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Episode 10 :: The Electric Bat Cast

Electric Bat Cast·podcast_episode·1h 27m·analyzed·Jan 1, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Electric Bat hosts discuss operations, community building, Stern badges, and pinball maintenance.

Summary

Electric Bat Cast Episode 10 is a casual, meandering discussion between co-hosts Cale and Rachel about arcade operations, community building, and pinball culture. Topics include upcoming events (Elton John pinball arrival, New Year's Eve with skater Steve Caballero), Stern Insider Connected badges driving engagement (25% boost on Godzilla), pinball ball comparisons (standard vs. chrome steel), streaming rig costs, operator advice for building community, and machine maintenance/player conduct policies.

Key Claims

  • James Bond 60th Edition costs $33,000 USD in the UK

    high confidence · Steve London question about UK pricing; hosts note it's cheaper in US at $15,000-$17,000

  • Godzilla pinball performed 25% better than recent baseline when featured in Stern Insider Connected badge challenges

    high confidence · Rachel states this directly as venue operator data; credited to badge gamification driving foot traffic

  • Standard pinball balls are case-hardened carbon steel; chrome steel balls (Silver Jets, Ninja Balls) are through-hardened

    high confidence · Cale explains metallurgical difference in response to Gonzo Pinball video comparison

  • Chrome steel balls can become magnetized and cause issues in games with strong magnets

    high confidence · Discussion of magnetic resonance retention and clumping in troughs; caveated by noting some operators use them successfully

  • Building a mobile streaming rig for tournaments costs several thousand dollars minimum (low tier ~$4,000+, high tier significantly more)

    high confidence · Cale provides detailed breakdown of cameras ($230-$1,000 each, need 3), HDMI transmitters/receivers ($400-$500 each, need 3), plus mixers, lighting, monitors

  • Electric Bat Arcade runs a 100-person Tuesday night tournament weekly

    high confidence · Cale mentions this casually as reason they can't also stream; Rachel notes the operational stress

  • Electric Bat's coin drop revenue in 2023 was steady, roughly in line with prior year (slower end-of-year but within 10%)

    high confidence · Rachel responds to AJ's economic slowdown concerns with their actual data

  • Elton John pinball will arrive at Electric Bat in approximately one week

    high confidence · Direct statement by hosts at time of recording (unclear exact date but recorded around late December 2023/early January 2024)

Notable Quotes

  • “We drink the Kool-Aid. We drink the Kool-Aid. We eat the dog food. All of it.”

    Cale and Rachel (in unison) @ ~12:30 — Humorous but genuine endorsement of Stern Insider Connected; indicates they were already evangelists before sponsorship deal

  • “Godzilla always performs very well for us. But this month, with the badges focused on Godzilla, it did about 25% better than it has been doing recently.”

    Rachel @ ~11:45 — Quantified evidence of badge gamification impact on venue revenue and engagement; practical operator insight

  • “It's like comparing an M&M to a jawbreaker.”

    Cale @ ~28:15 — Explains difference between case-hardened and through-hardened pinball metallurgy in accessible analogy

  • “Don't be – like ball machines are tough. Right. You're not going to like rip it up.”

    Cale @ ~31:40 — Reassures listeners not to obsess over standard ball replacement; counters overly cautious advice in community

  • “I think for us we created a place that feels that you know that this is going to be you going to run into some friends there. It very Cheers-y.”

    Rachel @ ~42:30 — Core philosophy on community building as competitive advantage; explains Electric Bat's success vs. struggling operators

  • “There's a lot of luck involved in business. There's a lot of luck involved in success. Yeah. And a lot of people don't talk about it.”

    Cale @ ~40:00 — Honest acknowledgment that influencer narrative of pure hard work obscures role of luck and circumstance

  • “What bothers me a lot more than trying to save the ball is whenever you drain the ball and you slam the lockdown bar.”

    Rachel @ ~85:00 — Reveals operator priority on machine longevity/care over aggressive play technique; shows operational philosophy

  • “To do a good stream, there's a lot involved.”

    Cale — Justification for not streaming weekly tournaments despite community demand; realistic assessment of resource constraints

Entities

Electric Bat ArcadeorganizationCale (Cale Hernandez)personRachelpersonStern Insider ConnectedproductGodzilla (Stern)gameElton John (Stern)gameSteve LondonpersonGonzoperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Electric Bat Arcade reports steady year-over-year coin drop revenue (~10% variance from prior year), contradicting broader operator reports of economic slowdown

    high · Rachel: 'we have not noticed a slowdown with the coin drop. Our coin drop graph throughout the year is kind of commensurate with what you would expect in prior years'

  • ?

    community_signal: Instructional tournament videos introducing non-pinball players to format significantly increase accessibility and participation; praised as best practice

    medium · Rachel praising Jared's Christmas tournament video for educating new players on what to expect, removing barriers to entry

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern Insider Connected badges driving 25% revenue increase on Godzilla pinball; gamification significantly boosting venue engagement and foot traffic

    high · Rachel: 'this month, with the badges focused on Godzilla, it did about 25% better than it has been doing recently'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Positive reception of Gonzo Pinball's technical ball comparison video; community appreciation for detailed metallurgical analysis despite apples-to-apples comparison limitations

    medium · Steve London recommendation; Cale validates quality while noting chrome vs. standard isn't fair comparison for performance testing

  • ?

    community_signal: Community building and 'Cheers-y' atmosphere identified as critical success factor for venue sustainability; friend networks drive repeat engagement

    high · Rachel explanation of visiting arcade and finding 15 known friends vs. different 15 on alternate nights; comparison to high school coffee shop model

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.263

0:00
All right. All right. All right. Here we go. Man, we look cool. You know, we have this monitor here that we can see ourselves. Yeah, I look like I've taken up motorcycling. Yeah, it looks like we're in the parking lot of the concert. Hey, you want to try this dirt weed? Right? Yeah, rolled up in some Bible papers. Yeah, let's smug it out of an apple. We got to wear all these jackets inside because we haven't turned the heat on yet. Yeah, it's cold. It's cold in here. Welcome. Welcome. You know, this is a milestone. Is it called a mild stone or a milestone? Depends if you're talking about an inoffensive rock or a bookmark in time. It's a milestone. All right. Episode 10. Oh, cool. Episode 10 of the Batcast. My name is Cale. I'm Rachel. and uh we are the uh the the owner and co-owner yeah of uh actually i just work for you i don't i don't want to own anything around here except godzilla let me have godzilla um let's get let's get into it man we have we haven't been here in a while yeah we've had we had mike in town for a while we've had all kinds of things going on mike vinicore he uh He signed Ty's leg, which is very cool because he signed it right above Gary Stern's signature.
1:28
So Mike's above Gary? At some point. Well, it depends what position Ty's in. Oh. You know, if he's upside down, Gary's above Mike's. But that was a lot of fun. We went to In-N-Out. And Mike coming here sparked a lot of burger talk. I didn't know how, you know, we have some serious burger fans in the Discord. And if you want to get into the burger talk, and I'm going to need some help because people are telling me In-N-Out is the best burger. And Whataburger. Is the best burger.
2:02
I disagree. Okay. So you need to get into our Discord and the Batcast channel. Make Kale feel good about Five Guys. Well, I'm not saying Five. Not the lifestyle choice. There you go. So, you know, I'm not saying Five Guys is the best burger. I just think it's better than In-N-Out. Okay. And I've never had a Whataburger, so I can't speak on that. But it seems Mr. Bauer did a great write-up. Very thorough. On Whataburger. Yeah. I mean, it is worth the read. Go in there to the Batcast channel on our Discord. If you want to join the Discord, go to our website, which is electricbatarcade.com. That's right. Go to the podcast tab. Okay. There's all kind of goodies in there, and there's a link to the Discord. All right.

Aimless Pinball handled streaming for Electric Bat's recent three-day tournament with telestrator and professional equipment

high confidence · Cale acknowledges they couldn't have managed tournament running + streaming simultaneously without external crew

@ ~53:15
Marco Specialties
company
Atomic Age Modern / Atomic Bobperson|company
Aimless Pinballperson|organization
Steve Caballeroperson
Urethaneorganization
Dirty Donnieperson
Roland (Pitbull Pinball)person
Retro Ralphperson
Jared (Jarred)person
James Bond 60th Anniversarygame
Gene Xperson
AJperson
  • ?

    event_signal: Elton John pinball arriving at Electric Bat Arcade; hosts previously played at Chicago Expo and are positive on title

    high · Rachel: 'Elton John, the pinball machine... will be here in roughly a week. So we're really excited about that. We played at Expo. It's a lot of fun.'

