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Episode 118 - Marketing 101

Eclectic Gamers Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 32m·analyzed·Jun 28, 2020
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Travis Murray critiques pinball marketing, arguing pre-recorded reveals beat livestreams; flags content ownership issues.

Summary

Travis Murray, a marketing professional and pinball streamer, discusses pinball industry marketing strategies with hosts Tony and Dennis. The episode centers on how manufacturers reveal new games, arguing that pre-recorded controlled video is superior to live-stream reveals, using Hot Wheels (American Pinball) and Rick and Morty (Spooky) as case studies. Key concerns include manufacturers outsourcing premium content to third-party streamers like Jack Danger, losing ownership and control of reveals.

Key Claims

  • Over 90% of consumers watching explanatory videos are more enticed to purchase a product

    medium confidence · Travis citing consumer behavior research; stated without specific source attribution

  • Video is the primary way consumers discover brands, not company websites

    medium confidence · Travis explaining consumer behavior prioritization of social media over direct company channels

  • American Pinball Hot Wheels was backordered at launch primarily due to insufficient units built, not demand

    high confidence · Travis on his pre-order status and production constraints

  • Livestream reveals are inferior to pre-recorded reveals because you lose narrative control

    high confidence · Travis's core marketing thesis; supported by Hot Wheels streaming technical issues example

  • Spooky Rick and Morty sold 750 units without showing actual gameplay, relying on controlled promo video

    high confidence · Travis citing Spooky's controlled reveal strategy as successful case study

  • Stern outsources all premium content (gameplay reveals, code update reveals) to third-party streamers like Jack Danger

    high confidence · Travis explaining manufacturers have lost legal ownership of their own premium content

  • Straight Down the Middle's Willy Wonka pre-recorded reveal video has ~70,000 views and is the industry gold standard

    high confidence · Travis citing this as exemplar of proper reveal strategy

  • Spooky built brand loyalty through 80-90+ podcast episodes before Rick and Morty reveal

    medium confidence · Travis crediting long-tail podcast investment as foundation for successful launch

Notable Quotes

  • “Video advertising is pretty much the number one way that consumers are going to discover a brand in which they are going to purchase later on.”

    Travis Murray @ ~00:08:30 — Core thesis for marketing strategy discussion; establishes video primacy

  • “I honestly do think that this is one of the weaker ways to reveal a product because I feel like you don't have control. Like when you're doing a live stream compared to a pre-taped segment, you really don't have control of any narrative within that live stream.”

    Travis Murray @ ~00:14:45 — Direct critique of industry-standard livestream reveals; explains loss-of-control problem

  • “It's like imagine that you go to a movie premiere and you know the movie's premiering, but the special effects aren't done yet. That's what a lot of these places do because the coding isn't complete.”

    Travis Murray @ ~00:15:30 — Metaphor for unfinished game reveals damaging first impressions for new audiences

  • “Jack was having issues with the internet for the first 30 minutes.”

    Dennis (host) @ ~00:16:15 — Concrete example of uncontrollable livestream failure during Hot Wheels reveal

  • “Spooky sold out of Rick and Morty without even showing actual gameplay. Like it was controlled. You saw some of it through a promo video, but they didn't show just somebody just live streaming the game.”

    Travis Murray @ ~00:19:30 — Key case study proving controlled reveals drive sales without full gameplay exposure

  • “All of your major pinball manufacturers are outsourcing their premium content. So legally speaking, it could be different nowadays, but pretty much that means anything that Jack is going to or Deadflip is going to stream, he owns 100% of that content.”

    Travis Murray @ ~00:25:00 — Critical IP/ownership issue: manufacturers don't own their own reveal content

  • “I don't think I have a single pinball manufacturer's YouTube page, Twitch page, any video page on social media bookmarked. And I sit here as someone who's commentated on this hobby for years.”

Entities

Travis MurraypersonDennispersonTonypersonJack DangerpersonStern PinballcompanyAmerican PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanyRoanoke Pinball Museumorganization

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball Hot Wheels backorder delays attributed to insufficient production capacity from launch, not demand surge.

    high · Travis: 'I think from what my understanding, they just didn't have enough units built from the very beginning. Coronavirus production issues, yeah.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Spooky Pinball's Rick and Morty succeeded through brand loyalty built via 80-90+ podcast episodes, proving long-tail audience development matters more than reveal execution.

    high · Travis: 'Spooky, they've had a podcast that has 80, 90 plus episodes...they've built up brand loyalty right there for an extended amount of time'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Live gameplay reveals expose unfinished code and incomplete special effects, damaging new audience perception similar to 'movie premiere with unfinished special effects'.

    high · Travis: 'the coding isn't complete, you know, and you hear that excuse come in a lot. It's like imagine that you go to a movie premiere and you know the movie's premiering, but the special effects aren't done yet'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Hot Wheels car mech received immediate negative comments in early footage due to grainy phone video quality; controlled reveal could have prevented negative first impressions.

    high · Travis: 'majority of comments are talking about that mech and it in a negative light from the very get' and 'that's something that could have easily been controlled'

  • $

    market_signal: Straight Down the Middle's pre-recorded Willy Wonka reveal video achieved ~70,000 views and is cited as industry gold standard for controlled reveals.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.277

0:00
This episode of the Eclectic Gamers podcast is brought to you by the Roanoke Pinball Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. What does the Roanoke Pinball Museum need with a starship? It doesn't, because it's an interactive museum dedicated to the science and history of pinball. Their mission is to cultivate curiosity in science, art, and history through pinball, while preserving and honoring its role in American culture. The museum is open every day in the Federation, except on Mondays, and it houses over 65 machines, with models ranging from 1932 to 2018. Of all the pinball museums I have known, Roanoke is the most human.
0:55
Welcome to the Eclectic Gamers Podcast. Today is Saturday, June 27th. It is episode 118. I am Tony. I am Dennis. And yes, we have an exception day. We're doing the Saturday record because we have an exception podcast. We have a guest host with us, Travis Murray, who I have to say, Travis, when I first learned of you was actually just a few months ago at the Kansas City Pinball Championship. because you were there to try and win all of our monies.
1:28
And the chat, Tony and I were live streaming that tournament, and the chat were full of Travis fanboys. And there were all these people like, we love you, Travis. Travis, you're a god. I'm like, who are all these people in my chat? So, Travis, could you introduce yourself? I know you are the Oklahoma State Champion, or according to your IFPA trophy, the Oklahoma State Champion. yes i can thank josh sharp for that one yes thank you josh because uh it gives us something to talk about and cherish when i see that on your on your streams and you have a youtube channel and i have a link to that in the show notes for people that they want to see because you recently you won star wars you won the whole star wars yeah yeah beat the uh or defeated the emperor so i've done that several times off stream just never actually on stream but uh yeah so the reason why there was a lot of people in the chat and everything besides my mom watching it, of course. I actually, before I got into pinball, I was a Call of Duty streamer for a couple of years, like back in late 2013 onwards to early 2015. And I got partnered with Twitch pretty quick doing that, just basically just doing all types of challenges for Black Ops 2. And that just kind of carried over. I still had a little bit of a base of people that would watch every now and again. But I kind of grew out of streaming at the time before I got into pinball and just, you know, pursuing other things in life. And then once I got into pinball, people start realizing, well, wait, I'm showing back up online a little bit. And that's kind of what gave people indications that I was still around, still breathing. So that's probably what you saw on there. Somehow the word got out. There was the blops fans coming in. That's what it had to be. So there it's funny because I kind of restarted my YouTube channel as well and just scrapped everything that was originally on there and just started doing some pinball stuff. And I might do some other stuff gaming wise in the future. But what's funny is that it's kind of confusing to the people that still know me from Call of Duty. They're still trying to figure out what this is that I'm doing. It's almost like they've never even seen a pinball machine before. And they probably haven't. And we're going to talk about that because, well, in terms of introductions, thank you for that. Tony, did you, anything going on over the last couple of weeks that are worth reporting? You know, not really, except it's really weird because yesterday afternoon I shut off my work computer and I turned off my work phone and I'm now officially on furlough for a while. And it's just weird. Yeah, because you've been just busy with work for, well, forever, really, but especially after you were promoted. I'm kind of a workaholic, I've been told. So it's very weird to me. to be sitting here and my phone is off. I'm not, I can't check the work, the stuff on the computer and my anything. It's just, it's strange. It's very strange. Well, it's been a, an exciting week for me because it's audit week. So that's what I was doing every year, an audit. And so it was this time, but last year I had an assistant who was actually the one to deal with the auditors. So this year it's like, okay, I have to, so we had to make our social distancing arrangements because they still need to be on site to pull all the paperwork. I got them out in a day and a half, which is a record for me. But it's just like, OK, well, I don't know where she filed anything. And her files were really well labeled. And then apparently she was one of those individuals who maybe knew where everything was. But those invoices weren't in date order. So I spent an awful lot of time resorting them so that I could find things that were being requested. But it wasn't ultimately that painful of a process. I've actually done tons and tons of audits. in terms of participation. Because in my old job, that was one of the things that was my responsibility is work with the auditors. It was just a lot harder because those were not cash audits. Those were accrual. And so they've been a lot more specific than what this is. But anyway, so it's been an exciting time of discussing money. And speaking of money, for pinball, we're going to be talking about, we don't have any news.

