game player, you know, growing up in the 80s.
Speaker: So I played games, but I was not, you know,
Speaker: Not like a championship player or not a big time collector or anything like that.
Speaker: And so they reached out to me and I've been doing games for a long time and I was doing streaming and I frankly missed doing games.
Speaker: I missed being part of that creation and everything that went with that.
Speaker: Streaming is great, but.
Speaker: doesn't quite have the energy for me that making and shipping these games does.
Speaker: As much as it's a miracle getting to the end, it's also a ton of fun kind of getting there and getting all the way through.
Speaker: So when they call, I said, pinball, I love pinball, which everybody sort of says, whether they're an enthusiast collector or not.
Speaker: And a company that makes the absolute best products in the world, how could I not be interested in that?
Speaker: So I worked at Disney for a long time, but before I was at Disney, I did work in manufacturing at GE.
Speaker: So I had some manufacturing experience as well.
Speaker: And so that was part of what was interesting on the Stern side.
Speaker: They called up and I was interested and the process went pretty quick from there.
Speaker: So that's a little different than someone like hiring Keith because Keith has been in into pinball forever.
Speaker: And I would say your journey in pinball is probably similar to a lot of people in their 40s and 50s where they they did.
Speaker: I grew up in an 80s arcade, too.
Speaker: A lot of times I didn't understand pinball though.
Speaker: So I never really played it.
Speaker: I didn't understand what I was supposed to do.
Speaker: And so, and I'm not sure in my mind why paying 25 cents on Donkey Kong where I died in 22 seconds was considered like a better value than actually playing pinball.
Speaker: But for some reason in my mind, that's how it was.
Speaker: So I didn't even come to it until later.
Speaker: The only thing I remember much about pinball is going into the arcade and seeing flash over there.
Speaker: And I never played it, but I never, I never understood it.
Speaker: So it's, it is interesting that your journey in pinball is probably a lot more similar.
Speaker: It's more in common with a lot of people in our demographic.
Speaker: We do have a lot of people that sort of played pinball when they were younger and find their way back to it.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: At a variety of different ages, they find their way back to it after, you know, they're in the life circumstances to be in a position to maybe, you know, get into it either for themselves or for their family or whatever and come back around to it.
Speaker: And, you know, part of the.
Speaker: dramatic growth that we've been able to see in the pinball space and in the business overall has been gamers grew up, right?
Speaker: If you think about the baby boomer that was 45 and owned a home and had this space, they weren't a gamer.
Speaker: Their kid was a gamer.
Speaker: And now you've got like 45-year-old Gen X that have been gamers all their life.
Speaker: They grew up in those arcades and now have the space and hopefully the money to be able to afford the best games in the world, right?
Speaker: Like these are a heck of a lot more exciting than
Speaker: you know, a digital game that sits under your TV, right?
Speaker: And so, you know, that's a real opportunity for, you know, the pinball space and for it to just grow and people to have fun.
Speaker: So that brings me to, I'm thinking about this.
Speaker: I know there's been a couple of questions on the community's mind and I feel like they all kind of tie together.
Speaker: Speaking of the future of the Gen Xers and getting those customers to buy more product,
Speaker: with pinball the way it's been going right lately the roads a little bumpy and it looks like 2025 could be bumpy as well for the entire industry just not for stern i'm wondering if you could give us a general strategy moving forward whether that be price increases or we've also heard possibly stern going public i know that like concerns some people with the way that ballet williams ended he kind of give us just an idea of general strategy and maybe answer if you are going to do price increases or or go public um
Speaker: You know, the last, frankly, the last few years in the world have been nuts, right?
Speaker: You know,
Speaker: People had all sorts of money, were flush with cash.
Speaker: Everything was growing.
Speaker: Assets were growing in every category.
Speaker: And then, you know, that came to an end and everybody had to readjust and figure out what normal looks like.
Speaker: And, you know, the other thing with that is no one was happy with inflation and no one is happy with inflation.
Speaker: Unfortunately, the reality in all these marketplaces is inflation doesn't reverse.
Speaker: Inflation just stops, right, or slows down is more kind of appropriate here.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: We had price increases.
Speaker: We had all of that.
Speaker: We have been holding price flat for about two and a half years at this point.
Speaker: That cannot continue forever.
Speaker: However, I'm going to continue it as long as I possibly can.
Speaker: Because I know these products are
Speaker: you know, they're pricey.
Speaker: We think they're good value for what they are, but, you know, nobody's going to say these are cheap.
Speaker: I'd love ways to make them cheaper and do that.
Speaker: But we got to find those ways, right?
Speaker: And that's just going to take hard work kind of over time.
Speaker: So there's no eagerness to go out and raise prices or do anything like that.
Speaker: There's eagerness to keep them under control as much as we can, but also to deliver the value that you guys want, right?
Speaker: And make sure that the games deliver the experience that you
Speaker: that you want to have with them, right?
Speaker: We don't want to have to strip out game product just to say, Hey, I didn't raise price, but you know, your, your experience is lesser than, so it's always a happy balance between kind of those things and, and balancing that out.
Speaker: And I think, you know,
Speaker: As much as there's been a bit of a hangover from all that time period, like I think we've shown the last two and a half years that we've been able to stand pat and not move any of that.
Speaker: And inflation has not been zero for that time period.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There's still inflation out there in the world.
Speaker: So we're going to keep it as long as we have.
Speaker: There's nothing to announce right now, and I hope there won't be.
Speaker: But at some point, we'll have to face the reality of wherever things are as we work to find ways to try to save it without making it problems for you guys and making problems for the experience there.
Speaker: So I wouldn't say there's anything there in terms of a price increase or anything imminently.
Speaker: I know people have been running around with rumors saying there's big price increases coming.