  • $

    market_signal: James Bond 60th Anniversary pinball significantly more expensive in UK market ($33k USD) vs. US ($15-17k); suggests regional pricing variance or tariff impact

    medium · Steve London pricing question answered; hosts note standard US pricing is roughly half UK cost

  • ?

    operational_signal: Electric Bat maintains intentionally looser tilt tolerance ('bar tilt') and prioritizes machine care over aggressive play; maintenance concerns outweigh competitive allowances

    high · Rachel: 'we have been told that our tilts are a little looser than most places... What bothers me a lot more than trying to save the ball is whenever you drain the ball and you slam the lockdown bar'

  • ?

    product_concern: Chrome steel pinball balls (Silver Jets, Ninja Balls) can become magnetized in games with strong magnets, causing trough clumping and play issues; mitigation strategy to use standard balls in affected machines

    medium · Cale: 'they'll retain what's called magnetic resonance... they can clump up in the trough cause other issues. When you have issues with magnetization you know that that is use a standard ball'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Streaming tournament-level content requires $4,000+ minimum investment (low tier) with significant ongoing operational overhead; prohibitive for most venues

    high · Detailed cost breakdown: cameras $690-$3,000, transmitters/receivers $1,200-$1,500, plus mixers, mics, lighting, monitors; Cale notes several thousand more dollars not detailed