Dennis (host) @ ~00:23:30 — Demonstrates marketing failure: industry expert doesn't follow manufacturer channels

  • “That first impression people were getting of the car just spinning non[stop]... The majority of comments are talking about that mech and it in a negative light from the very get.”

    Travis Murray @ ~00:20:15 — Hot Wheels mech criticism tied directly to poor quality of first footage impression

    • Straight Down the Middleorganization
    Hot Wheelsgame
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesgame
    Rick and Mortygame
    Willy Wonkagame
    Stranger Thingsgame
    Razagame
    Robert Muellerperson
    Steve Bowenperson
    Josh Sharpperson
    Deadflip Pinball Streamingorganization
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent

    high · Travis: 'That video right now has close to 70,000 views...that Willy Wonka trailer or reveal is probably one of the best ones, if not the best one in the industry right now'

  • $

    market_signal: No major pinball manufacturer maintains active social media presence with significant followings; industry commentators don't subscribe to manufacturer channels.

    high · Dennis: 'I don't think I have a single pinball manufacturer's YouTube page, Twitch page, any video page on social media bookmarked'

  • $

    market_signal: Manufacturers outsource 100% of premium content (reveals, code update gameplay) to third-party streamers, potentially losing legal ownership and brand channel control.

    medium · Travis: 'All of your major pinball manufacturers are outsourcing their premium content...anything that Jack is going to or Deadflip is going to stream, he owns 100% of that content'

  • $

    market_signal: Industry copying Stern's livestream reveal model without critical evaluation; Travis argues livestreams are Stern's 'weakest point' and competitors shouldn't emulate it.

    high · Travis: 'it's just not knowing any better. It's because Stern does that. So I feel like the rest of the companies just kind of fall in line'

  • $

    market_signal: American Pinball's Hot Wheels reveal was chaotic and out-of-order: unboxing first (withdrawn), livestream second (technical issues), trailer third (should have been first). Expert suggests this reflects 'not knowing better' rather than strategy.

    high · Detailed timeline of reveal sequence; Travis critique that trailer 'should have led with' this piece

  • ?

    announcement: American Pinball Hot Wheels launched with limited availability; first public footage was grainy phone video from unreleased event; followed by unboxing video (withdrawn), livestream (technical issues), then professional trailer.

    high · Multiple hosts describing chaotic reveal sequence and production issues

  • ?

    product_concern: Raza pinball had infamously difficult ramp shot during reveal gameplay; now confirmed as addressed in code updates but no one has seen the fix yet.

    high · Travis mentions 'nightmares of Raza' ramp difficulty; Robert Mueller addressed in TWIP interview but 'no one's seen it since that reveal'