Speaker: I don't know where they're getting that one from.
Speaker: So I could say there's not an intent to raise price.
Speaker: It may have to happen at some point, but there's no giant price increase on the horizon that we're planning to do.
Speaker: So that's kind of the price increase question.
Speaker: For the market overall, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, look at everything, right?
Speaker: Look at every product under the sun.
Speaker: They've all gone...
Speaker: particularly kind of durable products.
Speaker: They've all gone through a bit of a cycle.
Speaker: You know, the good news about our marketplace and the good news about our product is they're not all the same white box, right?
Speaker: Like there's a difference between all the games you have behind you and there's a difference in all the IP and the things that are coming up.
Speaker: So part of what we needed to do was do what we did with the vaulting program and take some titles out of the market and put some other new titles into the market to have some change and some diversity and some fun and, you know, make different products than we have before.
Speaker: And we're trying to gauge all that with the marketplace.
Speaker: We think pinball and I think pinball is not as big as it should be.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It should be bigger.
Speaker: Not enough people know about these products.
Speaker: Not enough people listen to this podcast or watch you guys like there are so many other people that could be having.
Speaker: you know, a lot of fun and having a good time with these products and growing pinball is a good idea, right?
Speaker: We talked about before how big a lot of these shows have gotten.
Speaker: I think these shows can get even bigger.
Speaker: Like I think pinball is a space will continue to grow and should continue to grow because it's fun.
Speaker: So, you know, I think the growth is going to be the growth of pinball overall and more people getting into pinball is going to help us drive, you know,
Speaker: you know, the growth and the ability to invest in software and Insider Connect and all the things we want to do to make everybody's experience better.
Speaker: But, you know, companies do have to grow and the space has to grow to match with it.
Speaker: And we just need to figure out how to do that all responsibly and the right way.
Speaker: How with the death of arcades, really, and I have coined most of these arcades like kiddie gambling hubs now, where they're the ticket redemption centers, and you're giving the kids a healthy dose of reality that most of the time they're not going to win tickets.
Speaker: How does that change?
Speaker: Because you and I grew up in an area where
Speaker: like the mall always had an arcade.
Speaker: You would go, I would go to 7-Eleven and play Street Fighter or it wouldn't be uncommon to see a pinball machine in the wild somewhere.
Speaker: Just, you know, the front of a supermarket or something like that.
Speaker: That stuff seems to be gone.
Speaker: So how do we start to increase the footprint of pinball?
Speaker: Because it is different than video games.
Speaker: As you know, video games are kind of bulletproof in that there's a button and a joystick.
Speaker: And that's pretty much it.
Speaker: You're not going to have things being damaged because of the steel ball ricocheting off plastic parts, which, which is, which is what pinball is.
Speaker: And even in my area, there's actually only a few places that have like actual good, well-functioning pinball machines that,
Speaker: And, uh, and, and even I would say in my own personal sphere, uh, they were looking for a place to host the women's pinball tournament.
Speaker: And we talked about this before at expo.
Speaker: I had 30 people at my house playing pinball on Saturday because we, because my, my collection is better than a lot of location collections.
Speaker: So how does Stern look at that and find a way forward to getting more of these in the wild?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: I'll start with our commercial business is still very strong, right?
Speaker: We're still out there.
Speaker: We are probably less in the sort of kid arcade space than I maybe would have thought when I first joined and when I think about it.
Speaker: Because we are not, and we as a company have made a decision to not focus on redemption products and all of that.
Speaker: We're not in the kiddie redemption area.
Speaker: When we're in a lot of those locations, we tend to be over by the bar near where the adults are hanging out and a little older audience.
Speaker: You know, Gary likes to say pinball and alcohol go together great, which is totally true.
Speaker: So we do tend to be in some of those locations.
Speaker: Sometimes we're in a slightly different section because, you know, we're a certain type of skill based game that.
Speaker: you know, appeals a little bit differently.
Speaker: It's not a claw machine, right?
Speaker: It's not a coin pusher.
Speaker: It's not those things.
Speaker: We are still in a substantial amount of locations that just kind of change, right?
Speaker: It's a lot of bar arcades and things like that where pinball is still out there.
Speaker: There's still opportunity for us and we are still in some family entertainment center type places.
Speaker: We've had some success in those.
Speaker: I think there's more we can do there to get out there.
Speaker: But I think, honestly, one of the biggest changes in this business over the years, and it's something we're really, you know, adjusting to as a company, is, you know, we talked about when Metallica originally came out.
Speaker: When Metallica originally came out, this was a majority commercial business.
Speaker: Like, consumer was the other thing that was happening.
Speaker: And now we are vastly a majority consumer business.
Speaker: So most of our product goes into homes like your own.
Speaker: And so I think there's huge opportunity and huge ability for kids to get, you know, their experience with pinball by folks in the community such as yourselves.
Speaker: Like, why would we not take advantage of that?
Speaker: I mean, you guys as guys who own pinball machines, is there anything better than showing that off to some new people and to some new friends and to some new family?
Speaker: And we as a company need to figure out how to work with all of you better to just say, hey, here's a way for you to help people enjoy that and get people into, you know,
Speaker: you know, what you love and all of that.
Speaker: Because if there's pinball machines out there, they can be played by lots of people, regardless of whether they're in a commercial location or not.
Speaker: We love our commercial locations.
Speaker: We also love home locations such as your own, where lots of people could get introduced to pinball.
Speaker: And I think you'll see as we continue to make the transition from what used to be a
Speaker: hyper-commercial-focused company to a balanced commercial and consumer company, you'll see a lot more of those efforts as we work with you to figure out what that means.
Speaker: I mean, the size that consumer got to over the sort of pandemic period is just kind of different than the company grew up as, right?