    • 2:56
    Let's get on with the meat and potatoes of the show. The burger and the fries. The burger and the fries, the pulled pork and the coleslaw.
    3:07
    What's coming up at the bat? Is there some cool stuff coming up? Man, it depends on when this podcast comes out, but there's a party at 6 a.m. on New Year's. So that's Monday morning. That's like 18 hours from right now. 6 a.m., and we're doing this for the service industry. Yeah, but anybody can come. Yeah, of course. Anybody can come. We're always open to the public. So we have that going on. New Year's Day, 6 a.m., party. Per usual, the Tuesday tournament, 6.30 p.m. That's right. It's Tuesday, next week. Yep. Are we already in next week? Is this next week? Yeah, yeah. This is this week. And Elton John. Oh, that should.
    3:50
    Elton John, the pinball machine. Yeah. Will be. It'll be there in roughly a week. Yeah, roughly a week. That'll be here. So we're really excited about that. We played at Expo. It's a lot of fun. I think everybody's going to enjoy it. Yeah.
    4:05
    Were you into skating, riding skateboards? I was really into it, but also not allowed to do it. Okay. I was allowed to do it. I didn't get hurt. I could pretty much do whatever I want. It's just like today. Your mom's only goal was to try and keep you out of prison. Yeah, it worked. Yeah, basically. So, world famous Powell Peralta skater, Steve Caballero, is returning. He's going to be at the arcade tonight. Yep, he's going to be at the arcade. He's taking the Yucca Taproom stage for New Year's Eve with his band, Urethane. Man, what a blast. That's going to be cool. The nicest group of rockers we've ever met. Yeah. Absolutely amazing. Besides Bare Naked Ladies. Ed's super nice. He's Canadian, though. That's a different scale. He's got to be nice, right? The Canadians look good. Oh, my God. I think I deleted some stuff. Oh, boy. Oh, Dirty Donnie. Dirty Donnie, another fine Canadian. Dirty Donnie has some new shirts. Rachel has one on right here. Yep. The monster shirt. Don't get too crazy. You're going to lose your position. Remember to keep it on the X. I want to make sure you're in focus. Yeah.
    5:17
    Okay. So that's what we have going on. Also, can we mention the February tournament? Sure. Roland is holding a high score tournament. It's Roland's company, the Pitbull.
    5:32
    Pitbull. Pinball. Whatever it is. It's Roland and his dog. They are holding, I guess, the first. What type of tournament is this? It's like a card system? It is a, it's not a card system. It's a three-day high score tournament. So you have 20 hours of qualifying. And in that 20 hours, you have as many opportunities as you want, as long as the queue allows, to try to get high scores on as many of the games in the bank as possible, and a certain percentage of those count. I don't know if all of the details have been finalized on that, but it's a high-score tournament, and it's happening in February. So this is similar to InDisc, right? Well, InDisc is a card system. Oh, okay. And all this is over my head, but we're going to do a lot of marketing. We're going to do a push for it. Yeah.
    6:31
    Soon. Come on out. It'll be fun. Yep. And it's one of the ones, you know, you can pop in and just play, you know, 12 games and then let the scores ride. And then go to Waffle House. Right. You don't have to sit around for all the whole, for the duration. Our previous three-day tournament was 20 rounds, and that was an endurance test. This you can kind of come and go, and it's not quite that intense. At your leisure. Your leisure. At your leisure.
    7:05
    All right. Also, shout out to one of the sponsors of the show, Stern Insider Connected. People, and we're going to talk about that in the earnings report. There's some interesting data concerning what we do. Pinball. And how Stern Insider Connected helps us out. But before we get into that, this January, next month. A few hours from now. A few hours from now, Elvira's Haunted Capture Quest. You can get a bunch of cool badges if you play Elvira. And look for that new Blood Red edition. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah.
    7:51
    So there's a bunch of cool badges, and if you want to see more about that, head to Stern Pinball's social media accounts, Facebook, Instagram. They probably even talk about it on TikTok. They have a cool TikTok. Go follow them there, too. And also, today, you get a New Year badge. Oh, okay. Yeah. On January 1st. Play any game New Year's Day 2024 to earn this badge. You get a cool badge. and there's a cool rock on badge where if you play any rock and roll game and score over 20 million points to earn this badge i think i'm gonna try it on food fighters i will do it on iron maiden you're playing you're practicing i played a lot of iron maiden last night still couldn't get on the leaderboard so you can you can get both of those that would be monday so here yes monday and because that's going to be a new month on our leaderboards i will be able to get on to the leaderboards. I've only been able to hold my place on one of the 15 games, one or two. I had a few good scores, but man. We refresh our leaderboard every month. Yes. Which is cool because the people who are not going to get on the top, they can come in and at least get their name up there for a little bit. Yeah. Like me. Yeah.
    9:09
    Very good. Yeah. So go check out Stern. So I want to talk about these badges because I care about these a lot. Okay. Like as a player. So this Godzilla, we've been doing Godzilla this last month, and I am addicted to badges.
    9:27
    So we went in several days on days that we hadn't planned on going into work. We did. Just to play games so that I could get some achievements. We've been playing a lot of pinball because of these badges. We are not the only ones. And actually, I might as well just talk about this now. So Godzilla always performs very well for us. But this month, with the badges focused on Godzilla, it did about 25% better than it has been doing recently. So it gave it quite a boost. So if you're operating, man, put these on. And you're not trying to shill. No. We were talking about this before they decided to help us out with a little sponsorship. Totally. We're evangelists for Stern Insider Connected. We drink the Kool-Aid. We eat the dog food. All of it. Yeah, we love it. I like badges. I like feeling like I've accomplished something. Yeah, who doesn't? Achievements. Yeah. A cold plunge. A Stern Insider badge. It really makes me feel like my day, I've done something. Dopamine bumps. That's what I do. We like dopamine bumps. Clean bumps. Yeah, we're old enough now that our bumps are dopamine. And it's working. It's working. It's great. head over to stern pinball on facebook instagram tiktok whatever to learn more about the badges and go log in yeah get into it go into your app look at it yeah the new insider connected app it's great yeah don't have to wait for the browser alert yeah i'm uh i'm ghost rachel on there and i i'm electric kale so it's a electric and then a l e a l e so you use the c in both electric and kale you're not doubling it up all right it's a little little onomatopoeia that's not what that is yep okay now we're going to go on to the mailbag if you want to be part of this fantastic mailbag there are several ways to get in touch with us you can do uh electric bat arcade at gmail that's right dot com you can go to our discord and join and and get in the backcast channel ask some questions and uh where else oh you could dm us no no that's it that's it i don't want to try and track it from other places. There's only two ways to do this. Alright, what are you having to drink there? This is water, but I'm drinking it with a straw because I've noticed that it always bumps my microphone.
    11:51
    So now I'm bougie. I have a big old thing of water. It's my spot cup. Let's get into it. This is from Steve London. This is our friend from across the pond. This is one of our friends from across the pond. One of our friends from across the pond, Steve London. And thanks for addressing my questions in Episode 8. Would love to hear your opinion after watching my friend's video on your next show. Cheers, mates. Oh, this was about the pinballs. Pinballs, yeah. And we did watch the video. Interesting stuff. Before we get into that, he answered our question about how much a James Bond 60th was in the U.K. How much?
    12:33
    $33,000. $33,000 U.S. dollars? Well, he didn't say if it was USD or either way. What's the exchange? That's the dollar sign, so that is USD. It's like $1.20 to a pound, or are they doing euros? That's $33,000 US dollars. Okay, $33,000. Wow. You've basically got to be James Bond. You've got to be James Bond to afford that thing. But it's a great game. It is a great game. And I think the good news is I think you can get that game. Less than that now. Even new in box. Yeah, probably $27,000 now. I thought it was cheaper than that. Well, I mean, over there. Oh, yeah, over there. Okay. Here, I think you can get it $15,000 to $17,000. I'm not sure.
    13:22
    We watched, I think the guy's name is Gonzo. Yeah. He has a very cool YouTube channel. Go check it out. Just Google, or not Google, go to YouTube and search Gonzo Pinball. He has a great channel. He's very polite. So what he does, he compares the pinballs that came with his Stern machine to Silver Jets from Marco Pinball, supporter of the show. Thumbs up to Marco Pinball. Silver Jets are great. He even says Silver Jets are great.
    13:51
    Ninja balls, which I don't know who sells that. I think it's Pinball Ninjas who sells it. Okay. So you have that. And then another ball that I don't remember the name. But they were all Silverjack clones. Not the third one was carbon steel. Oh, really? Just so everybody knows, standard pinball is carbon steel. That's case hardened. So the outer layer, the crust, if you're thinking of the earth, or like an M&M, it is case hardened. So it's harder on the outside than it is on the inside and all the way to the core.
    14:33
    So that would be your standard pinball, like your Marco standard pinball, the standard pinball that comes in. I know Stern machines. I don't know. I think every pinball comes with standard. I don't think anybody's using premiums. I'm wondering if American is using chrome steel because they've talked about even their customer service has responded about balls becoming magnetized. And that usually happens with the chrome steel. Anyway, back to our story. Most manufacturers just use a standard ball.
    15:09
    So you have the, he... He compared that. He took photos and up close. But there's also chrome steel balls, which are silver jets and your ninja. And there may be another folks, some more folks selling under a different brand. But chrome steels are like through hardened. They're as hard on the outside layer as they are all the way to the center. And they're very shiny. Incredibly shiny. And they look absolutely beautiful.
    15:40
    So you cannot. You're not comparing apples to apples. Right. Comparing a standard pinball to something like a silver jet or a ninja ball. It's like comparing an M&M to a jawbreaker. Right. Or like a Geo Metro to a Ferrari.
    15:57
    Well, no, but a jawbreaker is hard all the way through. Okay. It's my analogy. There you go. Hey, whatever you like.
    16:06
    So anyway, the video is cool, but it just – It kind of points to what we already said. Yeah. I mean, of course a chrome steel ball is going to outperform a standard ball. They're harder.
    16:24
    Yeah, but it's a good video. Go check it out. I'm still not down with throwing out the balls that come with your stern as soon as you get them. Send them to us. Yes. If you do, just mail them to us. We'll send you a sticker.
    16:40