    • 5:40
    Yes, we're going to talk about money. Specifically, we're going to talk about the promotion of pinball so that manufacturers can make money. Now, Travis, you actually have a background involving bringing products to market, correct? Yes, sir. Yeah. And so that's one of the reasons why I ended up leaving streaming, because I found that there was a little bit more a little bit more income on the other side of the of the world in terms of bringing products to market. So you are our marketing expert. That is that's your label. that's the hat that's what when other people i actually had i had someone else reach out and email us at eclectic gamers podcast at gmail.com saying they would they had a background in marketing as well and they would have been willing to come on the show and it's like well but i've already got travis so we can't have two experts what have you just it's gonna be awesome so well it becomes crossfire yeah yeah and it's funny too because one of the things about marketing that i figured out is that it's basically i can't say it's all self-taught but outside of a couple of college courses. That's all I have from schooling itself. But most of my knowledge and everything comes from mentorships within business and kind of learning on the ground or learning in the trenches and kind of realizing what's working and what's not working. And I dealt a lot with video marketing and basically bringing products to market, which is a little bit different from what we were talking about earlier compared to dealing with products that already exist. So I feel like with pinball, it's interesting because there's brands that already exist, but then they're constantly bringing new products to market over and over and over again. So there's some things I feel like I see that they could do much better that would help at the end of the day in terms of revenue building and content creation and all that. So I just I feel like there's certain things that can be done to kind of bring all that together for a better overall product, especially presenting it to consumers. Right. So before we start that, I do want to go ahead. We're not playing Build-A-Bank today because we have a guest, but just real quick from Episode 117. So the results are in. I did win. I had 71% of the vote. No, see, it's not true. Tony had 29% of the vote. The moral, I think, of this one is why didn't you take Alien Star, Tony? That's the moral. Why didn't you take Alien Star? it's amazing how there's always a game that's like well Tony would have won but he didn't pick this one game but Dennis picked a paperweight that doesn't work that's okay hey that one hurt me though that hurt me bad that cut me bad in this instance I don't even think it was Alien Star specifically because you had Harlem available too and both would have given you competitive street cred the problem was you went with Party Zone over both of them right And maybe this is my issue with I pick games that I enjoy.
    8:33
    And perhaps I need to start being more aggressively meta in my choice. I don't know. I think the audience questions why you don't enjoy Alien Star.
    8:51
    As I recall, I don't think I've played Alien Star. That's what I recall as well. So I think that's why you didn't pick that one specifically. I don't typically pick a game that I've not played unless we're in the list where it's like, I haven't played any of these games. Or it's like, well, I've not played this game, but I have played that one and I hate that game. So this one just by default has to be better. Well, that was the heat I took with Alien was I didn't take Tales from the Crypt. And it's like, well, I don't remember ever playing Tales. So I just couldn't pick it. And I had played Alien. Oh, see, but if I had, yeah, I would never have picked Alien because that came just below it. Well, you almost won that one, but you didn't. So I don't know what the point is there. I was hurt for choosing Alien. Apparently, people don't think it's worth its weight in paper.
    9:42
    But speaking of paper, we now will go into the big discussion of the paper world of marketing and how to build up these games. Travis, as our guest, I'll let you decide where in this you want to start. I brought categorically here are the kind of areas I'm thinking of that might be worth diving into. Obviously, we have the two most recent releases. So we could start with Hot Wheels from American Pinball. We could start with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Stern Pinball. We could run through how the various companies have been handling their various pinball launches and obviously expanding that to other entities like Jersey Jack and Spooky. we could talk about the i do want to spend some time talking about the the live stream reveal and just exactly what the value is you already touched on the issues about live streaming from your own experience and also uh just broadly what we think are ways that we could get pinball out in front of more potential buyers and players so that's kind of the five points i have carved this into into my head and into my head i mean in my one note that i'm using to guide this conversation so So where would you like to start, Travis? Well, I think the most important thing entering this conversation is kind of realizing or kind of explaining exactly what the consumer behavior is when it comes to marketing in general. And, you know, the thing is, is that, of course, there's all types of different ways that you can market. But I really I think the main focus should be on ways that companies are marketing through video and not necessarily through text, especially when we're dealing with a very analog thing with pinball. That's very visual in terms of seeing, you know, what what is the pin doing, the sounds, hearing what it's doing, just, you know, in the artwork. There's a lot of things that goes into visual and auditory in terms of getting a consumer to want to purchase this particular product or getting them interested in this particular product. So I think it's important to understand what the consumer behavior is, especially when it does come to video in general. And that's pretty much where I would say we should start at. OK, so so from that, it's in your judgment, the biggest thing that because pinball is a machine that people are going to be experiencing as a game, video is the best way to let them get the feel for how that would be and imagine actually owning it. Yeah, a thousand percent. And really, the caveat to this is that Stern is really great in terms of releasing, you know, news press releases or press releases. And of course, that goes against video a little bit, but they're able to call back to other content as well. And that's where I feel that a lot of other companies aren't necessarily great at right now, but they could improve. And so, I mean, that's one of the things that just just a little caveat when it comes to it. I think that that does help Stern a little bit in terms of establishing their brand. But I also feel like they could go so much further if they did utilize video marketing to its fullest extent. But Stern is by far the best at doing these things comparative to the other companies as of right now. Right. So as I'm thinking about Stern, I'm thinking, all right, so they tend to put out a press release. They usually do like an exclusive first look through IGN with an article and photos. They usually have like a teaser trailer. You can't usually hear the game. There's usually some sort of like background music playing or something, if I remember correctly. And then a live stream reveal. it's kind of what I think of with them. Are there other pieces that I'm not thinking of? I think that pretty much covers it. But like I said, it all entails that it makes it interesting. So to understand consumer behavior in terms of how they want to get a product, especially a product such as pinball, and I think that this really would come together,
    13:35
    is the fact that video advertising is pretty much the number one way that consumers are going to discover a brand in which they are going to purchase later on. And I think, I don't have the statistic off the top of my head, but I know for a fact there's a lot of different surveys that show over 90% of people that if they're able to watch a video that explains how something works or a service of how something works, they're more enticed to actually want to purchase that product. And so that really plays into the social media aspect of it Because the majority of people, they want to discover products not by going to a company's website, but by going to their social media first. So that's really king. And that's where I feel like everything can really come together in terms of video, in terms of social. And I just feel like a lot of companies could do something better with that to really help their products. Let's go into an example then. Let's use one of Stern's competitors. Let's use Hot Wheels that was just released by American Pinball. Now, they've done some pieces that are similar to what Stern has done and in other ways not. So what was your what's your take on the Hot Wheels, how they how they rolled it out, the reveal, so to speak? Well, they they had a pretty crazy reveal week, didn't they? Yeah. And I think in full disclosure, you you do have a Hot Wheels. Yes. I have one on order. Yes. Yeah. So I wish I could say I have it, but pretty much I was ready to get one from day one, mainly because I feel like I should play it first to really figure out what's going on with it and everything. But I think it's so backordered right now. I don't think I'm going to be getting one for close to a month. And it's not necessarily backordered because of so many different orders. I think from what my understanding, they just didn't have enough units built. from the very beginning. Coronavirus production issues, yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. So, Travis, you mentioned the kind of the crazy launch week, and I think, Tony, that we touched on that. We did. Was it the last episode? The last episode or the one before? Yeah, I think it may have been the one before. Tony, can you recall to, I don't know, just as a summary in terms of sort of what happened with them, so refresh those that didn't hear that episode? Well, there was a release on YouTube, an unboxing that was ordered to be withdrawn by American Pinball, which started an entire discussion inside the hobby about the way things were handled. Is that a nice way to put it? Yeah, that is. It's very polite. And for those that don't know, that unboxing reveal video was by a third party that was hosted by Straight Down the Middle, a pinball show. And then over the weekend, they, being American Pinball, had a livestream reveal, which was also through a third party, through Deadflip Pinball Streaming on Twitch. And then on Monday, American Pinball was promoting the reveals that Straight Down the Middle had done. And then they also had apparently hired a, I guess, a PR firm or something. And they put out another sort of video piece, I think, on Monday as well. Might have been Tuesday. That was the trailer that they put out. Yeah. OK, thank you. Yes, the trailer. I think that's what it was. Yeah. And so that's what really was confusing me, that I felt like they put out a piece of content that after all this, that they should have led with. Yeah, right, right. Because that's what Stern does, right? It's always the teaser trailer first. Correct. Yeah. And it didn't seem like. And so and this is why I think it's so much more important. I think we need to qualify to that. According to American Pinball, they were planning on a bigger reveal at the Texas Pinball Festival before it was canceled. So I imagine for a couple of months they were trying to figure out how they wanted to go about this. but what's what's really confusing to me is that you know i personally feel that revealing a game or premiering it through a live stream gameplay i feel like that's one of the worst ways that you can reveal your product let's explore that because because because that's what it feels like almost everyone in pinball does though travis so you're saying that they're all wrong i i think that there's better ways to do it. And I'm not saying that you don't use Jack with dead flip. I'm saying that I think that there's a better way for him to be utilized that they're missing out on. And so a big reason for that is, is like for me, I honestly do think that this is one of the weaker ways to reveal a product because I feel like you don't have control. Like when you're doing a live stream compared to a pre-taped segment, you really don't have control of any narrative within that live stream. You've got to deal with anything that might happen. So take what happened with the debut with Hot Wheels, for instance. Jack was having issues with the internet for the first 30 minutes. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. I tried to watch it and I couldn't because the stream was down and I only had a little period of time at the start of the schedule that I could have watched. Right. Exactly. So that's something that's not controllable. And you'll always have those variables take place whenever you're doing something live. I mean, there's been plenty of times we've watched a gameplay reveal in which either something breaks on it or something happens, ball stuck, you got to change everything out. And these might be little things to people that are familiar with pinball that they're going to be there watching it no matter what. But if you don't understand pinball and you're very new to it, very green, it could be the very first game you've ever seen. And you're seeing that for the first time, it's going to be hard to really keep that end user engaged necessarily because you're not really throwing too much value out at them besides just flat out just showing something that's something that they don't understand. It's like imagine that you go to a movie premiere and you know the movie's premiering, but the special effects aren't done yet. That's what a lot of these places do because the coding isn't complete, you know, and you hear that excuse come in a lot. And so it kind of puzzles me why you would present a product that's not quite finished. Right. And what do you have a theory as to why they do it? I, you know, to me, I think it's just not knowing any better. It's because Stern does that. So I feel like the rest of the companies just kind of fall in line and decide, well, if Stern does that, that's what we should do as well. And do you think that's that's why they do the live the live stream reveal so often is it's like, well, we see Stern do it and Stern's the big dog so we might eat the same kibble yeah that would be my guess which is which is kind of odd because even if that was true then it's kind of like i'm watching these other companies do what i feel like is stern's weakest uh point that they present a game and all these other companies are following suit in terms of doing the same thing and i i just think that there's a better way to utilize it in terms of you could still provide gameplay, but I don't think that that should be something that you lead with in a way that it's not controlled in order to present the gameplay in the best light to the end user, to the consumer. So given the importance of video that you stressed at the start of this segment, I take it you think that some sort of use of controlled pre-recorded video is the best way to actually do your initial reveal work and then you just incorporate a live stream at some stage in the rollout for the people that want to see a longer period, hands-on sort of experience.
