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Arcades Across America Part 1 - Electric Bat Arcade and Captain's Crazy Paradise - Episode 40

JBS Show·podcast_episode·1h 32m·analyzed·Aug 30, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Arcade operators discuss business models, tournament management, and community building strategies.

Summary

A roundtable discussion on arcade ownership featuring four arcade operators: Amona Harney (Captain's Crazy Paradise, Alabama), Coe (Quarter Drop Arcade, Oregon), Rachel and Kale (Electric Bat Arcade, Arizona), and host Jamie Birchall (Wormhole Pinball, Houston). The conversation covers business models (free-play vs. coin-drop), tournament operations, league management at scale (120 players), and community-building strategies. Key themes include pricing mechanisms, space planning, converting casual players to tournament participants, and maintaining family-friendly atmospheres.

Key Claims

  • Electric Bat Arcade runs one of the largest pinball leagues in the world with 120 tournament players on league nights

    high confidence · Rachel and Kale stating they have grown to 120 people, with belief they could reach 150 if space allowed

  • Rachel has been building the Arizona arcade scene for over 10 years through ZapCon and other initiatives

    high confidence · Kale crediting Rachel's decade-long community building work as foundation for their large league

  • Card-based payment systems generate more revenue than quarter-drop or free-play models, but involve hidden pricing that can feel 'shady'

    medium confidence · Multiple arcade operators discussing revenue comparisons; concerns about unused card balances functioning as float

  • Free-play arcades in some regions generate similar yearly revenue to quarter-drop arcades despite different operational complexity

    medium confidence · Coe and others noting surprise that financial outcomes are 'pretty close' between models based on conversations with peers

  • Captain's Crazy Paradise switched from all-day passes to hourly rates within weeks of opening due to customer demand

    high confidence · Amona directly stating the change happened 'maybe one or two weeks into opening'

  • Game play time settings on newer machines can be configured to extend play sessions for new/casual players

    high confidence · Rachel mentioning ability to adjust play time settings on modern games to improve new player experience

  • Banks of fast-playing and longer-playing games are essential for managing 100+ tournament participants efficiently

    high confidence · Rachel identifying game bank diversity as 'absolutely key' and 'not easy' for most arcades

  • Dance Dance Revolution tournament at Captain's Crazy Paradise attracted 10 players, many traveling from out of state (New Orleans, Florida)

    high confidence · Amona describing successful first DDR tournament with out-of-state participants

Notable Quotes

  • “Our mission is to be a nonprofit to foster an inclusive and vibrant pinball community in Houston where the joy of pinball is accessible to all.”

    Jamie Birchall @ early — Establishes the nonprofit mission driving the Wormhole Pinball podcast and museum initiative

  • “It's like our home away from home, our parents' living room that we're all hanging out and you just come in to pay and then just play whatever you want.”

    Amona Harney @ mid — Describes the philosophy behind Captain's Crazy Paradise's free-play model and community atmosphere

  • “There's a lot more work involved. But, you know, we think it's worth it. Just that nostalgia.”

    Rachel or Kale @ mid — Explains the trade-offs of choosing quarters over free-play despite operational complexity

  • “You have to break the ice with these people. You have to show them that this is going to be a fun, fun experience.”

    Rachel @ mid-late — Core philosophy for converting casual players into tournament competitors

  • “No assholes.”

    Rachel @ mid-late — Stated requirement for maintaining tournament atmosphere and arcade culture

  • “The one most important thing you can do is to make sure that you're consistent... You can tell somebody that they're disqualified in a very kind way.”

    Jamie Birchall (citing Tracy Lindbergh advice) @ late — Best practice guidance for tournament rule enforcement and fairness

  • “I honestly believe if we could knock down another wall if we could make it bigger I think we could easily be 150 people.”

    Rachel or Kale @ mid — Indicates league growth is space-constrained and demand exceeds current capacity

  • “If you put in a dollar and then, like, you lose the ball in five seconds. All the dopamine just is, like, gone.”

    Amona Harney @ early-mid — Describes new player pain point that free-play model addresses

Entities

Jamie BirchallpersonRachelpersonKalepersonAmona HarneypersonCoepersonElectric Bat ArcadecompanyCaptain's Crazy Paradisecompany

Signals

  • ?

    venue_signal: Electric Bat Arcade's tournament league grew from 30 to 60 to 120+ players as physical space expanded; operators believe 150+ is achievable with further space

    high · Rachel: 'whenever we just had the front room you know it'd be like 30 people then when we doubled in size it was like 60 and then as soon as we opened the doors and doubled again it was i mean within a couple of weeks it was 80'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Managing 120-person league requires: banks of fast-playing and slow-playing games, efficient sign-up procedures (printouts + laptops), PA system announcements, consistent 2.5-hour time windows

    high · Rachel detailing operations: 'we have banks of fast playing games and the longer playing games that is absolutely key' and 'we're out there at 5.45 doing sign-ups'

  • $

    market_signal: Card-system arcades generate highest revenue; free-play and quarter-drop are financially comparable despite different operational complexity; regional variation is significant

    medium · Coe: 'What's not close, we've seen you make more money with the card system' and 'the quarter drop and free play are pretty close. Okay. As far as their yearly revenue'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Captain's Crazy Paradise pivoted from all-day-only to hourly rates within 2 weeks based on customer feedback; uses wristband time-tracking; implemented kids discount (10 and under vs. attempted 13 and under)

    high · Amona: 'We first started off as just all-day passes, just one rate to rule them all. And then immediately people were like, no, this is not fair... it wasn't like maybe one or two weeks into opening that we introduced an hourly rate'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.277

0:00
Hello, my name is Jamie Birchall, and you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents.
0:10
Today, I'm very, very excited to be joined by two great individuals. Today, I'm really excited to be joined by a very special guest. And today, I'm very excited to be joined by two awesome guests all the way from Arizona. Hello, my name is Jamie Burchill and welcome to a very special episode of our podcast we call Wormhole Pinball Presents. This is number 40, in fact, so we decided to go big on this podcast with four guests, four great people in the pinball content creation space, as well as owners of three arcades that I can't wait to visit. So, in fact, we're titling this episode Arcades Across America. So I'd like to introduce you to Amona Harney of Captain's Crazy Paradise near Gulf Shores, Alabama. Hello, and good to see you again, Amona. You too. Happy to be here. Thank you. Coe from Quarter Drop Arcade, the soon-becoming Quarter Drop Arcade in Cottage Grove, Oregon. Coe, always a pleasure, sir. Right back at you. And Rachel and Cale from Electric Bat Arcade in Tempe, Arizona. Thank you guys so much. Hello. Thanks for having us. It's an absolute slice. Thank you, Jim. Oh, my gosh. Welcome back, all four of you, to the Wormhole virtually. So you've been on the podcast, and I had a blast speaking to all of you. So I said, what I'm going to do today is a little different. I'm going to do a roundtable discussion about owning arcades, and selfishly, Coe and I are going to pick your brain as much as we can, okay? Let me start out with a shameful plug, and I'll try not to make this an infomercial on the Wormhole, okay? But we're in the process of becoming a nonprofit. And our 5013C is in process. And the museum downtown that we call Wormhole East is making some serious permitting and asbestos progress.
2:00
So let me read the mission statement because I think it will really tell who we are, right? Our mission is to be a nonprofit to foster an inclusive and vibrant pinball community in Houston where the joy of pinball is accessible to all. That is our mission statement. All right. So we really want to focus on the art and the history of these great games as well. So shameful plug done. I'm putting it out there because my idea for this podcast was to basically record a board meeting of arcade and pinball consultants.

  • “I'm not ready for a tournament. Everybody's ready.”

    Rachel @ mid-late — Challenges barrier-to-entry misconception that prevents casual players from competing

  • “You're not familiar. Okay. I do the segment on my channel...”

    Pinball Hall of Fame staff/Kale @ end — Anecdote about staff not recognizing Electric Bat Arcade operators despite their prominence in community

    • Quarter Drop Arcade
    company
    Wormhole Pinballcompany
    Lisa Coxperson
    Brian Broilsperson
    Portal Pinballcompany
    ZapConevent
    Retro Ralphperson
    John Spaceperson
    Tracy Lindberghperson
    Lynn's Arcadecompany
    Matthew, Carrie, and Nicoleperson
    Pinball Hall of Famecompany
    Stern Armyorganization

    community_signal: Operators actively convert casual daytime players into tournament competitors through personal relationships and encouragement; successful conversion requires messaging that tournaments are 'fun' and accessible

    high · Rachel: 'my goal is to turn them into tournament players... You get to know me like, man, you were always in here like blowing up Godzilla. Why are you not playing in the tournament?'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Captain's Crazy Paradise heavily requesting DDR, Buck Hunter, and Carnival machines; successfully ran first DDR tournament with 10 players, some traveling from FL/LA; identifies cross-game skill transfer potential (rhythm games to pinball)

    high · Amona: 'The most requested machine that I get is DDR... Probably the most requested machine... people constantly are requesting' and 'converting the bimani like the rhythm game players into pinball has been like my mission'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Tournament directors must maintain consistent rulings even when unfavorable to new/casual players; DQ rulings can be delivered kindly without changing outcome; consistency matters more than case-by-case leniency

    high · Jamie (citing Tracy Lindbergh): 'the one most important thing you can do is to make sure that you're consistent... You can tell somebody that they're disqualified in a very kind way'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Electric Bat Arcade successfully maintains family-friendly culture despite 'Mad Max' motorcycle bar aesthetic; intimidating appearance masks genuinely welcoming community

    high · Jamie: 'everyone I talked to when I went out there is like the nicest, sweetest, coolest person ever... Electric Bat is like, oh, second to none'