    Even trade. Yeah, right, right. So the problem you'll find with chrome steel, which is silver jets or ninja balls, they'll retain what's called magnetic resonance and which which can cause them to clump up in the trough cause other issues where they get hung up that's not always the case it if if i you know our friend bob um local local uh atomic age modern yep he puts chrome steel balls in his godzilla which has some strong magnets yeah and oh and that's that's the issue it's games with strong magnets will magnetize chrome balls faster he hasn't run into any issues using chrome balls try them so when but if you have issues with magnetization you know that that is use a standard ball put a standard ball back in there um and yeah and and the standard balls are going to get cloudy damaged uh faster right especially from the auto launch the the two forks on the metal Metal on metal. Any metal on metal. The balls banging each other in multi-ball, which I don't have a problem with. I don't get too many multi-balls.
    17:55
    That's not true. Yeah, but good video. If anybody wants to check it out, Gonzo Pinball on YouTube. But still, you're not comparing apples to apples when you're comparing a standard ball to a chrome steel ball. Of course the chrome steel ball is going to outperform your standard ball in every way. And they are completely fine to leave in your machines. We have – there's like a lot of take these out of your machine immediately. Don't. They're fine. It's not going to tear up. You're talking about the standard balls that come with you. Yeah. Any machine. Don't be – like ball machines are tough. Right. You're not going to like rip it up. So any of our games like Knight Rider, Andromeda, Solid State. We put fancy balls in there. Yeah, there's no magnets in there. So we throw silver jets in those games because those things will last forever in an older machine. Especially because we live in the driest place on earth. There is not going to be any – it's not going to rust or anything. It's free. I'm cold. I'm cold in here. It's 65 degrees in the house. All right. Well, the studios are supposed to be cold. Did you know that? Yeah, that's because of the hot lights. I've toured some studios. Letterman. I went to Letterman. I did some Foley for Letterman back in the day. Did I ever tell you about that? Certainly not. That was fun. All right. Thank you, Steve. And thank you for sending us that video. Very cool stuff.
    19:30
    We're going to move on to It's Me, AJ. Okay. On Discord. Have you noticed any type of slowdown lately? and he did send this recently within like about a week ago um we have been extremely so he obviously has an arcade or or a route or you know i'm not sure exactly uh we have been extremely slow and it seems like no one has money to do things it seems like a pay utilities grocery bill or go out and play pinball we know we would do right playing pinball that's right it's ramen time yeah yeah Yeah.
    20:08
    Let's see. I can't help but feel that it's me failing as an owner slash operator. Our tournaments have been stagnant and we are not getting new players. I just don't know how to increase getting people in the door. Don't feel bad, AJ, because this may not be your fault. There's a lot of luck involved in business. There's a lot of luck involved in success. Yeah. And a lot of people don't talk about it. A lot of the influencers you see online, oh, it's all hard work. Just do three posts a day. Yeah, just three posts a day and a bunch of hard work. There's a lot of luck involved, and we've been very lucky. But we've worked hard too. Yeah.
    20:52
    So here's one thing I'll say about that. I know that he did send that before Christmas, and so the holiday season can be – people are trying to get presents for their kids versus pinball. We still might vote for pinball. but a very big part of our success i feel is that and we talk about this every time we talk about it community right yeah we were hanging out at the arcade last night after work and there's like in addition to all of the other people that are just there that we don't know There's like 15 people that we know, like friends, right? And any night that we go there, there's also maybe a different 15 people that are friends. And it reminds me of the coffee shop, the little coffee shop I hung out at in high school. And you knew that when you went to this particular coffee shop that you were going to run into like the other goths and computer nerds right So I think for us we created a place that feels that you know that this is going to be you going to run into some friends there It very cheersy And I think building up that sort of community is going to be the key to your success, no matter what your business is. But it's hard to say because we don't know if AJ owns an arcade or if he's just, like you said, if he's got some route games. So how personally invested he is in that particular space. If this is at Kale's Pizza Palace and AJ is routing the games there, he may not have a reason to hang out there 12 hours a day like we do. So it's not a total fair comparison, but that would be the first step that I would say anybody that's trying to build something, man, really make friends with your players and invite your friends that are not players to just come out and have a good time, like throw a casual tournament or something. Just be like, hey, it's my birthday. Y'all are going to come play pinball today. For sure. Yep. That has worked for us. And as far as like, I know, I mean, if you keep up with the media, you hear, you know, the economy is not doing well. Some people say it's actually doing well if you look deep into it. we have not noticed a slowdown with the coin drop. Our coin drop graph throughout the year is kind of commensurate with what you would expect in prior years. It's always a little bit slower at the end of the year, but not within 10%. So we're doing pretty steady. Yeah, so I would say AJ, and I would really need a little cash for consulting.
    23:44
    No. These books aren't going to buy themselves. Yeah, just be sure you do the regular stuff, promoting stuff on social media at the bare minimum.
    23:55
    Instagram and Facebook, make it real clear when your tournaments are. Make it look like a fun place. Maybe throw up some physical posters. I'm a firm believer in physical media and person-to-person marketing. Tell your friends.
    24:14
    Tell them, hey, friend, that's what we're – come hang out. And you painted a gigantic poster for the arcade, and I actually wanted you to do this because I noticed some players are not really on social media. Right. We have a wide variety of ages playing at our tournaments, and they would show up and go, oh, I didn't know you had a tournament today. Right. We always do. It's Tuesday at 630, and so you painted a gigantic poster. Yeah, it's like four feet tall or something. And just so people are reminded.
    24:53
    And then any other tournaments, just push those things on social media. it doesn't don't pay him any money don't do like the the push there's no need for that yeah just do your own stuff and and also part of the uh building community uh give it personality like every once in a while go on there and shoot a video of yourself talking about what it's going to be like when when you show up um is it a card system is it do you need to bring tokens and quarters is there is there a toga machine there just uh you know educate the players i thought that video that uh our buddy jarred made for his christmas tournament was fantastic because he was really introducing a lot of non-pinball players he's like here's what to expect and i think that's a great idea because there's a lot of people that if they've never been to an arcade or aren't sure how it works you want to like give them that that little heads up so they're not nervous about like i don't want to walk in and do the wrong thing for sure that is great advice rachel um i think we covered anything but aj message us on discord if you want to know any more details or need any other ideas we will be glad to help yeah um next question is from bob This is Atomic Bob from Atomic Age Modern and the whole Atomic Age Modern family.
    26:18
    I know Kale built a streaming rig a while back. What is the average cost of putting one together? Any chance that you will eventually start streaming the Tuesday night tournament craziness? It would be great for the largest league in the world to be on Twitch every week. Can you imagine running the tournament? I wouldn't be able to play. If you could see us at the end of a Tuesday night, I think that's what the wrinkles that I've gotten might just be from running a 100-person tournament every single week.
    26:52
    It's pretty intense. It's gotten easier. It has gotten way easier, mostly because I think the players, there's so many people helping out. Right.
    27:04
    So, for Bob. At first, I don't think we're going to be doing that on Tuesday nights. If somebody else would like to run it, if somebody else would like to stream, let us know. We're definitely not. So much work goes into streaming.
    27:20
    If you came for the three-day tournament and saw the streaming rig and all that going on, commentary and all the equipment, to do a good stream, there's a lot involved. And we should note that that was aimless pinball doing it. We could not have done that and run the tournament. We didn't have the equipment or the knowledge to do – Or the minutes. Yeah, the minutes to do all that.
    27:45
    And they did a fantastic job, had the telestrator and all that stuff. I would – you know, I wanted all that equipment until I saw how much work went into going into that. And that stuff is very, very expensive. the rig we have is set up on tripods it's not a rolling rig it's not a wireless rig so it would be very impossible to use that for a Tuesday tournament you could leave it set on the same game and just you know we actually did that years ago do you remember I do remember that and it was kind of weird because there was so much dead air that doesn't really work out But what I do need to do more of is, you know, like your one-off streams. We're thinking about having the three heavyweight electric belt holders battle it out on stream. We're going to talk about that. Right. And that way I can set up everything and just move the machine. But, like, have them play, like, maybe three games on one machine, do a pause, switch out, swap out a machine. um so just to give you an idea i had a friend of mine uh do up a spreadsheet on the cost of all this stuff um it would i'm not gonna he details it like a high tier low tier medium tier but let's just um ballpark so a rolling rig and and that is the the the what would you call it the aluminum It's got the frame. It's like modular frame stuff.
    29:30
    So you're talking about at least $400 for that. Just for the wheels and the aluminum. Right, the aluminum frame. You can use a clothing rack.
    29:45
    Retro Ralph actually sent me a cool video where he used a clothing rack. And for what he's doing at home, that's great. So that would make something good for home. But if you're trying to do this and do a live, do a big tournament, I would go high tier. Yeah. Cameras, low tier. And this is what we have. This is Sony HDR-CX405. You're going to need three of those, and they're $230 a piece. We should also note that whenever we stream, the camera that's on us is... $2,000. Yeah. Yeah, all this stuff is crazy expensive. And then on the high tier for your cameras, you can do the Panasonic Lumix GX85 or a Sony EOS M6 Mark II. Man, these are all expensive. The Panasonic 600, you're going to need three of them, and the Sony is $1,000, and you're going to need three of those. Some of these prices might be a little outdated, so it might be a couple hundred dollars less than that. But I think you can kind of get the ideas. This is one of the most expensive parts, and I think the most important part are the HDMI transmitters and receivers. And those are for if you're – because you're doing wireless, so you have to be able to get the signal to the place where the computer is, right? That's what that is? The HDMI signal.
    31:08