    21:27
    Right. And I feel like, and we've talked about this before, and I feel like what, I think it was straight down the middle, did the Willy Wonka reveal? Yeah, they did the pre-recorded video. Well, and Buffalo Pinball did the live stream at a show. Exactly. And that video right now has close to 70,000 views. Oh, wow. YouTube. so that's it's obviously the gold tier standard on reveals and i always felt like whenever you're revealing a pinball machine yeah you should do a teaser trailer you know maybe not even showing you know any of the game's highlights or anything like that it's just like an extreme teaser but i've always felt too that these premiere dates that they're going to show these pins i feel like it should actually feel like an event because people are tuning in people do want to see it but you want to put your product in the best light possible.
    22:20
    And I feel like that Willy Wonka trailer or reveal is probably one of the best ones, if not the best one in the industry right now. I mean, that should be the standard for any company to follow at this point. I mean, look at what's happened.
    22:35
    Discluding, I guess there was Stranger Things where they released it the day of, but if we're talking how American Pinball did it compared to Jersey Jack, And granite Wonka was you know some time ago now, but the first time we got to see Hot Wheels was through grainy phone footage From just randomly put out from one of the events before everything closed down And that was the first impression people were getting of the car just spinning non I mean you go look at the comments on those videos That the majority of comments are talking about that mech and it in a negative light from the very get And that's something that could have easily been controlled, you know, through a proper reveal with it. Yeah, I fear I might have been one of those comments, maybe. Maybe. I guarantee you I was not one of those comments. Well, my comment wouldn't have been, I don't normally comment on videos, but in terms of on the video, literally. But I know I made a remark on a podcast for sure. I know we talked and we talked about it. So I remember talking about it. This was like the first thing we noticed. It's like, I didn't make a comment anywhere like that, but we definitely talked about it. We talked about it on the podcast. So I remember that specifically. Well, look at what Spooky did also. Like, keep in mind, Spooky sold out of Rick and Morty without even showing actual gameplay. Like it was controlled. You saw some of it through a promo video, but they didn't show just somebody just live streaming the game. That's true. And they sold all 750. So I feel like that there's a formula that people could follow in order to better promote their product to a consumer because pinball people, they want to see it anyways. You know what I mean? Like we all know when there's a new game coming out. we're aware of it but how is that going to be presented to us in a form that we want to actually purchase it or we want to actually go out and play it you know i mean one of the things about stranger things when it first came out what was the you know the big deal about it was that the mech it was so hard to hit that mech and you just saw brick after brick after brick and that was kind of that became a theme with it you know for the next month or so when that game first came out Yeah, that it actually that reminds me of it. I know you had hands on experience of this because I think I saw some video involving your play with it or or others, at least at the same event. But the experience with the the ramp shot on Raza. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Even that nightmares of Raza. I mean, that's man. I'm glad that they got Steve on that on that code. But man, that's just that that game in general. I hope they can save it. But yeah, that ramp was just I still have nightmares. And I've heard Robert Robert Mueller on or I read, I should say, in an interview with Twip that that has been that ramp has been addressed, but no one's seen it since that reveal. So it's you know, I still haven't seen the ramp, the new ramp that's supposed to be makeable by even a baby. That would be great because I definitely felt like a felt like a baby on that game, not hitting that ramp. now you you mentioned spooky in the rick and morty and i was kind of curious so do you think that spooky had a just this awesome planned rollout or did they luck into the fact that rick and morty just happened to be this huge thing and with only needing to sell 750 at all just this whole fear of missing out thing drove everything and they just kind of lucked into all those sales? Well, I think what people need to understand is that Spooky is that reveal was years in the making. I mean, Spooky, they've had a podcast that has 80, 90 plus episodes, I think. I've never listened to it, but I'm aware that they do have a podcast. It's one of the oldest podcasts. Okay, so perfect. So they've built up brand loyalty right there for an extended amount of time. And when you build up brand loyalty like that, and you get the right theme, and you present it the right way, I mean, it's dynamite. You're going to get a great selling game from the get-go, regardless of what other variables could be. You put those things together. I mean, that's really how you start cooking right there.
    26:56
    Back on the topic of the live streams, because obviously that's sort of what a lot of people really associate with game reveals within the pinball hobby.
    27:06
    The one thing that's always sort of puzzled me is that they all seem to outsource it. Yeah, yeah. And that's interesting in its own. Yeah, definitely. And I can understand maybe bringing in someone who is an expert at doing that sort of thing like Ajak Danger, but I don't think I have a single pinball manufacturer's YouTube page, Twitch page, any video page on social media bookmarked. And I sit here as someone who's commentated on this hobby for years, and I ask myself, as we talk about this in marketing, why do I not follow any of the manufacturers on their video? And when I went and looked before we did this episode, most of them don't have a lot. No, and so what's interesting about that is that I don't think a lot of people think of it in terms like this, but that essentially means that all of your major pinball manufacturers are outsourcing their premium content. So legally speaking, it could be different nowadays, but pretty much that means anything that Jack is going to or Deadflip is going to stream, he owns 100% of that content. so it's very unique that any gameplay reveals the manufacturer is offloading that completely to where they don't have access to that content anymore legally speaking and at the same time like any code updates that stern does the first reveals they don't have any of that content so it's kind of that's very unique that it gets outsourced to something that's not even associated it with their brand and then they they lose out on premium content now you know legally i that's how i think it works based on my past with it but it is 2020 it could have changed now but i was i was debating about this with somebody here just actually last night that's that's an interesting theory that say stern really wanted to you know stick it to american pinball what would stop them from if if Jack is on their payroll or whatever, what would stop them from saying, hey, we don't want the Hot Wheels gameplay reveal on YouTube. We don't want that content to stay up. What would stop them from requesting him to pull that?
    29:26
    I see. You know what I mean? Not saying not saying he would do it, but that's a scenario that could exist, especially if American Pinball doesn't own that content anymore. What would stop American Pinball from hiring Jack Danger? like pay them however much you know to come on full time and then they're like hey you know we don't want our competitors you know content to be up anymore and then all of a sudden there's a version of this in which all the gameplay reveals that stern has ever had or code updates they're not around anymore right no that's a that's interesting i hadn't really thought much about about that um and this is really stemming from the fact that so many of the manufacturers are all relying on the same person to do their live stream reveals and all the content, as far as I've ever seen, I, and I haven't paid as much attention to it as I probably should have for, for a discussion like this. But I believe he hosts all that content that he initially, like he's got the VODs. He's, I don't know if the thing is, even if he is willing to share them, the thing that was sticking out in my mind is none of them seem to be using them though. Like they, They'll put a Facebook post up and say they'll share a post that he did of the VOD and the initial announcement. But they don't ever seem to take the video content and do a lot more with it after it was filmed live. Does that make sense? No. Yeah. They essentially funnel potential customers away from their web pages, from their Facebook or from their Instagram or from any other social media, which is the exact opposite that you want to do. Whenever you're managing a brand or you're trying to get people to be into a product, you want the influencer to bring people to your social. That's what you want. You don't want to take people away from your social to other people's, to other parts of the Internet. Because then the potentiality of losing said consumer just goes up considerably then. I have a quick question. on the video game side of things there's been the big push lately where they do the big reveals and the big gameplay reveals at big events and then when they release things to streamers they will pick a day and they will release it to all of the streamers or they'll pick a half dozen or a dozen big main streamers to do it and is that a situation you think might work better here overall is that they do a big reveal like you were talking about pre-recorded, set up to be perfect on their streams, and then they set up places with machines for streamers to live stream. And they don't just pick one live streamer. They just set up for two or three of the live streamers and get it out there as far as they can spread out instead of just picking one target and putting it all on that person's channel and all on that person's background. No, Tony, you hit the nail on the head. And that's typically the way that the video game industry will do it. And if you notice, when they do reveal a game or whatever, they're typically going to reveal it either at a big event that has to do with either Sony or Microsoft or an Xbox event or PlayStation event. And then at the same time, they'll be revealing it on their own branding as well. And then it'll start to disseminate out to the content producers or the influencers of that. So, no, that's absolutely right. And that's why we kind of touched base on at the beginning, but we didn't go all the way with it. I still think there's like by no terms am I saying like you don't use dead flip at all. Like, I think you still utilize them. I just think it's being utilized incorrectly. And if I was putting out a game, somebody said, hey, Travis, how are you? How do you want us to present this game to people? I would tell them I would come at it with both pre-recorded content and a few minutes of actual gameplay. So I think that there's a way that you could take somebody like Jack Danger or Dead Flip. And at the very beginning, you say, look, we're we want you to come on to our platform as Jack Danger. Come on to our platform and help us present this game. Like use your influence on our platform to present this game. So followers of him that would watch anything that he would do, whether it's stand there or drink a beer or whatever, they would still come watch this. And so from there, you could have you could start it out and say, OK, premiere date is yada, yada, yada day at 9 p.m. And then you started out just hyping the game's highlights, kind of like a reveal like they did with Wonka. And then you can come out with an interview with the designer and the coder, like just short form, maybe like one or two minutes. and then afterwards you could show a few minutes of actual gameplay then like maybe three to eight minutes tops instead of doing a full hour's worth or having any lulls you're very precise with the content that you're presenting to the consumer and at the same time you're able to have calls to action to say here's when this product goes for sale call your distributor like you get people hyped up and so instead if you look at for instance how american pinball did it you know, none of us were really clear on, okay, when does this go on sale? Is this on sale now? Does this go on sale next week? You know, and I feel like if you can funnel people to a certain area and you say, this is when it's going on sale, that's when the feeding frenzy happens. And that's exactly what Spooky did with Rick and Morty. Everybody knew when it was going on sale. Everybody knew and they hit it. And what's amazing about it is, is that they showed the secret sauce And I feel like nobody is really paying attention to that in the industry. And there's something to that. And yeah, somebody could say, well, it's only 750 pins. That's a drop in the bucket compared to what Stern would do. But the fact is, is that they did it. They probably could have sold 1,500 Rick and Mortys that day legitimately.
    35:26
    So I just feel like that there's just a way that you can better utilize a content provider or influencer in that form. Because then afterwards, yeah, as soon as you get done with your premier event, You've driven traffic to your socials. You've built up your own brand. Now you can say, all right, you know, Jack, I want you, if you can go ahead and stream this game on your channel, like get the word out. Okay. Straight down the middle. You guys show an unboxing. Like that's where you start going out and webbing out your product to more people. I'm going to go in a little more on this influencing idea. I agree with what you just said, but for – I'm wondering now, though, how do we – part of the thing with – if pinball is to grow, we have to get it in front of people that aren't already familiar with pinball. And the thing about Straight Down the Middle and Deadflip, in my judgment, is those are known to pinball people. Correct. So I don't know how you, unless those influencers dramatically expand their own audience bases outside of the hobby, I think that it would seem to me that the easiest thing is to actually go to people that already have influence outside of pinball and use them as part of this campaign. Yeah, and I think that that would probably be the most intelligent thing to do. I mean, so some people might know somebody like a Mr. Beast on YouTube. I don't know if you guys have heard of him or not. Yeah, so he has 35 plus million subscribers on YouTube in general. So there's a world in which you could, if Stern decided that they wanted to use him, they could easily just tell Jack Danger, hey, we want you to represent us or whoever. It could be anybody and say, we want you to represent us. We're going to have Mr. Beast come to our facility and we're going to give him a pinball machine. And then you're going to have like, I don't know, eight people. Of course, you can't kind of do it nowadays, but in a COVID-free world, I would do this, where you have like eight people put their hands on the pinball machine and you let Mr. B shoot a whole video in which the person, the last person to leave wins that pinball machine. So what you've essentially achieved is a tremendous upside in ROI in the future, that you have evergreen content that's going to get millions of views on this guy's channel, but you're going to have references back to Stern Pinball, back to the facility. you're going to get pinball in front of people that don't even know pinball exists. I mean, I'm sure both you two have talked to other people about the pinball hobby, and a lot of times you'll hear people say, I didn't even know pinball was still around. That's common. Yes, that's a super common thing. Another really common one is if I'm somewhere and it comes up in some stream. You got to be subtle so you don't seem too nerdy about it, but it comes up that I have several pinball machines. What ends up really surprising them isn't that I own pinball machines, But if I mention that they're still made. Yeah. The vast majority of people that I come in contact with that are into gaming, they're into gaming, they're into pop culture. They have no idea pinball is even a thing. And it's funny. And that goes back into the marketing aspect of it, in which a lot of people don't realize this, but it's something astronomical. Like even on Facebook, 85% of people watch it with no sound. and I think somebody else did a survey in which they found 60 to 70 percent of all video content is consumed on the mobile without sound at all and so then it becomes into you know what's your branding and everything and it was funny because I had a bunch of I did a little experiment and I had a bunch of people that had no idea really what pinball was they so they don't know any manufacturers or anything like that and I showed them all the gameplay reveals like just snippets of it. And literally over 90% of them thought that dead flip was the manufacturer. They thought that was the pinball company. Oh yeah. The branding is more prominent. Yeah. Because they're watching with no sound. So how do they know if it doesn't say anything else and it just says dead flip on it, that's what they're going to assume. So that's something to keep in mind also. I mean, and that's not his fault at all. I mean, that's his content, how he's putting it out. That's squarely on the manufacturer saying, hey, if you're going to reveal our gameplay, here's how we want you to show our content. Here's how we want you to brand it. And I feel like that they missed the boat on that at times, especially if you're not taking that into consideration that a lot of people will watch and consume content without the sound even being on. So it's all visual then. Now, why do you think that none, at least to my knowledge, none of these pinball manufacturers have done anything with an outside influencer? Are they just cheap? They don't want to give away a machine? I mean, like, why has... Because it's... While we, you know, on the video game side, people often jokingly reference the influence of influencers and just how ever-present they are, but they are ever-present. And all these companies use the... I mean, this is done on a really, really broad level now, including giving away product or showcasing or doing special arrangements with people and letting them at least borrow something. So I'm curious why it doesn't seem pinball has made that jump. I mean, to my knowledge, they have. And I heard back like in the 90s, they used to do things like that. Yeah, I'm not quite sure why that isn't utilized now. I mean, it could be that maybe pinball is just still in the leather helmet era when it comes to that, since, you know, like we talked about earlier, A lot of their social media presence is just non-existent. I mean, anything outside Stern. Stern does really well with it, but they're also the biggest company there is. Right. They have someone on payroll who does social media for them. Right. Exactly. And so, I mean, that could be a reason as well. I mean, in terms of social media influence, and we got to qualify this also, that a lot of people, when they hear these terms, they sometimes get offended by it. Like we, you know, we don't need anybody telling us how to like we need to purchase this or anything like that. But, you know, I'm sorry, but our whole entire lives, whenever we're consuming any content, we've always been influenced by something, by some type of product placement, whether it's on a TV show, a movie commercials. You know, it's subtle. We may not realize it, but it happens in our everyday lives. So, you know, seeing this, I don't know the simple answer as to why they don't do that. But I would think that if these products legitimately cost between three to four thousand dollars to make or four to five thousand, however much it could be, you know, I would think that the potential return of just utilizing one of those built machines to get millions of eyeballs at least aware, even if these are people that won't buy your product. These are people in which they will retain the information that you're presenting to them to them and they will know it exists. and that's still a potential buyer in the future. That's somebody that could potentially go to an arcade and look for that. That's just people that become more aware of the existence of it. And the fact is, is that if people become more aware of something that exists, that means that the consumer base will grow. And if you don't grow your consumer base, then like we talked about before, you could produce the best pinball machines in the world, but if only 10 people are around to buy it, then what does it matter? You need to grow the consumer base as much as possible, especially with as many manufacturers that are wanting to come in. They all can't eat from the same pie.
    43:01
    Well, they seem to be trying to. Yeah, which is crazy. Because Stern will win that. Ten times out of ten, Stern will win that. You can't release a pin once every two years and go against Stern that's released five or six pins during that time, with all major themes as well. It just doesn't work. So we've mostly focused on Stern, obviously, in these discussions and American Pinball because of their recent Hot Wheels release. And you brought up the Rick and Morty and the success Spooky saw with that. I was sort of curious about if you had thoughts on any of the – again, we already have noted that most of the manufacturers seem to be just sort of to varying degrees cloning the Stern model as it stands today with various degrees of success. I wondered if you wanted to touch on any of the other manufacturers and what they've done. And I'm kind of thinking about specifically right now Deep Root because they don't have a product out yet. So should they be doing anything different than they are right now, in your opinion? Or are they right to kind of stay as quiet as they have been? No, they should 100% be actually trying to get noticed. Oh, yeah. I mean, and here's why. It's OK. So a big part of video marketing is just or any marketing in general or branding in general is documenting your process, documenting from behind the scenes, you know, explaining what's going on, interviewing people. That's a big part of it, because, again, we talk about brand loyalty. People have to trust your brand before you try to sell them any type of product. They have to trust that you have their best interest in mind. So if you're completely radio silent on that, it's I mean, you're still going to have some hype, but you're going to miss out on a lot of potential hype leading up to it. So there's a different version of this with Deep Root in which, you know, everything that Roberts talked about in terms of what they plan on producing and everything. If you actually go to their website, they they don't have and this is on their front page. I'm looking at right now. They don't have any links to any social at all on there. And it legitimately says, for more information, please see our past interviews on Twip or Canada's Pinball Podcast. So they're literally outsourcing that immediately to other places. They're not like, I don't understand why you would necessarily do that. Whereas in a different world, they might have been showing just it doesn't have to be like well-produced videos that are five minutes. It could be a 30 second behind the scenes showing something being done, whether it's it's not even something that's being produced right now. It could be a designer on a computer designing something. It could be half of a blurry photo of some type of mech that they've created. I mean, there's all these things that they could do to grab attention and to keep attention, because the fact is, if you're out of sight, you're out of mind. And that's something that I think that they're missing the boat on. I mean if they would have been doing all this more and more and more they would still be very relevant to the conversation today And they can still get back in it I just feel like they just missed out on a lot by not utilizing those tactics Thoughts on multimorphic and the P3? I think that's always a really interesting one to me because the P3 in and of itself is a platform. So you've got this sort of – the machine part is this long tail, And then on occasion, there are these modules that come out at lower price points that enhance your gaming experience by actually introducing new games.
    46:39
    And I'm not as aware of exactly what they like. More recently, I've noticed that Multimorphic has relied on they have started to do some live streams of things like their Cosmic Kart Racing multiplayer. Now that they've rolled that out, they did have a video. They didn't do the live stream thing. They did the kind of the teaser video for Heist when they had announced Heist. And other than that, I was I mostly only been familiar with them having a really strong presence at the Texas Pinball Festival. And that's about all that I know that they've done. It's one worth talking about because they're they're one of the companies that actually has has newer games available in 2020 that are actually produced. Right. And it's, you know, again, the theme of this is marketing and marketing your brand. it establishes relevance with the consumer. So even then, do we, and this is kind of drawing back from the broad, to a broad perspective as well, while still focusing on Multimorphic.
    47:40