  • ?

    business_signal: Wormhole Pinball pursuing 501(c)(3) nonprofit status; Wormhole East museum in downtown Houston in permitting/asbestos remediation phase; mission focused on accessibility and community

    high · Jamie: 'we're in the process of becoming a nonprofit. And our 5013C is in process. And the museum downtown that we call Wormhole East is making some serious permitting and asbestos progress'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Quarter Drop Arcade opening in Cottage Grove, Oregon with ~8 pinball machines in 13,000 sq ft space; planning family-friendly quarter-drop model; leveraging volunteer tournament expertise from Eugene league organizer

    high · Coe: 'Quarter Drop Arcade in Cottage Grove, Oregon... I want everyone that comes there to be happy' and planning with 'the guy who has organized a lot of the tournaments there' in Eugene

  • ?

    product_concern: Coin-drop model creates poor new player experience (lose ball in 30 seconds, no dopamine); free-play model solves this; modern games have configurable play-time settings to extend sessions

    high · Amona: 'I really suck at pinball, too. So, you know, you put in a dollar and then, like, you lose the ball in five seconds. All the dopamine just is, like, gone'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Multiple arcade owners report that peers have successfully migrated from coin-drop to free-play model and reported increased revenue; suggests ongoing industry consolidation toward free-play

    medium · Coe: 'I've actually had a bunch of arcade owners reach out and let me know in my DMs that they started out as a quarter drop arcade and then they moved to the free play model... they started making a lot more money'

    • 2:31
    And this will not only help Cohen and the Wormhole, but anyone that's thinking about owning and operating an arcade. So how does that sound? That sounds great. Okay. Yeah, let's go. I feel like I'm going to learn a lot because I'm still very much a newbie in this realm, but I appreciate you having me here. Oh, thanks so much. Let's start with quarters versus tokens versus hourly rates, daily rates, okay? I'm going to start with a moto. Captain's Crazy Paradise has hourly or daily, right? Yes, yep. We're a free play arcade with hourly or daily passes. Why did you choose that method? And if it's hourly, how do you monitor their time? Like, do they have a card system? How does that work?
    3:13
    So we monitor time with wristbands and we just write the time on the little wristbands that there is their checkout time. And for the most part, people adhere to the time on their own. We don't have to chase people down too much. A lot of times people extend their time just to bump it up for an all day pass. So we're 25 all day or 10 bucks an hour.
    3:40
    And, yeah, it was kind of scary in a sense. We first started off as just all-day passes, just one rate to rule them all. And then immediately people were like, no, this is not fair. We need an hourly rate. So it wasn't like maybe one or two weeks into opening that we introduced an hourly rate. And it's been really beneficial because a lot of people will come in that are local just for lunch or something, play for their 30 minutes and then leave.
    4:18
    Or, you know, you entice them to stay longer. But we chose, it's a family-run business, so it's my parents and my big brother and I together. And we chose the free play route because mainly the nostalgia of it when we were growing up in arcades, my brother and I, it was always like 10 buck Tuesday. You go down to the local arcade, you pay $10 flat rate, and then you can play through all the games as much as possible. You can see the ending to games. You know what I mean? Like, have you ever seen the ending to Cruising World? Highly recommend.
    4:54
    Never gotten that. Or you can practice your skills. You know, back then it was like lots of fighting games and dancing games.
    5:02
    So you got a lot of bang for your buck. And now that I'm in pinball, it's that same feeling like we're kind of the training zone. You can come in and pay $10 and then just practice, you know, post-passing or something and not feel this kind of like, oh, I'm going to, you know, lose my money really quick sort of thing.
    5:27
    So I've always liked that kind of environment for us. it's at the end of the day it's like our third space yeah it's like our it's like our home away from home our parents living room that we're all hanging out and you just come in to pay and then just play whatever you want and hang out sort of thing rachel and kale you have tokens right yeah tokens and quarters tokens nine quarters yep oh okay why well it makes sense because you're both a bar and a restaurant to be Coindrop, right? Yeah. Yeah, so some people just come in, same thing. Like some people just want to come in for a couple of games or in between shows. It's a venue. So if there's a band on stage and then the next band you don't really care that much about, then they'll come in and take a break and play a few games of pinball and then go back to watch the band after that. So it makes sense for us to be coin dropped. Yeah, and it would be impossible for us to monitor people by hour or even by day. Yeah, yeah. We're like a small little retirement sort of beach town, so we don't have the giant crowds in our arcade, so it's a little bit easier. And it's more younger people, like families with kids that kind of run around and stuff. Yeah, for sure. We come from a slightly different generation than Emoto. We grew up with tokens and quarters. Yeah. And so that's the feel. That's the feel that makes us comfortable. And there's a lot more work involved. But, you know, we think it's worth it. Just that nostalgia. And Co talks about this all the time. And I'm glad he's going with quarters. You know, it just feels good. This is a layup question for him, right? Okay. Right. Unless he wants to redo his entire marketing plan.
    7:34
    Oh, no. No, yeah. I think it's really interesting what Emoto said, though, because for Emoto, the nostalgia comes from the free play model. And I hadn't thought about that because for an older guy like me, the nostalgia comes from putting the quarter in the machine. And so that tells you what a powerful force just that that nostalgia is. And us all trying to kind of recreate that in our own way.
    7:58
    I love the quarters and token drops. I will say also another very big reason why free play made the most sense for us is because my parents run the day to day operations and they're not technicians or operators or they are now. But the coin mechs in 80 games was scary to think of, like, you know, they get jammed, they get broken. They need a lot more maintenance and a lot more love and care. And the fact that, you know, me and my brother aren't there all the time to help them with that. But it was just, there's lots of different reasons why it was, like, easier to go a free play route as well, too.
    8:50
    Simoto, did you ever think about a card reader, card system? Yeah. And so that's the difference. See, it's like, okay, so that's the next step. We'll do a card reader system. And then it reverts to, well, we just really like that free play environment. um even like uh i my brother lives in kennesaw georgia which is like a rock skip away from portal pinball with brian broils and uh they have a free play arcade there and so that was in you know when he opened up when did he open like 2016 17 like that was my hangout spot too and And it was just fun to kind of just pay one rate.
    9:37
    Oh, because I really suck at pinball, too. So, you know, you put in a dollar and then, like, you lose the ball in five seconds. All the dopamine just is, like, gone. There's no, you know, hits. That's something I worry about, too, because I see people who I've never seen before. and you know i imagine them being new to pinball and they come up and they they see john wick or you know and oh look at this this is very cool and they put a buck in and within 30 seconds they're done you know and i'm like man this is a you know this is not how you get people like like yeah but there's a setting now right like on some of the newer games where you can set the play time too so like i would you know in that sense for me i would set the playtime higher just so i could get through progress through the game but you know longer right um it also allows us to like make the games really jacked up and weird and rubbers missing from lots of posts and super bands and places and stuff like not as crazy as like what uh matthew and carrie and nicole do at Lynn's arcade, but, you know, a little bit tougher game. And ball saves off. So, like, when you do drain in 10 seconds, you're not totally angry at me and my staff. We keep our machines pretty friendly.
    11:12
    I've actually had a bunch of arcade owners reach out and let me know in my DMs that they started out as a quarter drop arcade. and then they moved to the free play model. And they were trying to convince me that the free play model is by far the way to go for them, that they started making a lot more money and it was a lot less headaches. And I thought that was really interesting because I've been listening to the Batcast for a long time and I know it's very successful for you guys. And then I have a couple other friends that have coin-operated arcades and it works for them. But then for the most part, it seems like a lot of people think that you make more money as a free play arcade than you do as a quarter arcade. And I'm wondering if that's just demographics, area, where you're located, because it seems to be all over the map, the information I'm getting. Yeah, there's a lot of that. I definitely feel regional, yeah. Yeah, from what I've seen, and we've talked numbers with a lot of other arcades our size, and it surprised us that the quarter drop and free play are pretty close. Okay. As far as their yearly revenue. What's not close, we've seen you make more money with the card system. Oh, my gosh, yeah. Next Arcade is definitely all card systems. Yeah. But, you know, some people say it's kind of shady because you don't know exactly what you're buying. You leave a place. A lot of the money comes from people leaving with a card loaded, you know, that maybe they're on vacation. And that never gets spent, you know. Like a majority.
    12:48
    So it's not like people are playing anymore. It's just, you know, there's convoluted pricing or even if it's not, you've bought a $20 card and then you spent $4.75 and then you go home and, you know, you've gotten a free $15.25 off that person. But that's not how I'm looking to make money. No. Yeah. That makes sense. about you know people have a good time like i mean that's how you know you got a target best buy they all they all make all this they have like crazy money at the end of the year from gift cards that weren't spent i mean it's the same kind of stuff i thought when you said the card system you're talking about like amusement connect where you can do like tap to pay or like like if you're paying with your phone or a credit card to make it easier uh transactionally uh i forgot about the whole like yeah you can put 50 bucks on tape and busters and then the other thing with that it's like oh it's 16 points to play a game and you're like what is 16 points in my money system you know you don't think you just swipe and then 4.8 per like yeah it does feel a bit like yeah when i um uh when we were on a podcast after we went to a friend's arcade who has a card system and we noticed he was charging $1.50. This is when Foo Fighters just came out, and it was $1.50 a play. And I mentioned it on the podcast, and then he got in touch with me, and it was like paragraphs of why it's not actually $1.50 a play, because if you put $20 on your card, you get a discount, and then if you just happen to go play Foo Fighters right after that, you know, it equals like 75 cents actually. It's too much of a – you have to explain that much. There's a problem with your system.
    14:44
    Something so simple as a coin. Yeah. We have – the reason I ask that question, too, is that we have 125 pens that we're putting in there.
    14:57
    And, you know, a lot of them being Spanish and Italian, there's no coins. So we're either have to convert all those or just keep it all on free play. So I think that's really, and I was curious about the hourly rate, but I don't know how we're going to monitor that with 13,000 square feet. So that's just a challenge for us. Yeah. I mean, I've heard of people having different colored wristbands, but still, that has to feel bad. Oh, you have a green wristband? You need to go to the front desk. It does, but like for us, we don't have to do it as often as you would think. But I do know other friends that have free play arcades in areas where it's like, yeah, you kind of have to be a dick to them, and then you have to have that gross conversation. That was the only other thing, too. We have a kids rate, too. So it's $25 for adults, and kids 10 and under is $15 for all day. uh originally we had that for 13 and under and then we learned very quickly that it was hard to discern a 13 year old from a 14 or 15 year old sort of thing so we had a lot of like those weird icky moments where it's like dude you're obviously 16 and you're sitting here trying to prove that you're 13 to get a discount and it's like okay sure fine or you know you just don't ever have to feel that way at your like arcade you know so it's just yeah i think we can tell if you're right now that he's just going with quarters everything everything else sounds complicated right besides that it's total paradise yeah all right next question uh we'll start with Rachel and Kale, okay?
    16:46
    120 people on a league night is a pretty large tournament, right? Let's start with a simple question. Do you use preregistration for this, or do they just walk up? No. So what we do is we do do a season pass, so two six-week series. Basically, you can prepay for your 12 weeks and do a $10 thing, and then you get on a printout sheet. So when you come in, you just have to initial your name. But if you do preregistration, one of the things that I worry about are people that sign up but then don't show up. So then I still have to go through and double-check everything. So I think it's just much easier to enter the names as they come in. So League starts at 6.30. Kayla and I are out there at 5.45 doing sign-ups and money. You have like two laptops going? No. Kale has an envelope with cash, and I have a laptop, and I'm signing people in. It's not hard. It's not, you know, and we know everybody. So you see like all these people in the line, unless they're a new player, you know, I can be typing their name in as they show up. But I think it's just much easier to add them and not do preregistration. And it's nice. This comes to where, like Emoto says, third place and feeling like you're part of a community. These people are in line. They're talking to us. They're writing their name down. Now I'm remembering their name like, oh, thank you so much, Frank. That interaction is worth it. Instead of the sterile remotely sign up with a QR code and you never talk to the person. You can find out how the family is doing. You really get to know all these people. So what kind of tournament players follow up to that? What kind of tournament players are you attracting? Is it the casual players? Is it pros? Is it a good mix? How do you grow to 100 is really the question here, because it's like, how long did that take? You know, pre-pandemic, post-pandemic? I'm just hammering them a question. Sorry. So this is really, this goes back 10 years. I mean, Rachel has been building, helping build the arcade scene in the valley in Arizona, Phoenix, for over 10 years with, you know, ZapCon, a giant convention. So, I mean, that's really part of it. She's been building this for that long. And I think that's why we, you know, we have one of the biggest leagues in the world. Oh, yeah.
    19:26
    And it was space. whenever we just had the front room you know it'd be like 30 people then when we doubled in size it was like 60 and then as soon as we opened the doors and doubled again it was i mean within a couple of weeks it was 80 i mean it's just there was room and i i honestly believe if we could knock down another wall if we could make it bigger i think we could easily be 150 people i think yeah sort of at a certain point like there's you know kind of levels itself out and yeah there's about how do you guys manage that many people like when you're doing announcements and like your format and everything like i mean i do the announcements on a pa and you know but the the biggest goal the biggest secret and and this is not easy i think it would be easy for the wormhole but the the biggest thing is to have banks of fast playing games and and the longer playing games that is absolutely key um but that that is so with a hundred people that is hard for most arcades to do yeah because if you had again if you had somebody on strikes and spares and then also on godzilla the strikes and spares folks are waiting 20 minutes just sitting around and week to week that kind of is like you know maybe that wasn't really people you know it's nice to keep everybody moving at the same pace and it keeps people it you know it's not a it's not a huge commitment right you're in there from 6 30 to 9 and then you go home put your kids to bed and uh you know it's not it's not a huge commitment i asked john space i said hey i just heard on electric bat that they do this uh we should do this at the warm hole he goes dude we've been doing it for a year and a half i was like oh okay that's why i'm behind the camera right yeah I leave him up there.
    21:23
    Emoto, how's your tournament scene? Growing? What are you doing to grow it, or how's it looking? It's still small, but it's pretty fun. I have a tournament director, Lisa Cox, that helps me, and we run monthly Stern Army tournaments, and we'll do launch parties if we get a new game. And then we started a league that we're in our second season. It's every other Sunday. But the max amount of players that we've had so far at a tournament turnout is like 26. And then our league averages like 15 people on Sundays, you know.
    22:11
    So it's containable. Containable also, note, we have 16 pinball machines. So our pinball section is a small portion. It's probably a quarter of the entire arcade. But you have other leagues, too, don't you have? Do you have a Japanese? Oh, we need other leagues. Yeah, we need a Dance Dance Revolution League. I was just going to ask that. That would be cool. Do you do any non-pinball tournaments? We would love to. I haven't gotten around to it yet. But we did do our first Dance Dance Revolution tournament,
    22:49
    which was fun. We had 10 people play and some people came from, you know, New Orleans and from Florida that were just love playing DDR Everyone in we all in like our late 30s 40s because that you know when DDR was really popular was in the early 2000s And that's when it was pretty booming and there was tournaments all over every weekend sort of thing. So all those people that remember and played in that generation are like finding places that will have Dance Dance Revolution and other Bimani games and kind of seek them out to play. So we're slowly growing that, but yeah, like 10 people. I mean... Probably the most requested machine that I get is DDR. Oh, really? Yeah. DDR, Carnival, and Buckhunter. Those three are the ones that people constantly are requesting. We just had a Buckhunter. Did you? A few hours ago. Oh, really? Retro Ralph sent it over to us He needed some room Oh you got Ralph's Buckhunter Yeah this is his first time operating So this is going to be a cool adventure for him It's cool and it has all the like Zombie stuff Yeah I know this machine Cool Is he going to make a video about that I'm sure There's a whole Buckhunter world That there are like excellent buck hunter players they are ranked there's a whole thing that we don't even know about we have a nationally ranked buck hunter player that plays pinball with us and okay just just to circle back and double click on one thing yeah one of the uh one of the most important things i've found is that i think every arcade has this your casuals who hang out during the day and play pinball by themselves they're not tournament players my goal is to turn them into tournament players and i've I've been doing this for years. You know, you get to know me like, man, you were always in here like blowing up Godzilla. Why are you not playing in the tournament? And I hear this all the time that I'm not ready. I'm not ready for a tournament.
    25:08
    Everybody's ready. And I explain to them, it is so much fun. This is where you learn how to play. You're going to be playing with ranked players, top 100 guys who, and they're an open book. They'll tell you all. There's no secrets. They'll tell you how they play, what mode they go for, what not to shoot. And everybody's ready for a tournament. And you have to break the ice with these people. You have to show them that this is going to be a fun, fun experience. And we've gotten so many people hooked by that. And you also have to make sure it is a fun experience, right? No assholes. Right, right. We're going to talk about no assholes later. the converting the bimani like the rhythm game players into pinball has been like my mission at our arcade and it translates really well from them they've become like really good in like all our leagues and tournaments like the hand eye coordination and stuff um it's awesome would you consider tournaments although I mean I'm in your space would you look at that oh I'm gonna do tournaments it's I think because of the size of the quarter drop and the limitation of space I'll probably lean more towards the casual crowd I don't know that until I actually open up but I'll probably have eight pinball machines and I'd imagine that would be something that would be more like the local community and stuff will be interested in that But it'll be interesting to see how that pans out because there is a large pinball league in Eugene.
    26:50
    And I'm actually the guy who has organized a lot of the tournaments there is going to be helping me with the tournaments at the quarter drop. So I'm not sure how that's good. Yeah, I'm not sure how that's going to pan out. But he just wants to spread awareness of pinball and he's going to volunteer and help me with tournaments. and that's great because I've never done it and I'll be able to learn from him and that experience it's always nice to have somebody to like show you what to do instead of just jumping in and making a guess yeah I've been watching a lot of like tournament pinball streams trying to do my best to like get a grasp for it but still I've never run a tournament so I'd be going into it totally blind and submitting the results can be a pain sometimes. It's good that you have somebody who's done that before. I screwed up consistently. Sorry, John Spade. Using match play, IFPA. I'll probably start with non-IFPA, non-ranked tournaments. We're having fun kind of thing. Then see where that goes and then grow into a water farm of 120 people coming. It happens, man. I don't think I have space for that. One thing that I would recommend that Tracy Lindbergh really impressed on me whenever I started running stuff, just like the one most important thing you can do is to make sure that you're consistent no matter like what, who, what, you know, whenever. Because sometimes it's very tempting to be a little bit. You're talking about rulings. Rulings. Yes. Begging rulings. it can be very tempting to make a more lenient ruling towards someone who you know is like a brand new player and you want to be encouraging towards them but then at the same time that's still like you know at some point they start it's just good that everybody you know you can tell somebody that they're disqualified in a very kind way but you know you're going to take fourth place this round but you can still keep on you know playing your game and enjoying it and everybody plays out a turn you know oh like if you plunge someone else's ball sort of thing just stuff where you have to make calls that aren't favorable but even the ones you just have to be sure that it's consistent if there's other calls that you're making that aren't necessarily good or bad you just want to make sure that it's no matter what it's you are a consistent tournament Right. That's great. And rulings in general are something that I've been concerned about because knowing all that, like how to rule on each different game and all the different things, the potential scenarios that could come up. I mean, there's a lot there and it's a little nerve wracking. Yeah, I got hit on both sides recently. We had a we had a guy play someone else's ball. and then I had to let him know alright you're DQ'd for this round he was mad and got a little cussy but it's fine he's still coming back and then the guy who got his ball played he protested because now he gets a comp ball but he didn't think it was fair because he had so much progress built up we were playing Avengers I wasn't in the game but yeah so you'll get hit on both sides with you know and it just happens just be consistent love it That's a great point. Pinball. It's supposed to be fun, right? It is fun. It really is, actually. All right, Coach. It's a blast. I mean, look at what we're doing here. We're sitting up on Thursday night talking pinball.
    30:38
    Coach, start us off with this question. Okay. Is quarter drop going to be kid-friendly or more adult-centric?
    30:45
    Family-friendly. Okay. I want everyone that comes there to be happy and, like, feel comfortable, whether it's kids, families, or guys like me that just have nostalgia for these things and want to play some pinball and hang out and shoot the shit. So whoever it is, I want them to be comfortable. And Emoto, you're also more family-friendly, right?
    31:05
    We are family-friendly. We have a bar, too, in the back. We serve beer and wine, but we're in Alabama as well, too, so it's just very lenient. Like we don't have to kick kids out at a certain time or anything like that. So, you know, a lot of times it's like the kids are running around playing and the parents are chilling at the bar with us, you know, hanging out.
    31:30
    Rachel and Cal, lay up for you since you have sex toys in your sucker redecorator. Not anymore. We're still very family friendly. It's at heart of all the people there. Yeah. I think it's very family friendly. It looks like Mad Max, but we do have kids that come hang out with us and they love it because it is such a hardcore like motorcycle bar.
    31:55
    It's so crock. It makes it feel special, right? Like you get to go to the adult spot. And like everyone looks like scary and badass is scary. I mean, in like an awesome way, like just really cool people and like it's intimidating. But then everyone I talked to when I went out there is like the nicest, sweetest, coolest person ever. You know, you think of a community built around an arcade. Electric bat is like, oh, second to none. Yeah. I mean, way to go. That's what we're shooting for. So, yeah, the highest compliment. Question for the group. More for Kale, too. Will you let your kids run in the establishment Or lose their mind on Instagram Because kids ran and got changed Out of machines What do you think? What? Exactly, that's just for kale That's an inside joke So, obviously I'm having to go At the pinball place in Vegas, right? Okay I thought you weren't going to go there, Jamie I wasn't, but I said what the hell Look, I know there's charity I know you're a charity and I know your money to go to the Salvation Army but come on so we just got back from Vegas I wasn't oh it was beautiful we went to two submission grappling contests like world championship level stuff a lot of fun super fun and we of course on our breaks we wanted to go play some pinball and Rachel was like we are not going to the pinball hall of fame and I was like oh no we are going and and i was i was gonna like hold my phone up and be real loud and go like ladies and gentlemen we're at the you know just just try to get him to kick us out so we get some good video uh but i decided to do the adult thing and uh go play some pinball at caesar's palace and did almost get kicked out of um the pinball hall of fame last time we went before nudging. We were playing the circus. Is that what it's called? It was actually working. A ball got stuck. It wasn't that bad. I started gently hitting the side. Out of nowhere, that lady comes up. Is that me? You can't do this. I started mansplaining what cold solder joints are. and Rachel's like, why are you guys doing, you know, the Museum of Pinball people coming here with a bunch of cold solder joints? I love the solder. It was very weird because it wasn't it was not enough of a tap.
    34:43
    It wouldn't get like You wouldn't get a warning for what you, it was just like gentle tap, like just try to get the ball back. And you would think most people in the pinball world would know who you guys are too. You're not familiar. He's not familiar. Okay. I do the segment on my channel where it's like I spotlight arcades across the world. And the most by far, the quested one I get is the pinball hall thing in Vegas. And I have not done it because it's various reasons. It is just such an embarrassment to the hobby. not even even if the people weren't assholes just when you go in there there's trash all over the place you know there's like just construction garbage everywhere i just i don't understand yeah and you know 25 to 50 percent of the game's not working and then you always hear the people saying you know that are like defending them oh but some of them do work like man there are so many other places that you can support that have games way more games that work and that will be nice to you and really like pretty and we get it pinball people are weird there's a lot of weird sure but this it's just it's um we do get people because we're not that far from vegas we're like four four and a half hours away so we get a lot of people that are coming down and like their experience was with the pinball hall of fame like oh i didn't know it could be like this when they come and and play at our spot and it's just like people don't want to come back because they think it's just where um old broken games go to die and that's what pinball is they have one machine though that's pretty cool it's a disneyland from disneyland that creates wax figures yeah and you put in the money and it's a little custom it's pretty cool i saw that on YouTube. That was broken when we went. The person that put the money in on the YouTube video I watched, they put it in, and then it got stuck in there. And they had to try to find someone and they couldn't. They just left it there. So I wasn't going to say this. I wasn't going to tell this story. I was just goading Kale, and I'm sorry, buddy.
    37:02
    But it's your fault because you sent me the video. That's right. Okay. So I would have seen it anyway, but you sent it. So we go to Vegas, a bunch of guys. In COVID, like October.
    37:16
    And they had just back opened it back up, Vegas, and they were putting plexiglass everywhere, you know, sitting at the tables. And I was losing my ass, so I grab a buddy. I go, you grew up playing T2. They got a T2 at this place. Let's go. So we go down, and I call up to make sure they're open because it's COVID, and we'll mask up and everything. And they said, the only issue is every other game will be off. and I'm like okay but if the game is off just come to us we'll turn it on for you no worries I was like alright cool this is great so Circus was I went right to Circus and it was working it was cool and then we went to we wanted to go to T2 but it was off so we said alright let's just play Shadow and ask Miss Happy if she'll turn on T2 right I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for this I'm going to get in trouble I don't care So we play Shadow And she goes Just give me two minutes Walks away It's like 15 minutes And we're waiting And my buddy just wants to play this T2 He grew up playing And I go Somebody else walked by that worked there I go can you do me a favor Can you turn on T2 for my buddy We're done with Shadow She comes walking around And sees that we went around her and loses her mind that we went around her, that we now have two games open at the same time. They're going to lose their license. They're going to do all these things. And she is giving it to me. And normally I don't take anything real well.
    38:59
    I'm not very good at this, but I sucked it up. I'm like, okay, I'm going to take this. No worries. And I'm apologetic. And it just keeps going. Like it doesn't stop. She's just giving it to me. I finally said, you know what?
    39:14
    I've had enough of this. I apologize already. Let's move on. All right. We just want to play T2. All right. We're going to put the quarters in it. And then she just stormed off. So I'm like, okay, good. Play our T2. I go to play an original Cactus Canyon. And she comes back around and starts giving it to my buddy. Like, giving it to him. And another thing.
    39:38
    And just hammering him. And I yell really loud. This is terrible. I'm sorry. Is that broad still yelling at you?
    39:48
    And he goes, yeah, man. And I go, tell her to come over and talk to me real loud. And then she just warmed off. And I just laughed. I don't get it. I was like, what did we do? We literally did nothing. Was it turned off to save, like, power or something? No, no, no. It was just the next speed. Oh, okay. Gotcha. But I came in with a dude And there was six people in the whole joint That made me think of a few arcades I know of that turn off Large amounts of their machines And wait for people to ask them to turn them on To save a power And I thought wow that has got to be not a good idea Because no one's going to come to you And ask 80% of the people are just going to not play it And leave And I just think in the long run that can't be a good idea It was just COVID protocols and we were trying to be good people. And so I was really close to getting kicked out with the broad coming in. And that was wrong. I was wrong on that.
    40:47
    I'm sorry about that. All right. So last question for you then. This is just for Kale, all right? Which offense is worse, running, skipping, jumping, swinging their arms, bouncing, ball, or rough housing?
    41:02
    Oh, worse. This is the list that when you – It's a missed out. Yeah, I know. We do all of those things daily. Okay. But I would say, even though you said just for camp, roughhousing because that could potentially end up in an insurance issue.
    41:22
    That's not. But we do it. We do do it. Okay. I go with roughhousing too. And Coe has a question on insurance. Good job, Jamie.
    41:33
    That's a great segue. That is a beautiful segue. Am I good at this or what, guys? So I'm currently in the process of trying to get insurance. So I want to insure the building I'm in, insure the contents of the building, and get the liability insurance, of course, because someone hurts themselves. I don't want to be liable for that. And it's much more than I expected, the quotes I'm getting back. So I've been a State Farm customer for 20 years, and they've always treated me right. and they gave me a quote of $250 a month, which is more than I was thinking for my small little operation. But I'm talking to other insurers and they're saying that's actually a really good price. That seems very cheap. Does it? Very, very cheap. I would be so excited for that. Okay, well, I actually, I called the state farm rep and it's like, I think I'm going to take this just so you know. So good, yeah, she was excited. But I was expecting it to be a little less because the insurance rates around here are usually pretty affordable, and I have some other properties and stuff, and this is significantly more than any of those. But I guess that's just probably the liability is the big one. I guess you don't have alcohol, right? I don't have alcohol. Okay, that's probably a huge difference. Yeah, that's why. Are you guys significantly more than that with your insurance? Yes. Okay.
    42:56
    Jeez, that's a tough one. Yes, significantly. Significantly more, okay. I can't wait to get those quotes I guess I'm in my kind of small town mentality of thinking wow $250 a month that's outrageous Jamie are you guys going to have a bar? yeah we're going to have a bar y'all are going to rage so hard there I already know it I see y'all at TPS and at Houston Arcade Expo yes we like to party and we like to have fun So I can see the World of Moise being that place. I think what we'll do is we'll rent that space out for a third party can then build their bar what they want. There's an upstairs and there's actually an outside patio where we'll have bands and such in the back. And then there's room either for a restaurant or a gift shop or maybe we'll put food trucks out back. on the side?
    44:01
    I don't know yet. Yeah. We're pumped. We're doing a podcast here about it. Marketing questions. We have not released our 200 pins to the public yet.
    44:16
    Co, marketing is your number one job right now. It's just quartered up. It's not opening until your birthday next year, which is what day? July 26, 2025. There we go. How do we properly release these titles? the games that are going to be coming to Wormhole and Wormhole East one at a time build a narrative around it make them quick and snappy and do it in your own style stay true to you because you are Wormhole you're the face and people love you so you are Co makes it sound so easy but you're just so damn good at it No, I can't even. Oh.
    44:59
    Hearing that is just because when I think of people that are good in the arcade space, it's like Kale and Rachel and Emoto and Jamie. So I appreciate that. Oh, my gosh. I'd like to rip him off completely how he does the hook. You know what I mean? You can do your own thing and use hook for shadow, body, last line. That is the algorithm. them that's how you want to do it i mean it's just proven that for instagram tiktok and youtube shorts in particular start with a good hook foreshadow that um what you're going to talk about in the video and then have your main body but keep that snappy and then make sure you end with a call to action or a last line or a question because that engagement on the post even if you're saying have you played ninja turtles and if so what did you think about it that gets people to respond and that's what the algorithm is looking for to make it take off yep there you go all right demoto and rachel and kail what do you think same thing just i think i need to make videos of every single one of our games like go down that dude brilliant cool Yeah if you could do that I wouldn do that I too lazy I would probably, you know, just take the camera or phone or whatever, like, look at all this stuff. Oh, drone shot. Do a drone shot for sure. Do a drone shot over a place called the vault. Drone shots are pretty cool. Yeah. Oh, you could do, since y'all have a lot of pinball enthusiasts and stuff already, you could do little small pictures, like zoomed in pictures of a play field or somewhere on that game and be like, what game is this? I tried to do a few of those. I might do a little more of those. Yeah, but the consistency, right, of like every week it's another one. No, I got to do it. Making it like writing it down of this is how I'm going to tackle this and I'm going to stay true to that. Like I have to post a video every day. I have for two hundred and twenty seven days or whatever it is now. Congratulations. That's amazing. It's intense. I mean, I stay up late at night writing scripts, editing. I mean, I have to make sure that every single day I'm posting a video and then I'm responding to comments, too, because you want to keep that engagement going. And if you just let all the comments go, people aren't going to be as passionate about the project that you're doing. So what platform are you getting the most engagement? So when I first started posting, TikTok seemed like it was the one that was doing well. But then like Instagram took off and that's where I have the most followers. But I'm actually getting the most views on YouTube right now. I'm having videos that are breaking that half a million mark. reviews and it's been really intense like shorts or like long okay sure wow under a minute right one under a minute yeah 45 to 58 seconds is that sweet spot and um but uh you know with the shorts on youtube that doesn't relate to uh subscribers as much as it does on instagram so i have 5 000 something subscribers on youtube and then i have like 15 000 something i think on instagram somewhere around there and it's just been one short per day for 200 and however many days awesome that's amazing that's impressive consistency i mean in your your numbers really show that that that pays off right like your videos are great and i love watching them um thank you but man like every single day that is it's it's hard to do because we all have a bunch of shit to do i know that's the thing is like i do have a lot of other stuff to do and And there are times when my eyes hurt and I do not want to be writing a script. And I can barely look at the computer screen. But I just I know from previous experience of making content that you start to lax on that and you start to let days go by without posting a video. The algorithm little changes like that, the note of the algorithm notices and it's kind of a grind. So you really got to be like super consistent. So do you shoot like a whole set of videos and edit them all and then you just schedule them out each day? Are you like editing each day your little snippets when I first. So I shoot them all. I write them throughout the week. I shoot them all on usually like a Saturday and then I was editing them all in like a day or two. But then that was such an intense day of editing that I've started getting into a habit of at nighttime. I edit tomorrow's video. So I have them written, shot, but I have to edit a video every single day, which sometimes is kind of not the greatest because, you know, life gets in the way. You don't always feel good. But it takes like an hour usually to edit a video. So it is just one of those things you got to do. Oh, that's awesome. Kudos. I see Jamie just thinking about his future right now. What am I giving up?
    50:08
    I'm like, oh, my God. I mean, the community and passion around arcades and pinball. It's great. And being here, I mean, this is proof of, like, validation of what I'm doing and all that work and the hours I put into it just talking to you guys. It's worth it. I guess I'll tease. Let me tease one. Because none of you guys are going to go to the Houston Arcade Expo, are you?
    50:34
    I know. It's the week before Expo. Why did they do this to us? Oh, no, no, no. We can't. It's the most heartbreaking thing of the year. I'm going to both because I'm crazy and it's here, right? And then we're streaming it. But we're bringing a Zidware Magic Girl fully upgraded.
    50:53
    Are you bringing it to Expo too? I don't know yet. We're not bringing it to Expo. We might bring it to TPF. I don't know.
    51:02
    Cool. So that's kind of cool. That's amazing. And then we just unboxed an Olympus, which was a Juegos Popularas. from 1986. Cool. So that's kind of cool. We just did a little unboxing on that. I'm going to post that. But this is stupid, and I'm going to share a little story with you. One of my favorite things to do when I go to the vault, and that's our place that no one knows about, that we go to, that we made it perfect for the techs, because you have to have techs, everyone. I mean, you know, you guys are techs. You're a tech. Coe's got a tech friend, okay? We have really great techs, but they're geeking on these weird machines, and they want to figure them out. And so my favorite thing to do is when they figure it out and it's ready to be played, I try to get the high score on Pindigo because there's none of these games, right? No one has the only score. So like I'm third on a game called Io Moon. So anyone that wants to go to Pindigo, check out this ripoff of 2001, the Space Odyssey, the Spanish game. I'm three in the world and I'm going to bust my ass until I'm number one in the world that's just a stupid thing I like to do you guys have a devil king? yeah for real?
    52:19
    I'll look right now that's a conversion kit right? well it's not a conversion kit it was Technoplay released it in the early 80's but it's they used, I think, the Mystic Star layout because they bought, I think they bought everything from Zachariah or Zachariah's factory. How do you guys pronounce that? Is it Zachariah or Zachariah? We just say Zachariah. I like Zachariah. I've looked at this. My understanding, pizzeria, Zachariah. Really? That's my understanding. I could be wrong. Zacharia. Yeah, we should. OK. Yeah. I'd love to know for sure. But I did a little research on that because I try to know how to say things in videos. And yeah, that's the best little info I could get. Pizzeria, Zacharia. Yeah. The reason I was asking, Jamie, a friend of ours gave me one and I haven't put on the floor yet. But from what I can see, if we put it on the floor, it will be the only one in public. So, you know, everybody. So basically we would have to put ours out before yours. Devil's game. Exactly. Then we're all coffee dust. Wait a minute. I don't know. I can't see it. It still has the European power. We haven't converted it over. So there's, I mean, it just sort of. Oh, that's a problem. That's cool. You know, because Tim, real quick, Tim buys a lot of rare games from Italy and London, and he has two distributors there that are just unbelievable bird dogs, and they find these machines. And they come over in pallets and then they come to the vault. And sometimes we just don't know what's in there. And, you know, like I.O. Moon or let's see this. What do you guys do for the power? Well, we have to convert them. OK. We have those big boxes, the conversion boxes. And and then we'll just put them behind here. It's not that bad. Oh, OK. Well, yeah, we have a conversion box. We just didn't know how robust they were. Will it work for 20 hours a day? Yeah. We haven't had any problems. Okay. We haven't had any problems because future queen. Let's do it. Oh, now you got it. See, if we do have a devil king, you're going to go up first.
    54:49
    You gave him the trade secret. All right. I'm on days. Let me get to these. Wow. Yeah. We have a techno play devil king. Do you really? Yeah. We got to hurry up. Race, race, race, race. Tomorrow.
    55:05
    Do you know that there's, you know, what's so cool about Pinside, that only three Pinsiders have this in their collection? And two of those are us. Yeah.
    55:14
    Are you registered on it? No, the one we have has been passed from, it was in California, and then it came to Phoenix, you know, and now we have it. So I think two of those entries are the one we have. Super cool. I'll have to look this game up because I don't know it. It's a location. It's in Australia, right? Yeah. Yeah, but it's not there. It's not there. If you look.
    55:39
    You verified it? Yeah, yeah. I wrote them an email or something. They said it wasn't working. They took it off the floor. I don't know. Yeah. So, you know, this is a race. This is like a movie. I don't know where Devil King is. It could be boxed up. It could still be in Europe. In a container. Yeah. So you've got plenty of time. You got plenty of time. We're not opening until 2026, 2027 anyway. Okay, good deal. We got this. You got us on like 70 other games, but the Devil King, that's ours. The Devil King is yours. Techno play. How many did they make, did it say?
    56:17
    Man, they made a little bit, but they bought all of the Zacharia stuff. Okay. All their equipment and everything, and then started manufacturing games. Yeah. Him geeks on the Zacharias. We got a locomotion. There's a bunch of different ones. But, yeah, I'm not allowed to really even say these games yet, but I give you Devil King. There we go. Okay, good. And you'll be up first.
    56:47
    Coe and I discussed streaming the entire quarter drop arcade on his podcast with me. so I'm going to start with Kale and Rachel this time okay why are you not streaming these tournaments? Because it's too much work and you know that we want to see it we want to be there so we have a rig just like everybody else during COVID you know we couldn't operate what are we going to do so we started streaming it was just me and Rachel and with just cheap web cameras right and And then we're like, you know, and we're like, why does this stream not look like Jack Danger's? And you find out, well, you have to have 60 frames per second. All right. So then you upgrade your cameras. And then we finally got everything looking great, but it's not a mobile rig. It's still on tripods. So setting this up and tearing it down is a real pain in the ass.
    57:45
    I think we're getting closer and closer to breaking down and actually getting a real rig. because you're right we do have a lot of action a lot of interesting people playing and it's a no-brainer of no brainer yeah oh my god i would love to watch that we just need more people working like like it's really kayla and i doing 80 of the work at the arcade and we're an arcade that's open 22 hours a day basically um it there's just manpower is kind of so so the coolest thing our last stream we didn't stream from the electric bat twitch channel we we did the uncle joe show and he's a he's a local twitch streamer who has this amazing game show every friday night it's wild called cash fucking marbles and it is the most amazing thing i have ever seen in my life so we did a stream with him and it's like it's a it's a variety show comedy thing and uh and we had like a ton of people watching pinball and and why i really want to connect with him he's getting people who don't even know pinball is still a thing into it and a lot of a lot of his fans are now showing up at the arcade uh and playing the tournaments awesome so i think that's that might be more of the direction we go like teaming up with a popular streamer yeah yeah smart He has somewhat like 40,000 to 50,000 Twitch subs. Yeah. So, I mean, it's a big audience. And he's doing something. Like, he's crazy, off-the-wall, good-time guy. And that energy is fun to bring to our crazy, off-the-wall, good-time. Sounds like you should put him behind the mic. You should fly me. For sure. I'll build the rigs. Do it. Yeah. I mean, I know what I'm doing. Oh, look at that.
    59:47
    I know what I'm doing. Crash. That's expensive. Don't do that. Sorry. Okay. Co, what did you decide to do? Are you going to stream tournaments? I know you said you would, but are you going to stream the 24-hour Twitch stream maybe? Well, I'm definitely going to be streaming from the arcade. At the very least, I'll stream from my desk like what I have here at the arcade. and play games and stuff and then i'll stream the tournaments whether it's pinball or like the galactic battleground i just got or fighting games or something um stream those because i have a mobile rig that i built and um but the 24 hour thing i did find funny after we talked i found a software that works with a certain type of camera they're they're kind of expensive i forget the name of it but it's a certain camera you have to buy and you have to pay like 50 bucks a month and it blurs all the faces okay with ai automatically um so that would allow me to do the 24 hour kind of if the arcade's open i'm streaming i don't have to worry about privacy things and stuff like that that's interesting because yeah amoda what do you think would you guys start streaming yeah absolutely um well one thing to co like you could put a big sign outside of the front of your building saying that uh when you enter you're being recorded sort of thing um which would help you on liability wise but it does never change the fact that there's a level of uncomfortability of knowing that you're being recorded at all moments that's my biggest concern is I want people that feels like a sanction, you know? Yeah. I want people that don't want to be on camera to not feel like, yeah, that AI blurry thing sounds awesome. Cause I've always liked that idea too. Like just tapping in like Truman show styley. Um, my, our master plan, uh, and we're not there yet, but we have, um,
    61:51
    cameras rigged over all the play fields. and what I'd love to do is have a stream that allows you to select which play field you want to watch on Twitch like uh California Burbs you they it's a it's a bird watching thing Kyle Spiteri told me about it and you could just like click between like five different cameras and choose which camera angle you want to watch on this mountain of like birds different type of birds eating seeds and stuff. So it's like imagining like that, but you can kind of switch between each play field camera. And that's what I'm thinking about for wormhole East. Yeah. But I haven't gotten there yet. It's just, there's just so much. I'm going to have these. Once you figure it out, let me know. And then I can just do your setup too. And it wouldn't help. Cause I'm going to probably do three rigs at wormhole East. Nice. You know, why not? Let's go big. Yeah, for sure. Let's go big. You're building it from scratch though. The ultimate way is to do it with the camera over. I know, but you know how expensive that is? Well, you're going to do the ZV-1s for each machine? No. Yes. I'll do the ZV-1s for three rigs. Ouch. My wife's going to murder me.
    63:07
    Jamie, are you guys going to do like an InDesk or like District 82? Yeah. Like giant tournaments. Absolutely. I mean, we want Houston to be a destination like Cottage Grove is. OK, if you're going to Oregon, you go to the quarter drop. If you go to Gulf Shores, Alabama, you go to Captain's Crazy. If you go to Tempe, Arizona, you know what I mean? You go to you go to Electric Bat. So we want you're going to Houston. Man, dude, you got to go to Wormhole. and by making it a destination, we also want to have a major. One of our big tournaments that we have every year is called the Bayou Bash. It started at Tim's house and is now morphed here, and we cap it at 60 because of our space here. But I can see that being a massive tournament. Everyone dresses up. It's a Halloween tournament. Everyone dresses to the nines. We give out prizes for that, and then we stream it, and watching people with Dracula or whatever play, it's hilarious. And I'd like that to be our major.
    64:18
    That would be cool. That would be awesome. That would be fun, right? I don't know. Yeah. Twitch is kind of a hard nut to crack, though, I will say, because you certainly get better numbers if you focus on the social media aspect of it than on Twitch, because Twitch, even for the best pinball streamers, doesn't seem to generate a lot of revenue. so there is kind of a um effort to reward ratio there that is a little bit askew um but it's like a it's good for the arcade i think to have those streams but how much you have to just kind of go into it yeah have them transfer to youtube for our going to youtube and then cut little segments too i'm maybe i should do that because i've actually out of all the social network things that I do, the one that I haven't connected with is the Twitch. I have like 300 Twitch followers, and I put a lot of money and a lot of effort into streaming on Twitch. And that just seems like a really hard. So Twitch is its own community in itself that you have to kind of be in to grow organically. And what Kale was saying earlier, Kale, Rachel, how they teamed up with that streamer that already had a big fan base.
    65:34
    That's kind of the method that will help your average numbers raise higher, is collaborating with other streamers, being on their stream,
    65:48
    them being on your stream especially, because then their fans are coming over to see them on your channel, and then they're clicking follow to see what's next sort of thing. it's definitely lots of it's very communal I feel like that it used to be great when you could share you know your stream across multiple accounts they won't let you do that anymore they don't let you do that sucks so now I have a decision to make right but we'll figure it out you can multi stream now on Twitch to multiple platforms and not break their TOS right and you could before you couldn't do that i think he does that right with marco streams that might be so you at both twitch on twitch and at youtube at the same time so we do twitch youtube and facebook all at the same time but i do believe there is like once you become like past an affiliate or affiliate or partner then you have to stream exclusively on Twitch and then you can archive it on the other services, but you can do it regardless. You just won't make the money income generation. So if you're doing Twitch for income, then you need to build that Twitch community and stay exclusive. But if you're just doing it for marketing just to get the word out, like we're doing pinball repair. You know, we don't we're not doing it to, you know, make money off of Twitch, more so just getting as many outlets as possible, because some people are only on this place. Some people are only on Facebook or they're doom scrolling and they're like, oh, cool. They're live. You know, then I'll go to YouTube to watch them or, you know, look at that. That sounds that's a great idea. Where are you getting the best numbers? email uh twitch yeah twitch still and then second youtube and facebook the least because twitch has the interaction so when we were um very consistent with pentech live when uh we were still had kyle um doing all the little like custom emojis and the channel points and hype trains and stuff like that. A lot of people would start on Facebook or YouTube and then decide they want to make a Twitch account just so they could be more involved and more interactive. Sort of thing.
    68:23
    All right. I've kept you long enough. I'm going to ask one more question about assholes and then we'll hurry up and then we'll end. How about that?
    68:32
    We have a strict no asshole policy at the wormhole. All right. And I'll explain it in a little bit. But what do you do with assholes that bang glass and disrespect other patrons? Who wants to start this one off? If they are rude to other people, that that's not cool at all. We just don't have that happen. And that might be because we have so many like punk rock folks. folks like you're just not going to act up in in our place right it's sort of self-polices in that way um but but my number one concern would be to make sure that everybody is having a good time so zero tolerance for you being a dick to somebody else To the machines sometimes it just explaining like hey, man, these are like 40-year-old pieces of electronics.
    69:26
    Consider that. Can you not do that? Please don't rage to the devil. And it just depends on who it is because, like, Kayla and I are there all the time. We know almost everybody that's in there. So you're interacting with people in a way that makes sense with that person that you're interacting with, right? Like I might call somebody out in a funny and sarcastic way if that's what's going to get to them. But if they're not the type of person that's going to respond well to that, then, you know, know your audience. And recently, like in the past three or four months, you know, one of the top-rated players had an outburst. And I just pulled him to the side and, you know, was like, hey, you know, yellow card let's let's try to keep it cool yeah uh and he was like yep you know my bad my bad i mean especially at tournaments because everybody wants everybody else to enjoy themselves um at least everybody there so if you kind of point out to them hey man there are some new people here and you look like a bizarre like dick yeah um this is not helping the tournament grow like it you know It's reflecting poorly on you and on us. So like, let's let's get it together. Yeah. We just started because it was a private collection in the history of the wormhole. Right. And we just, you know, Houston had some rage filters and some glass shakers and some glass bangers in Houston. And when we opened this up to everyone, we were like, hey, that's no done fly. Right. And then, you know, part of our proceeds will be donated to charities that focus on neurodivergent individuals. In fact, we're going to hire neurodivergent individuals. We have to. It's pinball. Well, yeah, but we're excited because we're we want it to be an inclusive environment at the wormhole for everyone. And if you're an asshole and you're bringing your crap into the Wormhole, that's just not going to be tolerated. So we're thinking about Wormhole East Pinball Bouncers as a real job title and just asshole police. So your experience is you have a lot of people so much that you need to have police? No, I'm joking.
    71:44
    Like are they? Like everyone, every time I go to Houston, everyone seems pretty chill. No, it's just we've only had to kick out two people. And that's not too bad in three years. No, that's good. Yeah. This scenario I'm concerned about for a couple of reasons. One, I'm coming from like a collector mentality, like these machines and everything is like my personal collection. And they're kind of like I've put lots of love work into. They're beautiful and history and all that. and I'm going to have to let that go because you're going to a public arcade and people are going to beat up on them and I just have to be okay with it so I'm kind of trying to prep myself ahead of time prep for little for little kids especially because they don't know better so they'll come up and be like on your games and you just need to have the patience and focus to be like hey let me show you something cool you're going to get more points you know hit it like a baseball wait for the ball to come down or you just have kids that are like staring at you and going up and down with the star wars day to east thing just like trying to rip it off and you're just like can you stop doing that i think i think that's what we need or holding a gun game and like throw the gun down on the ground you're just like oh no i'll have carpeting so that might help yeah i used to freak out when you know i'd be in the office and i hear somebody double flipping over and over again i was like this person's not playing pinball and i go out there just like a little kid and uh and i'm like you know what am i gonna do but you know because i'm thinking like this is a 50 flipper rebuild you know but you know it's just like i'm glad i'm glad there it gets to a point where you're just glad they're enjoying themselves uh and you know a flipper rebuild doesn't take too long we're still pretty new um our one year is in a few months in october and my dad is still like he's amazing but he's very like oh don't hit my game like that so he's very anti-nudging like i mean anti-nudging sort of thing we're gonna get a football hall of fame sign outside of captain crazies yeah i call him i'm like he's turning into um well yeah i don't yeah but yeah but no i've had to like sometimes like the our uh captain crazies police is you know me policing him being like you can nudge the game it's okay so i started like strategically putting in games i mean he's gotten like our we a lot of people are very new to pinball in our area and they're experiencing it for the first time or first time in a long time um that can happen crazy so uh he sees them like you know hit the game or something and they're not even getting a tilt warning and he's like over there like oh you can't nudge the game and so like now all these players are like scared to nudge and then when i come into town they see me i'm like sliding the game over and i'm like no you're supposed to so i started strategically placing games in like i just got a viking um you know so like the outlands you have to nudge to keep the ball in play um stuff like that or trident or whatever um to teach my dad that nudging is tactical and And important, you know, to progress. Like, it's part of pinball, you know. Yeah. They're not rage tilting. And these games, they can take a beating at the end of the day, you know. Yeah. I love seeing just beat up machines. I mean, I want it to look like Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitar. Oh, nice. It just has, like, love. When you see an old machine that's just, like, beat up but still playing well, you just think about all the good times people have had on that thing. That makes me feel so good. Patina. The patina, right? The show wants it that way. I just like the Stevie Ray Vaughan reference. Yeah.
    75:51
    All right. I'm going to put Ko's question about – I'm going to put it in the hurry up, okay? Because I've kept you long enough. Are you guys ready for a hurry up, a rapid-fire question game? We quickly go through because I want to send you home. Do we need buzzers? No. We should have buzzers. That's coming. Come on. You got to tell me. And dramatic music. I do need music. Glenn Welch did music for our intro. And I should ask him for music for the hurry up. Absolutely. All right, so I'm your game show host, Jamie Burchill. We'll start with Emoto and we'll go this way. We'll go Emoto, Rachel. All right, Emoto, best pinball designer for a location game?
    76:35
    John Borg. Easily Keith Owen. Yeah. Fair. I have four. I was going to say Elwynn, but you know what? People love Papa Duke. Especially casuals. World Cup Soccer, damn it.
    76:52
    Here's the difference. If Elwynn would have designed World Cup Soccer, you wouldn't have to take off all the ramps to get to one little screw that's by the goalpost. Elwynn designs games in a way, if it's a location game, which was specific to the question, the answer is unquestionably Elwynn. Spoken like a true operator in Yeah, true that. You know what I mean? All right.
    77:17
    This is Ko's question about earnings. What is the best non-pinball earning machine in your arcades? Dance Dance Revolution. Dance Dance Revolution? Interesting. Gail and Rachel? Aliens Revolution. Oh, I forgot. She has all the data. Yeah, it's a claw game. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, maybe. Not the Suck It Up? Well, suck it up. I've been looking for a suck it up. The closest thing I've found is a similar, but it's a magnet instead of suction.
    77:50
    It's on Facebook Marketplace. I'm thinking about buying it. I think you should. It will out-earn your pinball machines if you market it like our guy Chewy. Like Kale does in those amazing videos. It almost out-earns the bar.
    78:04
    The suck it up is very, very profitable. but outside of a redemption game or specifically that redemption game a shooter I gotta change my answer actually I mean in the pre-book what's playing the most outside of a redemption game is the Guitar Hero that's our jukebox DDR and Guitar Hero have been on my list for like two years trying to find one but they're hard to come by because they're popular everybody wants one They're so awesome. Rachel and Kale, give me your holy grail pinball title to own.
    78:42
    Oh, like a make-believe one or like a real one? No, just a real one that's out there that if this came up, you have to have it.
    78:50
    Or do you have them all? What's yours? I mean, it's been Viking for a while. Emoto scored one. What are you thinking? Oh, I want a Black Fever. I've wanted one forever. I just just having a game with an eight track in it uh a buddy of mine actually gave me the back glass and I have it uh have it framed in my office um yeah it's such a such a cool game all right I wanted to see if I have if we have one but I don't think we do so sorry we don't have one of those uh okay uh Omoto what's your holy grail uh it was Lord of the Rings uh but I got it. So now I don't know. The entire 6803 collection. That's my current quest. What about you, Ko? Massive Elvira fan. I really want Scared Steps. All right. Holy Grail arcade game. We'll start Rachel and Kale again. Is there a Holy Grail arcade game that you don't own that you want in there? For me, I would like four Hydro Thunders. But I don't have the room.
    79:58
    Nice. Oh, yeah. Eight of the Grid arcade games. Do you remember that? We played that. Retro Ralph brought two of them to ZapCon.
    80:13
    All right, Cole, same question. Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Nice. I wanted it so bad. What about you, Emoto? Save the children, Michael.
    80:22
    Yeah, The Grid. it's like a shooter game that you can have 8 arcade I think it's up to 8 right I think they had 6 at California Extreme when we played super super fun it'd be hard to find 8 of those yeah there aren't that many of them I don't think out there and it takes a lot of space but it's cool that or the mech warrior game you know like the battle tech that they bring to Houston does that count as an arcade game sure i don't know there's a line you know i've never done it at houston i've never gone in the mech that's like all i do there besides like you know work it's there and outfits did you know john boar john boar said did you know george gomez designed the very first uh rendition of that uh battle tech pod wow i did not know that i did not know that either i need to go and set up it's right near the wormhole booth. I know. You're literally right across from it. We let go and say hi to y'all and then we pass by you because we're going to play MechWarriors. That's terrible.
    81:37
    Amoto, music pins, are they overplayed, yes or no? No, it's fun to play with music. No, the music pin bones. Are we done? No.
    81:48
    There's so many more options. Maybe, you know, I think there's still so many good bands and musicians and stuff that could have pinball machines. All right, Coe, overplayed? No? Yes or no? We're just not picking the right musicians for the pinball machines. I think music pins are perfect, but we're just picking ridiculous choices for bands. I like Led Zeppelin, but still, there's a lot of really good choices for pinball machines that I think people that maybe our age would appreciate more in Emoto's age. I left your back music pins overplayed? No. They're important because you have these super fans. We see them. We see guys that just come in and play Rush just because they like Rush. I think it's important.
    82:43
    Music connects people and it connects people to pinball machines. So many people ask for Rush. Like a Dead Kennedys or something like that. Oh. Then, I mean, at our location, you would just, I mean, there's not enough. Yeah. Tools. Just having the right, like Ko said, just there's bands that could do amazing things with music bands. All right. Name one each that you want. I want Beastie Boys. I'll start this off. I want a Beastie Boys band. Like an imaginary? No, I want a Stern or whoever Make a Beastie Boys pen Oh, I see what you're saying Wouldn't that be cool? Yeah, for sure That's a no-brainer That just cost me $12,000 Me and Mike Vinicore Are the two people in the world Vying for a skinny puppy Pinball machine Nice But at least he's inside the machine So we're up to like a 1% chance There you go. Any other ideas? Oh, Pink Floyd tool, Michael Jackson. I was going to say Pink Floyd, yeah. Yeah, the Floyd, I don't know why it has to happen. The light show, psychedelic. That's what I was thinking. People love Pink Floyd for a good reason. Got to be licensing, right? Yeah, that's probably right. Those two don't get along anyway.
    84:11
    You're going to do that. Michael Jackson, though, doesn't that seem like a good fit? Well, I think it would be a good fit, but I think there's kind of some history there that maybe some people wouldn't want to touch. No pun intended. That's so bad. There certainly is some baggage there. That's good. Tool, though. Tool, hell yeah. I mean, Tornado plays pinball, so I think of those, that's the most likely to happen. I think he would agree on it. He lives not far from us. We'll see what we can do. Make this happen. Yes. Come on. What are you guys waiting for? Oh, my God. All right. You are a consultant. Last question, because I've taken you long enough. I'm sorry. I keep apologizing. You are a consultant with a major pinball manufacturer. What pinball machine are you pitching them to make? Basically the same question, but. Any theme, anything, any idea? Who's first? Any could be an arcade game. We'll go with Rachel and Cal.
    85:11
    Do you want to go or should I? You can go. I want G.I. Joe. I have been a gigantic G.I. Joe fan from the beginning. You know, I had one of the big dolls and then all the all the action figures, the cartoons, the movies, the animated movies. They're amazing. And G.I. Joe is so hot right now. They just they have a new comic series out. They just released a gigantic hardcover book with all of the G.I. Joe comics from the 80s. It is a big thing. And the people that are in the G.I. Joe are my age. We have enough money to buy this pen and I would get the Ellie. It'd be probably the first time I ever bought Ellie. But G.I. Joe would be absolutely massive.
    86:00
    He's correct. He is, because I love Destro. I love Zartan. I love them all. I had his original Zartan. I had a hooded Cobra Commander, Kale.
    86:13
    I had the Refrigerator Perry. Did you really? Yes. My mom had to clip off the UPC codes and send it out. I got my hooded Cobra Commander. But imagine, so you'd have the Pro, could be G.I. Joe. premium is Cobra and the Ellie is both of them just battling it out. I mean, the Ellie is Destro. Yeah. Hopefully Jody's listening to us right now. If not, I'll send them the clip. I mean, my God, it has to happen. I want a GI Joe pin. Now. Yeah. Just convince them. Now. Oh, of course. That's an order. Yeah. All right. Hey, American hero. No, non-refundable. We have to all go for it. Yeah. No, non-refundable deposits, please. All right, everyone, thank you so much for being with us tonight. It was just an amazing podcast. I hope people get a lot out of what we discussed, and I think they will, because it's just awesome to get to know your perspective and learn a little more about each of your great establishments. And I say this on every podcast, but I'm going to visit Quarter Drop on Coe's birthday. I'm going to go to Gulf Shores, and I'm definitely coming to Electric Bat as well. And we're all going to the wormhole. I hope so. I really do. I think when we open Wormhole East, that's going to be a party. And I would love to somewhat coincide with people already coming into Houston.
    87:38
    Maybe for, I don't know. Do it during Houston Arcade Expo. I mean, that would be amazing if we could get it to coincide.
    87:48
    Okay, I've held you long enough. I'm not even going to do an outro. That was the outro. The outro is this. On Instagram, follow Coe at Quarter Drop Arcade, Rachel and Kale at Electric Bat Cat Arcade, and Emoto at Emoto Arcade. And us at Wormhole Pinball. How about that? There you go. Yes. All right. And please subscribe to Electric Bat Podcast on Spotify or wherever you download podcasts. Am I missing anything? Nothing to be covered. Oh, who's on your next episode of this new Arcade Owner Series? So I think what Coe and I talked about it today.
    88:23
    And we're going to continue this. We're going to do probably every two months, and I want to get Tom and the guys from District 82 on.
    88:34
    I'd love the Dutch Pinball Museum to get on. There's so many that I have to reach out to. It's going to take a lot more time as well, but that's okay. You have never-ending content. There's so many cool people. I would like to do two or three of these a year.
    88:51
    I think you should do more. I think it's like once a month. there's a lot of great arcades there's a lot of that's only 12 like so what that's yeah you need to how about every two months i'm negotiating with you okay i'm negotiating with you uh but yeah i would love co to be my co-host on this and uh because we're both learning right we're both trying to you know make destinations out of our establishments and both of what you guys have done so that's really the premise of what we're trying to do but ko does a video every day so maybe you should do this podcast he's super human we don't know where he comes from right but he's your co-host no but jake be sure you could be doing more sure i just have a stream i have a podcast i do social media a lot but i do have an intern that does all our editing in our podcast, and I do have IT support. I will tease this. You know what we're going to do real quick? We're going to build an app, a wormhole app, and we're going to put QR codes on all the machines. So when they come up, it will pop up the history of the machine, how it came into our collection, maybe a video if we've already streamed it, and then a text section where the text can click in and have it in an app. Amazing. Great idea. Yeah, I think that's going to work out. I really do. And then once you develop the app, can we purchase it from you so we can use it for our arcades as well? Well, you know what I thought? I thought Pinside was going to do something like this.
    90:38
    Because if they did something like this, it would be pretty cool. we just put the Pinside QR code on, you know, Cause of Princess and then people pull up and they see Stern Electronics, I'll show you, but I don't know if I want it to leave. I'd rather it stay within the framework. No offense to Pinside, but. If each page had like a nicely designed landing page with information and history and like a little form to report problems. Yeah, that's great. That would be amazing. I think a lot of arcade owners and operators would be stoked on that. We'll invest.
    91:15
    Yep. Well, that's more work for me as well. This has turned out to be great. Thanks, guys, so much. Start writing script. Look, it's all about data, right? It's all about good data. If we can collect the good data coming in right now on spreadsheets of what's coming in off the ship, then we can really – then the interface is easy. It's the data in. Yeah, that's true. A lot of machines out there. Yeah. But they're awesome. And it's going to be great. And thank you guys so, so much. Ko, Emoto, Rachel and Kale. Love you guys. Thank you so, so much. Thank you, Jamie. It has been an absolute slice. Oh, yeah. All right. And remember our last line. Don't be an asshole. There's just no reason. Don't do it. Come on. It gets you nowhere. It actually gets you in reverse. You don't want that. No. Thank you. All right, guys. Thanks so much.
    92:13
    you