    Low tier? You can probably just upload this document, share that somewhere in the Discord, and just give us the numbers. Yeah, but you're talking anywhere, and you're going to need three of these, anywhere from $400 to $500 times three. Yeah, so then it goes on because there's headsets, mics, mixers, all of the computer lighting, all of that stuff. So, I mean, like the lowest you could do a mobile rig. There's like a thousand more dollars left to talk about here. Yeah. Yeah, so as you can see, I mean, look how this list keeps on going. Monitors, $360. It might be like $4,000 more.
    31:53
    You're talking several thousand dollars to get a good streaming rig going on. And even for the most basic mobile rig, several thousand dollars. Because with the transmitters, with the wireless stuff, there's no way of doing that cheaper yet. Now, that's for streaming, doing a good quality stream, 60 frames per second at a big tournament. If you're at home, people are doing great things with just webcams. Yeah. And it doesn't cost as much. Some nice webcams and like a snowball USB microphone where you don't have to use. So you could do that for less than $1,000 for a home rig. Absolutely. And that's what we started out doing. Cheap tripods from Amazon? During COVID, right? It was the cheap stuff at home.
    32:47
    And, yeah, so it's exponentially more expensive if you want it to be a mobile rig, which is really what you want if you're trying to stream tournaments, right? For sure. But I think somebody around here should invest in that and start doing it. Yeah. And let us know. Yeah, we welcome you. You can practice at the bat. Yeah.
    33:13
    Yeah. So, I mean, to answer your question, Bob, we are not going to start streaming Tuesday Night Tournaments, but that'd be fun. But we'd like you to. But, you know, I don't even know if we would have the room to, like, move around a rig. It would be hard. Because, I mean, the rooms are just packed with people. Yeah. It would be difficult. But I think it could happen, but we're not going to do it. Okay.
    33:38
    Thank you so much. Bob, Atomic Bob, for your question. Good people. All right. So not sure. We're not sure who this came from. You threw it in there. Sorry. I think I copied it from the Discord, but I forgot to copy who it came from. So if you hear this and it's you, let us know and we'll give you a shout out on the next. We'll give them two shout outs for missing the name.
    34:06
    Here we go. Maybe a podcast topic, but I'd love to know both your tolerance for game abuse from players. What, how, much of a game moving from its position is tolerated, slap saves, slide saves, etc.? Go.
    34:24
    Well, I guess until the Tilt Bob says no. We have been told that our tilts are a little looser than most places. that um that's called a bar tilt that's what that's what gene x called it bar tilt bar tilt you know um they on the classics they're a little bit tighter on the moderns they're um they're relatively loose i don't like to see people doing death saves but i there are some people who can pull it off without tilting obviously not during a tournament that's and not permitted. Right.
    35:01
    Slap saves, slap saves all day. I don't, you know, what bothers me a lot more than trying to save the ball is whenever you drain the ball and you slam the lockdown bar. Yeah. Or you hit the glass, or you just have, like, this general uncontrollable outburst. The unnecessary stuff. Yeah. Kicking a machine. Yeah, what's that doing? Slapping, you know, losing your ball and slapping the lock bar. Yeah, that I have. We'll be like, hey, you know, take it easy. Yeah, if I see you kicking the leg of a machine or the coin door or banging on the lockdown bar, that is much, much worse to me. Right. Because you're not accomplishing anything. Right. Except making more work for us. We probably tolerate more than other places. Yeah. Wouldn't you say? I think so. Yeah. I mean, we are a player's spot. Welcome to Electric Bat where the players play. Oh, yeah. Welcome to the Thunderdome is what's up. Machines every day. Yeah. We bang around these machines every day. We put up with a lot, buddy. I don't know who this is.
    36:07
    But still, then the machines are still fine. This is what really gets to me about the people that think that they're just like so precious and they're going to break. It's not like a little kitten. It's a big old box. But don't slam the game into the wall. Like we had a TNA that was close to a wall, and after we put it there, we noticed people were slamming it into the wall because the drywall was coming off.
    36:35
    So we remedied that with some rubber feet. And tighten the tilt. Rubber casters or whatever you want to call them. Yeah. Yeah, and tighten the tilt, and that solved it. Cool. Thank you for your question. Mystery person. Hopefully we'll find out who you are.
    36:54
    So we're going to bring up some marketing questions now. Oh, okay. Did you want to talk about it? Right off the cuff. Oh, okay. What did you have in mind? You thought of something? Well, there was a couple of things I wanted to talk about. One of them was we just had the bat belt. Oh, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. So every year for Tuesday night tournaments, I keep tracking a spreadsheet of everyone's score. Everyone? Throughout the year. So that's like 400 people, right? Throughout the year, yeah. I think we had about 400 unique players.
    37:27
    So I keep track of that. And you get to have 12 drops throughout. So your 12 worst scores, or if you don't show up for 12 weeks, those scores get dropped. Everything else counts. And the person with the highest score at the end of the year wins the bat belt, the heavyweight belt. So if you've seen this on social media, it is a real wrestling belt that our good friend Andy, shout out to Andy. Leather and metal. leather weighs like many pounds um so we gave that away and it came down to the last week it was between roland and mark and they were within five points of each other so if you can imagine there's 52 tournaments all year long and it's like neck and neck after that so that was really exciting for me that was very exciting to not have a runaway yeah i mean it was it was people were watching to see how each person did in each round and it came down to roland okay roland won roland one congratulations so over the three years that we've awarded the bat belt it has been um k car kevin mark and roland so now we have three different belt winners which i'm also happy to see that it's three different people that have become champions of the year wow and uh that's So you were talking about having a heavyweight battle between all three of them. Yeah, we're thinking about doing a stream. If they all agree to it, I'm sure they will. I think they love pinball, they love streaming, and they love the electric bat.
    38:57
    And we love them. A three-man tournament. Yeah. We have to come up with a prize and what games they're going to play. It can't be us choosing. Well, it can't be them choosing the game, right? Well, they could each choose one game. You want to take a break so I can switch out the battery here? Sure. Okay. We'll be right back. I'm still cold. I'll have you know I'm still cold. Still cold. It hasn't gotten any warmer.
    39:27
    Okay. And we're back. We're back. All right. So where were we? We just had to switch out some batteries on our lights. Yeah. And I did that.
    39:38
    Success. Achievement. Get a badge. Yeah. We don't have any PA here, so I have to do everything. I'm the key grip. I'm the producer. I'm the director. And the assistant key grip. Yep, yep. Got my gaff tape right here.
    39:54
    So what were we talking about? We were talking about doing a Super Champ. Oh, Super Champ stream. We just got to talk to those guys and select a – Sundays are usually good for streaming. It'll be cool. Yeah, we'll do something fun. It'll be a blast. I did say I was going to go into some marketing questions. Let's hit them. Well, actually, but I was thinking I really want to get into this is a fan favorite segment before we get into the marketing stuff. And we might run out of time. Who knows?
    40:27
    But this is a very cool earnings report. Yes. And this is a special edition of the earnings report. You got it. This is top earners of the year. Yeah. I have compiled. You have some interesting data. In my database. Is it data or data? What do you call it? Data. Who was the guy on Star Trek? Data.
    40:51
    Do you call it Star Trek or Star Trek? I actually sometimes call it Star Trek. But knowing that the correct pronunciation is Star Trek, I just like the sound of Star Trek. Yeah. Track. We're on the Star Trek, right? Yeah. So this actually coincides. We had a question from Brian Jenkins who he had a Jurassic Park and a Deadpool and wanted to know how those worked out in the earnings report. And he's going to find out about both of those. So for the year, I compiled all of the earnings. So some of these games, and I'll let you know which ones, we haven't even had for the full year. So we're going to do top ten, and I'm going to start at number one just because that's where I feel like starting.
    41:47
    This is the top earner. And this is just raw coin drop. For the year. You want me to tell you what it is? Yeah. It's Godzilla. That's right. Come on. Come on, y'all. There was no question about it. So all of the rest of the games followed kind of a standard drop-off. It's a pretty gradual drop-off. Godzilla earned more than 30% more than the second-place earner. So that's how far and away Godzilla is above everything else. now um you know a lot of people say well yeah because it's an elwyn game but we have other elwyn games and they're not performing like godzilla are they well we're about to find out okay they're not all performing like godzilla and nothing nothing else is performing exactly like godzilla but this is why whenever i see people saying that they swapped out their godzilla like i just can't even fathom it but i you know i guess not everybody has the same clientele that we do but yes godzilla number one with a greater than 30 percent lead it's not even close not even this is the tiger woods of pinball the michael jordan of pinball the owner arnold schwarzenegger of pinball wouldn't you say yeah i would say the arnold schwarzenegger of pinball number two uh jurassic park nope it's batman 66 let's go batman 1966, Gomez, Lyman, who else? All the boys of Stern. Franchi. They put together a great game. Yeah, it's a fun one. They'll probably never run these again. No. So it's... But for the entire year, it earned... And that game hasn't been new for a while. Right. It's just... Number two for the year, Batman 66. That surprises me. Yeah, it was a little surprising to me, but it a great game Yeah Number three is not a pinball machine but I included it because it shows you people are always wanting to know how everything stacks up aliens armageddon which is the giant two person it's 11 feet tall you know what i'm really happy about like i you you remember the name of it because i'm always going on it's alien something that's got machine guns so it's called aliens it's aliens armageddon yeah it's the two it's the one where you hold the machine guns uh and shoot at the screen. Everybody loves it. It's simple for anyone to play. And it paid for itself faster than many pinball machines. So even though it's expensive for a video game, it was a good investment. Sure. And if somebody wants one of those, they can get in touch with our sponsor, Game Room Goodies. They can hook it up. Video games and pinball machines. Shooters are always great performers. So if you're opening an arcade or thinking about putting things on location, Shooter would be the first or second thing that I would add. And if you have room, Sit Down Driver. Sit Down Driver, Shooter, and then like a Miz Pack. But the Miz Pack isn't going to earn anywhere near what your Shooter is going to earn, but it has a lot less footprint. Yep. All right. Number four, Brian Jenkins, it's Deadpool. So Deadpool is our number four earner for the year. So it's working. Yeah.
    45:15
    These are very good. Number five is interesting. It's Foo Fighters. The reason that's interesting is because we didn't get it until March. So it, in 10 months, did better than many games did in 12 months. Very interesting. I cannot wait to see what happens next year. It did better than number six, which is Jurassic Park, Brian Jenkins. I think that surprises me because like somebody's always playing Jurassic Park, but they're also – I will say that the difference in total money in these games is pretty small. We're not talking about very large percentages. So a lot of these games are fairly interchangeable. Okay. Except Godzilla. Godzilla, that's very much. Dun, dun. Very good. So he was asking how Deadpool and Jurassic Park did. And for us, they were our fourth and sixth best earners out of 60 games on the floor. So this year, you know what? This is our one-year anniversary of The Big Room. We opened at New Year's last year. That is right. Congratulations to you. I totally forgot about that. And you. I remember. Man, we hustled. Oh, my gosh. We didn't even have enough games to fill it. But we had Mark getting games ready and bringing them in. He bought an Ironman to put in there and all that good stuff. Thank you. Thank you, Mark Pearson. Yeah. Well, I totally forgot about that until right now.
    46:54
    And so moving on, number seven, Bond 60th. So Bond 60th is our seventh best earner, but we've only had that since May. Wow. So for all of the people on the Internet saying, why would you get a $20,000, whatever it's selling for now, $33,000 in the UK, in a little over a half a year, it's outperformed 55 other pinball machines. Not only that, it's an awesome game. It's super fun. I was playing it last night over and over and over because it is definitely one of those, I know I could do better. They're just let me try one more time games. Right. So Elwynn games of the top seven. Elwynn has three of the top seven. Way to go, Elwynn. Yeah. Keep them coming. Yeah. I can't wait. There might be a new one coming out very soon. Dun it. Yep. All right. So number eight. This surprised me. Toy Story. Jersey Jack. And that's only been there since February, so it does have a one-month disadvantage. Still earned its spot on the list. There you go. And, yeah, Jersey Jack. To be clear, that's Toy Story 4. Right. I mean, that's what it is. We don't have Toy Story 1, 2, or 3 because they don't exist.
    48:20
    Right. And number nine is the Bond Cornerstone. Oh, I love that game. I know. I played it last night. It has great code now. Yep. You know, people complained about the code at the beginning. Also with Batman 66, right? When Batman came out, that was a complainer fest about code.
    48:39
    Well, let's be real. Anytime a game drops, there's a complain fest. Yeah, that's good, Paul. Remember the color on Godzilla was no good? Oh, yeah, it's terrible. Oh, it's horrible. Nobody will ever make any money with a game with green on it.
    48:52
    Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. So there you go, Jersey Jack folks. Somebody from Jersey Jack got in touch with us and wanted us to do a top ten. Because you usually do a top five. Right. And top ten because he wants to hear a Jersey Jack title on there. Top ten of the year? There you go. Toy Story. It doesn't get better than that. For the whole year. Right. Twelve months.
    49:15
    And then the Bond Cornerstone, which we talked about. And then in tenth place is Attack from Mars. Man. A classic. Still one of my favorite games. It is so good. It is good. Yeah. So some other things that we – we only had a Stranger Things – we only had it about six months. So it didn't – in the totals, it didn't make it. But I also ran some other data of the average earnings per month, and I have some top numbers for that. Most of it doesn't change around too much except for Venom and Stranger Things are in the top five. Yeah. And actually Scooby-Doo breaks in in the 10th place spot. That's a cool looking game. Scooby-Doo, people, you know. Yeah. And we'll have Looney Tunes, I would say soon, but I don't know, whenever they're making them. We're getting number 10. Yeah. Mark Pearson is bringing that in there. Thank you, Mark, again. Yeah, thanks. He brings a bunch of cool games in.
    50:15
    Oh, and also, I guess we need to say Elton John is being brought in. I think we did say that. Yeah, in about a week. Yeah, but we have to give credit to... Oh, by Greg Davis. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, Greg is... I know he's a listener of the cast. Yes, yes, he is. Thank you so much for bringing that game in. That's an expensive game. It's an expensive game. And cool. It is cool. We played it. Yeah. And now Greg gets to operate some games at the bat. So that'll be really fun. We look forward to having that in the lineup for a bit.
    50:51
    Yeah. Was that it? Did you have like worst earners? I do have worst earners for the month. And I actually could look at worst earners for the year if you want. Worst earners for the year. I'm not really worried about that. Let's keep it on the up and up and talk about Galactic Tank Force. Oh. Well, that's like the, it is up from where it was, right? Like it's up-ish. I mean, I think it's only fair that we do an update. Yeah, we should talk about it. I don't want to just trash those guys all the time. And we're not trashing the guys. Oh, right, right, right. The game. I mean, they made it happen. Okay. So moving on. Yeah. Galactic Tank Force. David Fix and the crew at American have done something that is extremely rare in the pinball industry.
    51:39
    They sent us an entirely new game. They sent us, they opened up a machine, went over it with a fine-tooth comb. Their words. and sent it to us. That is, I don't know of any manufacturer that will do something like that. And they just said, please send us the other one back. It wasn't, they didn't wait for us to ship it back. Yeah. But also, I mean, we have this podcast, so I don't think they would do this for just anybody. I don't know, try. See what happens. Well, because full disclosure, when we were having all those issues with that other one, which they took back, they said, as a learning tool for the programmers and the factory to figure out what happened and to not repeat this. The other one was just absolutely unplayable.
    52:37
    This one is actually working well enough to keep it on the floor. Sort of. Yeah, it does have some glitches.
    52:47
    And if anybody owns a Galactic Tank Force and you're having an issue with the lights locking on or off, just the play field lights, like just locking into position. So you don't know what to aim for, what you've already shot, that sort of thing. And you have to restart the game. They said that they've actually admitted that that's something they know about, and they're pushing a fix with an upcoming update. So we'll probably get that after the new year. Pinball is kind of shut down for the next, you know, between Christmas and New Year's. This machine that we have now does have updated code that wasn't, oh, different code. Yeah. That wasn't on the other one. I don't know if it's prototype code or what have you, but whatever it is, it's working much better.
    53:32
    The game does not lose track of balls as near as much. It still loses track of balls sometimes. Also, we had to turn virtual locks off because when we had – or virtual locks on. When we had the locks the way that the game is supposed to function, it did lose track of balls. Correct. So we had to turn virtual locks on to make it work at all. And I think that's something some other operators I've talked to are doing. They're just putting the virtual locks on. David Fix even recommended putting virtual locks on. And he said, you know, like you have to do with the Groot lock in Guardians of the Galaxy. Sometimes if you're routing those, use virtual locks. We don't. We just make sure ours works. But this one. But you don't really lose any. The locking system is not. No, it's fine. It's fine with virtual locks. Right. You don't really notice like. But the real sad part of all this. Okay, so now we are pretty happy with the machine. It's fine. Right. It can't be used in a tournament. Yeah, you can't use it in a tournament because it will auto launch sometimes. And, you know, tournament players would get mad at that. But at least it's bringing in some money. The whole sad part about this is with our other galactic tank force that wasn't working, the final say from customer service from American Pinball was we can't duplicate any of these things your machine is doing. So that's it. We can't do anything for you. Yeah, we're kind of guessing. Right. And so and we actually talked to David Fix at Expo in person and he gave us his cell phone number. we both called him at separate occasions left messages i left my cell phone number rachel left her cell phone number and he never got in touch with us and until we started talking about it on the podcast where he even told us man my friends started telling me about you two guys talking about how bad this game was and i had to get in touch um so i think it's unfortunate if If somebody doesn't have a big megaphone and they're stuck with an American game that doesn't work, the official response from customer service is, oh, well, that's just what you're going to get. So the lesson is start a podcast if you want to buy an American game. But anyway, but in all seriousness, that was a huge blunder on their part as far as customer service goes. But they did fix it. I mean, there are very few manufacturers, if any, out there that are going to send a customer just another game while they have a game. And this one is... Hats off. Maybe the first one we got was just like an odd lemon that was especially... But yeah, I'm hoping that some future code updates make this game more stable.
    56:40
    It would be neat to be able to use it in a tournament at some point. and people like playing the game. It does have a different feel.
    56:52
    It's fun, and it mostly works, and it's very beautiful. Yep, it's a super cool-looking game. So that's where we are with Galactic Tank Force. Yes, thank you for the help, David Fix. If you have one, shoot us a message in the Discord, like how yours is doing. I just I am I'm very curious about it.
    57:19
    Bravo. Namaste. So do we do we go on to Colin's questions or what are we running at right now? We're at almost an hour. Yeah. Do you want to hold off on these for next time? You know what? Let's let's let's I want to I want to hit him. You want to hit him right now? Yeah. Let's do it. We don't have to get too in depth. Let's do it. This is from Colin at the Kineticist. These questions came in a long time ago. Before, now he's This Week in Pinball. Is that what it's called? Yeah, and I think it might have helped him out if we would have gotten to this a little bit earlier. A little earlier. Colin kind of had some internet fame there for a little bit. Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about the right way to market pinball. Here's our buddy Colin, and I think this is from the Discord.
    58:18
    Okay. Is that right? I don't remember. Some marketing questions. What should a marketer know about marketing to pinball people? For reference, I've been in marketing since 2008, but only recently took on the pinball marketing challenge. Let's hit that one first. what should a marketer know about marketing to pinball people i have something to say about that go i would think it's the same as in any um specific hobby there's going to be a lot of people that know a lot and think they know a lot so if you don't know a lot oh yeah don't pretend that you do yeah and this is not any like it's not towards calling not directed account this is a general i see that so much where somebody and it you're right it's not just pinball there are many industries where somebody gets into something and like oh cool this is what i want to do and they they don't know what they don't know um just just i guess study up on on pinball but um or don't don't assume authority right just hey um you know right right 100 and um I guess I was lucky. This is how I did it and how I learned to connect with the zeitgeist of pinball.
    59:42
    Go to the conferences, the pinball shows. Meet the people. Now, I know this might be expensive for some people, but, you know, I was paid to do it. But that brings you so close to the pinball community, actually talking to these people face to face. You know, that makes a huge difference. Learning what makes them tick, what they're into. And you see a lot of them have hobbies that go across, you know, many individuals like the crossover of video games. it seems like beer is also a thing you know i don't drink but um man they love talking beer yeah and uh different different types of brews and i'm guessing that that that the parcheese club also has a high crossover with beer i think yeah yeah everybody everybody loves worldwide um yeah but there's just just get get in touch with with the community hang hang out at pinball tournaments, hang out at pinball tournaments. Also, a big advantage I have, because I was selling pinball parts, talking to people every day. So it's just more of like the community actually getting to know these people. Yep, go to where these people are. Don't just talk to them online. Like talk to them.
    61:11
    There's so much. There's a meaningful conversation there you get when you're looking at somebody eye to eye that you don't get over email or Facebook comments. Really immerse yourself in pinball. And don't be afraid to say you don't know something. Yeah. You know, because there are a lot of experts in pinball. Knowledgeable and otherwise. Yeah. Next question. What's the difference in marketing to pinball players, quote unquote, older versus location players, younger and more diverse um i those are all the same from what i've seen what your marketing is like this is fun fun is fun right like i don't see yeah but we have i mean we have older players i guess in the arcade i don't think oh this is an age question not like an enthusiast versus what's the difference in marketing to pinball oh i'm sorry pinball buyers did i say players I misspoke. And me misspeaking made the question not make sense. Okay. So buyers versus. Right.
    62:20
    What's the difference in marketing to pinball buyers older versus location players younger, more diverse? Oh, that is kind of a huge. Well, from my side, when we were marketing, when I was selling games. and i guess you could do this but it was it was more vanilla you know like when i'm marketing for the arcade it's like balls to the wall whatever whatever goes i know how to entertain people and it's just really all about entertaining right and for people to to grab somebody's attention and bring them to the arcade for a wild fun experience right right you know tiki drinks music, even live music. Good times, irreverence. And games. Yeah. When you are, you need to be a little more serious when you want, you know, $15,000 from somebody. The thing that I think, again, like, and I'll bring this back to our sponsor, Game Room Goodies, that I appreciate about Game Room Goodies, who we buy our games from, is the service. And so I think if I was marketing to somebody, because so many people are buying games that don't have any idea how to take care of them or that there are a lot of things that you need to do to take care of them. I think marketing the service side of it and that you're going to – that you are there. You're somebody who has been here long enough that you're not going to be a fly-by-night sort of person.
    63:52
    And that you can offer some resources for just that security of knowing if things go wrong. and not like major things, but just I don't know what to do here, that you can be a reference for that. That would be something that would be meaningful to, I think, a lot of buyers of machines, whereas nobody that's coming to the arcade cares about that. For sure. They just know that we take care of them, I mean our crew, and that they're going to work. Yeah, yeah, totally.
    64:24
    Thank you, Rachel. He also wants to know what works versus what doesn't work in pinball marketing. What I've noticed for marketing the arcade is humor.
    64:40
    Man, and I don't know if this works for everybody, but I don't see why it wouldn't. But you have to be good at it. Like I've even when I've talked to some people, I've even recommended them hiring a comedy writer. I know this sounds nutty, but if you're not funny, try that. Or maybe even try AI. I don't know. I've never tried to get AI to do something funny. But what we've noticed is comedy freaking works on the Internet. People want to be entertained. They want to be amused. That's why memes are so popular. And you make – people think that you have borrowed these memes from somebody else. I didn't find memes, yeah. You make like basically all of the memes that you see on Electric Bat. You are just a very funny guy. Right, right. If you're not funny like you, you may want to look elsewhere for the funny. Sure, and what I'm doing, I mean it's no secret. I finding things that make me laugh and then remixing it to make sense for pinball and here here a here a little uh uh secret um you know i i don i don brand any of my memes like if if you want to take the meme i mean you know please give us credit but like use them i purposely do not put any watermarks on any of our pinball memes because i i wanted to make it to where you can take it and use it and then uh you know just give us credit but because the more people that get into these things and think about pinball, the better it is for everybody. So I'm just giving back to the community, and all I'm doing is remixing other people's stuff. So I don't really feel like it's all my intellectual property. Okay. That's a secret even to me. I didn't know that. Yeah. I've talked about that with, like, Ian from Nudge. Like, yeah, use it. Have fun with it. I think a generous spirit is important with all kinds of marketing, right? Merry Christmas. Yeah, well, I mean, it's all part of community. What doesn't work? When you try and be funny and you're not.
    66:50
    That, unless you reach the so bad, it's good. And that's a hard thing to hit. And another thing is just like stale photos with, you know, data points on it. Right.
    67:07
    People over machines. You have to have some personality. I think we're all tired. And excuse me, they've been doing it for years. I think we're all tired of seeing a beer or a cocktail surrounded by tokens and a photo of that. Yeah, like that. That's it. Like over and over and over again. Zero personality. Yeah.
    67:34
    Do do shoot videos of yourself. You know, you might be like, well, I'm not good on camera. Just keep doing it. People don't mind you being – I mean we're fucking weird. Yes, and sometimes I'm very awkward on camera. Yeah, we're super weird and awkward. Just keep doing it. Just keep, keep doing it. Keep bloopers in. That's what makes stuff funny.
    67:59
    Also, do not pay for advertising. The only – don't do these Facebook pushes and all this stuff. The only time that works is when you have like you can show some ROI like you have like you're pushing merch and you do a paid push for that. And you can see that it's actually pushing people to your website for to purchase items or tickets to an event. Like if you have a big pinball event coming up, right. Are you trying to sell magazines like like whatever? But don't just, oh, I'm going to push that we're open and have a happy hour and throw money into that. You're just pissing in the wind. Yeah. And I just stand by person-to-person, physical things. You're inviting people to have a physical analog experience. And I know I'm a broken record. Notice I say record, not MP3.
    68:57
    Just word of mouth is, I think, the best thing you can do. And the best way to get good word of mouth is to be a good person, be a good community member, have cool stuff, let people know about it. Yep. Clean machines that work. That's part of it. Yep.
    69:17
    What do you want to see more companies do with their marketing efforts? What do you want to see more companies do?
    69:27
    Man, I don't know. I haven't thought about that. So he just says any companies. Well, I mean, of course, like pinball related. I assume they mean pinball related. Well, I think we just kind of covered that. More entertainment. Like none of this dry, here's a drink surrounded by tokens. Yeah, but what we want to see is the companies. Also, you know what I've seen that I'm like, what the hell are you doing? What's that? It's almost like I see some arcades kind of trying to emulate what we do, but they just post memes that have nothing to do with pinball and and they get zero interaction yeah and zero clicks zero likes i'm like make sure it's like pinball centric i know that might be obvious to most people but i see i see accounts doing that i'm like this has nothing to do with pinball and it's not even funny i'm very lucky that i married somebody that were that happens to just be so good at marketing like you don't even think about it you're just like it's just in your blood and that's what you do and i think there's so many people that just don't have that well you know it really it goes back to being the class clown and always wanting attention i mean you just roll it into this you know you got two only children here you get paid for it and then uh um yeah but what i wanted to see from more companies um more personality um and personality is so important like it was great when uh when marco specialties had kyle and now kyle's moved to stern but he was a great personality you know and i think companies need a personality something the uh the public can connect to todd tucky todd holy shit todd tucky he's doing it right yes like like i think jersey jack needs some personality out there and you know and it might not be uh jack himself no you know but you i think you need somebody speaking to the people like ken cromwell he's he's very good you know like i mean i think he should be doing videos but i don't know what kind of board he has to deal with to get clearance for things i mean It's a big company. We're lucky. This is the clearance you have to get through for us. And even Stern, I think these companies need more personality, somebody they can connect with. Get some of your most exciting and entertaining employees to create content. I don't think you're saying be a clown or be out there. You just want to be able to identify, you know, when you think of Jersey Jack, what do you think of? Most people couldn't picture, some people can picture Jack himself, but really nobody else at the company. And it's just sort of this nebulous thing. If you think of Stern, everybody knows what Gary Stern looks like. Sure. And several of the people at Stern, right? And I think a lot of companies, it would make me happier to have them not be so afraid of like, well, we have to keep it between these two lines because if we go slightly outside of it, we might offend some people. And I'm not saying take political stances, like none of that sort of stuff, but just like don't be afraid of, like you said, having a personality and being true to who you are.
    72:58
    Yeah. There you go. I think that's a great answer. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, Cal. Yep. Who besides Stern and EB is doing a good job with marketing and pinball? Todd Tuckey.
    73:14
    There's going to be some people that we forget. Zach. Flippin' Out. Oh, Zach. Flippin' Out Pinball. Zach with his video and all that. You see, that's a personality. He has personality. He has humor. He started a whole pinball network to help promote his company. I mean, he's doing it right.
    73:37
    Jen Rupert. Oh, she's great. Incredible. Go follow her on TikTok. I don't know what her handle is. Just search Jen Rupert. Is it pinball Jen? Something like that. Jen Rupert. I'll put it in the show notes.
    73:51
    She is getting the word out. What I love about her stuff, and I'm not too heavy. on TikTok. We posted a little bit of stuff there.
    74:01
    But she is connecting. If you go look at her video, she's talking to people who had no idea pinball was a thing. And TikTok is a young audience. She is introducing a younger audience to pinball. She's educating them to no end. She loves doing it. Erica's pinball journey. Doing it right.
    74:25
    Fantastic video, content creator. If you want to know a little bit about her, she was on the Pinball Party. One of the 12 Days of Christmas. Go check out her episode. Actually, go check out all of them. There's a great one with her in there and she gives a little insight into that.
    74:48
    So I don't just like, you know, with I think Spooky is doing the right thing. They're doing basically what we said. They're given a personality.
    75:02
    Who is it? Spooky Luke and Bug. We can name people at Spooky, right? You can picture who they are. They're the face of the company. They choose licenses that they like. They're streaming. They're podcasting. Yes, they're doing it right.
    75:18
    Kudos, Spooky. And then Jersey Jack just seems, Jersey Jack and American, I think they have the same kind of problem. The marketing is kind of dry.
    75:30
    Now, Jersey Jack's got a lot of money, so the videos they do are like second to none. And the product. The promo video and the product is great.
    75:40
    Marketing seems a little dry, not exciting, no personality. I think that they feel like we have this really great top-tier product, and we just want to show it off. And it will sell itself. Which, that's not how it works. Yeah, yeah. And again, we don't know what they're dealing with there. There might be a committee that shoots down great ideas. Who knows? But yeah, I think some of the bigger guys are missing out on some personality in the marketing. Also, one of the things that Stern's doing for marketing, and we end up talking about Stern a lot more than we normally would, I mean just amongst other people, is with like this Insider Connected stuff. because when you're getting all these badges, you're saying, I'm going to go get these badges. Like it's just – it helps – it gets like little fingers. It's the word on the street, right? Yeah. It just kind of permeates.
    76:38
    Yes. Now, this is a little dated, but we can still talk about it. What do you think about the Mystery Pinball Company from a marketing perspective? He's talking about Barrels of Fun. Yeah, but at the time, we didn't know who it was. I give them an A+. A plus. They did it. It was super cool.
    76:56
    They went around and dropped little Easter eggs. They even came to our arcade, David Van Ness. Yeah. And we had no idea, but he left. There were stickers. There were decals. A little exclamation point with a, what is it, a lightning bolt on something like that.
    77:10
    Good deal. Is it a flipper? It is a flipper. Okay. Good. I thought they did a great job, and especially because I was so worried that they weren't going to mention the game until it hit the floor at Expo. But wasn't it like the week before? Yeah, they did the week. We have working Labyrinths, and we'll be taking orders, and we'll be shipping soon after. That was awesome, and it built so much excitement. We were at Expo, and the longest line – like, we didn't even try to play Labyrinths. We got in there early to play. Yeah, we played before the doors opened. Yeah, but people were lining up to play Labyrinth and then going back to the end of the line. But the line was always a mile long. It was like a Space Mountain level line to play that. And I think a lot of the early marketing people were like, oh, who's this pinball company? What are they going to do? Because there have been a few companies that have come and, you know, like, what is this? Taking your money. Yeah. But because they followed it up so well, it made the marketing shine even more. Yep, I agree. Great job. I give them an A+. Two thumbs up from Cisco and Ebert.
    78:29
    How much should an arcade be spending on their marketing? You're the money person, so... Let's see. How much do we spend on marketing? well i spent i already had the paint that i made for that poster we already had the camera i we've spent like god near zero yeah like but we i mean we do it all ourselves um i would say you want to spend as close to zero as possible because using social media is free I understand time is a cost and, but that's your time. I think you should study and do this on your own to where marketing is not a big expense. Um, sure. You can, you can pay to like, have, I mean, I don't like, uh, but I was just saying, don't, don't pay for your social posts, but you can, I mean, if you want like a local publication ad, I mean, I think that's the only thing I would actually spend money on? Yeah, like in the local weekly or whatever you have. Right. I would spend money. Before I spent money on social media ads, I would spend money going to Kinko's and making Xeroxes and putting those up in places that people go. Yeah, I think that sounds good. Yeah, so try to spend as little money as possible. I guess the only deal is If you're starting up an arcade and it's not your number one thing, you're still having to have a day job, and you might want to bring in somebody to help you with social media. Somebody that knows what they're doing. A good social media person is going to cost you between $1,000 and $2,000 a month. So that's a huge expense if you're thinking about – That's a good one. Right. I mean, you can probably get your cousin to do it for $400. But, yeah, if you want a good one that has a team that can bring in photographers, videographers, and what have you, that's $1,000 to $2,000 a month.
    80:46
    Yeah, yeah. Easy. But we're saying as little, to answer the question, it's as little money as possible. Go out there, meet people, do things in person. Do it the atomic age modern way. Go to tournaments. Tell people. Become their friends. Here's the spot I have.
    81:11
    Mark it to your friends. Right. Pretend it's a big Tupperware party. Yeah. Cool. That people wouldn't actually go to. Thank you so much, Colin.
    81:20
    And is the Kinetis still a site, or did he roll it all into this week and pinball? No idea. Anyway, go check out. Now he's this week in pinball. and uh colin is a good friend of the podcast and a great guy oh okay hey colin yep uh from gutter ghoul okay for your marketing episode marketers love doing ab testing to see if a web page or email outperforms the original before making the full transition i'm familiar with We used to do that at a company I used to work at.
    81:58
    I don't really fuck with that now. Does pinball adopt that in some way? Is there any new age marketing tactics that do or don't work for a pinball arcade?
    82:11
    Nobody does A-B testing that I'm aware of. I don't know how you would do it. Yeah, not in pinball stuff. But I know with like email campaigns, I used to do that at a company I worked at. We don't do that. I don't think we're like big enough or I think you need to like sell a lot of stuff online. My I guess this is kind of like like the poor man's A.B. testing, like do a social media post like you want to try something new. You do it and then go, man, that didn't go anywhere. We'll call that A. And then you do you and then you do your B, which is your tried and true. Something else. Something else. Yeah. So that's my A.B. test. OK. You know what? Marketing, some A-B testing. We have some merch. Some of our website has been restocked. Oh, good. We're still waiting on some more hoodies, but they're on the way. But right now, if you're looking for some of that merch, we have some sweet teas, some pin towels, so you don't have to be a person that wipes off the lockdown bar with your shirt. Right. We have some beanies, some embroidered beanies. and I did one thing that was out of stock I think our most popular item is the XL size Starburst t-shirt it's in stock now so go there get some yeah it's wonderful 100% cotton use your Christmas money to do it up your Yule money right on do you have anything else you want to talk about It doesn't have to be about pinball. Oh, well, just about how much I love you. Yeah. Oh, I love you, too. Your love keeps me warm. I'm shivering right now. But thank you. I love you. And I'm so glad we got through another year together at Electric Battlecade. This marks the anniversary of the big pinball room. Of the final expansion. And we made it happen. There's nowhere else to expand. We made it happen. And I think we're going to head to the arcade and try to get some badges. Yeah, let's get some badges. We're going to get some badges and just play some more pinball. Yeah. Get ready for some future tournaments. I need to get a little bit better. I want to hang with Roland and the boys. Roland and Shoppel and Andrew. Oh, I'd like to. Mark. Yeah, I'd like to thank, you know, it's end of the year, beginning of the year. I'd like to thank all of our staff and friends and the people that we work with. So, like our unpaid staff, like Ty, the official ambassador. What a great guy. So kind. Andy for making all those trophies. Sure, sure. You know, Chewy is there at 6 a.m. making sure that things are... Man, Chewy's amazing. And can we talk about Chewy's new thing? God, which one? He has a camera. He has a new thing every day. He has a camera inside of the redemption machine. Yes. So when people win, he gets a notification. He downloads the video, and he'll send it to me so I can post it on social media. And it's so much fun. People love it. They're dancing. Oh, I won something. When they win a prize, they're dancing. They might get a little bag of tokens. They get so excited about it. Chewy's great. He's a hard worker and a marketing genius. I mean, this guy. Yeah, he's great. And I tell you what. If you have any issues with Yodek, you know, the good folks at Stern Insider Connected turned me on to Yodek. And Chewy took it to a whole other level. He put a monitor with his Yodek inside of the redemption machine. So you have Stern Insider Connected leaderboards inside the redemption machine. And he also puts videos of people winning stuff, all kinds of promos. Yeah. We just have the best team. We do have the best team. And also, all the staff at Yucca Taproom, thank you for your help. Dane, Rhonda, Marcos, Lola. Am I forgetting anybody? Derek. And Brandon and Dusty at the Bat Bar. Danger. Also Danger. Nick. Nick Danger. Thank you. And Dan. Can't forget Dan. Thank you so much. We're going to sign out. What time are we at? We're at 1.27. So it's good. A minute and a half. A minute. We've been here for a minute. It's an hour and a half. uh thank you for joining us and see you at the arcade see you at the arcade if you have any questions for us uh send them to electric bat arcade at gmail.com also join our discord we're talking about cheeseburgers yeah people are trying to convince me that the in and out and what a burger the best you got to come in there and help me out um let me know let me know some other good burger joints. My favorite burger is in New Orleans, a place called Port of Call. I like that burger. That's a solid burger. The meat is ground to order. I think that's what makes it better. It's a nice fluffy patty and can't be beat. But it's a long way away. And it's wet. It's wet and high crime and wet. I don't need all that. But thank you for joining us. We're out. We're going to go play some pinball. and you should too. Go out to your local pinball establishment and drop some quarters or swipe the card or whatever they need. Let's keep all these things running on route and keep everything exciting. Stay warm. Bats out. Bats are out. Thank you all.