    Do, outside of Stern, are we aware of any of these companies really utilizing YouTube, for instance, at all? Are any of you guys aware of that? Now, I know Multimorphic has used YouTube, but very sparingly, because we actually had, this was years ago, we had Jerry on this podcast and he referred me to their YouTube channel to show us how the anti-cheat protocols worked on the game. But there weren't very many videos that I remember. Right. And that kind of ties back into it that, and this is why I would recommend people to stay away from live streaming, at least on Twitch as a platform, because the three major purchase drivers for the platforms is YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Those are the three top ones. And YouTube in general, it's the second largest search engine behind Google for the world. There's billions of people who utilize YouTube. And so even looking at, we'll take Multimorphic, for instance. If we're really looking at what they're doing in scope, right now their official YouTube channel has 124 subscribers. Yeah, let's think about that. This channel's been around for nearly five years, and they're trying to sell games or they're trying to sell a platform.
    48:55
    And obviously they go to shows, but it costs money to go to shows. YouTube content, you could put stuff up that shouldn't cost anything outside of the equipment that you're using, the time that you're using. So this is a big discoverability platform in which they legitimately only have 124 subscribers total. 31 videos used in their lifetime, 25,000 total views in their lifetime. And we just talked earlier, the Willy Wonka Rebill, which isn't even on the Jersey Jack YouTube channel, has close to 70,000 views already. Do you know what is Jersey Jack's most popular self-hosted video? Because I didn't remember if the 70,000 video was ultimately put on their page or if that was a straight down. I knew straight down the middle filmed it. I couldn't remember if they had hosted it or not. Apparently they did. Straight down did. Yeah, their most popular video. I would imagine that it's probably going to be off the look it up real quick. I imagine it's probably either going to be a reveal or behind the scenes, because I guarantee if you go to any of their anybody's YouTube channel that is a pinball manufacturer or even a pinball content creator, it's all reveals or trailers. Those are the things that get people's attention. so it's yeah so seven looks like seven years ago they have a video that has 98 000 views with wizard of oz and then their next one is from three years ago 26 000 views on a official promo trailer for dialed in so that's that that's the top ones do they have do they have a lot of followers they have right at 2000 i think or yeah 1900 subscribers so again i mean i feel like i i honestly feel like that these companies could be getting a lot more if they put a lot more into their YouTube or Facebook. I mean, they could be doing much better. And so just just skipping back to P3, I mean, it's think about it. That's a product that not too many people understand because you don't see it out too often. So how do you make people understand? Well, you provide video content that makes them understand. You provide graphical information that makes them understand and that's just that's just things that haven't been utilized at all up to this point okay because within the and i know you've heard this before travis uh that we've discussed this off off this podcast uh prior that it within the hobby of pinball sometimes the narrative is if you want to sell more games and get more people in you just have to make the games better yeah and that's i mean again like let's let's try to let's just kind of think of what that means exactly right okay so let's say tony for instance is the greatest painter in the history of painting right he's probably over there well you should you should see his warhammer figurines war machine figurines thank you very much i haven't started painting my warhammer stuff yet now i just look like i made stuff up because i did so let's just say he's the greatest artist in the world right now, right? And let's say today he puts it up for sale. Well, outside of anybody that listens to this podcast, who knows about the world's greatest paintings?
    52:11
    Like you have to be able to disseminate that content. You're only going to sell, your product's only going to sell as much as the awareness allows for it. And it could be the best product ever. It could be a top tier game made. Like it's, but it doesn't matter if your consumer base is not there. That's why I've always been curious when people say, well, more people will buy things if the machines are just built better or if the themes are better or anything like that, which is true, but it's just true based on who is your current base right now that would buy games. All you're saying is that I would maximize the customer base currently available. And what I'm getting at is in order to grow your product or your business, you have to extend your customer base beyond that scope. And that's the only way. And that's the only way that these smaller companies will even compete with Stern. Because right now, they're competing in Stern's own playground. And you're not going to come onto the playground as the first grader and beating the fifth graders at Tetherball. It's not going to happen. And that's basically what they're all trying to do. Just a quick thought. When we were talking about finding other ways to spread out other influencers, what kind of influencer do you think would be the best target for them to use? Would it be a more gaming-based influencer or with like P3 with all the technology, would they be better off targeting like a tech influencer as the kind of target to use? Right. And that's a good question. And I would say that ultimately depends on what their goal is. Is their goal brand awareness? Is their goal sales? Is their goal to drive their social media up higher so that way it makes their discovery easier for future potential customers? I mean, there's lots of variables at play here that it doesn't necessarily have to be make a sell today. It could be we're doing the things necessary to build up our business today so we can make the sell tomorrow or the next month. I mean, that's really if you're building a brand and you're building a product line, that's, I mean, ultimately you want to sell it. But you have to gain the trust of people in order to sell it. So in terms of who to put it in front of, I would say it ultimately just depends on what your goals are at that time. If your goal is to get people, your demographic more involved, then you've got to really examine what is your buyer base. And I know that this day and age with 2020, there's been a push to include more minorities into pinball, for instance. And so these are things that I feel like a lot of these manufacturers need to consider when they're reaching out to different people is who is going to be their priority in terms of customer in the future. And that's the type of people they want to gain the trust of. And I mean, you're right with P3 that it could be tech based. It could be going in front of a big or inviting a huge tech person on YouTube or a huge tech influencer and just simply having them just play the pen and come check it out and come look at it. You know, and it's and again, you're you're measuring this ROI, not necessarily by what's happening today, but what's going to happen in the long term. And that's that's what you need to do. You need to be very fast in your short term, in your day to day, but you've got to be slow in terms of your long term and where are you going to be a month from now, a year from now, five years from now. And it's I feel like whenever we're looking and examining how these companies have approached social and how they've approached their marketing in general, how they've approached the reveals, I don't see necessarily that people are focusing for the future. But the one company I've noticed that is starting to do that is Jersey Jack. If you notice, especially based off the podcast, the way that their owner spoke up, it really seems like that they're trying to go that direction and changing it up a little bit. And if they're successful in that, they're going to have a very strong hold on the number two slot. And they're going to definitely create a lot of ground between them and number three and number four. And they're going to gain ground on Stern at the same time. What do you think, Tony? What's something that you think could do better? If somebody was wanting to convince you to buy a particular machine outside of the theme, what could they do that's better? I think, like you were saying, that the obvious targets need to be, they need to build the brand awareness more. It needs to be, when you think about pinball, you're not thinking about an individual machine. You need to be thinking about the company because that gives them the long-range push. And that's why I was asking about, like, because of the cost of new pinballs, the difference between targeting, like, some of the gaming tubers I watch and stuff like that versus some of the tech-based stuff. You're talking about people with a very different return and what they consider something being expensive and something that's not being expensive. Because when you're talking about somebody who they're looking at, okay, well, here's all the new stuff in the new Tesla, and here's all the new stuff in this $5,000 camera, and this compared to someone who's like, well, I got this game for five bucks, let's see how good it is. I think that's the type of targeting and how you need to aim. And like you said, they really need to get outside of their box that they're currently locked in because it's just not there. There's just not enough people outside the hobby who are already there who stumbled in who care. Yeah, that's a big part of it. Essentially, what you're trying to do is you're trying to gain new followers of your brand. You're not necessarily trying to convert them from day one to consumers of your product, but you want them to be fans of your brand. And then you can start working on your your value to them and why they should buy a product from you. And that's where I think live streaming can come into play. If if these companies utilize Facebook live streaming to connect with their audience, I think that that would pay off dividends. I mean, you can you could even look on Stern's Facebook page. A lot of their videos that are some of their biggest videos are just showing like games on the production line, just, you know, backstage type stuff. And that's easy ways that you can connect with your audience. So it's like, why doesn't Jersey Jack do that? Or why doesn't American Pinball do something like that? Or even Deep Root, you know, anybody, you know, I just think that that's an easy way that they could be connecting with people in general. But instead, you know, you find that they don't necessarily do that near as much as they possibly could. Well, maybe they I mean, what I've always assumed is they just they haven't had anyone on staff with any expertise in it, though. Maybe that's changing. So, I mean, obviously, Jersey Jack has just brought in a communications specialist. Stern, we know, has had marketing people for years. which would explain why they do things a little differently, I would suppose. But I mean, that's always just been my assumption is that it's not been prioritized, that the sales side of it is maybe just because so many people come from being in the industry beforehand, I say with a question mark, because it seems like we're getting new blood in. But, you know, in the old way, it was all distributors and going out to operators and you didn't market to consumers. So I understood why the old guard never thought about it. Yeah, and I feel like Stern, they can get away with a lot of things because people are like the pinball community is aware of Stern. They've had the biggest reach and they can sometimes they can transcend the hobby in general just based off the press releases that they provide to. Like, I'm sure if you if you look at their stuff, I can almost guarantee I don't have it in front of me. But, you know, Stranger Things and Jurassic Park probably have some of the biggest views on any of their social stuff. so I just feel like that a lot of other companies need to take note of that and if they're not going to put out press releases the way that they get their brand notice is they do have to go outside of the box they do have to try to reach a consumer base that isn't aware of pinball even existing and just simply make them fans of pinball and then eventually you can get to them potentially you purchasing your product or something like that. It's the same way. If we go back and look at American Pinball, I took a look at their Instagram, and I think they had something like eight or nine posts all year long for this year, which is insane. That's like EGP. Well, think about this. That's kind of crazy. That's a little over one post per month, And that's the third biggest platform for consumers to view. And they're only posting basically a little over one time a month on a year that they're releasing a new game and their first license game. Exactly. And that's that's also a year in which, you know, we've had the lockdowns where people are consuming content like never before. Like it's gone through the roof. The amount of people that are watching mobile video or any type of video online has just skyrocketed this past year. So any company that hasn't utilized Instagram, just putting out, you know, five like like any social media, putting out anywhere between 10 to 15 pieces of content a day. If you're not doing that, you're you're losing automatically every day that you let go by. that's just another day that your main opponent such as Stern or whoever else it could be around you that's where they're getting further away from you because right now we're in the cycle that yeah we're all excited about Ninja Turtles and everything and we're getting ready for potentially Guns and Roses from Jersey Jack but by this fall there will be another Stern pinball machine coming out so how is American Pinball they're not going to be releasing another pinball machine this year and we don't even know of any for next year. So how are they going to execute and get as many sales as possible for Hot Wheels? You're not going to do that by only posting three to six times a week on Facebook. You're not going to do that by only putting out three to five videos a year on Facebook. I think last time I checked, they have on their Facebook page maybe 16 or 18 videos in total for the history of their pay. And so these are things that consumers and fans want to they want to consume they want to consume the video and i know that because these companies do use live stream reveals they they kind of understand that but why stop there you need to do all the work before that live stream reveal in order to build up that trust in order to just build up your base would you recommend uh with the need for that Instead of just going with the normal style of marketing hires, them actually picking up one or two people that are completely focused just on social media, just pure social media people. I mean, case in point, I work for a government and we have in our communications division, we have a couple people that all they do is maintain the government's social media. their Facebooks, their Instagrams all that stuff for their connectivity and that's their pure job is maintaining just the social media and the discussion and contacting with the people who live within the government's area so is that a targeted hire that might be a good starting place for some of these companies to pick up someone who, they're not the normal marketing person, all they concentrate on is social media and they're people who that's their primary background is social media. Oh, 100%. I mean, it's a no-brainer because once you consider it, even when we were bringing products to market, our thing was that we always needed to find the right people to run social and the right people to get our message across to why people need to buy this product, why they need to care. And there's many ways that you can do that, whether it's through documenting the process, whether it's like if it's pinball, they should have a rule set video every single time. They should have a how to set up your pinball machine. They should. I mean, this is all content that they should have. And so just like you're talking about now. Yeah, you should absolutely have people running your social 24 seven because they're going to get across to the world. What is your brand all about? And those types of people, they should also be, they should be replying to everybody that's on their social too. Like if somebody says like, Hey, that looks like a kick-ass pinball machine. Even if it's just a comment, they should be commenting back, you know, like, hell yeah, it is. We're excited about it. I mean, that's times that you could push your brand even more and you can show that you care about the consumer as well. I mean, if you go onto any video put out by any of these, any of these manufacturers, if there's like, even on Instagram or something like that, If there's a ton of comments below and they haven't commented or replied to every single comment, they are missing out because that type of engagement can make a loyal user for life or a loyal somebody loyal to that brand. And so that's that's just a lot of ways that they're missing. But, yeah, 100 percent. I mean, every company should have a full time social media person full time and it'll pay dividends. I mean, they'll find the numbers through various surveys throughout the industry or any industry in general. There's nobody that says, yeah, I have social media people or, yeah, I have video marketing people and my sales went down. Like that just doesn't happen because people have to know about your product in order to buy the product. And there's only so far reach you can have if you're not utilizing those tactics because everybody uses social. Nearly everybody does. Except me. Except you. but keep in mind though podcasts are a form of social too that's a form of social too so they understand like they they go onto these various podcasts doing interviews and everything so they understand what should be done i just feel like they're just not going all the way with it you know like we don't we could go on jersey jack right now and it might be buried somewhere in there i know it's not on p3 i didn't see it on american pinball i don't know it might be on Stern, but Stern kind of understands this with their lifestyle brand thing and all that. But we don't have any central videos or anything centrally located for these other companies that really explains to us what's their company culture. What do they believe in? What do they stand for? We don't know these things. And there's people that know their products and everything. They're scoffing at this right now. Like, well, what does that even mean? But it means something a lot to somebody that doesn't understand their product, that doesn't know these things. And those are the people that you're trying to reach. Those are the people that you're trying to get across what your message is. And I feel like a lot of them, they don't, for whatever reason, there's not an effort made at doing that. And I don't know why that is. I don't know if it's just from just not knowing that that's the best way to go about it. I don't know if it's just like somebody mentioned earlier, just the old guard that things were done a certain way in the 90s before the internet. So that's just kind of how it's still done today. I mean, I don't know. But whatever company starts doing these things, these tactics, I guarantee it'll work.
    68:00
    It'll blow up for them for sure. So we just have to see if they are all listening to us right now. Well, not right now, but once this is edited, at least now. And then they'll be like, oh, what great ideas. And then they do it or not. Or they just criticize the critiques. But I think it was a good meaty discussion. So I thank you very much, Travis, for coming on and helping us have it. Yeah, well, no problem. And I was going to say, I think we'll go ahead and pivot over to video games now. We do actually have some news in video games. Tony, do you want to go ahead and lead us off? Yeah, and surprisingly for once, a lot of this stuff in video games is going to tie into what we've been talking about because most of the news is live streaming based. There's been a lot of upheaval lately In the streaming world What should not be a surprise to anybody Is Mixer is gone Microsoft announced that they are going to Shut it down And they are going to partner with Facebook And transition the users who want to Onto Facebook Gaming Don think that really a surprise I never watched anything on Mixer I don know if either of you two have ever spent any time on Mixer I've never watched anything on Mixer. But it had generally, the people who watched it and people who used it seemed to like it. And they had their big score last year where they stole Shroud and Ninja off of Twitch with huge, huge multi-million dollar deals for exclusivity. And now they're shutting down. I do have a link in the show notes to an article that is by GameSpot talking about the Mixer shutdown.
    69:48
    In a way, in terms of what my initial thoughts would be, I'm both surprised and not surprised. I'm only surprised because Microsoft was paying out some really big exclusive contract amounts. And I've heard that those contracts are all have been or will be fully funded for everyone, even though they are now free to go and stream with whomever they choose. So just given the dollar investments, it seems like those weren't very old. So that it's like it seems a bit sudden. But on the flip side, when I saw what their year on year growth was for Mixer, I am not surprised. What's really interesting about it all, I think the big winner coming out of this is going to be Facebook gaming. and for reasons that we were talking about earlier with Pinball. I feel like, especially even on YouTube too, the discovery on there is so much easier from people that I know that do stream on those platforms. They have a lot easier time gaining a foothold and gaining viewers on those channels compared to Twitch. I have found myself watching a lot more YouTube gaming than I used to. I'm pretty much, I'd say 50-50 split on my streaming between Twitch and YouTube at this point. Do you not think that, I mean, Facebook's kind of going through some criticism as part of the current cultural debates that are happening. Do you think that that suppresses on some of the streamers desire to move to Facebook versus going back to Twitch? Because most of them probably came over from Twitch. I think it's a possibility, especially as we'll talk about coming up next with some of the issues Twitch has been having lately as well. that kind of thing is a pretty big deal with a lot of the streamers and it could have a effect on where they decide to go and what they finally how they finally decide to shake everything out yeah the the i and and maybe i mean again we we're looking at current events and not knowing exactly say six months out how some of these companies will end up having dealt with the fallout if they were successful or not i think the main thing though that i where i do agree with travis about Facebook is their gaming sections video growth rate, it has not been bad like Mixer. They have been year on year end growth has been excellent for Facebook. So even though it's a much smaller video streaming site versus Twitch, they're at least seeing the numbers go up. What was Mixer's last year increase? Like 0.2% growth? 0.2%. I mean, that's just like, guys. And that's the part where I'm like, yeah, you definitely should just stop dumping money into this because it's not working for you. I wonder how much growth they expected to get out of the the Ninja and Shroud exclusivity and how much they actually did instead. My first thought would be a lot.
    72:41
    And my second thought would be not what they anticipate. From my understanding, their exclusive arrangement folks had good numbers, but those numbers never matriculated over to other mixer streamers. So it's like they would go to watch Ninja and then they go back to Twitch to watch whoever else they liked when he wasn't streaming. Yeah, they didn't really have. They lost. How much of their audience did they lose when they went over the mixer? It was a considerable amount, wasn't it? Yeah, no, it was. I mean, double digit percentages. Yeah, there's even a viral video out of the big streamers on Twitch. because a lot of them will co-stream on Call of Duty and stuff like that. And there's a video out of all them just giving Ninja a bunch of crap for being over on Mixer. It's just him getting pissed off. So I imagine it's got a wear on you as a content creator too. Like even though you can sleep well at night with all that money, it's got a wear on you that you watch basically nearly your whole audience just disappear overnight just from switching platforms like that. Yeah, but money makes good insulation to warm. Yeah, that's valid. Yeah, I fully expect he'll go back to Twitch. I think most of the – last I read, only one of the Mixer-exclusive contract folks had said they were going to Facebook for sure. Most of the others weren't going to commit yet. But do you think Ninja would go back to Twitch considering what Twitch did right after he made the changeover? when they took his page and used it as a launch for everything else. And they even had porn on his page. I still think I still lean towards him going back to Twitch because if no one else can offer him an exclusive contract, he might as well go where his followers are still probably following the channel. But yeah, that's why I can't say, oh, he's definitely going to go back because I think he is salty with how Twitch treated his channel after he left. I would think his best bet would probably go to YouTube. Shroud should come back to Twitch because he's the best FPS gamer in the world. But I think Ninja, he would do really well on YouTube because he still has a presence on there. I think he has nearly 24 million subscribers on there alone. So imagine him going live on that. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if he doesn't end up over there. That's a good point. I really hadn't considered YouTube. And that's the thing is YouTube gaming is picking up But a lot of people don't think about it They think about YouTube as Being just recorded videos YouTube's always no that's where you Export the VOD and that's just what I think of I know because I know A couple of the streamers That I watch Are still they're small Enough that they don't have any Exclusivity or any of that stuff they're still Playing the games where they'll be simultaneously Casting to Twitch and YouTube and in almost every one of those cases uh i tend to watch their streams on youtube because the quality is better yeah is that because they're not part i assume they're not partnered on twitch they're not partnered they're not partnered on twitch yeah no the the the two i'm thinking of specifically aren't that big they're not part and they're very niche uh they're not partnered on twitch some of us are only affiliates travis i got in when the going was good a few years ago I mean, that goes into it, though, that, you know, there's been a shift, especially just the past two or three years, that realistically, as content creators, your best way to even build up on Twitch is to have a YouTube presence because your discovery is huge on YouTube. Whereas Twitch, that's just more or less for connecting with your audience that already knows about you. And so that kind of comes back to pinball. Why you wouldn't want to do reveal streaming over there is just because Twitch, the discovery is so low on there. So I could see a lot of the value. I think YouTube in general will catch up to Twitch in due time with just live streaming. I mean, it's I don't when you have it all there, you know, because Twitch, they try to do the VODs. Right. And then it just turned into everybody having to delete their VODs pretty much because of the DMCA and all that. So I think YouTube has a has an extreme advantage in terms of searchability, discovery and how they're how they utilize those videos. So I'll be interested to see how they end up moving forward with live streaming. I think with Mixer gone, I think you're really going to see Facebook and YouTube both take off more and catch up with Twitch for the most part. I mean, it might take a couple of years, but it wouldn't surprise me if Twitch is no longer the top ones anymore. Oh, wow. Well, you could. Huge market change. Well, think about it this way. You could tell Twitch is going away from games. I mean, their main content is the real life or what do they call that? Just chatting. Oh, yeah. Just chatting. Last night, when I logged on last night to Twitch to go watch some Satisfactory, the biggest thing going was it was just chatting. And it was rapidly followed by their music one and the art where people just paint. Those were like some of the biggest things being watched. Yeah. Which goes in goes in case. Can you imagine if Stern has their own Twitch channel in which on art they show Zombie Eddie doing his artwork for a future project? Nope, I can't imagine it. I would like to imagine it, but.
    78:12
    That's an example right there, missing out or just doing music, somebody just doing the sound. Jerry sitting there mixing up some turtle tracks. I'm telling you people would watch it. I I sat there the other day. I found myself Enamored by somebody that was doing a live music thing djing In their living room. I didn't even like the music. I just liked all the lights and everything that was going on I I sat there 10 minutes later. I'm like i'm still watching this right now What is going on with my life, but you get you get attached to it though pretty quick Some of it just gets your attention. So it's kind of funny how it's moving It's going back to the Justin TV days to where gaming is kind of going away from their main source of viewership and everything.
    78:59
    Well, Tony, is there more streaming news? There is more streaming news, which is more of this one to do with Twitch. Twitch had a blackout Twitch going on as a protest to how they were handling some sexual harassment allegations or the way they were not handling them and just ignoring them. And it was enough that Twitch did make a very generalized blanket statement about taking things seriously, which didn't surprise me. What surprised me is they actually followed that statement up within a few days by announcing that they have prioritized the most severe cases and are going to be issuing permanent bans following investigations. and from some of the numbers I've seen, while none of the major streamers who had been commented on or part of the allegations had had anything done yet, there had been a fairly large number of mid to low tier streamers who had received permanent bans, who had been on some of the lists.
    80:09
    Yeah, and I do have a link for the listeners in the show notes to an article Polygon has about the bannings if you want to read more about that. And I do think it names some of them that have been permanently banned. So, yeah. So I guess the I didn't know if the blackout date, which was earlier this last week, if it had a lot of participants or not. But clearly Twitch is conveying that they're listening at this stage. Yeah, they're definitely at least paying attention with the way things have been going in the world lately. it's not really a surprise to me that they're taking things much more seriously than they might have, say, two years ago. And then in also Twitch news that I don't think is related, but I can't say for sure, one of Twitch's biggest streamers, DrDisRespect, has been supposedly permanently banned. He's at least banned for some duration. Yeah, he's at least banned for some duration. He was banned two years ago for two weeks for filming in a bathroom at E3. Oh, I remember hearing about that. Yeah. And he got a two-week ban for that.
    81:23
    But on this one, the only announcements Twitch has made is that they take action where they have evidence a streamer has acted in violation of their community guidelines.
    81:33
    And that's it. But what's interesting is they just signed a major multi-year deal with him in March worth millions of dollars per year. Yeah, so this has got to be something big. It's not like, oh, yeah, I walked into another bathroom and filmed. I think it's got to be much more significant, either related to his contract or, again, we don't have any sense. There's nothing that I've seen, and I do have a link to another article also with Polygon about this topic, specifically with Dr. Disrespect. I've not seen anything that has suggested that it has to do with sexual abuse or harassment or any allegations thereof. I haven't seen anything like that. So this timing may just be coincidence. But, I mean, compared to all the names in those accusations that have gotten permanent bans, he is far and away the biggest name to have been announced with a ban in the current climate. Correct. Well, how many followers on Twitch does he have? like four and a half million i think yeah it was a pretty good size number um let me see yeah four million followers is what polygon said in their article thousand subscribers i think somewhere around something just crazy yeah it's uh his uh his twitch account's over four million and then his twitter account is 1.5 million and his youtube account's 1.6 yeah and he just signed a big deal with PepsiCo, too, just about a month ago for, I think it was Game Fuel or G Fuel or whatever. G Fuel, they're the sponsors of the New York City Pinball Championships. I know, and they didn't give any of those seven figures to that place either.
    83:12
    Disappoints me. Yep, fail. Levy needs to work a little harder on that. The other big news and is happier news, EA did their EA Play 2020 to let us know what EA has going on this year since there was no E3 due to the Corona shutdowns. And as we are surprised to absolutely nobody, there's going to be more mad than FIFA. Yay!
    83:44
    I, you know, I don't, I, overall, can I just say that I actually thought this was actually a fairly boring presentation. Incredibly boring. There was one interesting thing in this entire... The only thing interesting in this entire presentation to me was Star Wars Squadrons, and it's because I'm a fanboy.
    84:05
    It's the only thing that interested me. I want to get my Wing Commander on. That was the only highlight for me. I played X-Wing and Tie Fighter, and X-Wing versus Tie Fighter and Alliance. Those were my games. Those and, like you said, Wing Commander. I was a flight sim guy back then and I played the crud out of those games and I'm super excited looking at everything I've seen for Squadrons I'm a little worried about the multiplayer because it's EA and the multiplayer stuff from what I've seen just kind of screams hey eSport me eSport me but we'll have to see but anyway are they going to do the loot boxes again like they did for Battlefront 2 Your loot crate? Is that what it is? I don't know. I hope they've learned their lesson.
    84:57
    I'd have to double check. My understanding is probably not. And the reason is this game's actually coming out at a $40 price point. And I had heard, though I do not have a source that I'm linking to or citing, so I don't remember where I heard it, that supposedly someone at EA had conveyed this is not going to be a living game. This game is going to come out. There will be no DLC. There will be no added multiplayer maps. It'll just be what it is. So you either like it or you don't. And one of the things that was noted that I heard on another on a video game podcast I listened to, they were talking about this game and they were actually quite concerned because it didn't mention anything about the PS5 or the Series X or any enhancements. And I think maybe that's where some of this is coming from is that this is a current gen release that's just really late in the life cycle. It probably, given the price point, could have been a free-to-play game. They went ahead and decided they were going to add a price tag to it probably because it's got a campaign. And it is what it is. So hopefully it's polished, but don't expect any enhancements. It's not going to be like Battlefront where they kept adding more and more. That's where I currently do my flight combat, is I play Battlefront 2 and just load up Starfighter Assault and play that. Well, hopefully this will be better than Starfighter Assault. But I'm trying to think... Do you want to be a Y-Wing or another type of Y-Wing? Why don't you shut up and fly your Y-Wing? I'm trying to think, how much longer did they have the Star Wars license? I believe until either 2021 or 2020. That's what I was thinking. I thought we were within a couple years of the end of the license.
    86:39
    Do you think they're just rushing this out because of that then? I don't think it's rushed, but I think maybe it may have started as a more ambitious project, and they decided to wrap it up and get something out of it.
    86:50
    Like, was it going to be a... Like, this has a campaign, and that's what's getting a lot of X-Wing versus TIE Fighter people excited. but I'm not sure it's actually going to be that long of a campaign. I doubt it's going to be. I know they had a really good, when Fallen Order came out, they had a lot of good buzz. And quite frankly, they haven't had a lot of good buzz when it's come to their Star Wars games. And a lot of the Star Wars games they put out or the ones that were under development that people were most interested in were all scrapped. Mm hmm. Yeah, no, the the and Travis, you may be aware of this, but but if not, the rumor mill for years now has run rampant that Disney is not happy with how EA has managed this property and that the likelihood of EA getting the contract again is low. Oh, yeah, I think it was what they signed with him, like a 10 year deal. It was a 10 year. And that's where I can't remember if they started in 2012 or 2011. But I don't blame them. I wasn't happy either. First day I played Battlefront two and everybody was just murking me left and right. and I just thought I was really bad at it. And I was, but everybody had the loot boxes.
    87:59
    New crate! And they changed that now. I think the crates are just cosmetic. As of when I got the game, a friend of mine got a free copy when he bought something else, and so he gave me his code. And it's like, yeah, I mean, I like dice games, so it kind of falls under that for me. But yeah, when they do certain, they do certain events all the time. So they put on hero mode where the moment you get 50 battle points, you can unlock the Emperor. It's just like, oh my God, this has just gotten stupid.
    88:29
    It's 2023. It went active in 13. It was a 10-year deal. It went active in 13. Maybe we'll get Battlefront 3 out of it then. Oh, I bet. That's like the one thing that they keep spitting out on time are the Battlefronts. It's because they have dice in their live-die-repeat mode. So, yeah, and I have heard I thought there was either some more contents or a sequel to Fallen Order being looked at that they could probably get out by then if they're already working on it. Because Fallen Order was a really well-received game.
    89:07
    But yes, yeah, we'll just have to see what happens. Yeah, but yeah, I agree with you, Tony. That was the only interesting announcement with squadrons at the whole EA play. Did they announce any Sims 4 stuff again? No. They had some Sims. They had an image of Sims, but I thought maybe it was just that it was on Switch. Yeah. It wasn't any of the thing that you would consider a huge, huge news.
    89:33
    Some people said that they were excited about some Skate game coming out. Yeah, Skate 4, except for it's not called Skate 4. Oh, is it? I mean, they didn't show it. They didn't show it. Two dudes sitting there talking about thrashing their boards. That's it. That was the entirety of the announcement, but it's basically being taken as a sequel to the Escape Games, which does nothing for me. Right. And, yeah, I did see on the after and coverage the cross-play for Apex and that Apex Legends coming to Switch. But as Apex Legends, didn't everyone go back to Fortnite? Yeah, it didn't. it had a really strong start and then everyone went back to other games and now the question is going to be when once it goes fully active will it be valorent that takes the next big step up uh of that style again yeah i don't know a lot of the a lot of the people that were streaming it all the time during the early beta access uh have stepped away from valorant so i don't know I don't know if that game really is going to have legs or not. It's not fun to play at all. I tried to figure it out because I thought it might be like CSGO, and it just felt like the little brother to it. It just wasn't fun. Yeah, I mean, that's been the most common comparison when it first came out in beta was I was hearing people say, well, it was mostly CSGO with a little bit of Overwatch blended in. And a lot of Overwatch people had jumped ship. I don't see, of the ones I follow, I saw one stream. And I think it was Goldenboy, Tony. So who's known for commentary and he also is more of a mixed streamer anyway, uh, who is still playing it. Everyone else had either gone back to overwatch or we're just playing some other non-related shooter. Well, I think we got through everything. We got through our video game news. We've, we solved all the marketing questions that exist in pinball. I'm sure Travis will be getting a check in the mail.
    91:33
    A lot of hate mail. So, uh, for those that want to reach out to the show, uh, You can always email us, eclecticgamerspodcast at gmail.com. We're also available on facebook.com slash eclecticgamerspodcast. We're available on Instagram, Twitch, and Twitter as eclectic underscore gamers. Travis, I don't know if you want people to reach out to you. If so, you can say how. If not, you can tell them to leave you alone. Either is fine. No, you guys can find me over at Twitch at Marv or on YouTube at Marv Loco. Well, that's it for us. So Tony and I will be back in about two weeks. And until then, everyone have a great week. See you.