Speaker: And so we've got to transition along with that.
Speaker: Well, and I will have to say, I mean, pinball should have died out in the 80s, and it didn't.
Speaker: It pivoted.
Speaker: And
Speaker: Should have died out in the 90s and it didn't.
Speaker: It pivoted.
Speaker: And I think you guys have pivoted really well as of recently.
Speaker: Almost died in the 2000s.
Speaker: Yeah, it almost died.
Speaker: It really did.
Speaker: Almost died.
Speaker: But looking at like Insider Connected, this is something only Stern is doing.
Speaker: There's been remnants of online pinball gaming, but you guys are doing it, attacking it from a different angle.
Speaker: And I feel like it's going extremely well.
Speaker: Insider Connected.
Speaker: I know Gomez had announced May three years ago that Spike 3 was coming.
Speaker: We hear rumors of that is on the horizon.
Speaker: Is this another way to help pivot too?
Speaker: Because I agree with you.
Speaker: I agree that pinball is a very amazing product that more people should be involved in and more people should be listening to or playing.
Speaker: So what is the marketing strategy going forward?
Speaker: And what is Stern doing to pivot to
Speaker: to become more of a modern product when it's very much a product of its time?
Speaker: Well, so, I mean, one of the things is just as simple as how do people figure out how to buy pinball?
Speaker: And we've honestly made it really difficult on our website to figure out how to buy pinball.
Speaker: Like, you guys don't need to worry about it.
Speaker: You already, you know, you call Zach and you're good, right?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Imagine somebody new like comes in.
Speaker: So we're just making some changes on instead of sending people a list of people to call, we're taking inquiries from them and giving them some concierge service to help them a little bit into the buying experience and connect them with, you know, somebody they should be talking to and help them kind of move through that.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: You know, my joke is a little bit we were hazing people when they wanted to buy a game before.
Speaker: Like you guys remember probably your first pinball buying experience.
Speaker: It had to be a little nerve wracking to kind of go through that and do it.
Speaker: And, you know, just think of that for getting people into pinball and kind of kind of getting them acclimated to pinball.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't know if you guys have experiences, but it had to be it had to be something when you first got into it.
Speaker: Well, okay.
Speaker: I'll tell two stories.
Speaker: One, I bought a Simpsons pinball party.
Speaker: That was my first game.
Speaker: And I, it was because I had a little bit of money.
Speaker: I was looking for like a home fun thing in a, in a game room.
Speaker: So this room is completely filled with pinballs now, but it didn't have anything down there before.
Speaker: So I knew a guy who was a, um, a local like arcade runner thing.
Speaker: And I was like, Hey, what about like a used arcade game?
Speaker: Like maybe I can get something like that.
Speaker: So I ran over to his house.
Speaker: He's like, Hey, I got something.
Speaker: I ran over to his house and he turned to me and he's a super nice guy.
Speaker: He is like a little bit of a Spicoli type where it's kind of like a, you know, the surfer bro is like, well, you know, and he turns like, well, I just picked up three pinball machines from a house somewhere.
Speaker: Do you want a pinball machine instead?
Speaker: So I was like, okay.
Speaker: I never really thought about it, but sure.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I had no idea.
Speaker: There were modes in pinball.
Speaker: And I owned that game for two years before I figured that out.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I also, like he came and set it up, but I would have had no idea how to do it myself.
Speaker: And so the, and that's, that's one thing.
Speaker: Another thing is when, because Josh and I have been doing this for a while and in our local community, we,
Speaker: I think like a guy just posted in our network.
Speaker: He's like, Hey, I just bought a machine.
Speaker: I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, like to set it up.
Speaker: And so I actually just messaged him.
Speaker: I was like, look, I've set up machines before.
Speaker: I'll, I'll come over.
Speaker: I'll just come, come help you set up.
Speaker: It's not a big deal.
Speaker: And so it's actually been really nice, but yes, there is definitely, it's not like throwing keys to a car where you drive it into the garage.
Speaker: There is, there is something about not really fully understanding how pinball works and the physical nature of getting a pinball machine into your house, powered up.
Speaker: People don't, people don't know how to, Oh, by the way, you have to take the glass off.
Speaker: Oh, just do a quick wipe down on the play field.
Speaker: wash off the balls because they have a little bit of oil on them and put them in your game and then you're good to go.
Speaker: But yes, there is definitely a barrier to entry.
Speaker: Josh, what has your experience been?
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: So, I mean, my experience is I've, I've used eBay for our, one of our very first game, which was a Ninja turtles, the original from data East, not this was before Stern released their version.
Speaker: And it was one of those things like it showed up, but even before that, the person that showed me what pinball was, I wanted one, but I was so afraid.
Speaker: I'm like,
Speaker: This thing's a big box of mechanical gibberish.
Speaker: I live out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker: What happens if I break?
Speaker: He's like, don't worry.
Speaker: They're easy to fix.
Speaker: He's like, the barrier, I think the problem is people see the barrier to entry up here when it's actually just lower.
Speaker: If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see my hands.
Speaker: Get on YouTube, like, subscribe, all that jazz.
Speaker: High versus low.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: And then I found Pinside.
Speaker: And it was like I started buying used.
Speaker: But it just became a thing.
Speaker: This was back before Facebook was a thing with Marketplace.
Speaker: This was before Craigslist was really being hit hard.
Speaker: I mean, it just becomes one of those things.
Speaker: I didn't realize... I don't think it... It wasn't until a lot later I started buying new from a distributor.
Speaker: And I didn't even know who to go to.
Speaker: I just kind of... Someone recommended someone kind of thing.
Speaker: We found it out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We figured it out.
Speaker: And it's kind of silly because like you said, Seth, you go to your website and you click on games and stuff like that.
Speaker: But I feel...
Speaker: kind of overwhelmed with buying a game and it does it looks better now like i'm on your site right now you click games the top left says buy a game you get to this page says buy a game so you you guys are doing better at saying hey this is this is how you get a hold of a game where i remember like
Speaker: before the earlier days, it was like, I want to go click a game.
Speaker: So you find the game and it's like, well, here's a list of our distributors and it might not be entirely up to date.
Speaker: And you call the distributor, but they wouldn't answer.
Speaker: And it just, it was kind of a small distributor versus a big one.
Speaker: And you're not sure who's going to be able to, to help you out.
Speaker: And yeah, it's because it could be, Hey, we sell, you know, okay.
Speaker: You guys actually sell pinball machines at our furniture distributor place.
Speaker: And so we go to, like, I go to buy couches and I kind of wander over to the pinball section because I know they have them there.
Speaker: But I'm always surprised when people talk about like, oh, well, we just bought it from, you know, the local place is RC Willie.
Speaker: I'm like, yeah, it's great.
Speaker: I'm glad they have them there.
Speaker: However, I doubt that anybody in RC Willie knows much about setting up a pinball machine other than, hey, we can deliver it.
Speaker: Because they do massage chairs.
Speaker: They do sofas.
Speaker: They do everything.
Speaker: But it's a really specialized thing to buy.
Speaker: However, I've always encouraged people when they – so I don't know, Josh, is this your experience when – or maybe even Seth, is this your experience?
Speaker: When people find out I'm into pinball –
Speaker: They always have the same three questions and they're roughly in this order.
Speaker: They say, pinball, they still make these.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then they, then I was like, yeah, they, they do.
Speaker: And they, they come over and they're like, Oh, yeah.
Speaker: well, this is really cool.
Speaker: Like, oh, you can have these in your house?
Speaker: Yeah, you can.
Speaker: And then the third, third, I need a special license.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The third question is how much are they?
Speaker: And so, and so it's kind of like this, this, this gateway into the pinball community.
Speaker: I have always encouraged people when they talk about the price range, I say, okay, so let me tell you roughly used ones.
Speaker: However, it's like buying a car.
Speaker: If you buy a used car, that's really old and broken down.
Speaker: There's going to be a lot of maintenance going on.
Speaker: And so I always encourage people.
Speaker: I was like, if you really want, because there's nothing worse than buying a machine, taking it home and it being broken and you not knowing how to fix it.
Speaker: So I, I always encourage people.
Speaker: I'm like, what I would do is I would look for, um, like a, I say like a used modern game.
Speaker: So, you know, find a stern or if you want to get, if you want to just get into it and just pay the pay a little bit more, you can just buy a new one box pro and that way it's under warranty and there's no issues.
Speaker: And it's very little maintenance actually.
Speaker: So, so that's always been my selling point to people.
Speaker: And there have been a few people who have actually, I've taken them down that journey from when they got the first pin into where they have three pins and they have five pins.
Speaker: And it's been, it's been a nice way of, I guess, acclimatizing people to what pinball is in the modern era.
Speaker: I was going to say, it's funny.
Speaker: Like what Scott said with RC Willie, the furniture company here.
Speaker: And they're, they're a great furniture company, by the way, they're like, this is where I buy all my furniture.
Speaker: And so it's, it's fine.
Speaker: That's what makes me chuckles because like, so I ran into a gentleman a month and a half ago.
Speaker: I live out in a town of 30,000 people.
Speaker: There's not a ton of pinball out here.
Speaker: The biggest location is my house.
Speaker: There's, there's a pinball machine here.
Speaker: There's a pinball machine there.
Speaker: So I do heating and air conditioning.
Speaker: And then when I tell this gentleman right before I'm leaving for Expo, I'm like, oh, you're lucky that I was able to fix your first day because I'm leaving for Chicago.
Speaker: And he's like, why?
Speaker: I'm like, pinball.
Speaker: And he's like, oh, you love pinball too?
Speaker: And I was like, yeah, why?
Speaker: Like, I just don't run into people that have pinball in Bernal.
Speaker: And he's like, come into my house.
Speaker: And so he shows me a Venom premium, which first catches me off guard because the reception around Venom hasn't been super positive.
Speaker: So I'm like, what convinced you to buy a Venom?
Speaker: And he's like, I went to RC Willie.
Speaker: I got to play all the games there.
Speaker: He's like, I'm a big comic book nerd and I was debating between this or Deadpool.
Speaker: That was my two options I wanted.
Speaker: He said, so there's your first hurdle.
Speaker: There's somewhere he can play it and test out and loves it.
Speaker: And then RC Willie offers financing.
Speaker: And so he's like...
Speaker: this product is $9,000, $10,000, anywhere from $7,000 to $10,000 or LE.
Speaker: This product becomes more attainable because this company is carrying financing and whether they do like 0% financing for 48 months or whatever it is.
Speaker: It's 12 months, by the way.
Speaker: That price of
Speaker: nine, 10 K or, you know, nine, 10,000 becomes, Oh, that becomes more obtainable.
Speaker: They have my house.
Speaker: And it's funny.
Speaker: Cause I asked him like, well, you know, I can, I can get these not through RC Willie.
Speaker: You know, I can help you through flipping out pinball and Zach and Nicole many to get you one of these.
Speaker: And we can talk about that.
Speaker: And he says, that's great.
Speaker: But he's like, I'm still working on paying down my loan essentially for what I have.
Speaker: But it seems like two of the biggest hurdles were, are trying to find them
Speaker: and trying to get them to finance them.
Speaker: And the nice part is a company like RC Wheelie is already doing that with their furniture stuff.
Speaker: So it wasn't a giant leap to do it for people.
Speaker: Yeah, so what you guys are hitting on, this all started you asking about the marketing question and what we're going to do.
Speaker: We have products that people love, and they still make those things as still a top thing.
Speaker: Not enough people know.
Speaker: Not enough people are aware.
Speaker: There's a whole discovery element of how do people discover these online or how do they discover them in a location, whether it be in RC Willie or wherever else.
Speaker: Some of the best advertising we can have is to be in locations with a lot of foot traffic.
Speaker: where people are going to see these games and say, they still make those things and do that.
Speaker: We'll only be successful someday where people never say again, they still make those things.
Speaker: We've got a lot of work to do.
Speaker: But the fact that people say that shows you the size of the opportunity, right?
Speaker: The size of the opportunity for more people to get into pinball, more people to be aware of pinball.
Speaker: And then there's an element of a guide or a Sherpa, right?
Speaker: You both talked about the story about how nerve wracking it was to get into pinball, to have to take responsibility for that physical item, to know that you're making a good decision.
Speaker: And having somebody to help you do that is really, really helpful.
Speaker: And that could take a whole variety of roles.
Speaker: But most of those people are going to be people like yourselves in the community that are going to help people say, oh, it's not that big of a deal.
Speaker: It's not as hard as you think it is.
Speaker: I'll help you.
Speaker: I'll take care of you.
Speaker: Like everybody needs somebody to do that for them to really get into pinball kind of in a big way, at least in the ownership side.
Speaker: It doesn't take that to play pinball.
Speaker: You can go play it at a lot of places, but to become an owner, it takes somebody to help you do that.
Speaker: And so that's where you get to like, you know, things like financing make it easier.
Speaker: Another thing that we did this year, because it was right for us to do for our customers, also right to do for new people was have an official warranty, right?
Speaker: Kind of, in my opinion, kind of crazy that we hadn't had one yet, which is part of the reason why I was like, we're going to do this.
Speaker: We're going to have a, you know, a warranty that people would expect on these things.
Speaker: And so, you know, we did that this year and added that because again, that's going to
Speaker: making people confident in their purchase and know that we're standing behind them.
Speaker: By the way, we were already, if you guys know already, like we were already standing behind our products.
Speaker: We just weren't telling people that we were, which was kind of crazy, right?
Speaker: So part of this is we just need to be a little bit more kind of transparent and talk to people about what we are doing and what we're not doing and put a little bit more of a commitment out there.
Speaker: And so that's something we're working on as well is just to be, you know, a little bit clearer and say what we're doing and, and, and, you know, like talking to you guys today, like talk a little bit more about what we're doing.
Speaker: Cause I think it's important because, you know, we appreciate everybody who is really into pinball and really loves pinball and wants to, wants to host a podcast about pinball, right?
Speaker: Like, you know, that's a special thing and, and it's, it's a, you know, it's a special product.
Speaker: It's a special,
Speaker: It's just something to be.
Speaker: So we just got to tell more people about it and get the word out.
Speaker: And no better way to do that than with the people in the community and folks like yourselves talking about this to get out to more friends and family and people in the community and tell them how much fun this is.
Speaker: Now, I actually do have a story about that.
Speaker: So on my rush, I had the time machine ramp on the upper right.
Speaker: I wasn't exactly sure.
Speaker: So sometimes things can function differently than as they're supposed to.
Speaker: So my time machine ramp would go up, but it would kind of stay down just a little bit.
Speaker: And the thing is, I wasn't exactly sure.
Speaker: I'm like, is this like how it's supposed to be?
Speaker: And I would still be able to play the game, but it just wasn't going quite as good.
Speaker: And so I reached out and I sent a video.
Speaker: And one super nice thing about us is that we've been able to have some contacts at Stern.
Speaker: And I even sent it to Raymond Davidson, who coded Stern.
Speaker: And I said, hey, is this working the way it's supposed to?
Speaker: He's like,
Speaker: No, man, that's that's supposed to go all the way up.
Speaker: Like it's a little flaccid.
Speaker: Like it's not it's not totally going all the way up.
Speaker: And so I reached out and and Greg through flipping out binball, he does the tech stuff.
Speaker: He was able to talk to you guys and say, yeah, actually, they even though it was it had been over a year.
Speaker: But they were able to say, yeah, we'll send you out.
Speaker: So they sent me out a new motor.
Speaker: I fixed it up and put it in.
Speaker: And that is huge, by the way.
Speaker: That is huge because one of the major concerns about any other pinball manufacturer is, are you going to be around and are you going to support the product?
Speaker: And that is reassuring to me.
Speaker: When I tell people like, actually like your biggest bang for your buck is to get a stern and they have the highest volume and the easiest way of fixing them up.
Speaker: If anything happened and it will, cause cause pinball is a physical sport.
Speaker: It is so, but I will say that just a big shout out to what you guys have been doing is because I think you have been on certainly the higher, the higher end of what people expect in a company.
Speaker: Yeah, we do whatever we can to try to take care of people within reason and do that.
Speaker: And that's something the whole team prides themselves in.
Speaker: So we're proud of that.
Speaker: And, you know, we want people to h ave a good experience.
Speaker: So I do have another question because we did, I'm going to circle back to this because you were talking about, you know, it's a lot of times pinball, if it's in location, it tends to be, it tends to be around like the barcade or, you know, the bar arcade or however you want to coin that.
Speaker: And you guys have some great ones there.
Speaker: You know, Logan's Arcade is there.
Speaker: You have Interium's there, which is a little bit of a family center, but it also has an adult section.
Speaker: But there are some smaller places.
Speaker: So like I live in the Salt Lake area.
Speaker: And so I know Utah is not huge, but it is the capital city.
Speaker: And there's about three places, but they're all in Salt Lake.
Speaker: Well, I'm 40 minutes away from all those.
Speaker: But people were super excited for me hosting the tournament because it was a smaller drive for them because they live in a major county that's south of Salt Lake.
Speaker: Now, Josh also lives in a town that has, what, 10,000 to 15,000 people?
Speaker: So a small area.
Speaker: So on these things, how does the future of your promotion, like the Stern Army, how does that factor into the fact that I'm guessing that there's going to be a lot more people who are going to be exposed to home collections in the future, especially when they're young?
Speaker: Because we hosted a women and kids tournament.
Speaker: And so they're not going to be able to go into some of these adult oriented locations.
Speaker: So how does that factor into your strategy going forward?
Speaker: Um, so it's really important to me that we take advantage of all of these opportunities and find ways to do this.
Speaker: I don't know exactly what form that is going to take right now.
Speaker: Currently the, the Stern army is focused on an operator and location specific sort of footprint.
Speaker: But, um, when you're not close to a location and you have a great collection, you know, I'm happy for you to celebrate, you know, a new game launch or anything else kind of in, um,
Speaker: your place with whoever you want to celebrate it with.
Speaker: I don't have an answer for you yet as to what form that's going to take, but I want to work on a way that, you know, you can celebrate your new game just as well as location can because it's an awesome day.
Speaker: Whenever,
Speaker: you know, a new game comes home or you have a tournament full of people or everything like that.
Speaker: You know, some things we've got to figure out about people's homes versus commercial locations, how you make sure everything's safe and all of that.
Speaker: So there's some work for us to do, but I do think,
Speaker: The future of pinball is going to have to be both at home and in commercial locations.
Speaker: And I think, you know, the business has changed, right?
Speaker: It was commercial location predominant for so long.
Speaker: And now it's more balanced between the two.
Speaker: And the play is more balanced between the two.
Speaker: than it's ever been before.
Speaker: So we got some work to do to figure out how to support home locations better than we have in the past.
Speaker: And as we talked about before, that's something I want to do because we're just missing out on an opportunity if we don't do it, right?
Speaker: How many people are in your area in your neighborhood that would be excited to come play pinball and sort of participate in this that aren't going to drive 45 minutes to downtown to do it, right?
Speaker: I bet you there's a ton.
Speaker: Well, just how many people found out, wait, you got a Metallica LE?
Speaker: I want to come play.
Speaker: Like, we even had, even though it was a women's and kids tournament, we did have some significant others that showed up who were not playing in the tournament, who kind of piggybacked on the participants so they could get a glimpse of Metallica and play Metallica.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a bit of almost a launch party for yourself for that one, right?
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: So we got to do that, right?
Speaker: It's a celebration when those games come home.
Speaker: And, you know, home or location, it should be a celebration.
Speaker: And we need to figure out some good ways to support you guys.
Speaker: So I think we will.
Speaker: We just got some work to do.
Speaker: Sounds good.
Speaker: Yeah, like if your collection is so big and you run tournaments, you could do this or that.
Speaker: Yes, yes.
Speaker: But, you know, by the end, we got to figure out how all that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: that works, but.
Speaker: Well, I probably have more games than, well, okay.
Speaker: I probably have an equivalent collection to Keto's, which is the downtown location we have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Keto's have about 10 games, 10, 12.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you, they're probably about the equivalent of the same amount of Sterns and retro and stuff like that.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, it, it, it,
Speaker: Well, and I mean, right now, you've certainly also got the Pinball Cup going on right at the moment where... Yeah, so talk about that.
Speaker: Talk about the Pinball Cup.
Speaker: Yeah, so Pinball Cup, you know, one of the things that we've been doing as we go through new things to do, we had done a little test and experiment and a new experience with March Machine Mania back in March, which was a sort of tournament, sort of basketball tournament themed competition where all the states and international could compete.
Speaker: And that was all based on scores.
Speaker: And as you guys know,
Speaker: Comparing scores across pinball machines is quite an exercise.
Speaker: So as we thought about what could we do that's something fun for the community to participate in that could work across all of our connected machines, we came up with this idea of the races in Pinball Cup.
Speaker: And one of the things we were able to put into the games since then was different challenges you could achieve, right?
Speaker: So they were objective based instead of just score comparisons across the game.
Speaker: So when you guys saw an all game update,
Speaker: a month or so ago, that was what we were doing.
Speaker: We were putting in all of those challenges so that people could compete in those challenges.
Speaker: So for Pinball Cup, basically there's five groups and we had a qualifying week where you got points to get into a group.
Speaker: And now we're having race week where we'll see who's able to win and get the most points.
Speaker: And so there's challenges ranging from easy to hard on each one of our games and
Speaker: that people can work against and compete in.
Speaker: And so, you know, if you have access to a game, you have access to be in the Pinball Cup.
Speaker: And, you know, the more games you have access to, the more chances you have to get kind of more points across games.
Speaker: And we just thought it was a fun way for people to come together over the holidays.
Speaker: We tend to see our greatest play over the holiday period because...
Speaker: It won't surprise you that the most play is on weekends when people have time off.
Speaker: In the holidays, you get a lot of time off, so there's a lot of pinball play.
Speaker: So we thought it would be fun to have something for people to do and compete with over the holidays.
Speaker: So that was really the idea of Pinball Cup, was to get everybody together.
Speaker: And no matter what stern pinball machine you have, you can play, right?
Speaker: And you can participate and you can be part of it.
Speaker: So that's the idea.
Speaker: So we're seeing...
Speaker: Uh, increases in play increases in people scanning in all those things, which is what we want to see.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: People are having fun.
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: So you have each game and maybe Josh, maybe you want to jump in on this too.
Speaker: So you have each game and you're competing on whatever game.
Speaker: So I have seven games here or six games in my downstairs that have insider connected all set up.
Speaker: So on each game, each game has a cup and then you get risk stratified or ability stratified in them.
Speaker: And so it's a little bit like a pinball tournament where you have ABC division.
Speaker: Am I understanding that correctly?
Speaker: Yeah, so it's overall scoring.
Speaker: So it's overall scoring, but you can play from any game.
Speaker: Each game has its own challenges that will allow you to earn points towards the race total for the week.
Speaker: So, you know, there's an easy challenge on Rush.
Speaker: There's a medium challenge on Rush.
Speaker: There's sort of five different challenges for you to do on Rush.
Speaker: And each one of those is going to earn you points towards your race result for the week.
Speaker: So you could...
Speaker: earn them on a bunch of different games or you can earn them on one game, but it's a lot more fun to earn them on more games.
Speaker: So is the challenge basically like do this thing in the game or is it just overall score based?
Speaker: So the first one, we have an easy one that's overall score-based set at a pretty reasonable level that just about anybody should be able to achieve relatively straightforwardly.
Speaker: And then they go in increasing difficulty from there.
Speaker: And then the hard ones are pretty hard.
Speaker: And they're worth a lot more points.
Speaker: I'm going to say I've almost got Godzilla memorized because I've been playing this.
Speaker: And so the easy one is like $20 million, which is a fairly easy goal for Godzilla.
Speaker: Except for Joel.
Speaker: Except for Joel.
Speaker: And then you got like bridge attack, just starting bridge attack, starting Tesla attack.
Speaker: That's another one.
Speaker: Completing Ebra.
Speaker: So that's the spinner mode.
Speaker: And I can't remember.
Speaker: Hey, by the way, that's the one I hate so much.
Speaker: I hate that because it's right on the tip of the flipper and it drives me crazy.
Speaker: Oh, the, the, the fifth one is getting a destruction jackpot and defeating Ebra is one of the easier ones.
Speaker: Oh my gosh.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: I can't believe you said that.
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: Anyhow.
Speaker: I play with the glass on.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, but my question is too, because I see that
Speaker: I guess there's really no quote-unquote rules to this.
Speaker: I mean, if anyone wanted to take the glass off and just push buttons and just pump and dump, I've heard of people setting it to just a one-ball game and just knocking these out.
Speaker: I mean, I look at today's the second day.
Speaker: Like, this has not even been out 48 hours.
Speaker: Someone's already at 14,000 points.
Speaker: And I'm like, the max you can score on a game is 70.
Speaker: I'm like, how do you...
Speaker: Is it one of those things?
Speaker: Because I look to, like, when you guys first brought Insider Connected, there was, like, the promise of, like, May winning prizes and, like, t-shirts or swag bags and stuff like that.
Speaker: But even, like, with just this, just for a badge, it seems like people are going nuts over it.
Speaker: How do you contain something like that?
Speaker: How do you make it fun and how do you prevent cheaters?
Speaker: We had a lot of concern when we first launched leaderboards.
Speaker: This is a little bit inside info, but when we first launched leaderboards, there was a discussion about only letting for the
Speaker: for these global leaderboards we do only letting locations participate on them because people could take the glass off and could maybe cheat at home when we do these monthly kind of global leaderboards and the reality has been that the community has largely self-policed itself and behaved itself because how exciting is it to be the guy who cheated to get to the top of that thing like it's it's actually not that fulfilling um
Speaker: That said, we actually had on March Machine Mania, we had more trouble, which is if somebody... What's an exploit that is exploitable in a game?
Speaker: Is that a bug or not a bug?
Speaker: And there was all sorts of discussions about Jaws and all sorts of discussions about Batman.
Speaker: And it was a fun conversation because there was two sides to...
Speaker: you know, what's a bug that should not be counted versus what is a bug that, hey, that person was good enough to do the exploit.
Speaker: There's a little bit of that as well.
Speaker: Needless to say, we'll look at the data and we'll try to react as best as possible.
Speaker: But I have to say,
Speaker: I was initially surprised at how good the community's been at, you know, largely playing stuff straight up.
Speaker: Cause also like, it's boring as hell to cheat and cheat over and over and over again for days.
Speaker: Like, like you got to get tired of it at some point.
Speaker: So, you know, this is actually a good community of people that, you know, mostly people are playing for the right things and the right reasons or whatever.
Speaker: And there might be some temporary aberrations, but like,
Speaker: Somebody really going to keep that thing cooking for some period of time.
Speaker: And the other thing is like, look, we do have some games that occasionally will get stuck in a certain way and that'll rack up a bunch of points on things.
Speaker: Luckily, the structure of this one hopefully doesn't let them overscore points on that.
Speaker: So that does solve some of what we had before.
Speaker: But yeah,
Speaker: We'll take a look at it if somebody's clearly doing something impossible and then figure out what we do about it.
Speaker: But hopefully, we just don't have that problem.
Speaker: And actually, most of the stuff we've done in the past, we really have not had that problem in a big way, which is kind of awesome.
Speaker: You always assume somebody's going to be a total jerk.
Speaker: And not having that has been really kind of impressive from my perspective.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: So tell me about how, so I'm actually logging into my Insider Connector right now and I'm going to see how do I find out how far I've gotten?
Speaker: Like say I'm pulling it up right now.
Speaker: So people at home when they're like, how do I compete in this?
Speaker: I'll have to pull it up and look through with you.
Speaker: Yeah, I just because I think this is this is something that's important because when I'm looking at it, like I pull up, it has like your your scan ad up there.
Speaker: It's like, hey, December, December quest pinball.
Speaker: So go to the quest page.
Speaker: OK, I just I mean, one easy way to get to it is at the top.
Speaker: Now you do have to scroll over, but at the top where you have launch parties and whatever, if you scroll over to the end, the fourth one.
Speaker: OK, pinball cop up there.
Speaker: And you can kind of view the current race and where I need to I need to pay play way more.
Speaker: I'm tier two.
Speaker: I'm not sure what that means.
Speaker: And I have a total of 50 points.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: You got to get playing.
Speaker: I got a good point, but I am in the top 2,000.
Speaker: Good for you.
Speaker: At least that does help.
Speaker: I'm in tier 3 at 70 points.
Speaker: Well, my son keeps playing though too.
Speaker: My son's in tier 1 and right now as he sets, he has 730 points.
Speaker: I was like, dang dude, calm down.
Speaker: He wants that badge though.
Speaker: He's motivated.
Speaker: He's like, I've got Christmas break.
Speaker: I know what I'm doing for Christmas break.
Speaker: The kids play for the achievements and the challenges and
Speaker: it's it's a different way of playing they do that in a great way okay well okay i mean we are we are wrapping up on our hour mark um josh what else what else do you want to know from seth i don't know this has been fantastic this has been a wealth of information and appreciate how open and candid you've been about everything we've asked you about seth this has been amazing
Speaker: So Seth, what are, what, what are some topics that we were not smart enough to think about that you're like, you should have asked this, what's your problem?
Speaker: And what is, what are we looking at at Stern in 2025?
Speaker: Well, 2025, I think it's going to be an amazing year.
Speaker: We've got some exciting new stuff coming for everybody.
Speaker: As you know, we always release a number of games each year.
Speaker: We're going to kind of keep up the pace.
Speaker: Coming up on a possible milestone here.
Speaker: You guys always show something in January.
Speaker: We do.
Speaker: I mean, it doesn't take a lot of pattern recognition to figure out that CES is a big time for us.
Speaker: And, you know, I think we're going to have some exciting stuff to talk about here pretty soon.
Speaker: And, you know, maybe some of you guys will get to come in and check some of it out.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: I think it'll be fun.
Speaker: We've got some good stuff coming and I think some real creativity from the team on some outside the box things, some different ways to think about things.
Speaker: And that's what's really fun is sort of inventing and
Speaker: Pinball is the game, but inventing in and around pinball and the different things you can do, I think are pretty good.
Speaker: You guys asked before, and we get the question a lot about next generation and next generation platforms.
Speaker: You kind of alluded to it there.
Speaker: part of it is we look at our processing technology, but we also look at our platform and everything else and all that goes with it and try to figure out what would be fulfilling for everybody, right?
Speaker: Because if I gave you a new CPU and everything did everything the same, how excited would you really be, right?
Speaker: You know, that again, the
Speaker: You know, we're great at getting lots of rumors out there about everything going on and what's coming.
Speaker: But, you know, is a CPU board enough for you or you want some more and you want some different things?
Speaker: And so we're working through all of that.
Speaker: So patience is a virtue and I know nobody's patient, but...
Speaker: We'll be ready when we're ready.
Speaker: As you guys know, we put out stuff at a pace like nothing else.
Speaker: We will put it out, but everybody wants everything to be tested and perfect.
Speaker: We're testing a lot of different stuff and we've got a lot more coming.
Speaker: We'll announce everything when it's time and when we're ready for it.
Speaker: I think you guys will really enjoy it.
Speaker: We appreciate all of the interest and all of the speculation, all of the excitement for what's coming in the future.
Speaker: We're working on all those things.
Speaker: We're working to make the platform better.
Speaker: We're working to make the games better.
Speaker: We're working to deliver you really what you want.
Speaker: That was part of why we did... You guys probably saw the survey we did earlier this year to ask everybody about what they want.
Speaker: That's something we can do now that we have a relationship through Insider Connected with
Speaker: with everybody in the community, we can ask questions and we can get answers.
Speaker: And when you try to, you know, rest assured, we are trying to deliver you what you want.
Speaker: Why would we do anything else?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So we're excited to keep that going into the new year.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Got anything else that you want to ask Scott?
Speaker: No, I think we're good.
Speaker: The one thing is, don't want to give out your personal information, but if people want to reach out to Stern and either like, hey, I have a great idea for pinball, or I'm interested in getting a game, or I would like to work at Stern, what is the best way to contact you?
Speaker: So we have an insider at sternpinball.com email where we take a lot of the insider and other questions.
Speaker: But if you send a request to that, they'll get through to us as well.
Speaker: There are also some inquiry forms on the website for different types of inquiries as well.
Speaker: If you want to send them in there, if you need tech support or if you have another type of inquiry, we've got some inquiry forms on the website.
Speaker: People can submit there.
Speaker: But insider at sternpinball.com works perfectly fine.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: And if you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com.
Speaker: You can get a hold of us on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, which for some odd reason blew up last week.
Speaker: We got 13,000 views in like three hours.
Speaker: I don't know what happened, but it happened.
Speaker: And then, uh, if send us an email, we do have our swag on swivel ball, swag.com slash loser kid.
Speaker: We appreciate those have, uh, has supported us and buying product for Christmas time and whatnot.
Speaker: Uh, Scott, give us our final words.
Speaker: You know what?
Speaker: Check out Stern's page too.
Speaker: I'm actually repping the Stern shirt.
Speaker: The, uh, my, my favorite green one that, uh,
Speaker: They gave me when I came out and visited.
Speaker: They were super nice, but they have really great merch there.
Speaker: So check that out again.
Speaker: Big shout out to Seth.
Speaker: Thank you so much.
Speaker: We're happy for the future of Stern and the future of pinball with you leading it along the way.
Speaker: And we want to wish everybody a safe and a Merry Christmas.
