But we were never, I mean, I don't think we were ever good at advertising it because we never really felt a need to. It was just sort of a thing that we did for solving a problem that we saw. And I guess in 2008, it would have been word of mouth through Weegs, friends of ours, CFF, which Ryan is currently a member of. I think that was a way to get the word out, too. I don't think you've talked about CFF on your podcast before. For the listener. Well, I try not to get it too regional. You know, I try not to be like it's the Wedget Pinball Podcast, but we don't spend a ton of time talking about my bar or just Portland in general. We just talk about pinball in general. But for the listeners, a little backstory, the CFF or the crazy flipper fingers was a pinball street gang. In fact, one time, I think the Portland Police Department even categorized y'all as a real gang. They had jackets and they had like a logo and they would go around and play pinball on location. and put up scores that's it yeah be rowdy they had uh everyone had to put up cff as their initials right if you put in a high score you always had to put cff uh that's what i remember about it yeah but you know it's a tight group and just like the the leagues and the weekly tournaments were so it was pretty easy people were immediately excited about it and you know the the big difference that we were trying to solve essentially was being able to search for machines so when you had a spreadsheet or like a custom Google map. Back then you could make custom Google maps where you're just starring locations on a map basically. But for some reason back then you couldn't actually search those custom Google maps. You could just browse them. So we were just solving that issue of being able to search, search for machine, search for, we made little zones in Portland. So you could, if you lived in the Northeast, you could search for Northeast and limit your results just for that area. And, you know, I also want to add that we, back then, I mean, this has sort of died off, I guess, at least people coming to us for this, but we would get interviewed sometimes for, like, Willamette Weekly or the Portland Mercury or the Oregonian, you know, some other, you know, little paper like that that wanted to be like, oh, pinball's coming back. You know, it was really, it was very new back then, pinball coming back. I mean, people are still writing articles like that, but yeah. Yeah. So that helped. We got it. We got a fair amount of like mainstream press. Yeah. Isaac brought me an old issue of the Portland Mercury. Portland Mercury is like a free kind of weekly newspaper here in Portland for the listeners outside of Portland. But he brought me an old Mercury issue with you guys in it. And it's kind of an, it's exactly that. It whoa do you guys remember pinball machines Like they coming back in a big way in Portland It funny to kind of look at that old issue It pretty cool Enough about Portland. Like when did you guys first expand outside of Portland to include other cities and regions? And where did you start with that? Pretty quickly, I'd say it was like around 2010. You know, we started this in late 2008, around this time of year. Pretty shortly after that in 2010, people started coming to us and asking if we could cover their area, basically. And we started around that time adding regions. And just a quick background into the region concept is that, you know, there's a lot of areas like Bay Area, for example, San Francisco, where they had a rich history of communicating to each other on, like, Usenet, Games Rec Pinball, about where to find machines. they had a website i think it was called like pinball machine.org managed by this guy johnny and you know we didn't want to just like barge in and be like hey use our map ours is you know we have a better interface or something like that they would come to us and basically say we want to port our data into your interface and we would say okay we'd create like a separate map you know slash Bay Area for them that only contained Bay Area locations. And we just said, this is your website. This is your map. It has, you're the administrator for it. And go, go ahead. And yeah. That's interesting. I remember when you would click on like the homepage and there'd be like, oh, you can check out Austin, Texas or Portland, Oregon or Seattle, Washington. I remember that. Yeah. So around 2010, we started adding Seattle, Bay Area, L.A., Chicago. Like it really started, you know, growing pretty quickly. And it was always done that way. It was like, would you reach out to them or somebody would reach out to you and be like, hey, how do we get our local scene on the map? Yeah, they'd reach out to us. We weren't like doing any outreach to other people. And we just say, yeah, this is what you have to do. We have to have an administrator. So somebody there who's not an operator, like doesn't have any commercial interest in excluding the competition or something like that. And ideally, there's a league there already. So you have like an audience that will start using it already, like immediately. and so we kind of had some somewhat strict criteria to make sure that it was updated and high quality because we didn't want to just start adding wherever and then have no one update these areas yeah we also didn't want to go somewhere where they didn't want us to be there you know like if they already had a map and it worked really well for them then we would just back off i i remember in the earlier days seattle uh with skillshot was was one of those things where it's like, yeah, maybe we don't need a map because we already have this thing covered. And they still do that zine today. And I think that's a pretty cool way of tracking pinball machines. That's interesting. When did the app first come about? And how much traffic does the app receive now versus the website version? This is where it gets pretty computery. We launched an Android version and an iOS version, I think, if not at the exact same time, like a couple months apart. And at the time, that meant that you had to write two separate applications you had to write them and you had to maintain them so if you wanted to update the website you would then need to update the android version and the ios version and ryan keep me honest here because this was what 14 years ago isaac tall and handsome did the first uh ios version i think right he came to us with that Yeah. And there was a guy, Frank Michael, who did the second version. And then I think I did the third version. No. No? Who did the third version? I mean, you did Android at the same time as all that. And then the third iOS version is what we're on right now with React Native and Beth. We used to have two totally separate versions, one for Android, one for iOS. And then Beth, local Portland legend Beth, came and wrote a new version of the app in this thing called React Native, which you write once and then it compiles to an Android app for Android users and then an iOS app for iOS users. I don't know what year. Ryan, do you know what year that happened? I think that was like 2018. so that's pre just prior to that we had kind of uh made a universal map that wasn't only segmented by region and then we wanted an app that can support that and not have to like have the burden of switching between regions in the app because that's what you had to do before you know a lot of people are traveling you get off the airplane and you have to switch to a different region in the app, which is confusing and hard. And so we wanted more of a seamless experience. And that kind of helped the app take off even more, like even more, got even more popular after that, because it's just so much easier to use now. Yeah, but that was 2018. Alan, do you want to guess, do you want to play a fun guessing game? How much traffic you think is app versus desktop? I would guess that it's got, I would guess it's about 80% on the app yeah that's uh it's a smart guess and i think i would make that guess too but it's actually closer to 50 50 isn't that really like who are these monsters that are using the desktop browser on their laptops or something and don't most people just use apps yeah wow okay that is surprising uh i mean i use the app version a lot on the phone normally when i'm just i usually use it to update our location, like when we bring a new game in or swap a game out or whatever. But yeah, I guess I do use the desktop version a lot for the show. So I guess I do use both. Maybe it's people at work or something. I don't know. Yeah, that would be my guess. People just in front of their computers already at work. But you know, that said, we don't do the greatest with looking at metrics or tracking anything. Like we don't even have a counter on the website. So take it with a grain of salt. Okay. Well, I wanted to ask you guys, you know, because like pinball's a small hobby, but it's, you know, like a ferociously passionate one. My question is, how much money does it cost to host and run the pinball month every month? And why do you do it? The cost has gone up since we started it. We used to try really, really, really hard to minimize costs. And we still do, of course. But for a while, it was like 10 bucks a month or something like that. It was very cheap. And then we started getting like Patreon support and Ko-fi support, which kind of gave us a little more runway. I don't know if that's the right term, but more space to put a little bit more resources into it. When we were as lean as possible, we were always like maxed out at using 90% of the server RAM at all times. And if someone made like a crazy query, it would just degrade the entire site. We were always right on the edge. So in the last five years or something, we switched from our old server setup and just are using more of that Patreon money. So now it costs like 60 bucks a month. And half of that is the server with like four gigs of RAM, which is very plentiful for what we do. and then a database which also has a bunch of RAM, which makes, you know, just the goal is for the site to be fast and responsive, and it's kind of worth it to put a little bit more money into it. That, you know, people are paying us. They're paying us to have the site be fast, so that's why we pass the money right back over to have a fast site. I think, Alan, I think Ryan is being a little humble here too because I've seen examples where, So when a map loads on your screen, that's actually costing money. Like a service is providing these things called tiles, which is how the map renders. And over the years, we saw Google Maps go from free to very expensive. And then there's a bunch of third-party map providers that also cost quite a bit of money. And as the site gets more popular, more maps are being rendered and the prices go up. Ryan works pretty tirelessly to shift around what our map options are to the point where I think we have tiers where it'll load one map until it runs out of the free tier and then switch to a different one. He's just constantly juggling the way this thing works in order to save money. Instead of saying, hey, pay our way out of this, Ryan will actually program a solution that's more cost effective so it's impressive yeah we think a lot about tiles map tiles all the time that's wild i find this all very fascinating like the pinball map the idea the concept now is sort of like uh it's it's so obvious and it seems so essential you know and you guys built that but i was talking to the water boy and you know because he also really likes especially japanese candy cab arcade cabinets and we were just talking about like it's weird that there's not really at least in the u.s there's not really like an arcade equivalent of the pinball map but for arcade machines that there's not like a universal arcade map and i know there's one for sort of like rhythm games and stuff uh but it's not nearly as robust or well maintained as the pinball map is and i just want to ask you guys because like the video game industry in general i know the coin-op video game industry is fairly small but certainly the overall video game industry is much much larger than our small niche hobby of pinball but like why do you guys think like this is a more philosophical question because you guys know the nuts and bolts of like how to make it how to make something like this i'm sure there's other people that could do that for video games but like what is it about pinball that makes people spend months or years of their lives building a resource like this for other pinball people and why doesn't it seem to happen in an adjacent hobby like coin out video games geez a philosophy question i let me give a quick nuts and bolts answer and maybe ryan has the philosophical answer we're people who are into a niche hobby i'm sure we're all people who know somebody who starts a project and gets really excited about it and doesn't finish that project. Right? Yeah, people, people do this all the time. I think there are three reasons that the pinball map was successful. The first is when we wrote the initial version of it, we wrote a really elaborate automated test suite along with it. And what that means is, whenever we make a change to the code, we can run the test suite, and it'll tell us with relative confidence if we broke something else. Like, you know, code, you're always introducing bugs. We tried to make it so that we could make big changes and not break the entire site. So that gave us the confidence to keep poking at it without worrying that we'd have to start over every time. Number two, Ryan is absolutely relentless with this code It an open source project so you can go see online exactly what the code looks like at any moment Just go there and look at the changelog and you will see this guy in there all the time making visual updates, adding functionality. At the end of the day, Ryan is doing the good work of the pinball map and just has never stopped. And I think the third thing is the pinball community in general has just been really meticulous and excited about keeping the data fresh. Like we could write all the code in the world and if it just sits there never being updated, then it's useless. But for some reason, which maybe Ryan has the answer to, pinball users are really hyped up to tell you about the condition of Monster Bash in some small town in Iowa. Yeah. Ryan, why do people care so much about pinball? Well, first off, I want to say that, you know, you I wouldn't say it's me being relentless. I mean, if you go back in the changelog a couple of years ago, it's mostly you slowed down a little bit as you got a busier job and other things took over. There's a humongous amount of changelogs attributable to you in there, obviously. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I know the philosophical answer to that. I think we continue to do it because a lot of people use it, basically. You know, if people weren't using it, we'd just stop developing this. We get, like, new location submissions every day, many, many every day. And people are constantly leaving comments and adding, removing machines. So it's very obvious that there's a lot of people that use it and like it. And so that motivates us to continue with it. I think, you know, it's a lot of work. I would say it's the reason why, one reason why it's not, there aren't like similar ones for other game, gaming platforms or whatever, is just because it's a lot of work to set this up initially, I think. You know, once we have the momentum going, it's easier to kind of maintain it. I don't know. You know, once we are an open source app, so someone could easily port it or fork it. And just instead of having pinball machines in the database, they have arcade games in the database. They could just do that. But the fact that nobody has, I think, just demonstrates that it's kind of a lot of work. That would be my best guess. So like I'm an operator. You know, I've been asked this before by I think I was doing like a Q&A or something, maybe on our social media one time and I got a submission and I and I get this sometimes whenever we get a very kind of strident comments on the pinball map they go how do you feel about this as an operator and I want to ask you guys the question is I'm imagining you guys have at least in the past or still do do you guys get angry messages from operators based on the comments that players leave on their machines? Yes. Yes, yes. I have to be the first line of answer for that because Ryan is the one that gets the questions. And so I hear Ryan, he recounts the highlights to us and it's pretty brutal. Like he mentioned, we have admins in different regions that handle this sort of thing. But for a region without or for an area without an admin, it goes to Ryan. So Ryan is the front line here. I think the highlights are, well, for a while we had people deleting comments or, I'm sorry, deleting machines and re-adding the machines in order to clear out the comments on condition. Right. So that's just like a bad experience for everybody. Another frequent flyer is that people will want to track non-pinball machines like bat games. Where do you think, Alan? Like, do you think a bat game goes on there or like Bagatelle or something? No. Do you think it should go? No. What is the pinball machine, Alan? What even is pinball? It's got to have flippers, I think, to be a pinball machine. But what about like Hyperball or something like that? Do you think that's pinball? Have you played Hyperball? I do like Hyperball. I mean, the thing is, is like in a perfect world, I think we would have the pinball map, but it would also include games like skeeball and pop-a-shot basketball and air hockey and stuff like that. Because those are all games that people play, and it'd be nice to know at a glance if, just like with pinball, if you're into any of those games, just knowing that they have a weird Japanese rhythm game in good condition at this spot near you, that's valuable information. But I do love, because I'm a pinball guy, I kind of just care, I really only care about pinball. so I like that we have our own resource I like that you guys are the ones that made it and I kind of don't really want to see I like I don't want to click on a spot and then scroll through like say somewhere like ground control they have what I don't I don't even know but they may probably have like I don't know like a hundred video games plus all their pinball machines I wouldn't want to have to scroll past video games just to see what I care about which is What pinball machines do they have on the floor right now? You know what I mean? Yeah, that's fair. I would say above all other things, though, the angry messages that we get from operators, and I'll let Ryan give you the real answer. The angry messages from operators, they kind of think we're a business. They treat us like we are a profit-generating business that is hurting their business. And at the end of the day, like we're not a profit generating business. We're not a business and we don't want to hurt anyone's business. We're just reporting the condition of machines as the public reports them to us. That's it. There's a couple of different interests that the pinball map serves. And one is operators helping them advertise their locations. And then two is helping regular people who aren't operators find machines and also have some idea of the condition of the machines at a place. So those two interests can sometimes butt heads with each other. And I mean, I have pretty thin skin. I don't love getting upset messages. I think it was last year I spent a lot of effort responding to operators and like writing like an FAQ that really encompasses the main questions that we get a lot or the main comments that we get a lot from operators, which is like ban this user from leaving comments at our location or ban users from talking about our coin slots or something like that. Only let them leave comments that are of this type of comment. Like, and we're just like, no, we can't do any of that. Like, we can't control what people are writing. And we're not going to ban individuals just because you don't like that person. So we just kind of, I started just like pointing them, engaging less and pointing them to the FAQ, leaving notes when people leave comments. I have little tips or we have tips that say like, you know, please be respectful of the time that it takes to fix these machines so that people aren't, you know, leaving angry, drunk comments that piss off operators. And because, you know, we're just in the middle of that. We just get hit with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.