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Ep 5: Way Better Than The Last One

Final Round Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 43m·held·Jun 26, 2020
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Ed Robertson discusses competitive pinball, tournament formats, and making pinball spectating accessible.

Summary

Final Round Pinball Podcast Episode 5 features Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies discussing his passion for competitive pinball, tournament formats, and the challenges of making pinball spectating accessible to casual viewers. The episode also covers COVID-19 impacts on the pinball community, tournament streaming, and Ed's recent charity pinball competition experience at the Stern Pro Circuit.

Key Claims

  • Ed Robertson finished approximately 4th out of 40 players in a flip frenzy tournament

    high confidence · Ed Robertson to Jeff Teolis and Martin Robbins during discussion of flip frenzy format

  • Martin Robbins' IFPA ranking has declined because he has only participated in three tournaments in the past nine months

    high confidence · Martin Robbins explaining his reduced tournament participation and ranking drop

  • Ed Robertson owns a Jurassic Park pinball machine and recently beat Jeff Teolis on it at a Pinball for Change charity event

    high confidence · Jeff Teolis acknowledging Ed beat him at Jurassic Park in a flip frenzy tournament for charity

  • Ed Robertson has postponed his UK tour dates, including a sold-out Royal Albert Hall performance, to November 2020

    high confidence · Ed Robertson discussing COVID-19 tour cancellations and rebooked dates

  • Barenaked Ladies has created 8-10 selfie cam jam videos for Global Citizen's coronavirus relief effort

    high confidence · Ed Robertson describing their social media content creation during isolation

  • Head-to-head challenge format is better for streaming audiences than traditional tournament formats because it shortens game length

    high confidence · Jeff Teolis and Ed Robertson discussing tournament format accessibility for casual viewers

  • Ed Robertson released a pinball-related song called 'Silverball' as part of an album

    high confidence · Martin Robbins thanking Ed Robertson for releasing 'Silverball' and asking about future pinball songs

  • Australian pinball players are experiencing level three COVID-19 restrictions requiring everyone to stay home

    high confidence · Martin Robbins discussing COVID-19 restrictions in Australia at the beginning of the episode

Notable Quotes

  • “There's nothing quite like the kinetic energy of pinball, doing battle against a machine, doing battle simultaneously against a friend... there's rules to this thing... That's like this incredible light bulb moment that just hooks you forever.”

    Ed Robertson @ ~10:30 — Explains why pinball appeals to him despite being a successful musician; demonstrates deep appreciation for game depth

  • “I am the best pinball player that any of my group of friends knows. And that puts me at cannot qualify in C division at a real tournament.”

    Ed Robertson @ ~12:00 — Shows Ed's humility while also demonstrating the competitive skill range in pinball community

  • “I don't have the long-term focus to stay reined in for that long... I'd rather get my ass kicked and flame out a lot of the time and then have these exciting blow-up games in between”

    Ed Robertson @ ~15:45 — Reveals his play style preference: aggressive, risky play over patient strategy

  • “The joke rule among our group of friends is, you GC my machine, you just bought it.”

    Ed Robertson @ ~28:00 — Humorous insight into competitive home play dynamics among friends

  • “My screw-ups are water off a duck's back... they're hilariously frustrating to me in the moment. And then they're absolutely gone from my mind.”

    Ed Robertson @ ~36:45 — Connects his musician mindset (performing in front of thousands) to competitive pinball resilience

  • “I think there's a real chasm there to be figured out... between someone who's super into pinball, watching it, and a casual viewer.”

    Ed Robertson @ ~42:30 — Identifies the core problem with pinball spectating accessibility for mainstream audiences

  • “Heads up challenge, it's a speed run. Speed runs are the key.”

    Jeff Teolis @ ~48:00 — Articulates why head-to-head challenge format works better for streaming than traditional long-form games

Entities

Ed RobertsonpersonJeff TeolispersonMartin RobbinspersonDrew ChamberspersonWalt WoodpersonAndy RosapersonAlex HarmonpersonTodd McCullochpersonJoel de Guzmanperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Martin Robbins transitioning focus from competitive play to streaming and tournament production; skipping tournaments to invest in streaming infrastructure

    high · Martin states: 'my interest has gone from being a player to being a producer, if you will' and 'I pulled out my big rig... I can stream eight machines at once' to justify skipping local tournaments

  • ?

    community_signal: Ed Robertson (Barenaked Ladies) actively participating in pinball community events and content, including charity tournaments and upcoming Barenaked Ladies media appearances featuring pinball figures

    high · Ed competed in flip frenzy charity event, owns Jurassic Park machine, is creating content with pinball cameo appearances (Todd McCulloch in upcoming selfie cam jam)

  • ?

    venue_signal: Texas Pinball Festival postponed/cancelled due to COVID-19; merchandise being sold through secondary channels to support affected vendors

    high · Jeff mentions receiving TPF baseball shirt and Brian Allen from Flyland Designs selling art and merchandise that was intended for the festival

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Head-to-head challenge format and flip frenzy tournaments preferred by casual and celebrity players for accessibility and shorter game length

    high · Ed Robertson states flip frenzy format appeals to him more than traditional tournaments; Jeff Teolis emphasizes 'heads up challenge, it's a speed run. Speed runs are the key'

  • ?

    content_signal: Australian pinball community investing in professional streaming setups; Martin Robbins deploying 8-machine simultaneous streaming capability for tournament coverage

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.310

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching final round pinball podcast. It's player versus player and player versus machine. Welcome to the final round.
0:39
Hello, my name is Jeff Teolis. And my name is Martin Robbins. Welcome everybody again to the final round of Pinball Podcast. Episode five, really, the one that puts you over the edge, the one that really solidifies your place in podcast history. This is the one that's going to take us over the top, Marty. It really is. We've got some great guests. We've got an awesome new sponsor this week. This is going to be a great episode. You know, we're in the big time now. We should probably have a proper logo. And oh, look at this. We've got a new one. We do. So thank you, Mr. Joel de Guzman, for producing that logo for us. It's fantastic. We couldn't have expected anything better. So thank you very much. Joel does great things with American Pinball. Very kind to give us that kind of Street Fighter look, which I really like. So check it out on our Facebook page and also on Instagram. which you can find at Final Round Pinball Podcast. Yes, we have some guests joining us a little bit later. But first, Marty, how was your week? Look, I've had a good week in isolation. It's really interesting because in Australia now, I think we've got like level three restrictions. So everybody now has to stay home. Everybody's home. And it's really funny because people are going a little bit stir crazy and people are reaching out to me going, you know, how are you going? I'm like, well, I've kind of been in isolation for three months, so I'm absolutely fine with this. I'm used to it. I've still been streaming. I've been repairing machines. Oh, my God. I've been repairing machines, Jeff. My Wizard of Oz I repaired. I've changed micro switches on my Lord of the Rings. I've cleaned. I've waxed. I've polished my pinball machines. We're talking pinball here. Okay, thanks. Just to clarify. But also what I did, I don't know whether you've seen, but one of the benefits of this to us as people is a lot of artists, particularly DJs that I've seen or artists that are doing at-home concerts. So I thought I'd give back to the community and I did a five-hour Eurovision stream on my pinball channel on Twitch. It was hilarious. I had five hours of drinking, and it ended with me tripping over all of my equipment and shutting down the stream. It was hilarious, but I had a great time. That's the point of it now is let's just talk to each other. I've noticed a lot of pinball people are using online video chats to talk to each other and stay connected. That's good. I love what the community is doing. So that's really my week has been pinball, podcast, and Eurovision. There you go. How about your week? Very good. By the way, Eurovision for those in North America, think American Idol times a million. It's basically all the countries. It is massive. I actually have caught it, and I caught part of the stream. Well done on that, by the way. My week, or I should say the last two weeks, has been kind of similar in a way, what you're talking about. You're streaming and reaching people. I'm actually just contacting them a lot of messages, a lot of phone calls, a lot of FaceTime with some people. And I got some good messages from a couple of people that mean a lot to me. Julio Soriano from Spain and also Daniele Acari from Italy. Those are two countries that have been just devastated by the damn COVID-19 virus that's going around. So I want to make sure they were okay. And I'm certainly wishing that for everyone. But good news from both those fine gentlemen and top players in the world that I'm looking forward to seeing a little bit later. Hopefully in November, fingers crossed, at the World Championship. You'll be there too, won't you, Marty? Yeah, of course. No, obviously not. You might be. You never know because how it's going to work is they take the top two people from every country. Well, what if the top two people go, look, I'm not coming. I'm not coming in Florida in November. They go down the list. So I don't know how far you are down in Australia, but it might get to you. I would doubt it. I really, I think in the last, I know this sounds really weird being on a podcast that talks about tournaments, but I've really only, I think, been in three tournaments over the past nine months. I've been following and I've been watching so many tournaments and I've been talking tournaments. I just haven't participated in them. So I would say my ranking has gone down somewhat. The ranking has taken a spanking, so to speak. Ryan C is now ranked higher than me. What the hell? That's just, listen, Marty, you're the far better player than Ryan. I've seen him. I saw him lose at his own games at his house. We'll talk about that little tournament a little bit later. That's actually a tournament I was surprised you didn't play in because when I came to Australia there in Melbourne, we had a big event. There were 47 people playing on a – I think it was a Tuesday night, a day after Australia Day, a day after the holiday. It doesn't matter. Australians are coming out for a good time and a drink, a couple of shots of fireball and playing some pinball. And you didn't play because you wanted to stream and put on a great stream. Well, so this is it. And I know we're going to talk later in the episode. We're going to deep dive into streaming. and that's really what it's been for me is my interest has gone from being a player to being a producer, if you will. I mean, obviously I'm still putting on my Melbourne Silver Bowl Championship tournament at the end of the year, hopefully. We're thinking it's going to be late November and, you know, there's 100, 120 people playing in that. So I want to make sure that each year I get better at putting on a tournament and producing a stream. so I pulled out my big rig which we will talk about later and bragger that's where I can stream eight machines at once I can switch between them immediately and so I just wanted to have a reason to bring out all my gear to start playing around with it again and get better at it so that's why I much prefer to do that than being in the tournament everything you say is an innuendo I bring out my big gear I like to play it's not an innuendo to me so where's your mind jeff well you'll hear about it when we get to our sponsor it's seriously anyway stop it yeah we'll we'll get there i did get a nice gift today in the mail and i received my texas pinball festival baseball shirt i love it it's gorgeous it's great and i know a lot of other people who have sent ed and kim their donation if you will to help support that great event that I know you were looking forward to going to, but it's a great keepsake, and I'm glad I got it. I'm wearing it with pride. Yeah, and I know that there's been some more sort of TPF-related merchandise come up on Facebook as well. Brian Allen from Flyland Designs, he's selling a lot of art that was going to be there, and there's T-shirts and there's other art. So support those people that were relying on what was going to come from TPF. So you've been connecting to people. I've been connecting to people and so is our next guest. Absolutely. Well, somebody that does connect very well, particularly with the pinball community, but obviously outside the pinball community. And when we talk to them, you'll say that this person has been affected by this COVID-19 virus, probably more than all of us. Like we were, we just get to stay at home and some of us, Jeff, get to work from home. Others get to pretend that we're working from home. Whereas this person actually had to stay home and they were meant to be in England at the moment. Joining us on Final Round Pinball Podcast, a pleasure to be talking to a big, big fan of all things pinball. You know him, you love him. We do too. Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies. Hey, Ed, how are you? Hey, guys. Martin and Jeff. Nice to be here. Martin won't get this reference, but I know Jeff will. Jeff Martin, singer of Canadian rock band The Tea Party. So I'm just going to pretend that I'm being interviewed by the new Jim Morrison in the flesh.

“Well, so this is it... my interest has gone from being a player to being a producer, if you will.”

Martin Robbins @ ~05:30 — Explains shift from competitive play to content creation focus; justifies skipping local tournaments

  • “I pulled out my big rig which we will talk about later... I can stream eight machines at once”

    Martin Robbins @ ~06:45 — References streaming infrastructure investment; hints at upcoming sponsor content

  • “I think one of the tournaments that stands a better chance at hooking a more casual viewer is something like they tried a couple of years ago with head-to-head machines where they were time battling for a single goal.”

    Ed Robertson @ ~41:00 — Suggests competitive pinball format innovation to reach broader audiences

    • [name withheld pending review]
    person
    Julio Sorianoperson
    Daniele Acariperson
    Lyman F. Sheats Jr.person
    [name withheld pending review]person
    Brian Allenperson
    Barenaked Ladiesorganization
    Final Round Pinball Podcastorganization
    The Pinball Networkorganization
    American Pinballcompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Pinball for Changeorganization
    Global Citizenorganization
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Melbourne Silver Bowl Championshipevent

    high · Martin references bringing out 'big rig' that can 'stream eight machines at once' and 'switch between them immediately' for tournament production

  • ?

    community_signal: COVID-19 lockdowns driving pinball community online engagement, streaming, machine maintenance, and social connection through virtual channels

    high · Martin streaming Eurovision for 5 hours, Jeff FaceTiming international players, both emphasizing online connection during restrictions

  • ?

    competitive_signal: IFPA rankings sensitive to tournament participation frequency; players stepping back from competition see significant ranking declines

    medium · Martin notes Ryan C. now ranked higher after playing only 3 tournaments in 9 months; his 'ranking has taken a spanking'

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Celebrity/casual players prefer aggressive, risk-taking play over patient, optimized strategies; prioritize fun over win optimization

    high · Ed Robertson: 'I don't have the patience... I'd rather get my ass kicked and flame out... I rarely trap up'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Competitive pinball streaming faces challenge in reaching casual audiences; requires format simplification and clear objective-based goals to be translatable

    high · Ed Robertson identifies 'a real chasm' between pinball nerds and casual viewers; Jeff advocates for simplified head-to-head format with single clear objectives

  • $

    market_signal: Celebrity musicians engaged with pinball culture; Ed Robertson released pinball-themed song and actively participates in pinball events

    high · Ed Robertson released 'Silverball' album; participated in Stern Pro Circuit; owns Jurassic Park machine; competing in charity flip frenzy tournaments

  • ?

    product_strategy: Pinball event merchandise (t-shirts, art) being sold through alternative channels when physical events cancelled; supporting vendors and creating keepsakes

    medium · Jeff received Texas Pinball Festival baseball shirt as keepsake; Brian Allen selling TPF art through Facebook for vendor support

  • ?

    historical_signal: PAPA facility history referenced as landmark tournament venue with ladder match format that influenced modern competitive pinball structures

    high · Jeff mentions 'old Papa facility' and references the Stern Pro Circuit ladder match format used at Bottom Lounge as evolution of PAPA ladder match

    • 8:38
    You're absolutely right. I don't get that reference at all. Yeah, you're lucky. They are a massive band in Australia. In fact, their last live album was from Australia, and Jeff Martin lived in Australia. So you should know that, Martin, but we'll leave that aside. Another great Canadian band. Ed, so we want to talk to you about competition pinball because you've dipped your toe into it a little bit, not a lot, but you certainly love pinball. So first of all, what is it that after, I don't know, 20, 30 years keeps you coming back to pinball itself? Well, there's nothing else quite like it. I'm a fan of games in general. I mean, everything from card games to board games to video games to word games. You know, I'm a huge Scrabble fan. But there's nothing quite like the kinetic energy of pinball, doing battle against a machine, doing battle simultaneously against a friend that, you know, every fan of pinball remembers that moment when a door opened for them and they realized, oh, this isn't just about keeping the ball in play. there's rules to this thing. I'm supposed to make certain shots at certain times and I have to set certain things up. That's like this incredible light bulb moment that just hooks you forever. So arguably great musician, particularly I know that with your tours you do a lot of spontaneous performances and songwriting. So great, everyone knows you for that. How would you rank yourself as far as being a good pinball player? I am the best pinball player that any of my group of friends knows.
    10:25
    And that puts me at cannot qualify in C division at a real tournament. Okay, he's being modest. All right, I'll let you gloat. I've even given you kudos before on pinball profile. but the few times I've seen Ed in competition, I saw him recently at a great charity event for the Pinball for Change charity for We.org. We played in a flip frenzy, and we played Jurassic Park, a game in which Ed owns and a game I love as well. Ed schooled me on that game and then continued to text me days afterwards, hey, remember that time I beat you on Jurassic Park? So he's a pretty good player, if you ask me. Well, you know, it was a narrow victory. I crushed you. I schooled you. It was a clinic.
    11:17
    No, I always describe my play as wildly, I'm all over the map. I will blow up a game and then I will get my ass kicked right afterwards because I'm not a careful player. I'm pretty good with rules knowledge and I'm very good, I would say, playing on the fly in multi-ball. but my definite Achilles heel my my weakness is I have no patience so I'm always playing wild and taking that chance I rarely trap up I love the frenzy of fast-paced play and I'd rather get my ass kicked and flame out a lot of the time and then have these exciting blow-up games in between I just don't have the patience isn't the word. I don't have the long-term focus to stay reined in for that long. But do you also think that there's this balance between keeping it fun for yourself and taking it too seriously? And I can't be that by saying I'm in a similar position where I know that in multiball, I'm meant to cradle the ball and be able to just control the game in multiball in particular. But I when I stream, I choose not to because I don't find that as much fun and I don't want to change myself. So the fun is less. Is that part of it? That's a huge part of it. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's just about what we look for from the game. And when I'm playing head to head with people, I love competition. You know, my first big competition experience was going to the old Papa facility. And I just I couldn't stand the thought of waiting around to play a bank of six or eight games that I actually wasn't that interested in when there was 440 other games on the floor on free play like I would rather just go play a one-on-one match of Aztec against Lyman Sheets who just happened to be walking down the row at the time than stand in a lineup six deep to play Demolition Man. Ed that's a good point but what has happened in tournaments lately and it's the one I last saw you in is this flip frenzy. So you've always said, and you said it before on Pinball Profile, I hate waiting to play. You just said it again here. But that flip frenzy, you don't really wait to play and you got to go, go, go. I had a blast at that tournament. And that type of match play flip frenzy event would get me way more interested. But I just know because of my style of play, I'm going to get my ass handed to me eventually in every tournament i did well in that tournament i you were like fourth out of 40 or something yeah something like that i had some good luck i forget who won it doesn't matter it doesn't matter if he's one of the hosts on the show it doesn't matter did you win that tournament i totally won that you were one of the few guys who beat me in a game oh wow i didn't okay now i do remember that actually i'll post the link but ed on saying that that that is actually probably one of the biggest criticisms that i hear of people getting into tournament playing saying because there are some tournament formats particularly here in australia where you could be at a venue for four or five hours and play three games or four games and that's a lot of waiting in between but those ones like to be social so there's the social side of it there's also other formats like i think even head-to-head is like a strikes tournament is probably you've got more pinball in between rounds there might be like half an hour wait so it's something that i think a lot of tournament directors are conscious of that the waiting particularly there's nothing to do in between can be a bit of a problem is there anything else that that's sort of a barrier for you to play a lot more tournaments well yeah i mean the biggest barrier for me is i just don't have any room for more trophies oh my god i know the problem so yeah i mean between my uh all my Juno Awards and my Gemini and my People's Choice Awards and my World Music Award. There's not a lot of space left on the mantle for pinball tournament wins.
    15:50
    I'd rather leave those for people like Jeff who need to fill up mantle space. Whose idea was this to bring out of us? You said before that you are a competitive person. Are you really that competitive? And I say that because one of the things that sort of turned me off at a bit last year and I sort of stopped myself playing tournaments is the whole win-lose factor. You're either first or you're one of the many losers. Does that kind of stuff affect you as well?
    16:23
    No, that doesn't bug me. I am fiercely competitive, but it never makes me angry. It never takes me to a point of, like, I get frustrated, but it's only comedy frustration. And I like coming up with inventive swear words when I do something stupid or, you know, drain right when I've got the extra ball lit and the three times play field multiplier and just about to blow up the game. And then I just completely do an operator error move. But yeah, that's fun for me. I love, you know, my favorite thing is just to have a good friend over who's also very good and just play head to head. I have my friend Drew Chambers over all the time and we both love really deep games like The Walking Dead. and we played Metallica a ton, but we'll often end up stuck on something like Stern Big Game or Fathom, an old-school game, Cyclops, in my game room. We'll just play head-to-head games on that where you're looking at a max, sometimes three-and-a-half, maybe five-minute game if you really blow it up. That's super fun. Ed, do you still invite these people over should they happen to beat you? Or do you just say, oh, you know, I'm selling everything, and yeah, change your phone number, things like that. The joke rule among our group of friends is, you GC my machine, you just bought it.
    18:03
    So you're playing with friends, you're competing with friends. It might not be an IFPA tournament as such, but you're certainly into that competition, and you're enjoying the aspects of the game. You like to go, go, go. So when you're playing the games by yourself or with friends, Are you trying to achieve things? Are you trying to do modes you've never done? Are you going for a GC? Are you just trying to beat that person? Or is it what goes through your head? It depends on the nature of the evening. You know, if I'm having a group of neighbors over, I make it my whole goal to try and impart to them what I love about pinball. So I'm never trying to blow the game up. I'm just trying to show them that one thing leads to another. And here's what you should be focusing on. Simple things like, you know, letter completion, lane switching, that sort of thing is beyond a beginning player. And if you can reveal those things to them, the fact that you're controlling the lane lights and in lanes, out lanes and top lanes and telling people, you know, you're going for sets. You always want to make a set of these lights and shoot at, you know, it's simple to pinball people, but shoot the lights. look for what's lit, look for what's blinking. That's where you want to put the ball. And aiming, actually, I find comes pretty natural to a lot of people. So when they realize there's a point to aiming the ball, I think the game gets exponentially more fun. So when I've got a group of novices over, which I try to do a lot, you know, I try to take that sort of mentor role, and I bounce around from game to game and kind of give tips. And I don't play that much. And if I do, it would be on something like Beatles or Big Game or something that I know is going to kick my ass even when I'm doing my best. But on a night like that, I'm not going to hop on Metallica and try to blow it up. But when I have friends over, when I have pinball people over, you know, we're all trying to win. So we'll hop on a Walking Dead and I'm like going for Horde and I'm trying to blow it up because i know if player two is drew or or walt who ran that uh tournament i just played in like you know everyone's going to be trying to take my gc off my machine so i want to break their spirit before that happens so my last question on trying to find that level of how competitive you are have you ever been in a competitive environment where you've done pilot error or something's gone wrong and then you've relived that moment in your head because we do we we've got so many of those moments where you think shit if only i had flipped my right flipper instead of my left i would have won the game and continued in a tournament uh that's a good question martin and i i think it's actually part of my superpower as a performer and it's part of why as a musician i can get on stage and improvise music and just walk a tightrope in front of 10,000 people and not care what happens. Because I screw up all the time. If I let those screw-ups in front of 10,000 people bother me, it would wreck a show for me, and I wouldn't be able to take those chances. And I think you scale that down, certainly in any kind of pinball competition I've been involved in. And I've never been close to the top of a world championship or anything ranked importantly. But my screw-ups are water off a duck's back. They're hilariously frustrating to me in the moment. And then they're absolutely gone from my mind. I might think for 30 seconds afterwards, I had the frigging extra ball that all I had to do was hit the right ramp. And then I'm over it. So, and I do think that's part of my superpower as a performer is I've never let screwing up get to me. I also know as a fan of music, when I see a performer screw up, I enjoy it. It's, and I always feel bad for performers that let it get to them. I always wish I could say to them, man, nobody cares. Like it just means you're human and you screwed up. It's no big deal. I see some people carry that for the next three or four songs I can tell it's bugging them until they finally shake it and then they walk off stage going ah fuck that show sucked I screwed up that one chord for half of a bar in one of the 22 songs we played that night and it's just like it just doesn't matter that's a tough skill to get over I mean going way back learning music if I made a mistake I'd want to start over and I couldn't get over that But it's funny, make mistakes all the time in pinball, you get over it. So I'm sure you can remember when you were first learning music years and years and years ago, how tough that was. But now it's just, like you say, it rolls off the back. Yeah, I don't know. I think I've always kind of been like that too. And I see it in my son, Lyle, now, who's starting to play the clubs around Toronto. He's got that kind of fearlessness that I feel like I've always had, where he just gets up and does a gig and enjoys himself. And if he does make a mistake or someone in the band makes a mistake, it just makes him laugh. And it's just such a great part of the skill set of any performer to be able to roll with errors and not let it get you down. It's already over. When the mistake has happened, it's done. And if you can reset and keep entertaining people, the mistake doesn't even matter. I'm assuming you're at home like everybody and I think today you were meant to be in the UK, I think. That's right. Doing a lot of dates over there. How are you feeling about that? I imagine obviously you're going to be feeling bad that you've let down a lot of fans. You're doing, I'm looking at your tour dates there at the moment, you're meant to be performing at the Royal Albert Hall. Like, that's amazing. How are you feeling about that and what are you doing to, I guess, pass the time? Well, it was obviously a huge disappointment to cancel that UK tour. And yeah, we had worked our way back up to Royal Albert Hall and we'd sold it out. So we were really looking forward to getting back there, having to cancel or I should say postpone because we've actually rebooked all of these dates for early November. So assuming everybody sticks with the diligent hand washing and social distancing, we'll be able to get back there in November. Yeah, it's a it's a huge drag to had to have canceled those shows, but it was the only responsible thing to do at this point. And, you know, I've been up at my lake spot with my wife and our three kids, and we've actually been here two weeks as of yesterday. So we're certain that none of us is infected with the virus. And we're just going to stay up here for as long as the health officials recommend we do so. And by the way, even though unfortunately you're postponed in the UK for now, I have to tell you, I've been enjoying the selfie cam jams that Bare Naked Ladies have been providing on Instagram and on social media. and for a great cause too, hashtag together at home for globalcitizen.org slash coronavirus. So those are very, very entertaining and you're bringing a lot of pleasure into people's homes when you can't be out on the road. Yeah man we having so much fun with that We actually got a whole bunch more in the can We just been you know it just something to do to entertain each other and we know people are enjoying them so we just keep forging ahead with them I think we've got eight or ten of them in the can now that we're editing and getting ready to roll out. So a really fun one we're putting together right now actually has a cameo appearance by someone near and dear to the hearts of pinball fans. You may see my old pal Todd McCulloch in an upcoming selfie cam jam. You know, I was just thinking about Todd because it was almost one year ago. You, myself, Todd were in Chicago. We were broadcasting the finals of the Stern Pro Circuit at the Bottom Lounge, won by Andy Rosa. It was a great event. There you were, Ed, at this massive competition. and you're kind of seeing how exciting competitive pinball was. What were your thoughts going back to last March? All I remember is Andy's headlamp and gloves.
    26:51
    I can't remember anything else. But that competition was very interesting because you talked about the old Papa facility. Well, that's where the original Papa circuit was held and it was that ladder match. So you saw the end of the ladder match. Once you were done performing downstairs, you came up, you did the finals and basically they were in groups of four, loser out, bring in the next person, loser out until you get to the final two, which was Andy and Alex Harmon. So that was kind of an interesting competition, but a lot of waiting around, which I know you might not be crazy about, but still pretty competitive with a huge prize on the line. Yeah, I really enjoy watching competitive pinball, and there's been some really great streaming lately. What I don't know is how we get that outside of us pinball nerds, because there's so much knowledge required to understand what's going on. And even with the commentary, I think Papa's really upped the game with the visual overlay and showing people what important shots are and maybe what strategies the players are going to be employing. But I feel like when I watch it, I'm very engaged. But I recognize that there is a huge gulf between someone who's super into pinball, watching it, and a casual viewer. I think there's a real chasm there to be figured out. And I think one of the tournaments that stands a better chance at hooking a more casual viewer is something like they tried a couple of years ago with head-to-head machines where they were time battling for a single goal. I thought that was almost a little more translatable for a first-time viewer. I agree with you because what you're doing I won't say, I'm trying to say dumb it down, but you're simplifying the experience for the viewer and the parallel I'll give you, so I saw some esports being played on our commercial free-to-air TV and they were playing Dota I don't know if you've played that, Defense of the Ancients I haven't played it, but I watched a documentary on it, so I know the game So it is, it's kind of like a defense versus attacker type thing where you're in this map and you're switching between the different players from a first-person perspective. And it's really fast, it's really frenetic, but the objective is they've got to kill everybody or they've got to capture all the different resources and then kill everybody. So as a viewer, even though there's a lot going on, you know exactly what they're trying to do. And that's the same with pinball. If you're just keeping the objective being just start a multi-ball and you're watching that head-to-head play for, let's say, 15 minutes, that gives the announcers enough time to explain to the viewer exactly what you've got to do to get multiple and then just watch that over and over so you then just get memory of what needs to be done. So I agree with you. I think the heads-up format is fantastic for a viewing experience because it's kept simple. Right. But even it has some sneaky depth to it, right? Because they bring up a game and say, okay, here's the goal, and you think as a pinball nerd, Well, you know, if I'm stepping up to Metallica, there's four multi balls that I can work my way towards. So what is the easiest one to start first? Oh, well, on this particular game, that shot's actually tough to make. So, like, you know, there's a lot of sneaky depth to that that is hard to convey. It's not like, OK, make shot one, then two, then three, then four. Like I said, it's hard enough to bring people into the fact that there are rules in play. A lot of people think it's just keep up. So I recognize the barriers in place, I guess is what I'm saying. It depends on the challenge that they give you. Usually there's five challenges. And if it's score-based, what Ed's talking about is true. Yeah, which is the best way to go at it? But some of those challenges are simple. Like I played in two of those heads-up challenges, both the Stern Pro Circuit, and they had two guardians of the galaxy machines, let's say. And they said, you have to double a multiplier shot on one of the modes. So the person who picks that challenge picks the mode. And I was playing Kaylee and he goes, we'll do it on rocket. Of course, he picks the hardest shot. But that was the idea. So you had to get all your novas to light the multiplier shots and you had to hit that rocket shot. The first one to do it wins. But the reason that heads up challenge is the best chance for pinball streams to hit the masses is because it's short. A good player plays a game for a long, long period of time. It doesn't translate that well onto video. You know, you think of watching pool. A great pool player is done in a few shots. It doesn't work like that in pinball. But heads up challenge, it's a speed run. Speed runs are the key. Yeah, I agree. So you did us all a massive favor. So thank you for releasing Silverball because you did an album. Well, I know that there was a lot of metaphors in it, But Silverball, it was a great album. Are you going to do any more pinball-related songs? Probably. I mean, it's something that really consumes my thoughts, so it's probably something I'll approach again. I'm just happy that Pinball Wizard isn't the only pinball song. That's why I'm thanking you. Like, finally, we gave an answer to people saying, oh, you're Pinball Wizard. Oh, no, check out this other song as well. It's The New Guard. So thank you for that. My second question is, when are you going to come to Australia? You know, we were there in about 2000, I guess, 99 or 2000 when One Week was a big international hit. And we had a great time. But, man, it's so expensive to get there for a band, to get all of our gear. I mean, you know what you guys pay for pinball machines. So imagine shipping 30 of them every time you want to go do a show. That's kind of what it's like to bring all of our gear over there. So, yeah, we'd love to get back, Marty, but it's a huge commitment of resources and time. And the thing is, we'd be playing a medium-sized club if we went to Australia right now. So we've been talking to Brian Ritchie from the Violent Femmes about trying to get down and do the festival that he organizes there annually. So we're trying. Yeah, that is probably the answer, is to start a, be part of a festival and maybe do a sideshow in each of the capitals.
    33:48
    But are you sort of connected to your fan base in Australia? Like, is there something that you're aware of? Only via social media, which frankly, I don't engage in that much. I think most creative people, certainly of my vintage, have had to pull back a little bit. I think you know I I tend to sort of broadcast and I like to put out content for people but I don't necessarily need to hear what orange rind 643 thinks of my new single so I've pulled back a bit from the feeds and from the comments but uh I I get sent a lot of stuff from friends. So I'm engaged that way. Ed, like all of us, we hope to see you on the road. We hope to be able to see you on the road someday soon. I know it's going to happen. And thank you again for those selfie cam jams. We'll watch for those on Bare Naked Ladies on Instagram. Make sure you check it out too. And also the link to the great charity. Kent, thank you enough for being on final round. Anytime guys. Nice to talk to you. All the best. Thanks, mate. Hope to meet you in person one day soon. Yeah, man. Take care. Thanks, mate. Great to hear from Ed. A huge pinball fan, as we all know, and a wonderful entertainer as well. So that was nice of him to join us here on Final Round. Yeah, it really is. We sort of, when we were on Head to Head, mentioned that we always wanted to get Ed Robinson on our show. Obviously, it didn't happen, so it was really good to actually finally speak to him and manage expectations. I thought he was going to be a super nice guy, and he's a super nice guy. Do you think, Ryan, and Joe let you down on head-to-head? Do you think that's why? Constantly, but not for that reason.
    35:35
    I kid. I saw something online that was pretty fascinating, and it actually reminded me of head-to-head. And you did something on head-to-head, which I've said before, my favorite podcast ever, period. Sure, whatever. You did this a while ago, and Stern is doing something very similar, the Stern Showdown. You did the Stern Royal Rumble, where you took 32 games of Stern from the last, let's say, 15, 20 years and kind of did a bracket. Well, guess what the Stern Showdown is? The same thing. It is. We did this 11 months ago. We took the top 32 ranked games from Stern from 2000 based on Pinside rankings, and then we did exactly that. We did a bracket-style elimination to find out who would be considered the best Stern machine of all time. So I'm really keen to see whether things have changed over the last year. If you think about it, what was released by Stern in the last year that we probably wouldn't have on that? Elvira would be there. Stranger Things, obviously, would be there. What else was released? Black Knight Sword of Rage, very likely. I think you probably had the Munsters on when you did it, but certainly Jurassic Park. Yeah, Jurassic Park wasn't on this. Munsters was on it, yeah, but Jurassic Park wasn't. So, yeah, it would have been just as Munsters had been released. So, do you want to know who won or do you want to wait until it comes out? We're going to get to that. Let's compare. Okay. You and I, as quickly as we can, unless we have a disagreement here. Okay. Let's go through it. Okay, go. All right. In the top left bracket, we've got Lord of the Rings Mustang. It's Lord of the Rings. Okay. Guardians versus Batman 66. Guardians. I've got to go Batman 66. Whoa, we have a difference. I even own Guardians, but I think Batman's a better game. Really? Yeah. I find Batman's rules to be too much. I prefer the simplicity of Guardians. I actually really like the layout of Guardians. Yeah, I know. Sure, it's a little bit derivative, but yeah, Guardians for me. I really like the theme as well. Batman's deeper, but more clunky at times. So I will let you have this win. They're going to lose to Lord of the Rings anyway next time. So I'll be the tiebreaker next time. But Guardians with the win. Game of Thrones versus Kiss. It's Game of Thrones. Family Guy walking dead. Dead. Yeah, walking dead easy. So there you go. Jurassic Park WWE. This is a tough one. