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PNP 580- Sk8boarder Glenn: SAW, SFGE, This or THAT- Pinball Olympics or Expo Tourney + MORE!

Poor Man's Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Jul 25, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Glenn Wechter discusses SAW homebrew, pinball audio aspirations, and life updates with Orville Albert.

Summary

Orville Albert (host of Pinball Nerds Podcast) interviews Glenn Wechter, discussing his homebrew SAW pinball machine, music production work, his daughter's NCAA Division II softball scholarship, upcoming tournament appearances, and his aspirations to work professionally in pinball audio design. The conversation covers SAW's artwork quality, rule design philosophy, and Glenn's broader strategy of building a portfolio through diverse audio and music projects for pinball and podcasts.

Key Claims

  • Glenn's daughter accepted an offer to play Division II softball at University of Alabama, Huntsville with a partial scholarship

    high confidence · Glenn stated directly in conversation with Orville Albert

  • SAW homebrew's artwork quality rivals or exceeds most manufactured pinball games, comparable to work by Christopher Franchi (Spooky) and Zombie Yeti

    medium confidence · Glenn's self-assessment of the game's visual package and art direction by Austin

  • SAW features a simple rule set with three main shots and mode selection, incorporating bonus perks and multi-ball features

    high confidence · Glenn described the rules design during discussion

  • Glenn has an audio engineering degree and is building a professional portfolio through pinball and podcast audio work

    high confidence · Glenn stated explicitly: 'I do have an audio engineering degree'

  • Glenn plays in approximately one tournament per month locally and has won 1-2 tournaments per year

    high confidence · Glenn stated he's 'sitting at about 13 for the year' and gets 'one or two victories a year at most'

  • Glenn's dream job is to exclusively produce audio for pinball machines

    high confidence · Glenn stated: 'my dream job is to exclusively do audio for for pinball'

  • SAW will be on location at a tournament at No Quarter in Nashville this weekend

    high confidence · Glenn confirmed: 'Saul will be there' at No Quarter Nashville tournament Saturday

  • Glenn is planning to enter a mixed doubles pickleball tournament in the Nashville area within one month

    medium confidence · Glenn mentioned his daughter's travel coach is getting into pickleball and they plan to enter a mixed doubles tournament

Notable Quotes

  • “It honestly couldn't be better. If I were to ask for any more out of life, I feel like it would get really greedy.”

    Glenn Wechter @ early in call — Reflects Glenn's satisfaction with personal life achievements, particularly daughter's scholarship

  • “The general public is really enjoying the look of it, first of all... put that next to any manufactured game, and you will not know which one's the homebrew.”

    Glenn Wechter @ SAW discussion — Key claim about SAW's aesthetic quality competing with commercial machines

  • “My dream job is to exclusively do audio for for pinball... there's no reason in my head that at some point somebody won't give me a shot”

    Glenn Wechter @ career aspirations discussion — Expresses professional ambition and confidence in building portfolio for pinball industry work

  • “I can come up with ideas and I can see it to a conclusion and I can work well with others... I just have to keep working with people that are asking me to do work for them”

    Glenn Wechter @ career discussion — Articulates professional strategy and differentiators in competitive audio/music space

  • “Venom will be far more sought after and thought of far more highly a year from now... Zombie Eddie is still my favorite pinball artist”

    Orville Albert @ early game discussion — Expresses strong opinion on Stern Venom's long-term market positioning and artist preferences

Entities

Glenn WechterpersonOrville AlbertpersonSAWgameDwight SullivanpersonEnter Your InitialspersonChristopher FranchipersonZombie EddiepersonAustinperson

Signals

  • ?

    design_innovation: SAW features a novel bonus perk mechanic inspired by Iron Maiden-style progression, where hitting certain shots multiple times awards perks usable in modes via action button to 'cheat through' the mode

    high · Glenn explained: 'certain shots you hit enough times in it, it gives you a perk to use in the mode for the action button to kind of cheat you through the mode a little bit'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: SAW intentionally keeps rule set simple and straightforward for casual accessibility while maintaining tournament-viable mechanics; Glenn contrasts with deeper games while comparing to Whirlwind's approachability

    high · Glenn: 'It's Papa Duke simple... it's not a very complicated rule set... it's not the deepest of the games' but acknowledges 'that's okay' with Whirlwind comparison

  • ?

    content_signal: Glenn producing original intro music for multiple pinball podcasts including Wormhole Pinball and an unannounced podcast; diversifying musical styles across projects

    high · Glenn mentioned creating 'rocking intro' for Jamie Burchill at Wormhole and 'another podcast that somebody else is about to come out with that I'm not sure that I can even mention on air'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Glenn actively building professional portfolio in pinball audio/music through diverse projects; has formal audio engineering degree; positioning himself for potential industry hire

    high · Glenn stated audio engineering degree, dream job to 'exclusively do audio for pinball,' and strategy of accumulating diverse portfolio work through homebrews and podcasts

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.218

0:00
All get around, he's on the rebound, hear the sound of our buddy, oh lordy, it's Orby, pinball now to rejoice, he's tugging pinball, craft beer and coffee, mixed with syrup and honey, he wants to laugh with his family in a random tangent, stories of his boys, he's on the poor man's pod network, we're gonna get more listeners, for the Pinball Nerds Podcast.
0:32
Coming to you from beautiful River Hibbert's, Nova Scotia. Welcome back, Pinball Nerds, to episode 580 of your fifth favorite pinball podcast.
0:54
My name's Orbital Albert, and you can hear in the background there Glenn the Skateboarder's newest tune. That's right, he wrote this for Wormhole Pinball Fender over there. Jamie, cheers, salute to you. Love all the interviews, and don't worry, I'm not as easily offended as you would think, Jamie, so come at me, brah. No, I'm just kidding. It's all good. It's all good.
1:15
Yeah, this awesome mellow guitar you're hearing in the background is by Glenn the Skateboarder, and why am I playing it? Not just because he's a friend of the show, but because he's actually going to be calling in today. Hopefully, maybe, possibly, depending on how much time he has. So let's see whether or not he calls in. I guess you probably already know because maybe I put in the title.
1:36
But I want to start by talking about... I'm just going to turn this down a little. It's a great one. I'm going to turn it down just a little.
Stern Pinball
company
Spooky Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
Venomgame
John Wick Limited Editiongame
Southern Fried Gaming Expoevent
No Quartervenue
Pinball Expoevent
Poor Man's Pinball Podcastorganization
University of Alabama, Huntsvilleorganization
Wormhole Pinballvenue
Iron Maidengame

event_signal: Glenn planning to network at Pinball Expo with major manufacturers (Stern, Jersey Jack, Spooky); already attended Southern Fried Gaming Expo to showcase SAW

high · Glenn: 'come Pinball Expo that'll be my opportunity to interact and network with a lot of the faces of Stern and Jersey Jack Pinball and Spooky Pinball'

  • ?

    product_strategy: SAW positioning itself to compete aesthetically with commercial pinball machines; emphasis on professional artwork and audio quality to close perception gap between homebrew and manufactured games

    high · Glenn: 'put that next to any manufactured game, and you will not know which one's the homebrew' with reference to artwork quality

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Glenn playing approximately 13 local tournaments per year with modest winning record (1-2 victories annually); prioritizing social aspect over competitive dominance

    high · Glenn: 'I'm sitting at about 13 for the year... I get one or two victories a year at most, and it's mostly just an opportunity to see my friends'

  • ?

    venue_signal: No Quarter arcade in Nashville hosting major pinball tournaments; serves as test location for new games like SAW

    medium · Glenn: 'This weekend there's a big tournament at No Quarter in Nashville, and it just so happens that Saul will be there'

  • ?

    community_signal: Orville Albert conducting regular interview series with Glenn (historically every 2-3 months); Glenn is established repeat guest on Pinball Nerds Podcast

    high · Orville: 'I usually have you on every two or three months' indicating established pattern of regular appearances

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Orville expressing strong conviction that Stern Venom will appreciate in long-term market value relative to John Wick, attributing to superior artwork and completeness of feature set

    medium · Orville: 'A year from now, I honestly, truly believe Venom will be far more sought after and thought of far more highly'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Emoto building custom backdrops and professional presentation infrastructure for homebrew games at Southern Fried Expo, elevating production quality perception

    medium · Glenn: 'Emoto had such an awesome homebrew section... they built custom backdrops for each game'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Glenn balancing tournament participation and pinball machine development with family commitments; prioritizing attending son's competitive sports event over No Quarter tournament weekend

    high · Glenn: 'I promised my son I'd voice it... He is not a pinball junkie like I am, so I can't ask him to come out to the bar and spend 10 hours playing pinball'

    • 1:43
    I want to start by talking about... Okay, that was too much. There we go. That's better. I want to start by talking about Brunch with Dwight. So the Twitch channel, enter your initials. recently had Dwight Sullivan.
    1:58
    I did say, can I call you Sully? Because you remind me of the airplane pilot. And I didn't get a response to that. So I will not be calling you Sully for now, Dwight. And we haven't met yet. I haven't got that famous Dwight Stern tour yet. But I'm very excited for it. I'm very excited. And Dwight, even though maybe you aren't my favorite coder on planet Earth, you are a pinball god. Oh, yeah. Glenn, I like this. Pick it up a little bit, Rob. It's starting to get heavy. Just like this show, it's about to get so heavy.
    2:30
    Heavier than a pinball. With one shot left for multiball. You didn't come here to listen to me sing.
    2:44
    But I'm gonna do it anyways. I love pinball, baby. Oh, I love pinball, baby Give it to me, Glenn, play that solo, fucker Just kidding, okay, I'm not off topic here. I'm not allowed music in the background. I may or may not have ADHD, and it makes it hard. When, Glenn, you put out a banger like this, it's hard for me to actually just talk pinball, okay? But if you've never watched Enter Your Initials, I believe it's, due to the accent, I believe it's Down Under or possibly from the UK. No, I'm pretty sure it's from good old Australia there. And speaking of Australia, thanks so much to Ryan Barry, who was on the show yesterday for brunch. Look at this. We're going back to back to back brunch. First, I had brunch with Ryan Barry two days ago. Then I had brunch with Dwight Sullivan and Enter Your Initials yesterday. And today I might be having brunch with Glenn the Skateboarder. Wow. every day is getting better than the one before it.
    3:50
    Oh, Glenn, that was great. That was great. Okay, sorry. Sorry for going off topic. Probably hurt your ears a little. Thankfully, you know, I have called out some other pinball podcasters from time to time for singing when their co-hosts don't want them to. But Glenn the Skateboarder wasn't here, so he couldn't say like, eh, dude, leave the singing to me. Which really, let's be honest, my, I don't have a cigarette smoker's voice anymore because I'm not, chugging the ciggies very often anymore. Once or twice a year if I party like a rock store. I'm a non-Nova Scotian smoker, if that makes sense, I guess. But yeah, if I'm traveling, if I'm partying, whatever, maybe I'll grab some organic ciggies and fucking chug them down. But no, I have what I like to call allergy voice. Basically, I've been outside like the last three days straight, cutting the lawn, doing the veggie garden, keeping up with my jazz plants, everything else, you know, all the time and energy that it takes to do all of that kind of stuff. And the allergies in full force. We've got hay fever going on here. The farmers have been cutting the fields all around us. So anyways, I woke up this morning with a little bit of rasp in there. So maybe that actually helped with my Glennon skateboarder song, my impromptu song, that is. Now, the question is, going back to enter my initials, something I love, Laser Lose is probably one of the best at this, but also enter your initials for a new guy. He really is reacting to the chat. He's talking with the chat. You know, I was able to redeem some points and shoot a nerf gun at him. Oh, no, I tried to do that. It was still in cooldown. You can actually trick him. What I like for half the cost, you can trick him and he just hears the sound that the nerf gun's about to go off and then it doesn't fire and it's like a joke, which that is also awesome. He's also an incredible player getting like some insane scores, some of the highest scores I've ever even seen on Venom. Not that I've watched Venom streamed a lot, but Venom, Venom.
    5:43
    Yeah, so make sure you go check out Enter Your Initials, all one word, no spaces over there on Twitch, and join the stream. My favorite thing you can do, and this actually hurt my brain. As a pinball nerd, it actually hurt my brain. He does do it once near the end of the stream if you want to go back and re-watch the one with Dwight, which I highly recommend. There's some good tidbits there. Dwight, of course, he's been with Stern a very long time. He's a pro. He knows not to say anything he shouldn't say, but he did make some recommendations. He kind of pivoted around some questions in a way that might have given you some neat tidbits. So go listen to that. The one thing I love, Dwight said he's always wanted to come visit Nova Scotia. And I hadn't even said Nova Scotia. So it means either Dwight Sullivan himself is a pinball nerd, and he listens to each and every single solitary show. So when I said in chat, I live in the east coast of Canada and I still haven't got to play Venom. By the way, if you live in New Brunswick, if you live in Nova Scotia, or even Prince Edward Island where I'll be this weekend for the Sea Glass Festival, or even way over there in Newfoundland, let me know if you have a Venom because I'd love to come play it. I still haven't played it. I haven't played the Pro. I haven't played the Premium. I haven't. No, everyone disses on the Pro, but I'll be honest. Think about it. Would you rather a Venom Pro or a John Wick Pro?
    7:05
    Damn, Orbs, that shit's so hot. That's right, you better be putting on a little bit of your oven mitties before you touch these titties, because I'm about to say something so hot that it's just about to drop. Ready?
    7:19
    A year from now, I honestly, truly believe Venom Pro will be far more sought after and thought of far more hired. Everything that needed to be added, unlike all the guns that should have been on John Wick, everything that needed to be added was added.
    7:34
    And this is nothing against any other artists on planet Earth, but Zombie Eddie is still, to this day, my favorite pinball artist. I mean, Framon Franchi, depending on the day, depending on the release, right? And again, not that there was anything wrong. The John Wick art was fine. The Ellie back glass is gorgeous. You can go get yourself one of those for probably a couple hundred bucks in a few years from now at any pinball expo where, you know, they've been reprinted, remade, or, hell, you can take a picture of it and just have it on a screen like some people do with art nowadays. That costs you nothing, right? It's not going to have that cool patina effect and you can't feel it and go, oh, I can feel the bumps. You know, but you can go just like I did on Sunday. And for those of you who didn't check it out over there on Albert Agar, don't worry. You don't have to like me personally and go like Pinball Nerds Podcast. No, no, no, no, no. Most of the time, I just, I eat, sleep, breathe pinball. I put it up on Albert Agar through Facebook. Go ahead and add me if you don't have it, and go watch my trip through. If you just love stained glass, like all these people buying John Wick LEs, go watch my trip through downtown Charlottetown, and you're going to see tons of beautiful stained glass. And this stained glass wasn't just made last week or the week before. This stained glass is hundreds of years old, and it's absolutely beautiful, and it's a real deal. And, oh, you might even see guns if you look at it too. I'm talking about the ones between my arms. That's right. I'm doing the Canada six-month challenge. I'm going to be so fucking ripped by Halloween, I could go out as the Hulk, and I wouldn't even need to dress up or add fake muscles, because that's how exciting it is. Now, that being said, let me just message Glenn the Skateboarder. His center is going to give a quick call soon. I'll just let him know I am recording in case he wants to. Oh, there he is. Glenn is calling. Okay, I've got to call back Glenn. Here we go. Oh, Glenn. Guys, we're calling Glenn.
    9:31
    Good morning, Albert. Hey, how's it going, Glenn? Pretty good. Do you think that this audio quality sounds okay? I can also try talking straight into the phone, or I've got earbuds. Do you want to try each before we get started?
    9:47
    I'm basically like nine minutes into a podcast already. I wanted to talk about my brunch with Dwight, of course, on Enter Your Initials yesterday, but I think it sounds just fine. You can try the three different ways. We can do it live. You know me. I don't edit a lot, so let's do it live. Let's see how it sounds, buddy.
    10:05
    I'm not live right now, am I? Yeah. Okay. Well, let's try this, just straight into the phone. How's this? No, whatever you did before was better than that. There was less background noise.
    10:23
    Uh-oh. How is this? Can you hear me now? This is not working. What's going on? No. The first way, how were you talking just originally? That one was the best, I'd say.
    10:39
    Albert? Hey, that's better. There we go. Much better. Sorry about that. Oh, good. So what's going on? How was brunch? Oh, my God. I'm not really actually. I don't actually eat this early, so it's kind of just brunch like I'm having my first hot coffee. I got Elwin here laying on my feet. I got Draco Franchi on the other side, and I got Glenn on the Bluetooth, so we good.
    11:04
    Fantastic. What can I do for you today, Albert? Well, I reached out to you because I hadn't talked to you in forever, and honestly, through the last five or six years, I usually have you on every two or three months, see what's up. And I realized you most recently were at the Southern Fried Gaming Expo there representing SAW. But before we even get into all that, I just want to know, how are you, the person, doing? I know there was some big news with you and maybe, say, one of your kids not too long ago. But how's you, how's the family doing? What's going on? It honestly couldn't be better. If I were to ask for any more out of life, I feel like it would get really greedy. Yes, my daughter accepted an offer to play softball at University of Alabama, Huntsville. So that's a really, really huge accomplishment for her. Not a full scholarship, but every bit helps.
    11:57
    Division II athletics, especially softball, they don't get a lot of scholarship money to give away to the team. They got 20 girls on the team, and they only got eight scholarships to divide them up, 20 girls. And so her as a freshman, the way that that school usually operates, they usually give more money to the upperclassmen. So it's an hour and a half away from home, and we'll get to see a lot of her games, and we're really, really excited.
    12:22
    You know what? An hour and a half is doable, right? Because, like, at least you're not having to fly across the country. Like, it would be great, say, if she got a full ride somewhere, but then you may or may not ever get to see her play and, you know, so on and such forth. Plus, honestly, sometimes you go to these bigger schools, and you might not get as much play time, right? and you might not get as much training and not as much energy from the trainers and the coach. So, well, congratulations to her. That's incredible. How's the rest of the fam jam doing? I know you haven't had tons of time to play pinball recently because you're a busy guy.
    12:56
    Yeah, I still get out at least once a month for a local tournament. I think I'm sitting at about 13 for the year. So, you know, I don't have goals to make the state championship, but I play every tournament. I can win it. I get one or two victories a year at most, and it's mostly just an opportunity to see my friends.
    13:19
    This weekend there's a big tournament at No Quarter in Nashville, and it just so happens that Saul will be there. So if anybody in the area within a couple hours driving wants to try to come out Saturday, there's a big tournament at No Quarter, and you'll get a chance to play Saul. It may even be in the tournament.
    13:37
    Whoa. Okay. So, yeah, that's right. If you live anywhere within a couple hours of no quarter and you don't have plans this weekend, make some plans. Get down there. Glenn might even sign something for you, like if you ask him. I will not be there. I've been out of town the last two weekends for softball, and so I promised my son I'd voice it. So we're going to be hanging out. He is not a pinball junkie like I am, so I can't ask him to come out to the bar and spend 10 hours playing pinball. Well, fair enough. And you even mentioned off-air, I don't want to dox you or anything, but you did say you might be having a 10-person double elimination, I think, a round-robin ping-pong tournament tonight. So you're competitive no matter what you're doing. Do you have any chance against these young bucks or what?
    14:26
    Yeah, I'd say going into it, I've got about a 4-1 odds at winning this. My son's probably 2-1 odds. and I haven't seen the other dads game yet, but I'm really good at spinning it. I've got about five or six different serves.
    14:43
    I'm mostly a top spin hitter, but man, I can cut some backspin and make my opponent hit the ball right into the net. Damn, I can almost guarantee, just from listening to you talk, even though I used to be part of the London Ping Pong Club a long time ago, the captain looked at me, looked at my friend, watched us play for a little bit. He looked at my friend and he said, You, you come back next week. You keep practicing. Come back next year. So I'm better at tennis and pickleball than I am ping pong. I'm getting better. But have you ever pickleballed it up? I was playing pickleball last week. Damn, okay. We found some courts in Atlanta, and my daughter's travel coach, she's getting into it, and we're going to enter a mixed doubles tournament in the greater Nashville area in one month's time, we've got to get ready.
    15:36
    Wow, I'm stoked. So obviously this is a pinball podcast, but a lot of us gentlemen listening to this show, and women, you know, we're getting up there. We're not always spring chickens. Mind you, Zyron Silver's listening to every episode, and he's only 20 or 19. So, you know, we do have some youngsters there too. But whenever I try to go play tennis or even hockey or football or even basketball with my sons, I usually get injured. I usually sprain an ankle or hurt my wrist or overdo it. You know, I can't just give it like a half cent. I got to go 100%. If you're going 100% on any basketball court or, you know, football field or soccer or anything, you're probably going to get injured. But ping pong, you're fine. Pinball, you're okay. Pickleball, so it's like I want to do the tri-tournament that would have, you know, the triathlon, so to speak, of the three Ps of being past 40. The pickleball, the ping pong, and the pinball. I would do it. Would you play in it? Sign me up. The best thing about pickleball is you go to the rec center, you wear your pinball shirt, and then you get a bunch of weird looks, and you get to talk to them about, oh, what's pinball? But then you also get to lay the smackdown on some 70-year-olds. Man, it feels great. Oh, God, yeah. When you make the gentleman with the cane dive for the ball, and he somehow ends up with two canes, just that feeling in your soul, you're like, wow, I took another of the top members out here. Wow. No, it is nice. No, man. I always came for the pacemaker. Just fight in the chest as hard as you can. Yeah. See if you can make their heart skip a beat.
    17:09
    Oh, shit. That's so cool. Well, listen, thanks. I know we don't have too, too much time. So, first of all, tell us a little bit about Southern Fried Gaming. I know you didn't get to go there for too long, but maybe just the vibes of the show and or also the vibes and how, you know, I know everybody loves Saw, but just maybe tell us a little bit about which, you know, maybe which pinball personalities got to play it or see it for the first time or what the general public is saying, that sort of thing?
    17:34
    Well, the general public is really enjoying the look of it, first of all. Austin, the head of our team, he commissioned some artwork, and the gal that did that, I really should have her name at the tip of my tongue, but she's done artwork for a few other pinball projects, and she absolutely killed it. And with our art direction and her execution, we were really able to put together a cohesive art package that I think and this is just me being blatantly honest I think it as good as just about anything that anybody maybe other than Franchi or Zambietti is putting out there Oh. And a lot of the choices that Austin made as far as colors of metal trim and what do you call it? The powder coating. Yeah, yeah, the powder coating looked incredible. And then he just really, really had a keen eye to detail. and it just looks phenomenal. So put that next to any manufactured game, and you will not know which one's the homebrew. So that's the first thing that people are really pointing out. The rules are coming along. It's pretty simple. Hit three white shots. Hit shoot the scoop to start a mode. You pick your mode. Each mode's a different track. Each mode has a different song that I wrote and recorded for it.
    18:55
    It's not a very complicated rule set. We're starting to incorporate a lot more of bonus features in the game that kind of like are perks that, you know, certain games, you know, you'll hit the action button in certain modes, and it will spot you shots based on collecting certain things from hitting standard shots in the game. So think about, like, in Iron Maiden, you've got, like, you know, this many ramps you collect, you know, working towards cyborg. So with this particular game, certain shots you hit enough times in it, it gives you a perk to use in the mode for the action button to kind of cheat you through the mode a little bit. So we've got that feature. We've got a few multi-balls. people like the simple rule set we don't have to explain a whole lot even though we started over from scratch with the rules and it's more of a modern technology, it's not the deepest of games yeah, that's I mean, to be fair, yeah, but look at Whirlwind, Whirlwind's not the deepest game although Whirlwind, which has some really great shots, I have seen tournament players, there's at least two kind of different ways that certain if you're really like a top 100 tournament player you definitely play it different than me and that's okay but we know that it's a great shooter right off the top that's one of my favorite shooters from that time right so um anyways if someone let's say they wanted to look up like who the artist was or maybe listen to more of your sound or maybe get more details about the game or where it's going to be where's the one-stop shop we're getting all the information about saw homebrew is it more so on facebook is it on instagram is there a website we have a website We have a QR code on the machine that anybody can scan if they want to learn the rules, if they want to learn about the artist, if they want to get a shortcut to my SoundCloud page where you can hear all the tracks in the game. You won't have any options to hear any of the call-outs that I've done, but you can learn a lot about it through the website. I don't know the website's name offhand, but I will send it to you, and you can add it into the show notes if you do such a thing. Yeah, yeah, that's not a problem. I can do that. I'm figuring it out slowly. You know what I mean? Like, I'm trying to, I'm taking the Josh Rudd, Josh Rudd. I'm taking, I was thinking about Paul Rudd or Ant-Man or something, but I'm taking the Josh Mudd route of, like, 1% better per day, right? So that's the goal here. So hopefully by episode 1,000, I'll be a real boy, and I'll say this isn't a pinball blog, it's a podcast.
    21:18
    You'll have some podcast muscles to flex by then. Oh, yeah. I'm trying to. I'm no Josh Mudd. I'm trying. And then you'll be voting for Trump right afterwards. so uh we don't we don't talk political on this uh particular pinball podcast ever ever ever but mostly because you're not american and that would just not even make sense to talk what you're going for honestly honestly i used to be a big political guy i used to have political even once one one time danielle and i had differentiating uh political signs on our front lawn she was voting one way i was voting the other and i have you know i became what i call apolitical i was watching a video basically, a TED Talk saying that anything in your life, whether it's your auntie that you feel like you have to be friends with because she's related to you but you don't like her, or anyone or anything that doesn't bring you joy, just don't fuck with it anymore. So I just don't fuck with politics because it doesn't bring me joy. When I listen to either the left or the right talk, I go, Jesus Christ, can we talk about pinball? I'd rather talk about pickle. I'd rather talk about lawn bowling than politics. It just doesn't do it for me because me personally it's just I'm not into it I don't know the truth I looked into it for 20 years I end up voting for three different parties what do I know you know what I do know is pinball so tell me a little bit more about I'm curious now you've done all this work with saw are you hoping maybe someday maybe one of the big boys one of the pinball manufacturers even maybe one of the boutique companies might call you up I know you've invested in a sound studio you've sold off a couple pinball machines is the goal here is the final goal to maybe help a couple more homebrewers along the way and and and as you get better and better and better i mean i don't think you need to be better i've heard actual pinball machines put out by boutique companies with worse sound and engineering and and music that that then you've done so i'm just curious what's the angle for you like what would be like your dream job say a year two three four five years down the road well my my dream job is to exclusively do audio for for pinball um if if that means i have to diversify and and continue to do side projects and maybe get work in video games, that's fine. I think that with the technology where it's at, and I'm learning this every day as I'm trying to learn more about this process, and I do have an audio engineering degree, so this is not someone just coming out and saying, I wish I could do this. But I've put a lot of time and energy into a lot of projects that hopefully can act as a resume and um but with with as easy as it is to make audio where i think where i think i set myself apart is the the creativity i can i can come up with ideas and i can i can see it to a conclusion and i can work well with others there's no reason in my head that at some point somebody won't give me a shot and i will i will do i will do fine um but until that moment i just have to keep working with people that are asking me to do work for them,
    24:21
    even if it's just podcast music. Yes. I just did one for Jamie Burchill at the Wormhole. He asked me for a rocking intro, you know, and I came up with something. He loves it. I was really proud of it. And so the intro of his show, and then there's another podcast that somebody else is about to come out with that I'm not sure that I can even mention on air, but you'll hear something completely different. And so if you listen to all the stuff that I've produced, I've diversified the styles of music that I've put out there. I'm not a trained voice actor, but I can really put some energy into a character, and I feel like I can do just as good as about anybody not in Mark Silk.
    25:07
    Oh, for sure. I mean, Mark Silk is the next level, right? and so come Expo that'll be my opportunity to interact and network with a lot of the faces of Stern and Jersey Jack and Spooky and you know I was at Southern Fried and I saw Bog and I said hello as I walked by and I saw Ken Cromwell he was talking to somebody else so I left him alone but you know I was just there for an hour and a half with my daughter she was gracious enough to just allow me to say hello to my friends and take a picture with my buddies that we both saw together with because Emoto had such an awesome homebrew section built for that show and they built custom backdrops for each game and I don't know, I think Emoto is really passionate and I'm impressed with everything that she's touched whether it be the Twippies or organizing the floor for these expos or her video work, even her movie that she tried to do with Todd Tucky. That was one of the most favorite things I've ever seen in person.
    26:17
    When we did the TPF showing of her eight-minute movie that they were trying to make into a feature-length film, we just didn't get the financial back. I mean, she did such a phenomenal job with that. so these are the types of passion people that you want in the industry and I'm a little worried that AI is going to come in and these companies are going to say we don't need to hire an audio guy or a video guy or an artist anymore because I'm afraid they're going to say well AI can generate all this but what you're losing in that is you're losing the humanity the art and and the create the creative energy that people like they long for you know people don't go to art galleries because of a pretty painting. They go there because they're seeing somebody's dream on canvas, and then they can think about what they were thinking when they painted it. They can try to interpret.
    27:09
    There's just so much that AI takes away out of the humanization of it. I know where you're coming from. You may have pulled a page out of the Orby book and gone off to a tangent on AI while we were talking about Southern Fry. However, I do want to talk about AI. I want to touch on a few things you said. Number one, Amodo is incredible. She oozes her love for pinball and arcades and the community and the people. Her passion is 100%. You could not ever fake that. And we need more authentic people like her in pinball. And maybe something that maybe you didn't even know, but I guarantee you most people listening definitely didn't know. She actually one time was in my live stream on the Pinball Nerds podcast channel I used to have on Twitch. And she volunteered to be one of my pin turns. I believe for TPF or maybe even Southern Fried Gaming Show. Now it ended up she was so freaking busy at it, we didn't end up, you know, I didn't end up getting her missions to her on time, that sort of thing. So it didn't work out. But I absolutely love Omoto. Before we go into AI, because I actually do, it's funny you brought that up, but I actually do want to go into that. Just give us all the listeners who didn't even get, I know you're only there a couple hours, give us vibes from Southern Fried Gaming Expo. First of all, like, I don't even know where it is. I don't know how big it is. I know it's smaller than TPF. But just tell us, like, is it mostly pinball? Is there some video games? Give us the entire, give us a quick summary on what the heck Southern Fried Gaming Expo is, because I love being fried, and I love expos, and I love being in the South, but I've never been there. So tell me about it. It was a pretty good equal parts all things. You had, it was quadrants at all. Does that even work? Yeah, there was different sections. So you had, like, a room that was a wrestling match. That was pretty weird. That's awesome. People were getting into the pro wrestling match. we stopped in there and got a look at that and saw the match end so then we walked out of there there's a big area for tabletop gaming there was PCs, there was card games then you go up to the other main room and then you walk in there and there's rows of arcade games, there's rows of pinball, the tournament area probably had about 30 machines that were exclusive just to the tournament players and there was about 4 or five tournaments that happened in a three-day period just for pinball.
    29:27
    And then you walk into the other rooms and you had like a racing simulator with about ten machines side by side. People were racing kind of like the Forza-style simulators. And then you had a bunch of Fortnite PCs all linked together, a bunch of kids playing that. You had all these Super Smash Brothers switches all hooked up to a big screen. It was a pretty well-balanced show. And, of course, you had Spooky there, Jersey Jack, Marco.
    30:00
    And I don't know if American Pinball was there, but I did see a barbecue. So I just don't know if somebody brought that or if American Pinball was there. So I apologize to David Fix there if he had a representation. I was only there for 90 minutes, so I really did not get a chance to take it all in. I got a chance to meet Don. Don's Pinball Podcast was there.
    30:19
    Shout out to Don. There's a few other friends that I met from Alabama and Georgia. Dalton was there. I didn't get a chance to say hi to him. Oh, I love Dalton. He was trying to qualify on John Wick. I'm like, I don't have two hours to sit around while he plays one ball. Yeah, that's ball one, Glenn.
    30:40
    So, yeah, I think it was a good show. It was much bigger than I thought it would be. I have now been to the Nashville show, which was the smallest. I've been to Expo and TPF. Those are the four shows that I've been to.
    30:54
    And I would say that. Wait, you still haven't done Expo? Pardon me? You still haven't done Expo, Glenn?
    31:02
    I've been to Expo. Okay, sorry, sorry. That wasn't there. Sorry. Yeah, so I've been to Expo, TPF, Southern Fried, and then the Nashville show. So I've been to four shows. and I've heard that the Southern Fried this year grew from last year and it's about the size of MGC.
    31:18
    Wow. Okay. So it's in the top five easily then? Yes, for sure. That's awesome. Let's pivot. Okay, I will touch on AI just briefly because this has been annoying me too and pissing me off. A lot of podcasts that actually make money for a living, including a large podcast like Howie Mandel, I'm sure. I know he's Canadian, but you've heard of Howie Mandel before, Glenn?
    31:39
    Yep. Okay. So anyways, you know, he's on America's Got Talent. From Bobby's World. Hey, I'm Bobby. Anyways, yeah, yeah, Bobby's World. But also, he was a comedian before that, kind of a smaller, more Canadian one. And then, of course, he's on America's Got Talent or one of these shows, American Idol or something.
    31:54
    He used to have a sweet-ass perm. Oh, yeah, his 80s curls. And then he became a germaphobe and he has to shave four times a day or something now. But anyways, he's on his show and he has this live band that he pays money, which is great. Very few podcasts can afford to have it. And they're like, welcome to Howie Mandel's show. It's like a really cool vibes, like Hawaiian type of, they can do everything from ska to jazz. They're really cool. But then once a show, he usually plays like he goes, oh, I just told Random AI to make a song that's like this, this, this, and this. And then he'll be like, if you like that song, make sure you sub up. And I'm like, dude, you're making money off AI. And you're an artist who is a judge on a music talent show. the last thing you want to do is promote AI. So I will vow right here, right now to never, ever play an AI song or use AI art on anything pinball nerds related. And I honestly will never buy anything from any pinball company that uses AI art, that uses AI advertising, that uses AI songs to promote their product. Now, from time to time, I have used chat GPT as kind of a joke. Okay. But I mean, you know, I've even tried to avoid that recently. And I don't know if you've seen it, Glenn, but they've tried, AI's trying really hard to make, like, people dance, and when you watch that, it is scary. They end up having a third leg, and I'm not talking about just, like, a big fella here, like, Mandangalo. I'm talking about, like, women. Like, everybody ends up with a third leg or a fourth arm or, like, it's weird, and hopefully AI never figures that out, because I want to know what I'm, it's the same thing in music production. When you hear seven, eight, nine, ten layers over it, and it's all been cleaned up and filtered and overproduced in the music studio, then someone is playing a quote-unquote live song, and they've got nine layers of their voice going in the background, and they're just barely singing over top of that voice. You couldn't hear if they were flat or off-pitch or anything anyways. But so, no, AI is overall horrible for pinball. Do you think, though, that there might be a tiny place for AI, like I've said in the past, and would you fault Stern or Jersey Jack or Spooky Pinball for using AI to bring down the cost of a pinball machine by using AI to check which shots work to help fix the code, to do things like that. Would you be okay with AI being used internally as long as it wasn't used for an artistic approach? I'm opposed to almost all of it. I don't think it's healthy. I think that we have to continue to sharpen our own knives. I'm trying to create a metaphor here. I think that the less we start doing as work, the lazier we're going to be. And it's just, I can understand the want to. I can even understand in music. A lot of the music you're hearing on the radio already has AI. You don't even know. It's just, it's so good. You're already listening to it. You've already heard it. There are songwriters that are creating songs with AI where, yes, say maybe they have a song written already, but then they create the backing tracks. And it's so good, you can't even tell the difference. Like, and it's like, it even knows, like, okay, in the second verse, we're going to add the banjo part or the mandolin or, you know, it's just, it all sounds real, right? So the people that can execute things are going to continue to have jobs, but it's going to be harder and harder for them to get them if all these corners get cut. And the people that are going to make money off of this are going to be the people that are already rich.
    35:31
    The developers in the Silicon Valley that are creating these AI algorithms, they're facing a lot of lawsuits right now. They're saying that a lot of the music that's being made is plagiarism because what it's doing is it's analyzing existing music to create brand new tracks, but it's finding the things that worked in these other songs and applying it to new ones. So they're actually saying that it's stealing from the original's music that it's emulating. And we're in some interesting territory here as far as copyright laws. But for Stern using it to track code I not sure that that going to happen or not I am not an expert by any means on code I guess where I was going with that is that like let say if a really high company like Turner Pinball said guys you know you didn mind our last pin Ninja Gaiden or Ninja Eclipse or whatever right You didn't mind it, but you said you wanted it to look more like a real pinball machine. 100% of our creative endeavors are art, our play fields, our sounds, our sound, everything, all made by humans. But we can't afford Nick Wayne at a playtest machine for three to six months. We can't afford a rules developer and a rules maker. I think there is maybe a small place in the future. I'm neither for or against AI. I'm kind of in the middle. I'm trying to pivot here where I can. I'm against it in creative endeavors. So like at the grocery store where you get to do self-checkout, I'm totally for that. I know it loses jobs. I know Zoomers and Boomers all hate me for saying that. I'm sorry. I don't want to talk to you for 15 minutes in my little town. I know like half the people who work at half the stores. I don't want to talk to you about your week, your day. I don't want to hear about who did this or that. I just want to get my freaking cheeseburgers and craft beer and go home and get drunk and high and have fun and party. I don't want, you know, and I hate long lineups as well. Lineups are like the epitome of me. So I think there's a time and place for AI. But, yeah, it's coming in music. No place in artwork. No place to me personally. But if you could get like a Stern Pro quality pin down to $2,999, because honestly, you wouldn't want to go into Stern and fire everybody and do this. But what I'm getting at is that like a new company on the way up, I could see a place for it by 2030, where instead of having to have 15 or 20 coders, 30 to 45 different play testers all the time telling you about bugs and what's not working. If that could all be automized, and it could all be cheap, I would love it. Now, Drew and Ian somewhere are very, very happy with us. We're basically doing a Fuck It Friday right now. We've gone off topic. I will finish it by saying my favorite video I ever saw this week was they were talking about how, for the first time ever, an AI robot committed suicide after working for seven years, doing the same boring job, doing the same 40 feet back and forth for eight years straight with no time off. It finally just started spinning in circles, and no matter what they told it, it wouldn't stop. and eventually they tried to stop it, but it threw itself down a stairwell. It went down eight flights of stairs and was dead, and they couldn't bring it back to life. And it's like even robots don't like doing robotic work. So if we think that AI is never going to turn on us, we're freaking wrong. But let's give a couple shout-outs to everybody in the tribe. I feel like, you know, I'm wondering, I'm wondering, do you, when, where, and how do you think we might hear from Drew next? I know I got to be part of that last live. I don't know if you were there, but give us some thoughts, some feelings. I don't get to talk to tribe members as often as I would love to. What's going on with the tribe these days? What's going on with Ian and Drew? Is there going to be at least a big meetup at Expo?
    39:05
    There will be a big meetup. I think the greatest thing about the podcast, you know, they had some really, really great stuff. But the relationships that I don't even think they realized that they forged, I've got about ten people, including you, maybe a few more that I continually communicate with, that I've cultivated really good friendships with, that came from that show. And Tim Lee being the primary one. Hi, Tim. You're like my pinball husband. Hi, Tim.
    39:35
    He and I talk at 6 in the morning, 6.30, well, 7.30 in the morning his time, but 6.30. So my way to work, we kind of like twice a week, we'll chat for 30 minutes and catch up. And we've got different chat groups that we text back and forth. so yeah there's there's a pretty good there's a pretty good amount of people that are still active in the tribe that are as far as the future and i have no clue you know every every few months we get another podcast from in drew and they say yeah we're back we're going to do it more and then a few more months go by we had to hurt someone and then you know then they get a bug up their butt and then they decide to make another one that's great i think in whatever capacity they want to do episodes we will be here to support them um and if it becomes too much then and maybe they've lost a little bit of that ambition.
    40:22
    Yeah, I did think it was cool. Ian was doing those – Ian was Druin. Freudian slip? No, Ian was doing the – I haven't seen a recent update. I should probably go check out the YouTube channel. Do you remember the name of the YouTube channel? Again, this I will try to remember to put in the show notes, guys. But he's been doing kind of drink mixes and stuff. I thought that was neat. Did you watch any of those videos? Yeah, I watched a small handful of them, and I didn't understand the reference or the name of it, so it didn't stick in my brain. So I apologize, Ian, for not being able to give you a shout-out. But, yeah, I watched a few of them. And, like, it's kind of cool to see not only how to make drinks that you don't maybe are familiar with, but also certain drinks that have different local ways to make them. Like, I watched this old-fashioned mix, and, well, that's just a different way that I've seen them made and make them myself down here in the South that they make in the Midwest. So, yeah, I don't have the ability to look it up right now, but, yeah, definitely go look at Ian Abrams' Facebook page, and you'll see some of the videos that he shared there that will take you to his YouTube page. Yeah, and oddly enough, the last show that Drew did was his P3 Multimorphic Impressions, and I thought that was a great show. Make sure everyone listening, if you even think there's a small chance that you're interested in maybe getting a P3 Multimorphic, Go listen to Drew's last show. Just scroll back on the Poor Man's Pinball Network. You'll see it. That was like three or four weeks ago, I believe. It's in there. Scroll back. You might see a couple of mine. You'll see a couple of Craft Beer Sally and Foghorn Leghorn's show. Make sure you listen to them, too. You'll see all the shows in there. Make sure you support all the shows on our network. Because what the cool part was, I was even looking at, like, some other pinball networks, and we're providing almost as much content as some of them now. So I think that that's really kind of a cool thing. in the last week. I've had the pleasure of doing three shows. I know you try to listen to all of them. There's no way you're completely caught up, Glenn. But did you hear the show yesterday with Ryan Barry? Of course I did. I listened to that last night. Oh my God, okay. Yeah, I listened to it maybe an hour or two after it came out. I was just kind of hanging around the house doing stuff and I listened to that. I really like Ryan. Ryan's become a good friend too. We message back and forth probably a couple times, maybe every month, two or three times we have a couple conversations back and forth. But, yeah, I really like Ryan. I like Kimba. I like their show. I like their energy. It reminds me a lot of some of the great podcasts in this hobby over the years. When you get somebody that's fresh into pinball that has all that new passion and energy that reminds you of the way you felt when you first got into the hobby. Not that it's gone completely, but, you know, I used to say I'd go play pinball until 3 in the morning every day of the week, and I don't care if I had two hours of sleep. I'd be fine. And I actually was for like two or three years. Wow. I could go play pinball in a tournament and then play until the bar closed, get home at 2.30 in the morning, and then sleep for two or three hours and be like high as a kite the next day because of having so much fun that the endorphins are just flowing, right? Yeah. But after a while, you're just like, oh, so I need my sleep, right? That doesn't mean you don't love the hobby anymore. It just means you don't have that wild, crazy passion. and listening to somebody new in the hobby like when Mrs. Pins did it or when – Yes. When – what did Ryan see? And I forget the girl's name that he did podcasts with. Oh, Jessie J.
    43:54
    Yeah, Jessie J. And, you know, when these new podcasts come out and people are new in the hobby, even Don. Don's Pinball Podcast, his first 100 episodes. I love to hear that energy. So, yeah, I like Ryan and Kimbo for that reason, but they're also sweet, genuine people. Now, I know that you are hoping at some point, and by the way, if you have to go at any minute, like if your job is starting, just let me know, and I'll say goodbye to you, of course. But a question I did have for you, if it's too hot of a take, just don't answer it, just skip it, okay? But, you know, we were talking quite a bit about Haggis and the whole debacle without talking about any particular pinball companies or trying to offend anyone. I'm wondering what you truly believe the pinball hobby can do to not run into another haggis or another deep root ever again. Because I think that's the number one thing that would turn off a new prospective pinball person. If they came into the hobby, they didn't know enough not to buy into one of these companies, they paid in full for the pin, and then they don't get it delivered. So how, moving forward, how can we learn from this? How can we, like, what can we do to make sure this is the last time this ever happens?
    44:58
    I don't really have an answer. I know that's a cop-out because I don't see how a new company is able to make games unless they've got an angel investor with so much money that can allow them to kind of like skip the process.
    45:16
    How are they able to make 100 games without people giving deposits? You know, where's that financial start money coming from unless you're independently wealthy already? I just really think that Damien was very convincing, and I do think that he was being genuine when he started this endeavor, and he was very likable. Everybody really enjoyed seeing his updates and his progress. We all bought in, and I'm really sad that it didn't work out for him. And there's probably a lot of factors that none of us even know. That's why I'm trying to be careful about what I talk about. Yes. And I just think that it's a lot harder than people realize. I don't know how you can make pinball machines without people giving nonrefundable deposits. Or maybe they can. I don't know. It's tricky. What about barrels of fun? Let's turn this around to a positive. Barrels of fun did it right. Like, they came out with a machine. They already had a rad theme. You know, they already had great people working for their company. They had already worked at other pinball companies. So they had some credibility that way. And I think they've delivered on almost every single labyrinth so far, and people are very happy with it. So I think we need more of whatever Barrels of Fun did right, we need more of that. So cheers to them. Salute to them. We're also not going to know their financial situation. They could be completely different from what Agus was dealing with. There could be some angel investor working behind Barrels of Fun that we just don't know about. And, you know, the fields of different different size for these different people, you know, Damian working out of Australia, trying to import all these parts from America and then build there to ship back to America.
    47:00
    It's more complicated than people are allowing themselves to think about it because they just want to have an opinion and throw it out there on social media. But unless you know all the facts, like, it's really hard to make these brash allegations, other than it sucks that you put money and you lost it.
    47:20
    It's easy to make fun of people, am I right? Yeah. Like, it's so easy and high in sight to, like, I've been trying not to like or laugh at any of the memes going up and stuff about Damien. It's hard not to. It's really, really easy to trash them at this point. I could have gone on a Stern-style rant towards frickin' Haggis. they probably deserved it a hundred times more than Stern. In fact, I know they do, but I'm not going to do that because it's not going to be effective because they no longer exist as a company. Or at least if they do, they're a shell of the company they used to be or something in Minecraft. I don't know. Let's move on from all that negativeness. I'm going to move forward and, you know, looking forward here, we're talking about hopefully meeting up at Expo. You're going to Expo. I'm going to Expo. Give me some tidbits from my first big show. I mean, I did Pinberg like seven years ago and I feel like I did everything wrong at my first pinbird. So I don't know for just for me and some general, you know, other than like comfortable shoes and lots of water, like what should I expect? What should I do? You and I are both, we're both toiling with, uh, trying to figure out whether or not we should do the tournament. I know that's my biggest stress right now. My second biggest stress is do I stay in an Airbnb with people I know, or do I just get a cheap shitty hotel room because I snore louder than a lumberjack drunk off four quarts of moonshine, right? So it's like, you know, I'm trying to decide between those things, but the biggest thing is, do I do the tournament or not? How do we decide that? How do all the listeners listening decide whether or not if they're going to any big show, whether it be Expo or not, should they play in the show? Like, it's my first time meeting all these people. Wouldn't it be dumb for me to be stuck in the tournament place the whole time? But at the same time, I've only played five tournaments this year, Glenn, and I love tournaments, so I'm going to be at one of the biggest tournaments in the world. Why would I not play it? So you tell me, should I play it, Should I not play it? And what should all the other listeners do?
    49:02
    I think it comes down to a pretty simple, do you want to go to Pimble Olympics or do you want to play in terms? Because I don't think you can do both. If you go to Pimble Olympics, you can hang out with your friends and see all the seminars and you can walk through and see all the exhibits. You can have opportunities to talk to all the designers and manufacturers of the games that are in their booths. You can really take your time with that. You can go get lunch with friends. You don't have to be worried about when am I going to get back? When is my next round game going to happen? Because it's a limited qualifying entry. The main tournament expo, I'm not sure how many entries you get, but you pay your $100, and you might get like 20 games. I'm just guessing. I don't really know. But I know that it's $100. You get like your 20 games. You queue up for a game. You play it. So you enter your score. Every single person that's in the tournament gets put in a huge double elimination bracket. And I believe each round against your opponents is a best of three. It might be best of five, but I know that if you're not there within five minutes of your turn going, you get eliminated. So you have to be aware to some extent when your next round will be so that you can get back over there.
    50:17
    Otherwise, you just wasted $100. and if that's okay, then you're okay bouncing back and forth, probably two or three minutes of a walking trip from one side of the expo to the other. That's not horrible. It's not horrible, but your friends might go, hey, we're going to go to Galloping Ghost. Do you want to come with? You're like, oh, man, I'd love to check that place out, but you won't be back here for four hours, so no. You're just missing out on that kind of stuff. The Pinball Olympics is on Saturday, and it's an amazing, amazing event. but it's going to take up your entire day. You'll still probably get back to the Expo around 6 or 7 o'clock and have until 2 in the morning or whenever they close to play the games, but you will not be able to play tournaments if you go to the pinball Olympics. So I think those are the two things. Now, there is a classics that you can play, but it only takes the top 24 to make finals. I'm not going to be in that top 24, let's be honest. So I'll be fine there. but uh but the main i think i think you can do the main as long as you're okay with missing a few things and if you don't want to go to the ball olympics which is an hour away um it it's uh that those those are the main things ah damn okay here's what i might do even though scott is going to be real upset because i just told him i think two nights ago on wormhole pinball on twitch uh they were live streaming rick and morty and of course scott denisi happened to pop in and uh while he was there i was questioning him about the pinball olympics and saying that's how i'm I'm so excited for Expo because of that. And I'm sorry, Scott.
    51:49
    You're telling me it's only two or three minutes away? I might just have to press my luck for $100 and play in the tournament and run back and forth and hang out with people. And let's be honest, I'm probably not going to get by the first. I highly doubt I'll get by the first few rounds. And if somehow, by the grace of the pinball gods, I do, at least I'm still on site where most of the people will be. And even the people who go to the pinball Olympics, I should be able to see the day before or even that night. So I think I'm maybe going to play in the tournament and skip the pinball Olympics this one time, but I'll be back next time to play in it. How much do you like tacos?
    52:21
    Oh, frick, like, I don't know, like a 9.79 out of 10. They probably have the best tacos I've ever had in my life catered at the pinball Olympics, so that definitely has to factor in. Well, then I guess you've got to bring me one back. I won't be going to the ball and picks because I will be trying my best to get as much feedback from Saul as I can. Yes. I mean, could you imagine if I leave and then I come back and someone goes, oh, man, John Borg and Raymond Davidson came by and they wanted to play Saul and talk to you. They said they were, you know, you asked them to come play it. And I'm like, oh, man, I missed it. You know, that's not what I want. and I know that at Southern Fried Gaming the other three guys in the team Joe, Eric and Austin hey boys they played in every tournament at Southern Fried and that left saw by itself with Ernie Silverberg and with Aaron and Fast and the game was down from time to time because it was doing some weird reset that we weren't having happen here and so they had to do some work on the game but people I've seen on Facebook already calling the homebrew games delicate flowers. That's sad. These are not manufactured by high-end experienced pinball manufacturers. These are built by hand by people that have never built a machine before. I know Eric has rebuilt several games, but we've never taken a solid-state machine and turned it into a modern pin with an LCD screen. And with a whole new computer and like, there's a lot of things that technologically are advanced about this game than just anything else that that's a classic machine. And so we're going to have bugs. We're going to have things go down. We need to be there. So I think, I think we're, we're probably not going to play in the tournament. Maybe one or two of us will, but we will always have one or two people at saw for expo And I want to be one of them So I I might play in the main tournament but I don think that I even get all my entries in and that be fine I'll just kind of like, I'll just kind of partway, partly put my effort into it. But I have another question for you if I got a few more minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead.
    54:41
    What do you think the primary reason people play in pinball tournaments is for? Oh, geez. uh i mean for me i think it's it's for me it's almost to feel like how i used to feel when i was playing pinball because for like the first few years i got back into pinball and i wasn't even playing pinball tournaments it was about that moment of getting to the wizard mode or getting to the multi-ball or getting that high score or getting on the scoreboard or or having that long game and then hearing everyone in the bar here you get free games and as you play pinball for more and more years like you said when you used to play to two or three a.m and sleep for two hours the only way for me to get that same rush back is for me to prove i can do that on a harder machine with better people. So this year, me playing at Pin Masters was the biggest rush I think I've ever had in my life. Other than maybe the day I got married to Drop Target Danielle, come on. But I mean, like overall, like just me looking around and going, oh my God, every pinball player here is in the top 100 other than me. Like, you know what I mean? Like I was playing with Dalton. Like I was like, what is even, I don't even know, like they're trying to give me tips, assuming I kind of know the rules. I don't know the rules on any of these pins. It was crazy. It was incredible. I think it would be like someone if your favorite sport is hockey, you'd be playing with Wayne Gretzky, Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Mario Lemieux, Brett Hall, okay, I've gone into the 80s, Bobby Orr. You know, we've gone too far back. But the point is, for me, that type of rush is incredible. So somehow, somehow, somehow, my ultimate dream at Expo would be to sneak into, like, the 24th spot in Classics and get to play with some incredible players. I don't have dreams of ever making money in pinball or, like, ever winning a big tournament, or I do want to get in the top 1,000. But for me, the adrenaline rush of having one good game or even just one good ball, well on a live stream playing in nationals or well on a live stream at Pinmasters or at Expo or like this weekend at Pemberg, even my buddy Mike Dimas of Pinball Shenanigans, someone took his picture for Papa and he got on the front page there of Facebook with the Pemberg announcement and he was so stoked about that. Even though he has a YouTube channel where he gets thousands of views, He was so excited to be on the Facebook page for Papa at the first Pember being back in town. Mike actually played really well last night in the strikes tournament at Pember. I saw that. He got like seventh or eighth or something, right? Yeah. So I think for me, you asked the question, the long answer, I'm sorry I went overboard, but it was the adrenaline rush of me being around all these people I've watched for thousands of hours on television or on Twitch or on YouTube or what have you, and seeing the best of the best of the best. Like, usually you're also there with, like, a Raymond Davidson, who is not only incredible at playing pinball, but also, like, you know, helps code and do rules for Ed Stern at the greatest pinball company on planet Earth. So it's like, you know, you're getting the dual effect of, wow, I'm around these legends who are pinball wizards who make and design the games, but I'm also around these incredible legends who are awesome at playing pinball. So I'll just say this. My favorite ball of the entire year was ball three, playing against Escher Lefkoff on Keith Elwin's masterpiece, his best machine of all time, Jurassic Park. I came back and beat him by like two or three million on Jurassic Park. I was Escher Lefkoff's only strike at Lumberjack Johnny's the first day of pin masters, I believe. Might have been second day. So just to even say that for the rest of my life, do I think in a million years I'm a better player than him? Of course not. but anybody in any moment of time can get slightly lucky enough that he nudged just hard enough that he tilted out early and didn't get his bonus. And I was there, therefore able to beat him by just a couple million. You know what I mean? So like that moment in time, I'll forever remember that. Would that moment have been of cool if we weren't in a pinball tournament and he was just there playing a for fun game? I don't think so. Would I be able to brag about beating, being the only strike Escher Lefkoff got in a tournament forever after that? Of course not. No one would care. Cool. You beat him in one fun game. You know what I mean? So I don't know. Why is it, why is it that you still love tournaments? well i'll give you the top three for me and i'm curious to hear a lot of other people's top reasons um for me for me it's primarily about challenging myself you know trying to win um just trying to get better um being being social and seeing my friends and being able to catch up with what they're up to is number two and uh number three is the whopper chase like trying to stay up in the rankings and trying to set a goal early in the year. But I think that's the majority of people, right? I don't know how many people are strictly motivated by money.
    59:04
    My whole point for the question is I'm curious if the entry fees for some of these events are too high.
    59:13
    And this is a discussion. This is not me on Soapbox. I'm trying to wonder, like, you know, if you go to Expo and it's $100 to enter that tournament. Right. You know, the money goes to the prize pool, and the top players will make a pretty penny. I have zero chance of winning that money. So I'm basically going to that tournament just giving $100 to the winner, right, or to the top 24 players, however it pays out. But does that tournament need that high of an entry fee to get the top end players to play, or are they already committed because of the opportunities that carry?
    59:56
    I'm happy to pay what I need to pay to be in a tournament, but I don't want to pay more than is necessary. And I wonder if $100 is keeping other people from being able to play, because they're just like, well, that's just too much money. and maybe that's the price it costs just to play in the league tournaments because I do think that the organizers need to take a little bit of money because they're putting a lot of time and energy into it. I'm not saying that they, like for a long time it was like people that run tournaments need to just do this out of the kindness of their heart and I'm just not one of those people. Of course not. I think that always having a big tournament where the winners take home $8,000 or new in-box machine that is funded by all the people that have entry fees. I don't know if it's needed.
    60:48
    See, here's the thing, Glenn. We think about it differently. I think about it like a Comic-Con. When I go to a Comic-Con, I don't mind paying an entrance fee to get to hang out with the people I consider. Like, you know, I'm going to go to Halicon. I'm going to get to hang out with, oh, my God, Sean Austin from the Goonies and obviously from Stranger Things. And I'm going to pay not only, I'm not only going to pay just to stand there and talk to him and get a picture with him. I'm going to pay for him to get the science of comic books, some cool stranger things, Funkos. Like I'm going to pay, I'm going to pay like probably seven to $900 to spend three minutes with this man. I got to go play pin masters for $400 US and I was a hundred percent sure everybody there knew there was 0% chance. I was magically going to be like top 12 in the world. Like, you know, from a guy who's ranked 7,000th in the world, like a month before that. right so but that being said I wanted to do it anyways I didn't even think twice right when when I was there and and and I'm getting handed my 450 dollars that I won for going to nationals I'm handing it right back to go play pin masters because I'm going to get to play with the big boys and this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing now I hear what you're saying I guess the marketer in me would say as long as they're selling out the tournament they had it priced right and if there's if they're selling out in under like five minutes they had it almost priced too low to be honest And I hate saying that because I'm half Dutch and I'm broke. And I don't like people that like money gatekeeper or whatever or financially shame people or you can't have an above ground pool. I hate all that BS, right?
    62:13
    The point is you can go out for $1 and play pinball and have a great time. But if you want to go play with the big boys in a big tournament, yeah, you're probably going to have to go play $100. But then you have a shot at making your money back. And I know players who are just like mediocre players, not mediocre, but like slightly above average. and they can in small to medium size 10 to 20 dollar tournaments break even fairly consistently in fact not to brag but since the five years i've been out here on the east coast if you were to take all the money i've put into all my tournaments i make finals very often out here it's very rare that i don't make finals probably sitting at 75 to 85 percent of the tournaments i've played out here i've made to finals so i always get at least some money back you're usually doubling if not tripling your money but i don't do it to make like oh 20 bucks here 10 bucks here you know After you pay for gas, trip, beer, everything else, you're losing money. All I know is any of these tournaments you're talking about that are charging $100 or more, you've got the opportunity to get so many gosh darn delicious Whoppers, even if you just slide into 24th.
    63:10
    I forget who it was, but a friend of mine had traveled. Well, it was my buddy Matt when we went to Maple Pinball, and he ended up going up 20,000 spots. He went from 29,000th to 9,000th, or 18,000 spots, and he was very close to being the big stern mover of the month, just from playing four tournaments at Maple Pinball with us in Toronto like a couple months ago, and he is now addicted to the Whoppers. Now he's looking it all up, right? And then he goes, but Albert, that's the most money I've ever spent on a tournament. So I know what you're saying. It would be nice if small little tournaments cost less, but at the same time, you're spending $100 or more. Oh, my God, it's going to be, you know, I know where you're coming from. Maybe they would get more people entering the Expo tournament at like $75, or maybe it would just so many people would go in it, it would take like three days instead of two days to do. I don't really know. I haven't even really thought much about that. Around here, most tournaments are free or like five bucks. So for me, like the tournaments are a lot.
    64:05
    And the other side of it that I'm worried about, like Pinberg, they didn't charge enough back in the day and they ran out of money. So, you know, there's a lot of things that, you know, just in the discussion that are crossing my mind right now. and I want to see Pinberg grow and get back to the same size it was and to me that's an experience that I'm okay forking over $400 for because that's going to be me playing non-stop for two days, hopefully three right? Isn't it three days if you make a finals in one of the groups? Yes, and you'll get to play usually in other groups but for me to pay $400 to play in a Pinmasters where do you play one day or two? You get to play for two days.
    64:53
    Okay. And you get to play with two different foursomes. Maybe. Maybe that's okay then. Like one time in your life. One time in your life. I wouldn't do it every year. You know what I mean? Well, I might, but like, you know, it depends. If I can find a cheaper tournament for less, like if I can go to Pintastic this year, it's going to cost significantly less, but also I wouldn't get to hang out with Bruce and Ron, And who knows, if I win New Brunswick again, which probably won't happen because I've only played one tournament there this year, but if I won it, then I would already be there. Then I would feel, I think if you're already at Nationals, you almost have to play pin masters. You know what I mean? And you're at least a decent player to get to Nationals. So, like, your money's not usually a complete waste. In my particular case, coming from a smaller province, it kind of was. But I don't know, Glenn. I don't know. I haven't given much time. I have been thinking about, I know Ian from Nudge Magazine was writing about how to make it more airable. How can we make it more airable, Glenn?
    65:53
    I don't know. That's what I'm saying. It's tough, right? I think having a smaller, having a small, like maybe you just air the finals.
    66:03
    And that's hard, too, because Jason Zoller, they take a lot of time between balls, and that's dead air. you can't and maybe the answer is it doesn't need to be you know it can be its own thing okay it doesn't I don't think it needs to get bigger I think it's enough I don't think it has to be but I mean if people are talking about it and they're wanting it to get bigger I just think that you need to concentrate on having really good commentary or like people people that know what they're talking about and are being good at being entertaining probably switch out the commentary people fairly often make sure you're interacting a little bit with chat like I think there is ways the same way we look at enter your initials and the way we look at laser loss uh how they've advanced streaming from even and this is nothing against jack danger but if you look at like you know the setup for for dead flip he did some really cool interactive things don't get me wrong he had the beer can where he played the pinball with and you know he did lots of stuff like that and i know that jack danger would have continued to innovate but i think there's channels like enter your initials and what laser loss is doing that um you know if that some of that could be implemented for a younger crowd once in a while with some experimental tournaments like the heads up tournament that stern did and that carl d'angelo did i'd like to keep seeing those i think those bring people in time to tournaments time to missions i think those can bring people in and also showing more pin masters i don't know why but i love watching pin masters i like seeing how even sometimes a more regular player like you or i who's not top 100 has to play more holes and takes longer and you're seeing them play with like a really advanced great player typically in the grouping. And I guess I watch all of the tournament pinball on Twitch, but I prefer it when, you know, Carl D'Angelo, everything he does is magical. Fox City's pinball, they're killing it. You know what I mean? I like when they have good commentators, when they're talking to the audience, when, you know what I mean? All that kind of stuff makes it more arable to me. Glenn, I'm going to let you go because you've got to get to work, my bro. I'm over an hour. My voice is dying on me here. Do you have any final shout-outs, or do you want to say anything to everybody on the way out, or do you have a final question for me? I guess I just want to put my money where my mouth is and let the industry know. This is going to sound like a job interview, hopefully. It should be. I saved for years to buy pinball machines, and they meant so much to me. I had an AIQ. I had a world poker tour, and I was so happy to finally have them, and I was trying to think about what game I was going to trade one of them in for to get another one. And I just realized that I just didn't have the quality of recording gear that I needed to create industry standard audio, whether it be call outs or music or sound effects. So I sold those machines and I don't have pinball in my house just so that I can prove my ability to actually do this career change. This is not just a hobby. When Ian and Drew were doing their show and I was making funny music and skits, I was kind of doing that as a ha-ha, like none of this matters, look how dumb this is. That was me just trying to minimize what I was doing. I was really trying to make good stuff, but I did it in a way that was to downplay, right, where I could just joke it off like it wasn't good. I could just say that. It's just a joke. It's just for fun.
    69:18
    with that mentality like that was that was scared glenn like i'm tired of being scared like i want to put stuff out there that i'm proud of that i want people to hear that i want to be part of a bigger project like this is me putting my heart on my sleeve saying hire me give me a chance and uh and let's make something really cool together um you know all the calls you saw i wrote those i formed them i edited them i exported them you know trying to figure out all the different parts of the game and what what the game needs what's what serves the game best like i love love love this process and you know saw is coming to an end we're almost done making it and you know come november i need a new project to work on i work with in harrower on his uh on his blood bank billiard oh that's right yes i recognize that you know a lot of the great call-ups that he had for me to perform and that um weren't going to be enough for the game so i did a whole bunch of research on vampires and the lore of what I could make jokes and funny things that integrate history of vampires and pinball and billiards all in one. And I gave him maybe another 75 to 100 call-outs. Wow. He didn't use all of them because some of them were just so stupid that it wasn't his sense of humor. But I was fine with him cutting it because it was just part of my creative process to create something that was above and beyond what he was asking for. Look, you're not going to hire me on the strength of one thing. So I'm going to keep on making games for homebrewers, for songs, for podcasts, until I've created enough different stuff out there that it speaks for itself. and I can't wait for that moment when someone finally realizes this guy's going to give him a chance.
    71:13
    Glenn, you are a gem in the pinball world. You've helped out me, myself, this podcast, so many other podcasts, homebrewers, it's awesome you're working with Tribe member Ian Harwer as well over there at Blood Bank Billiards. And I like to think that he saved your best callouts for the wizard mode, maybe. We don't know yet, right? But I'll tell you this, if I had a P3 Multimorphic, I'd be getting it not just to play that awesome game, but to hear the sweet sounds of Glenn in my ears while I was at home in Orbeez Arcade. So Glenn, thank you so much for being on the show. I want you to come back on the show, you know, maybe closer to and, or maybe even after Expo, you and Tim could come on or something, or you and one of the other people that were there. Maybe we could do like a triple, a triple buck or something like that with my, you know, you're beloved here on the show. You're welcome back anytime. I think you've actually been on the show, maybe perhaps more than anyone else. I appreciate every time you're here. And any of you pinball companies listening, reach out to Glenn. Go listen to pinball for y'all. And I'm going to remember to put the SAW link to go check out all the information on the SAW homebrew also in the show notes. So until next time, pinball nerds. Pardon me? Yes, thank you. I'll send you that link in a minute. All right, Glenn. Come on, do our outro. You must know it by now.
    72:26
    Yeah, why don't you guys come on board and eat, sleep, and breathe pinball with Orby.