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Ep 156: The Future of Pinball with Seth Davis
25 Plays3 months ago
The President of Stern joins us to talk about inflation, price increases, putting games in the vault and the direction Stern is taking to make pinball more accessible to everyone
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Transcript
Introduction to Flippin' Out Pinball
00:00:08
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into loser kid pinball podcast.
00:00:10
Speaker
Merry Christmas.
00:00:12
Speaker
It is that time of year.
00:00:13
Speaker
And you know what?
00:00:14
Speaker
We're on episode 156 with you.
00:00:16
Speaker
My co-captain as always.
00:00:17
Speaker
Scott Larson.
00:00:18
Speaker
And Scott, it is Christmas time.
00:00:21
Speaker
It's time to get those pinball machines in your house.
00:00:23
Speaker
And if you're going to buy them, who are you going to buy from?
00:00:26
Speaker
You know, I go with Zach and Nicole at Flippin' Out Pinball.
00:00:29
Speaker
They've always been really good to us, and we're happy with our relationship.
00:00:33
Speaker
I know I actually just ordered the Metallica topper, so interested in that.
00:00:38
Speaker
I've always got, you know, accessories and games.
00:00:41
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...
00:00:49
Speaker
They sell used games.
00:00:50
Speaker
They sell everything, but they're really easy to get a hold of.
00:00:53
Speaker
Messaging is probably the easiest way because he gets about 150 contacts a day.
00:00:58
Speaker
However, just reach out, flipping out pinball.
00:01:01
Speaker
They've always been really good to us and they'll be good to you.
00:01:04
Speaker
They're amazing to us.
00:01:05
Speaker
And I want to tell you, so last Wednesday, Tim Lee, good friend of the show.
00:01:08
Speaker
Good friend of the show.
00:01:09
Speaker
A lot of people know him because he sucks at pinball.
00:01:11
Speaker
But he messaged me.
00:01:12
Speaker
That's not special to him, but he does really stink at the pinball crew.
00:01:16
Speaker
So he messages me.
00:01:17
Speaker
He says, Josh, I want a Metallica.
00:01:18
Speaker
Do you think you'd get me one before Christmas?
00:01:20
Speaker
And I kind of laughed.
00:01:21
Speaker
I was like, we can see what we can do.
00:01:23
Speaker
We'll see.
00:01:24
Speaker
We shall see.
00:01:25
Speaker
I messaged Zach.
00:01:27
Speaker
Zach said, I can get one.
00:01:28
Speaker
He's like, we'll get you squared away.
00:01:30
Speaker
Tim sent over the payment the next day.
00:01:32
Speaker
Mind you, this was on Thursday.
00:01:34
Speaker
Zach gets the payment on Thursday, gets the Metallica on the truck, and guess what was in Tim's?
00:01:39
Speaker
In his garage in Pennsylvania Monday morning.
00:01:42
Speaker
Wow.
00:01:42
Speaker
Metallica premium.
00:01:44
Speaker
That is how amazing Zach is with customer service.
00:01:47
Speaker
Merry Christmas to Tim and his family as well.
00:01:49
Speaker
Yeah.
Guest Introduction: Seth Davis
00:01:50
Speaker
Okay, Scott, I'm going to turn over you for introductions now.
00:01:53
Speaker
Okay, so this is, we're really excited.
00:01:55
Speaker
We have Seth Davis today.
00:01:57
Speaker
And Seth, it's interesting because he comes from the world of Disney.
00:02:02
Speaker
So he's been working in Disney forever.
00:02:03
Speaker
Now he's come across.
00:02:06
Speaker
Seth, how long has it been?
00:02:07
Speaker
A year?
00:02:07
Speaker
Two years?
00:02:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:02:08
Speaker
Oh, three.
00:02:09
Speaker
Three years now.
00:02:11
Speaker
Wow, three years.
00:02:11
Speaker
So he's come from Disney into the land of pinball to be the president of Stern.
00:02:17
Speaker
He's young, cutting his teeth in relative pinball terms.
00:02:22
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.
00:02:29
Speaker
about things in the expo.
00:02:32
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.
00:02:44
Speaker
Well, okay, that's not the way I want to say it.
00:02:46
Speaker
He is still opening his eyes to the manufacturing world of pinball.
00:02:51
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.
00:02:57
Speaker
And so we would like to welcome Seth Davis as the president of Stern to Loser Kid Pinball today.
00:03:04
Speaker
And we are so thankful that you are able to come on and we are going to talk all things pinball.
00:03:08
Speaker
How are you doing today, Seth?
00:03:09
Speaker
I'm good.
00:03:09
Speaker
How are you?
00:03:10
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:03:11
Speaker
I'm glad to be here.
Stern's Manufacturing Strategy for the Holidays
00:03:13
Speaker
So one thing,
00:03:16
Speaker
This is the Christmas time.
00:03:17
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.
00:03:32
Speaker
So here's my question.
00:03:34
Speaker
How do you decide what games you are going to prioritize when you're manufacturing for the Christmas rush?
00:03:40
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.
00:03:48
Speaker
You know, we work with them very closely about what are people looking for?
00:03:51
Speaker
What do they want?
00:03:52
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.
00:03:57
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.
00:04:08
Speaker
That's one of the titles we're going to take out of production here.
00:04:11
Speaker
But we wanted to make a few more because people have been looking for them and it's something they want.
00:04:14
Speaker
And that's really based on feedback from all sorts of customers.
00:04:19
Speaker
You talked about this marketplace.
00:04:20
Speaker
We've got commercial customers.
00:04:22
Speaker
We've got consumers and enthusiasts.
00:04:24
Speaker
We've got a lot of different customers.
00:04:26
Speaker
And so we really take the demand across those for what people want to decide what we're going to make.
New Vault Strategy and Game Availability
00:04:33
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.
00:04:48
Speaker
And these are some big title names like Star Wars and Deadpool.
00:04:52
Speaker
I mean, these are number movers.
00:04:55
Speaker
What made the decision to put these games behind the wall, essentially, and put them in the vault?
00:05:00
Speaker
So there's a couple of things there.
00:05:02
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...
00:05:12
Speaker
transparent enough or forthcoming enough with consumers.
00:05:14
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.
00:05:21
Speaker
And people make decisions about what titles are being manufactured or what titles are not being manufactured.
00:05:26
Speaker
And part of the strategy is to just be more upfront with people about this is what we're doing.
00:05:30
Speaker
This is, you know, the time periods for which we're doing it.
00:05:33
Speaker
And after that, we'll sort of revisit these things.
00:05:35
Speaker
So when we look through our portfolio, we were getting feedback both from consumers, but very much from our dealers.
00:05:41
Speaker
that there were so many choices that it was hard for them to stock all the choices, have all the choices available.
00:05:50
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.
00:06:04
Speaker
and have a more focused portfolio available.
00:06:06
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.
00:06:16
Speaker
I mean, we came out with four new titles last year.
00:06:19
Speaker
We can't just keep adding to the number of titles available.
00:06:22
Speaker
At some point we've got to call out and it'd been a little time since we had called out.
00:06:26
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.
00:06:35
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.
00:06:48
Speaker
What made you decide those ones versus like maybe Mandalorian or Black Knight or Rush or 007?
00:06:56
Speaker
So sometimes it has to do with the licenses themselves, obviously.
00:06:59
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.
00:07:10
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.
00:07:20
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.
00:07:26
Speaker
It'll be sometime after that if we were to ever do it.
00:07:29
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.
00:07:33
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.
00:07:40
Speaker
So let's go revisit this kind of at that time period.
00:07:44
Speaker
So a lot of it has to do with the licenses.
00:07:46
Speaker
A lot of it has to do with where we are in production and sales and all of that.
00:07:49
Speaker
And, you know, I think all of our titles are awesome.
00:07:52
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.
00:07:59
Speaker
But, you know, look, it gives our title some time to breathe.
00:08:02
Speaker
It gives people an opportunity to focus on all the new titles that came out this year.
00:08:06
Speaker
And we're going to keep bringing our great new titles next year.
Metallica Remastered and Future Titles Wishlist
00:08:09
Speaker
So there's going to be plenty for people to get.
00:08:12
Speaker
And I think cycling is just healthy for the community as we continue to bring out more new titles.
00:08:18
Speaker
Now, one of the titles that you brought up this year was Metallica Remastered, which is, you know, it's a one.
00:08:25
Speaker
It was a huge seller for you when it first came out, you know, 11 years ago.
00:08:30
Speaker
And it came out, you know, it was a DMD title.
00:08:33
Speaker
It had basically the same layout, but with this release, you were able to upgrade it in many ways.
00:08:40
Speaker
One, the sound system, the lighting system, you were able to incorporate the LCD screen into the back.
00:08:48
Speaker
And it really, it basically made, you know, a modern-ish game like up-to-date.
00:08:54
Speaker
Now that has to, I'm curious as what is your response been?
00:08:58
Speaker
Because there are a couple of factors here is that Metallica was a hugely successful initial run.
00:09:04
Speaker
And so there has to be, you know, five to 10,000 of these games out there in the wild.
00:09:09
Speaker
And for you to consider revisiting this and making it, how would you like, how has the response been?
00:09:17
Speaker
Has it exceeded your expectations and what doors does it open with this release?
00:09:24
Speaker
the response has been tremendous.
00:09:26
Speaker
People have really appreciated this game.
00:09:28
Speaker
Look, it's a risk whenever you make these decisions.
00:09:31
Speaker
One of the things that...
00:09:34
Speaker
I think is useful for people to understand about this is we make these decisions almost two years before these products come out.
00:09:40
Speaker
So we're making bets about what we want to do and where we want to be like two years in advance.
00:09:45
Speaker
So, you know, you can do the math like we're figuring out what 2026, 2027 look like now.
00:09:51
Speaker
Right.
00:09:52
Speaker
Because you got to do all this work and all this setting up in advance.
00:09:55
Speaker
So it was a it was a bet and a risk.
00:09:57
Speaker
But here's what we knew.
00:09:59
Speaker
We knew Metallica really wanted to do it.
00:10:00
Speaker
They wanted updated product for the updated generation.
00:10:04
Speaker
We knew that the original game was a great one and was really well received.
00:10:10
Speaker
So it didn't really make sense to do something completely different.
00:10:14
Speaker
Right.
00:10:14
Speaker
It made sense to leverage the strength of what's there.
00:10:17
Speaker
But yeah.
00:10:19
Speaker
you know, how do you go back and do right by a product that's already existed?
00:10:23
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.
00:10:31
Speaker
We could do the LCD, we could add a ton more songs.
00:10:34
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.
00:10:45
Speaker
And then the other thing is that product was amazing when it came out.
00:10:49
Speaker
11 years is a, in a way, it's a short time in pinball because pinball memories are really long.
00:10:54
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?
00:11:01
Speaker
Because 11 years, like, just think about how you've all grown and changed in 11 years.
00:11:06
Speaker
The people that are in pinball, some of them are the same, but a lot of them are new.
00:11:10
Speaker
Like, think of the size of, you know, Texas Pinball Festival and Pinball Expo and California Extreme and all these shows.
00:11:17
Speaker
Like, how many more people...
00:11:18
Speaker
are in Pinball now, they all missed out on the opportunity to enjoy that product originally.
00:11:24
Speaker
And so, yeah, they could get an older version or whatever, but people want the new technology.
00:11:29
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?
00:11:36
Speaker
In some ways, Pinball's Pinball, but in other ways, technology has come dramatically far
00:11:42
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.
00:11:53
Speaker
I know you've been having some fun with the game, so do you think we did it right?
00:11:57
Speaker
You know what?
00:11:58
Speaker
Okay.
00:11:58
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.
00:12:09
Speaker
And so for me to, it's, I like being able to see the whole play field.
00:12:13
Speaker
So when I would go on location, you would see Metallica and yeah, it's, it's great.
00:12:17
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,
00:12:25
Speaker
what I currently have.
00:12:26
Speaker
So I have a great collection at home.
00:12:29
Speaker
And so, you know, the play fields are well illuminated.
00:12:31
Speaker
I have invisible glass on them.
00:12:34
Speaker
And so I love that playing experience.
00:12:36
Speaker
And when I would play the old Metallica, it was kind of hard to see the ball many times.
00:12:40
Speaker
And it was hard to see the art.
00:12:43
Speaker
And in many ways, the ball's moving so fast that you want to be able to illuminate.
00:12:48
Speaker
And that's why I think some of these aftermarket things that you guys have addressed that with your OEM options,
00:12:54
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.
00:13:12
Speaker
It's because I break it like I normally do.
00:13:15
Speaker
And so that's why the new one
00:13:19
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.
00:13:25
Speaker
You need to get the LE.
00:13:26
Speaker
It looks great.
00:13:27
Speaker
It looks, it's going to be so good.
00:13:28
Speaker
And then when we came out, Josh and I came out and were able to play it at Stern.
00:13:33
Speaker
You can just see it in person and the LE and the premium both,
00:13:37
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.
00:13:47
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.
00:14:01
Speaker
Lay it on me.
00:14:02
Speaker
Okay.
00:14:03
Speaker
Lord of the Rings.
00:14:04
Speaker
I want a Lord of the Rings.
00:14:05
Speaker
I want to master Lord of the Rings because that has to be the number one thing.
00:14:11
Speaker
I'm with you.
00:14:12
Speaker
I'm with you.
00:14:14
Speaker
It's an amazing franchise.
00:14:15
Speaker
It's an amazing game.
00:14:16
Speaker
I'm with you.
00:14:18
Speaker
The call-outs are great and everything, but imagine taking that to the next level, and it would be so good.
00:14:25
Speaker
Tron, again, man, Tron is custom-made.
00:14:28
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.
00:14:40
Speaker
And if you guys did that OEM,
00:14:42
Speaker
wow, that would be a huge seller.
00:14:45
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.
00:14:55
Speaker
And ACDC was really where you guys started turning that corner to say, okay, we're going to play with the big boys.
00:15:01
Speaker
This is going to be great.
00:15:02
Speaker
ACDC, Aerosmith, you could even argue if you could do it,
00:15:07
Speaker
uh pirates of the caribbean your version of the pirates of the caribbean was so good and
Challenges in Game Remastering
00:15:11
Speaker
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
00:15:29
Speaker
And it's, it's nice.
00:15:31
Speaker
Actually, the one thing I, I literally at expo, I just barely bought the color DMD to swap out the orange DMD.
00:15:38
Speaker
Because when I had that in my lineup, that was the only thing that was jumping out at me.
00:15:43
Speaker
But, oh my gosh, adding more stuff to that or, or pulling out Simpsons pinball or doing a Futurama game.
00:15:49
Speaker
My gosh, how amazing would that be to couple with the Simpsons pinball party?
00:15:55
Speaker
No, that's great.
00:15:56
Speaker
Yeah, look, we've, I've heard most of those before.
00:15:59
Speaker
So not a lot of surprises on that list.
00:16:02
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.
00:16:15
Speaker
So we're going to keep looking at ways to bring people what they want.
00:16:19
Speaker
And that's, that's really what we've been doing.
00:16:20
Speaker
We're, we're,
00:16:21
Speaker
you know, look, we're taking some risks.
00:16:23
Speaker
Sometimes we nail it right on the head.
00:16:25
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.
00:16:30
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.
00:16:40
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.
00:16:48
Speaker
but we thought we were doing it in a way that people would really appreciate it.
00:16:51
Speaker
And that has really been the case kind of across the board.
00:16:55
Speaker
So I think it shows us what's possible.
00:16:57
Speaker
We've got to be thoughtful about it.
00:16:58
Speaker
We've got to be responsible.
00:16:59
Speaker
We also have to have partners that really want to do it.
00:17:02
Speaker
And, you know, it's a lot of work.
00:17:04
Speaker
It's,
00:17:05
Speaker
you know, most of the work that goes into a brand new game.
00:17:08
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?
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker
So you start with a little bit of layout, a little bit of code, but,
00:17:21
Speaker
You're doing almost everything above and beyond that and around that to make it a new game.
00:17:25
Speaker
So it does take a lot of work for us to do those.
00:17:27
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.
Seth's Background and Transition from Disney
00:17:33
Speaker
And so we're kind of going through and figuring out what's possible.
00:17:36
Speaker
Well, and just kudos to you guys, because I feel like Metallica was done right.
00:17:40
Speaker
Whereas to juxtapose it with the vault of Spider-Man, it wasn't super well received.
00:17:45
Speaker
You lost the voices of J. Joe and Jameson, which was such an integral part of the original game.
00:17:50
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.
00:17:57
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.
00:18:06
Speaker
A couple of questions I was thinking about.
00:18:10
Speaker
So you came from Disney.
00:18:12
Speaker
So this is a little bit different.
00:18:14
Speaker
I like how you said that you're putting a bet on what 2026 and 2027 are going to look like.
00:18:20
Speaker
How is that different from because you came from the streaming side of things with Disney, right?
00:18:24
Speaker
So I was at Disney for a long time.
00:18:26
Speaker
Most of my time at Disney was in video games.
00:18:28
Speaker
And then towards the end, I was in streaming and places like that.
00:18:33
Speaker
So I've been in the video game world before and it's a similar thing, right?
00:18:36
Speaker
You make a bet and you develop a game to go see what's going to happen in the future.
00:18:41
Speaker
And so there's a lot of sort of similarities there in terms of, you know, making a bet and figuring it out.
00:18:48
Speaker
And as you guys know, game developers, you make a bet and you see what happens on launch day, right?
00:18:53
Speaker
Well, that's what I was going to ask, too, is because is it harder in pinball because you have a physical product?
00:18:58
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.
00:19:05
Speaker
Where pinball machines is you make it, it's physical.
00:19:08
Speaker
It's hard to revamp the physicality of the game once it's in a house.
00:19:12
Speaker
You know what I'm saying?
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:13
Speaker
That's totally true.
00:19:14
Speaker
So I actually worked on a couple of products when I was at Disney.
00:19:18
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.
00:19:24
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.
00:19:33
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.
00:19:38
Speaker
So I've been in the...
00:19:41
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.
00:19:51
Speaker
You're right, though.
00:19:53
Speaker
You've got a physical thing that must, you know, must get to the church on time.
00:19:57
Speaker
Right.
00:19:58
Speaker
You must get it done and it must be right.
00:20:01
Speaker
And, you know, if you make a mistake, it's a physical product that's out there in the world.
00:20:05
Speaker
And so.
00:20:06
Speaker
We do a lot of work and we have a very experienced team that makes sure this happens and it all happens predictably.
00:20:12
Speaker
We usually get it 99% of the way right.
00:20:15
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.
00:20:22
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
00:20:46
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.
00:20:56
Speaker
It's a heroic effort every time.
00:20:58
Speaker
Definitely.
00:20:59
Speaker
So tell me.
Growth Potential in the Pinball Industry
00:21:01
Speaker
Go ahead, Josh.
00:21:01
Speaker
No, you can go for it, Seth.
00:21:03
Speaker
So tell me about the, like, you're at Disney.
00:21:07
Speaker
Your career path is going along.
00:21:09
Speaker
and this opportunity came up.
00:21:11
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.
00:21:19
Speaker
Is that, is that fair to say?
00:21:20
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.
00:21:33
Speaker
Right.
00:21:33
Speaker
So for me, it was everything that was in an arcade was in an arcade and I played
00:21:37
Speaker
all of them sort of equally.
00:21:40
Speaker
I was not a pinball enthusiast collector, certainly.
00:21:44
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.
00:21:50
Speaker
So I did not come through it from the sort of pinball enthusiast space.
00:21:55
Speaker
I just came to it as someone who was very familiar and a game player, you know, growing up in the 80s.
00:22:00
Speaker
So I played games, but I was not, you know,
00:22:03
Speaker
Not like a championship player or not a big time collector or anything like that.
00:22:08
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.
00:22:14
Speaker
I missed being part of that creation and everything that went with that.
00:22:19
Speaker
Streaming is great, but.
00:22:21
Speaker
doesn't quite have the energy for me that making and shipping these games does.
00:22:25
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.
00:22:32
Speaker
So when they call, I said, pinball, I love pinball, which everybody sort of says, whether they're an enthusiast collector or not.
00:22:41
Speaker
And a company that makes the absolute best products in the world, how could I not be interested in that?
00:22:46
Speaker
So I worked at Disney for a long time, but before I was at Disney, I did work in manufacturing at GE.
00:22:52
Speaker
So I had some manufacturing experience as well.
00:22:55
Speaker
And so that was part of what was interesting on the Stern side.
00:22:58
Speaker
They called up and I was interested and the process went pretty quick from there.
00:23:05
Speaker
So that's a little different than someone like hiring Keith because Keith has been in into pinball forever.
00:23:13
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.
00:23:22
Speaker
I grew up in an 80s arcade, too.
00:23:24
Speaker
A lot of times I didn't understand pinball though.
00:23:27
Speaker
So I never really played it.
00:23:28
Speaker
I didn't understand what I was supposed to do.
00:23:31
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.
00:23:42
Speaker
But for some reason in my mind, that's how it was.
00:23:44
Speaker
So I didn't even come to it until later.
00:23:47
Speaker
The only thing I remember much about pinball is going into the arcade and seeing flash over there.
00:23:53
Speaker
And I never played it, but I never, I never understood it.
00:23:56
Speaker
So it's, it is interesting that your journey in pinball is probably a lot more similar.
00:24:01
Speaker
It's more in common with a lot of people in our demographic.
00:24:05
Speaker
We do have a lot of people that sort of played pinball when they were younger and find their way back to it.
00:24:10
Speaker
Right.
00:24:11
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.
00:24:25
Speaker
And, you know, part of the.
00:24:28
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?
00:24:36
Speaker
If you think about the baby boomer that was 45 and owned a home and had this space, they weren't a gamer.
00:24:41
Speaker
Their kid was a gamer.
00:24:42
Speaker
And now you've got like 45-year-old Gen X that have been gamers all their life.
00:24:46
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?
00:24:54
Speaker
Like these are a heck of a lot more exciting than
00:24:57
Speaker
you know, a digital game that sits under your TV, right?
00:25:00
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.
00:25:07
Speaker
So that brings me to, I'm thinking about this.
00:25:11
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.
00:25:16
Speaker
Speaking of the future of the Gen Xers and getting those customers to buy more product,
00:25:24
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
00:25:51
Speaker
You know, the last, frankly, the last few years in the world have been nuts, right?
00:25:56
Speaker
You know,
00:25:59
Speaker
People had all sorts of money, were flush with cash.
00:26:02
Speaker
Everything was growing.
00:26:04
Speaker
Assets were growing in every category.
00:26:06
Speaker
And then, you know, that came to an end and everybody had to readjust and figure out what normal looks like.
00:26:13
Speaker
And, you know, the other thing with that is no one was happy with inflation and no one is happy with inflation.
00:26:18
Speaker
Unfortunately, the reality in all these marketplaces is inflation doesn't reverse.
00:26:22
Speaker
Inflation just stops, right, or slows down is more kind of appropriate here.
00:26:29
Speaker
Yep.
00:26:29
Speaker
We had price increases.
00:26:30
Speaker
We had all of that.
00:26:32
Speaker
We have been holding price flat for about two and a half years at this point.
00:26:37
Speaker
That cannot continue forever.
00:26:39
Speaker
However, I'm going to continue it as long as I possibly can.
00:26:42
Speaker
Because I know these products are
00:26:45
Speaker
you know, they're pricey.
00:26:46
Speaker
We think they're good value for what they are, but, you know, nobody's going to say these are cheap.
00:26:50
Speaker
I'd love ways to make them cheaper and do that.
00:26:54
Speaker
But we got to find those ways, right?
00:26:55
Speaker
And that's just going to take hard work kind of over time.
00:26:58
Speaker
So there's no eagerness to go out and raise prices or do anything like that.
00:27:03
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?
00:27:10
Speaker
And make sure that the games deliver the experience that you
00:27:13
Speaker
that you want to have with them, right?
00:27:16
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.
00:27:30
Speaker
And I think, you know,
00:27:32
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.
00:27:41
Speaker
And inflation has not been zero for that time period.
00:27:43
Speaker
Right.
00:27:44
Speaker
There's still inflation out there in the world.
00:27:46
Speaker
So we're going to keep it as long as we have.
00:27:49
Speaker
There's nothing to announce right now, and I hope there won't be.
00:27:52
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.
00:28:05
Speaker
So I wouldn't say there's anything there in terms of a price increase or anything imminently.
00:28:10
Speaker
I know people have been running around with rumors saying there's big price increases coming.
00:28:14
Speaker
I don't know where they're getting that one from.
00:28:17
Speaker
So I could say there's not an intent to raise price.
00:28:20
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.
00:28:28
Speaker
So that's kind of the price increase question.
00:28:31
Speaker
For the market overall, yeah.
00:28:32
Speaker
I mean, look at everything, right?
00:28:34
Speaker
Look at every product under the sun.
00:28:37
Speaker
They've all gone...
00:28:39
Speaker
particularly kind of durable products.
00:28:40
Speaker
They've all gone through a bit of a cycle.
00:28:43
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?
00:28:49
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.
00:28:55
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.
00:29:09
Speaker
And we're trying to gauge all that with the marketplace.
00:29:12
Speaker
We think pinball and I think pinball is not as big as it should be.
00:29:17
Speaker
Right.
00:29:17
Speaker
It should be bigger.
00:29:18
Speaker
Not enough people know about these products.
00:29:20
Speaker
Not enough people listen to this podcast or watch you guys like there are so many other people that could be having.
00:29:27
Speaker
you know, a lot of fun and having a good time with these products and growing pinball is a good idea, right?
00:29:32
Speaker
We talked about before how big a lot of these shows have gotten.
00:29:35
Speaker
I think these shows can get even bigger.
00:29:37
Speaker
Like I think pinball is a space will continue to grow and should continue to grow because it's fun.
00:29:43
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,
00:29:52
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.
00:30:01
Speaker
But, you know, companies do have to grow and the space has to grow to match with it.
00:30:06
Speaker
And we just need to figure out how to do that all responsibly and the right way.
Enhancing the Pinball Buying Experience
00:30:11
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.
00:30:28
Speaker
How does that change?
00:30:29
Speaker
Because you and I grew up in an area where
00:30:32
Speaker
like the mall always had an arcade.
00:30:35
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.
00:30:42
Speaker
Just, you know, the front of a supermarket or something like that.
00:30:46
Speaker
That stuff seems to be gone.
00:30:48
Speaker
So how do we start to increase the footprint of pinball?
00:30:53
Speaker
Because it is different than video games.
00:30:56
Speaker
As you know, video games are kind of bulletproof in that there's a button and a joystick.
00:31:02
Speaker
And that's pretty much it.
00:31:03
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.
00:31:13
Speaker
And even in my area, there's actually only a few places that have like actual good, well-functioning pinball machines that,
00:31:22
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.
00:31:30
Speaker
And we talked about this before at expo.
00:31:32
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.
00:31:41
Speaker
So how does Stern look at that and find a way forward to getting more of these in the wild?
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:50
Speaker
So, um,
00:31:52
Speaker
I'll start with our commercial business is still very strong, right?
00:31:56
Speaker
We're still out there.
00:31:58
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.
00:32:09
Speaker
Because we are not, and we as a company have made a decision to not focus on redemption products and all of that.
00:32:16
Speaker
We're not in the kiddie redemption area.
00:32:19
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.
00:32:26
Speaker
You know, Gary likes to say pinball and alcohol go together great, which is totally true.
00:32:32
Speaker
So we do tend to be in some of those locations.
00:32:34
Speaker
Sometimes we're in a slightly different section because, you know, we're a certain type of skill based game that.
00:32:41
Speaker
you know, appeals a little bit differently.
00:32:43
Speaker
It's not a claw machine, right?
00:32:45
Speaker
It's not a coin pusher.
00:32:47
Speaker
It's not those things.
00:32:49
Speaker
We are still in a substantial amount of locations that just kind of change, right?
00:32:52
Speaker
It's a lot of bar arcades and things like that where pinball is still out there.
00:32:59
Speaker
There's still opportunity for us and we are still in some family entertainment center type places.
00:33:04
Speaker
We've had some success in those.
00:33:05
Speaker
I think there's more we can do there to get out there.
00:33:08
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.
00:33:23
Speaker
When Metallica originally came out, this was a majority commercial business.
00:33:28
Speaker
Like, consumer was the other thing that was happening.
00:33:31
Speaker
And now we are vastly a majority consumer business.
00:33:35
Speaker
So most of our product goes into homes like your own.
00:33:39
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.
00:33:48
Speaker
Like, why would we not take advantage of that?
00:33:50
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?
00:34:00
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,
00:34:09
Speaker
you know, what you love and all of that.
00:34:12
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.
00:34:17
Speaker
We love our commercial locations.
00:34:19
Speaker
We also love home locations such as your own, where lots of people could get introduced to pinball.
00:34:24
Speaker
And I think you'll see as we continue to make the transition from what used to be a
00:34:30
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.
00:34:38
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?
00:34:47
Speaker
And so we've got to transition along with that.
00:34:50
Speaker
Well, and I will have to say, I mean, pinball should have died out in the 80s, and it didn't.
00:34:54
Speaker
It pivoted.
00:34:54
Speaker
And
00:34:55
Speaker
Should have died out in the 90s and it didn't.
00:34:56
Speaker
It pivoted.
00:34:57
Speaker
And I think you guys have pivoted really well as of recently.
00:34:59
Speaker
Almost died in the 2000s.
00:35:00
Speaker
Yeah, it almost died.
00:35:02
Speaker
It really did.
00:35:04
Speaker
Almost died.
00:35:05
Speaker
But looking at like Insider Connected, this is something only Stern is doing.
00:35:08
Speaker
There's been remnants of online pinball gaming, but you guys are doing it, attacking it from a different angle.
00:35:14
Speaker
And I feel like it's going extremely well.
00:35:17
Speaker
Insider Connected.
00:35:18
Speaker
I know Gomez had announced May three years ago that Spike 3 was coming.
00:35:23
Speaker
We hear rumors of that is on the horizon.
00:35:26
Speaker
Is this another way to help pivot too?
00:35:28
Speaker
Because I agree with you.
00:35:29
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.
00:35:37
Speaker
So what is the marketing strategy going forward?
00:35:41
Speaker
And what is Stern doing to pivot to
00:35:43
Speaker
to become more of a modern product when it's very much a product of its time?
00:35:48
Speaker
Well, so, I mean, one of the things is just as simple as how do people figure out how to buy pinball?
00:35:55
Speaker
And we've honestly made it really difficult on our website to figure out how to buy pinball.
00:35:59
Speaker
Like, you guys don't need to worry about it.
00:36:01
Speaker
You already, you know, you call Zach and you're good, right?
00:36:04
Speaker
Right.
00:36:06
Speaker
Imagine somebody new like comes in.
00:36:09
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.
00:36:28
Speaker
Like,
00:36:29
Speaker
You know, my joke is a little bit we were hazing people when they wanted to buy a game before.
00:36:33
Speaker
Like you guys remember probably your first pinball buying experience.
00:36:37
Speaker
It had to be a little nerve wracking to kind of go through that and do it.
00:36:42
Speaker
And, you know, just think of that for getting people into pinball and kind of kind of getting them acclimated to pinball.
00:36:48
Speaker
Right.
00:36:50
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.
00:36:54
Speaker
Well, okay.
00:36:55
Speaker
I'll tell two stories.
00:36:56
Speaker
One, I bought a Simpsons pinball party.
00:36:59
Speaker
That was my first game.
00:37:01
Speaker
And I, it was because I had a little bit of money.
00:37:05
Speaker
I was looking for like a home fun thing in a, in a game room.
00:37:08
Speaker
So this room is completely filled with pinballs now, but it didn't have anything down there before.
00:37:14
Speaker
So I knew a guy who was a, um, a local like arcade runner thing.
00:37:19
Speaker
And I was like, Hey, what about like a used arcade game?
00:37:21
Speaker
Like maybe I can get something like that.
00:37:24
Speaker
So I ran over to his house.
00:37:25
Speaker
He's like, Hey, I got something.
00:37:26
Speaker
I ran over to his house and he turned to me and he's a super nice guy.
00:37:31
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.
00:37:43
Speaker
Do you want a pinball machine instead?
00:37:45
Speaker
So I was like, okay.
00:37:47
Speaker
I never really thought about it, but sure.
00:37:49
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:49
Speaker
I had no idea.
00:37:51
Speaker
There were modes in pinball.
00:37:52
Speaker
And I owned that game for two years before I figured that out.
00:37:55
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:56
Speaker
I also, like he came and set it up, but I would have had no idea how to do it myself.
00:38:02
Speaker
And so the, and that's, that's one thing.
00:38:04
Speaker
Another thing is when, because Josh and I have been doing this for a while and in our local community, we,
00:38:11
Speaker
I think like a guy just posted in our network.
00:38:15
Speaker
He's like, Hey, I just bought a machine.
00:38:18
Speaker
I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, like to set it up.
00:38:22
Speaker
And so I actually just messaged him.
00:38:23
Speaker
I was like, look, I've set up machines before.
00:38:25
Speaker
I'll, I'll come over.
00:38:26
Speaker
I'll just come, come help you set up.
00:38:27
Speaker
It's not a big deal.
00:38:29
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.
00:38:37
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.
00:38:49
Speaker
People don't, people don't know how to, Oh, by the way, you have to take the glass off.
00:38:53
Speaker
Oh, just do a quick wipe down on the play field.
00:38:56
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.
00:39:02
Speaker
But yes, there is definitely a barrier to entry.
00:39:04
Speaker
Josh, what has your experience been?
00:39:06
Speaker
I agree.
00:39:07
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.
00:39:18
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.
00:39:25
Speaker
I'm like,
00:39:26
Speaker
This thing's a big box of mechanical gibberish.
00:39:30
Speaker
I live out in the middle of nowhere.
00:39:31
Speaker
What happens if I break?
00:39:32
Speaker
He's like, don't worry.
00:39:33
Speaker
They're easy to fix.
00:39:34
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.
00:39:42
Speaker
If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see my hands.
00:39:45
Speaker
Get on YouTube, like, subscribe, all that jazz.
00:39:47
Speaker
High versus low.
00:39:48
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:39:49
Speaker
And then I found Pinside.
00:39:50
Speaker
And it was like I started buying used.
00:39:52
Speaker
But it just became a thing.
00:39:54
Speaker
This was back before Facebook was a thing with Marketplace.
00:39:56
Speaker
This was before Craigslist was really being hit hard.
00:40:00
Speaker
I mean, it just becomes one of those things.
00:40:01
Speaker
I didn't realize... I don't think it... It wasn't until a lot later I started buying new from a distributor.
00:40:08
Speaker
And I didn't even know who to go to.
00:40:09
Speaker
I just kind of... Someone recommended someone kind of thing.
00:40:12
Speaker
We found it out.
00:40:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:13
Speaker
We figured it out.
00:40:14
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.
00:40:20
Speaker
But I feel...
00:40:23
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
00:40:38
Speaker
before the earlier days, it was like, I want to go click a game.
00:40:41
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.
00:40:47
Speaker
And you call the distributor, but they wouldn't answer.
00:40:50
Speaker
And it just, it was kind of a small distributor versus a big one.
00:40:53
Speaker
And you're not sure who's going to be able to, to help you out.
00:40:56
Speaker
And yeah, it's because it could be, Hey, we sell, you know, okay.
00:41:01
Speaker
You guys actually sell pinball machines at our furniture distributor place.
00:41:06
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.
00:41:13
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.
00:41:19
Speaker
I'm like, yeah, it's great.
00:41:20
Speaker
I'm glad they have them there.
00:41:22
Speaker
However, I doubt that anybody in RC Willie knows much about setting up a pinball machine other than, hey, we can deliver it.
00:41:29
Speaker
Because they do massage chairs.
00:41:31
Speaker
They do sofas.
00:41:34
Speaker
They do everything.
00:41:35
Speaker
But it's a really specialized thing to buy.
00:41:38
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?
00:41:46
Speaker
When people find out I'm into pinball –
00:41:48
Speaker
They always have the same three questions and they're roughly in this order.
00:41:53
Speaker
They say, pinball, they still make these.
00:41:57
Speaker
Yep.
00:41:58
Speaker
Yep.
00:41:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:59
Speaker
And then they, then I was like, yeah, they, they do.
00:42:01
Speaker
And they, they come over and they're like, Oh, yeah.
00:42:05
Speaker
well, this is really cool.
00:42:06
Speaker
Like, oh, you can have these in your house?
00:42:08
Speaker
Yeah, you can.
00:42:09
Speaker
And then the third, third, I need a special license.
00:42:12
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:12
Speaker
The third question is how much are they?
00:42:17
Speaker
And so, and so it's kind of like this, this, this gateway into the pinball community.
00:42:22
Speaker
I have always encouraged people when they talk about the price range, I say, okay, so let me tell you roughly used ones.
00:42:30
Speaker
However, it's like buying a car.
00:42:32
Speaker
If you buy a used car, that's really old and broken down.
00:42:36
Speaker
There's going to be a lot of maintenance going on.
00:42:38
Speaker
And so I always encourage people.
00:42:40
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.
00:42:48
Speaker
So I, I always encourage people.
00:42:50
Speaker
I'm like, what I would do is I would look for, um, like a, I say like a used modern game.
00:42:57
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.
00:43:08
Speaker
And it's very little maintenance actually.
00:43:12
Speaker
So, so that's always been my selling point to people.
00:43:15
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.
00:43:23
Speaker
And it's been, it's been a nice way of, I guess, acclimatizing people to what pinball is in the modern era.
00:43:30
Speaker
I was going to say, it's funny.
00:43:32
Speaker
Like what Scott said with RC Willie, the furniture company here.
00:43:35
Speaker
And they're, they're a great furniture company, by the way, they're like, this is where I buy all my furniture.
00:43:40
Speaker
And so it's, it's fine.
00:43:42
Speaker
That's what makes me chuckles because like, so I ran into a gentleman a month and a half ago.
00:43:45
Speaker
I live out in a town of 30,000 people.
00:43:47
Speaker
There's not a ton of pinball out here.
00:43:50
Speaker
The biggest location is my house.
00:43:51
Speaker
There's, there's a pinball machine here.
00:43:52
Speaker
There's a pinball machine there.
00:43:54
Speaker
So I do heating and air conditioning.
00:43:55
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.
00:44:00
Speaker
And he's like, why?
00:44:01
Speaker
I'm like, pinball.
00:44:02
Speaker
And he's like, oh, you love pinball too?
00:44:04
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, why?
00:44:06
Speaker
Like, I just don't run into people that have pinball in Bernal.
00:44:08
Speaker
And he's like, come into my house.
00:44:10
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.
00:44:17
Speaker
So I'm like, what convinced you to buy a Venom?
00:44:20
Speaker
And he's like, I went to RC Willie.
00:44:23
Speaker
I got to play all the games there.
00:44:25
Speaker
He's like, I'm a big comic book nerd and I was debating between this or Deadpool.
00:44:29
Speaker
That was my two options I wanted.
00:44:31
Speaker
He said, so there's your first hurdle.
00:44:33
Speaker
There's somewhere he can play it and test out and loves it.
00:44:35
Speaker
And then RC Willie offers financing.
00:44:38
Speaker
And so he's like...
00:44:41
Speaker
this product is $9,000, $10,000, anywhere from $7,000 to $10,000 or LE.
00:44:47
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.
00:44:55
Speaker
It's 12 months, by the way.
00:44:56
Speaker
That price of
00:44:57
Speaker
nine, 10 K or, you know, nine, 10,000 becomes, Oh, that becomes more obtainable.
Raising Pinball Awareness
00:45:02
Speaker
They have my house.
00:45:03
Speaker
And it's funny.
00:45:04
Speaker
Cause I asked him like, well, you know, I can, I can get these not through RC Willie.
00:45:08
Speaker
You know, I can help you through flipping out pinball and Zach and Nicole many to get you one of these.
00:45:12
Speaker
And we can talk about that.
00:45:14
Speaker
And he says, that's great.
00:45:15
Speaker
But he's like, I'm still working on paying down my loan essentially for what I have.
00:45:19
Speaker
But it seems like two of the biggest hurdles were, are trying to find them
00:45:23
Speaker
and trying to get them to finance them.
00:45:26
Speaker
And the nice part is a company like RC Wheelie is already doing that with their furniture stuff.
00:45:31
Speaker
So it wasn't a giant leap to do it for people.
00:45:34
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.
00:45:41
Speaker
We have products that people love, and they still make those things as still a top thing.
00:45:46
Speaker
Not enough people know.
00:45:47
Speaker
Not enough people are aware.
00:45:49
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.
00:45:58
Speaker
Some of the best advertising we can have is to be in locations with a lot of foot traffic.
00:46:02
Speaker
where people are going to see these games and say, they still make those things and do that.
00:46:07
Speaker
We'll only be successful someday where people never say again, they still make those things.
00:46:11
Speaker
We've got a lot of work to do.
00:46:12
Speaker
But the fact that people say that shows you the size of the opportunity, right?
00:46:18
Speaker
The size of the opportunity for more people to get into pinball, more people to be aware of pinball.
00:46:23
Speaker
And then there's an element of a guide or a Sherpa, right?
00:46:26
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.
00:46:36
Speaker
And having somebody to help you do that is really, really helpful.
00:46:40
Speaker
And that could take a whole variety of roles.
00:46:42
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.
00:46:48
Speaker
It's not as hard as you think it is.
00:46:50
Speaker
I'll help you.
00:46:50
Speaker
I'll take care of you.
00:46:51
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.
00:46:58
Speaker
It doesn't take that to play pinball.
00:46:59
Speaker
You can go play it at a lot of places, but to become an owner, it takes somebody to help you do that.
00:47:05
Speaker
And so that's where you get to like, you know, things like financing make it easier.
00:47:08
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?
00:47:16
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.
00:47:22
Speaker
We're going to have a, you know, a warranty that people would expect on these things.
00:47:26
Speaker
And so, you know, we did that this year and added that because again, that's going to
00:47:30
Speaker
making people confident in their purchase and know that we're standing behind them.
00:47:32
Speaker
By the way, we were already, if you guys know already, like we were already standing behind our products.
00:47:36
Speaker
We just weren't telling people that we were, which was kind of crazy, right?
00:47:40
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.
00:47:52
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.
00:48:03
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?
00:48:12
Speaker
Like, you know, that's a special thing and, and it's, it's a, you know, it's a special product.
00:48:17
Speaker
It's a special,
00:48:20
Speaker
It's just something to be.
00:48:21
Speaker
So we just got to tell more people about it and get the word out.
00:48:24
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.
00:48:36
Speaker
Now, I actually do have a story about that.
00:48:39
Speaker
So on my rush, I had the time machine ramp on the upper right.
00:48:45
Speaker
I wasn't exactly sure.
00:48:46
Speaker
So sometimes things can function differently than as they're supposed to.
00:48:51
Speaker
So my time machine ramp would go up, but it would kind of stay down just a little bit.
00:48:58
Speaker
And the thing is, I wasn't exactly sure.
00:49:01
Speaker
I'm like, is this like how it's supposed to be?
00:49:05
Speaker
And I would still be able to play the game, but it just wasn't going quite as good.
00:49:09
Speaker
And so I reached out and I sent a video.
00:49:14
Speaker
And one super nice thing about us is that we've been able to have some contacts at Stern.
00:49:20
Speaker
And I even sent it to Raymond Davidson, who coded Stern.
00:49:24
Speaker
And I said, hey, is this working the way it's supposed to?
00:49:26
Speaker
He's like,
00:49:27
Speaker
No, man, that's that's supposed to go all the way up.
00:49:29
Speaker
Like it's a little flaccid.
00:49:31
Speaker
Like it's not it's not totally going all the way up.
00:49:34
Speaker
And so I reached out and and Greg through flipping out binball, he does the tech stuff.
00:49:40
Speaker
He was able to talk to you guys and say, yeah, actually, they even though it was it had been over a year.
00:49:46
Speaker
But they were able to say, yeah, we'll send you out.
00:49:49
Speaker
So they sent me out a new motor.
00:49:51
Speaker
I fixed it up and put it in.
00:49:53
Speaker
And that is huge, by the way.
00:49:54
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?
00:50:03
Speaker
And that is reassuring to me.
00:50:06
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.
00:50:17
Speaker
If anything happened and it will, cause cause pinball is a physical sport.
00:50:21
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.
00:50:33
Speaker
Yeah, we do whatever we can to try to take care of people within reason and do that.
00:50:38
Speaker
And that's something the whole team prides themselves in.
00:50:41
Speaker
So we're proud of that.
00:50:43
Speaker
And, you know, we want people to have a good experience.
00:50:46
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.
00:51:03
Speaker
And you guys have some great ones there.
00:51:04
Speaker
You know, Logan's Arcade is there.
00:51:06
Speaker
You have Interium's there, which is a little bit of a family center, but it also has an adult section.
00:51:12
Speaker
But there are some smaller places.
00:51:14
Speaker
So like I live in the Salt Lake area.
00:51:17
Speaker
And so I know Utah is not huge, but it is the capital city.
00:51:23
Speaker
And there's about three places, but they're all in Salt Lake.
00:51:25
Speaker
Well, I'm 40 minutes away from all those.
00:51:29
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.
00:51:40
Speaker
Now, Josh also lives in a town that has, what, 10,000 to 15,000 people?
00:51:44
Speaker
So a small area.
00:51:47
Speaker
So on these things, how does the future
Community Engagement and the Pinball Cup
00:51:50
Speaker
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?
00:52:08
Speaker
Because we hosted a women and kids tournament.
00:52:11
Speaker
And so they're not going to be able to go into some of these adult oriented locations.
00:52:15
Speaker
So how does that factor into your strategy going forward?
00:52:19
Speaker
Um, so it's really important to me that we take advantage of all of these opportunities and find ways to do this.
00:52:26
Speaker
I don't know exactly what form that is going to take right now.
00:52:29
Speaker
Currently the, the Stern army is focused on an operator and location specific sort of footprint.
00:52:36
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,
00:52:46
Speaker
your place with whoever you want to celebrate it with.
00:52:50
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.
00:53:02
Speaker
Whenever,
00:53:03
Speaker
you know, a new game comes home or you have a tournament full of people or everything like that.
00:53:07
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.
00:53:15
Speaker
So there's some work for us to do, but I do think,
00:53:20
Speaker
The future of pinball is going to have to be both at home and in commercial locations.
00:53:25
Speaker
And I think, you know, the business has changed, right?
00:53:28
Speaker
It was commercial location predominant for so long.
00:53:32
Speaker
And now it's more balanced between the two.
00:53:35
Speaker
And the play is more balanced between the two.
00:53:38
Speaker
than it's ever been before.
00:53:39
Speaker
So we got some work to do to figure out how to support home locations better than we have in the past.
00:53:46
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?
00:53:51
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?
00:54:00
Speaker
I bet you there's a ton.
00:54:01
Speaker
Well, just how many people found out, wait, you got a Metallica LE?
00:54:05
Speaker
I want to come play.
00:54:06
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.
00:54:22
Speaker
Yeah, it's a bit of almost a launch party for yourself for that one, right?
00:54:25
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:54:26
Speaker
So we got to do that, right?
00:54:27
Speaker
It's a celebration when those games come home.
00:54:30
Speaker
And, you know, home or location, it should be a celebration.
00:54:34
Speaker
And we need to figure out some good ways to support you guys.
00:54:37
Speaker
So I think we will.
00:54:39
Speaker
We just got some work to do.
00:54:41
Speaker
Sounds good.
00:54:42
Speaker
Yeah, like if your collection is so big and you run tournaments, you could do this or that.
00:54:46
Speaker
Yes, yes.
00:54:47
Speaker
But, you know, by the end, we got to figure out how all that.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:51
Speaker
that works, but.
00:54:52
Speaker
Well, I probably have more games than, well, okay.
00:54:54
Speaker
I probably have an equivalent collection to Keto's, which is the downtown location we have.
00:55:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:00
Speaker
Keto's have about 10 games, 10, 12.
00:55:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:03
Speaker
And you, they're probably about the equivalent of the same amount of Sterns and retro and stuff like that.
00:55:08
Speaker
So yeah.
00:55:09
Speaker
And yeah, it, it, it,
00:55:19
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.
00:55:25
Speaker
Talk about the Pinball Cup.
00:55:26
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.
00:55:46
Speaker
And that was all based on scores.
00:55:47
Speaker
And as you guys know,
00:55:49
Speaker
Comparing scores across pinball machines is quite an exercise.
00:55:53
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.
00:56:03
Speaker
And one of the things we were able to put into the games since then was different challenges you could achieve, right?
00:56:10
Speaker
So they were objective based instead of just score comparisons across the game.
00:56:15
Speaker
So when you guys saw an all game update,
00:56:18
Speaker
a month or so ago, that was what we were doing.
00:56:20
Speaker
We were putting in all of those challenges so that people could compete in those challenges.
00:56:25
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.
00:56:32
Speaker
And now we're having race week where we'll see who's able to win and get the most points.
00:56:37
Speaker
And so there's challenges ranging from easy to hard on each one of our games and
00:56:41
Speaker
that people can work against and compete in.
00:56:44
Speaker
And so, you know, if you have access to a game, you have access to be in the Pinball Cup.
00:56:49
Speaker
And, you know, the more games you have access to, the more chances you have to get kind of more points across games.
00:56:55
Speaker
And we just thought it was a fun way for people to come together over the holidays.
00:56:58
Speaker
We tend to see our greatest play over the holiday period because...
00:57:02
Speaker
It won't surprise you that the most play is on weekends when people have time off.
00:57:06
Speaker
In the holidays, you get a lot of time off, so there's a lot of pinball play.
00:57:10
Speaker
So we thought it would be fun to have something for people to do and compete with over the holidays.
00:57:15
Speaker
So that was really the idea of Pinball Cup, was to get everybody together.
00:57:20
Speaker
And no matter what stern pinball machine you have, you can play, right?
00:57:24
Speaker
And you can participate and you can be part of it.
00:57:26
Speaker
So that's the idea.
00:57:28
Speaker
So we're seeing...
00:57:30
Speaker
Uh, increases in play increases in people scanning in all those things, which is what we want to see.
00:57:35
Speaker
Right.
00:57:35
Speaker
People are having fun.
00:57:36
Speaker
Definitely.
00:57:37
Speaker
So you have each game and maybe Josh, maybe you want to jump in on this too.
00:57:42
Speaker
So you have each game and you're competing on whatever game.
00:57:45
Speaker
So I have seven games here or six games in my downstairs that have insider connected all set up.
00:57:53
Speaker
So on each game, each game has a cup and then you get risk stratified or ability stratified in them.
00:58:00
Speaker
And so it's a little bit like a pinball tournament where you have ABC division.
00:58:05
Speaker
Am I understanding that correctly?
00:58:06
Speaker
Yeah, so it's overall scoring.
00:58:08
Speaker
So it's overall scoring, but you can play from any game.
00:58:10
Speaker
Each game has its own challenges that will allow you to earn points towards the race total for the week.
00:58:15
Speaker
So, you know, there's an easy challenge on Rush.
00:58:18
Speaker
There's a medium challenge on Rush.
00:58:19
Speaker
There's sort of five different challenges for you to do on Rush.
00:58:22
Speaker
And each one of those is going to earn you points towards your race result for the week.
00:58:27
Speaker
So you could...
00:58:28
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.
00:58:33
Speaker
So is the challenge basically like do this thing in the game or is it just overall score based?
00:58:39
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.
00:58:48
Speaker
And then they go in increasing difficulty from there.
00:58:50
Speaker
And then the hard ones are pretty hard.
00:58:52
Speaker
And they're worth a lot more points.
00:58:53
Speaker
I'm going to say I've almost got Godzilla memorized because I've been playing this.
00:58:57
Speaker
And so the easy one is like $20 million, which is a fairly easy goal for Godzilla.
00:59:02
Speaker
Except for Joel.
00:59:04
Speaker
Except for Joel.
00:59:05
Speaker
And then you got like bridge attack, just starting bridge attack, starting Tesla attack.
00:59:09
Speaker
That's another one.
00:59:10
Speaker
Completing Ebra.
00:59:11
Speaker
So that's the spinner mode.
00:59:13
Speaker
And I can't remember.
00:59:14
Speaker
Hey, by the way, that's the one I hate so much.
00:59:17
Speaker
I hate that because it's right on the tip of the flipper and it drives me crazy.
00:59:22
Speaker
Oh, the, the, the fifth one is getting a destruction jackpot and defeating Ebra is one of the easier ones.
00:59:29
Speaker
Oh my gosh.
00:59:30
Speaker
Wow.
00:59:31
Speaker
Wow.
00:59:31
Speaker
I can't believe you said that.
00:59:32
Speaker
I think so.
00:59:33
Speaker
Anyhow.
00:59:35
Speaker
I play with the glass on.
00:59:36
Speaker
Okay.
00:59:38
Speaker
So, but my question is too, because I see that
00:59:42
Speaker
I guess there's really no quote-unquote rules to this.
00:59:44
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.
00:59:53
Speaker
I mean, I look at today's the second day.
00:59:55
Speaker
Like, this has not even been out 48 hours.
00:59:58
Speaker
Someone's already at 14,000 points.
01:00:00
Speaker
And I'm like, the max you can score on a game is 70.
01:00:03
Speaker
I'm like, how do you...
01:00:05
Speaker
Is it one of those things?
01:00:06
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.
01:00:16
Speaker
But even, like, with just this, just for a badge, it seems like people are going nuts over it.
01:00:20
Speaker
How do you contain something like that?
01:00:24
Speaker
How do you make it fun and how do you prevent cheaters?
01:00:28
Speaker
We had a lot of concern when we first launched leaderboards.
01:00:33
Speaker
This is a little bit inside info, but when we first launched leaderboards, there was a discussion about only letting for the
01:00:43
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
01:01:09
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?
01:01:19
Speaker
Is that a bug or not a bug?
01:01:23
Speaker
And there was all sorts of discussions about Jaws and all sorts of discussions about Batman.
01:01:28
Speaker
And it was a fun conversation because there was two sides to...
01:01:32
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.
01:01:38
Speaker
There's a little bit of that as well.
01:01:41
Speaker
Needless to say, we'll look at the data and we'll try to react as best as possible.
01:01:45
Speaker
But I have to say,
01:01:48
Speaker
I was initially surprised at how good the community's been at, you know, largely playing stuff straight up.
01:01:55
Speaker
Cause also like, it's boring as hell to cheat and cheat over and over and over again for days.
01:02:00
Speaker
Like, like you got to get tired of it at some point.
01:02:06
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.
01:02:12
Speaker
And there might be some temporary aberrations, but like,
01:02:15
Speaker
Somebody really going to keep that thing cooking for some period of time.
01:02:19
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.
01:02:26
Speaker
Luckily, the structure of this one hopefully doesn't let them overscore points on that.
01:02:32
Speaker
So that does solve some of what we had before.
01:02:34
Speaker
But yeah,
01:02:35
Speaker
We'll take a look at it if somebody's clearly doing something impossible and then figure out what we do about it.
01:02:42
Speaker
But hopefully, we just don't have that problem.
01:02:44
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.
01:02:50
Speaker
You always assume somebody's going to be a total jerk.
01:02:53
Speaker
And not having that has been really kind of impressive from my perspective.
01:02:58
Speaker
I agree.
01:02:59
Speaker
I agree.
01:03:00
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?
01:03:09
Speaker
Like say I'm pulling it up right now.
01:03:11
Speaker
So people at home when they're like, how do I compete in this?
01:03:16
Speaker
I'll have to pull it up and look through with you.
01:03:18
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.
01:03:27
Speaker
It's like, hey, December, December quest pinball.
01:03:31
Speaker
So go to the quest page.
01:03:33
Speaker
OK, I just I mean, one easy way to get to it is at the top.
01:03:37
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.
01:03:42
Speaker
OK, pinball cop up there.
01:03:45
Speaker
And you can kind of view the current race and where I need to I need to pay play way more.
01:03:53
Speaker
I'm tier two.
01:03:53
Speaker
I'm not sure what that means.
01:03:55
Speaker
And I have a total of 50 points.
01:03:57
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:03:58
Speaker
All right.
01:04:00
Speaker
You got to get playing.
01:04:02
Speaker
I got a good point, but I am in the top 2,000.
01:04:04
Speaker
Good for you.
01:04:06
Speaker
At least that does help.
01:04:07
Speaker
I'm in tier 3 at 70 points.
01:04:10
Speaker
Well, my son keeps playing though too.
01:04:12
Speaker
My son's in tier 1 and right now as he sets, he has 730 points.
01:04:15
Speaker
I was like, dang dude, calm down.
01:04:18
Speaker
He wants that badge though.
01:04:19
Speaker
He's motivated.
01:04:21
Speaker
He's like, I've got Christmas break.
01:04:22
Speaker
I know what I'm doing for Christmas break.
01:04:24
Speaker
The kids play for the achievements and the challenges and
01:04:29
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
Future Releases and Technology Updates
01:04:43
Speaker
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
01:04:50
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?
01:04:58
Speaker
And what is, what are we looking at at Stern in 2025?
01:05:02
Speaker
Well, 2025, I think it's going to be an amazing year.
01:05:05
Speaker
We've got some exciting new stuff coming for everybody.
01:05:09
Speaker
As you know, we always release a number of games each year.
01:05:12
Speaker
We're going to kind of keep up the pace.
01:05:14
Speaker
Coming up on a possible milestone here.
01:05:19
Speaker
You guys always show something in January.
01:05:22
Speaker
We do.
01:05:23
Speaker
I mean, it doesn't take a lot of pattern recognition to figure out that CES is a big time for us.
01:05:27
Speaker
And, you know, I think we're going to have some exciting stuff to talk about here pretty soon.
01:05:33
Speaker
And, you know, maybe some of you guys will get to come in and check some of it out.
01:05:36
Speaker
So, yeah.
01:05:38
Speaker
I think it'll be fun.
01:05:40
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.
01:05:49
Speaker
And that's what's really fun is sort of inventing and
01:05:53
Speaker
Pinball is the game, but inventing in and around pinball and the different things you can do, I think are pretty good.
01:06:02
Speaker
You guys asked before, and we get the question a lot about next generation and next generation platforms.
01:06:10
Speaker
You kind of alluded to it there.
01:06:13
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?
01:06:23
Speaker
Because if I gave you a new CPU and everything did everything the same, how excited would you really be, right?
01:06:28
Speaker
You know, that again, the
01:06:32
Speaker
You know, we're great at getting lots of rumors out there about everything going on and what's coming.
01:06:36
Speaker
But, you know, is a CPU board enough for you or you want some more and you want some different things?
01:06:41
Speaker
And so we're working through all of that.
01:06:43
Speaker
So patience is a virtue and I know nobody's patient, but...
01:06:48
Speaker
We'll be ready when we're ready.
01:06:49
Speaker
As you guys know, we put out stuff at a pace like nothing else.
01:06:54
Speaker
We will put it out, but everybody wants everything to be tested and perfect.
01:06:59
Speaker
We're testing a lot of different stuff and we've got a lot more coming.
01:07:03
Speaker
We'll announce everything when it's time and when we're ready for it.
01:07:07
Speaker
I think you guys will really enjoy it.
01:07:09
Speaker
We appreciate all of the interest and all of the speculation, all of the excitement for what's coming in the future.
01:07:17
Speaker
We're working on all those things.
01:07:18
Speaker
We're working to make the platform better.
01:07:20
Speaker
We're working to make the games better.
01:07:21
Speaker
We're working to deliver you really what you want.
01:07:25
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.
01:07:32
Speaker
That's something we can do now that we have a relationship through Insider Connected with
01:07:36
Speaker
with everybody in the community, we can ask questions and we can get answers.
01:07:40
Speaker
And when you try to, you know, rest assured, we are trying to deliver you what you want.
01:07:44
Speaker
Why would we do anything else?
01:07:46
Speaker
Right.
01:07:46
Speaker
So we're excited to keep that going into the new year.
01:07:51
Speaker
Awesome.
01:07:52
Speaker
Got anything else that you want to ask Scott?
01:07:54
Speaker
No, I think we're good.
01:07:55
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?
01:08:10
Speaker
So we have an insider at sternpinball.com email where we take a lot of the insider and other questions.
01:08:15
Speaker
But if you send a request to that, they'll get through to us as well.
01:08:20
Speaker
There are also some inquiry forms on the website for different types of inquiries as well.
01:08:25
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.
01:08:30
Speaker
People can submit there.
01:08:31
Speaker
But insider at sternpinball.com works perfectly fine.
01:08:35
Speaker
Awesome.
01:08:37
Speaker
And if you want to get a hold of us, we are LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com.
01:08:40
Speaker
You can get a hold of us on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, which for some odd reason blew up last week.
01:08:46
Speaker
We got 13,000 views in like three hours.
01:08:49
Speaker
I don't know what happened, but it happened.
01:08:52
Speaker
And then, uh, if send us an email, we do have our swag on swivel ball, swag.com slash loser kid.
01:08:58
Speaker
We appreciate those have, uh, has supported us and buying product for Christmas time and whatnot.
01:09:03
Speaker
Uh, Scott, give us our final words.
01:09:05
Speaker
You know what?
01:09:05
Speaker
Check out Stern's page too.
01:09:07
Speaker
I'm actually repping the Stern shirt.
01:09:08
Speaker
The, uh, my, my favorite green one that, uh,
01:09:11
Speaker
They gave me when I came out and visited.
01:09:13
Speaker
They were super nice, but they have really great merch there.
01:09:16
Speaker
So check that out again.
01:09:18
Speaker
Big shout out to Seth.
01:09:19
Speaker
Thank you so much.
01:09:20
Speaker
We're happy for the future of Stern and the future of pinball with you leading it along the way.
01:09:26
Speaker
And we want to wish everybody a safe and a Merry Christmas.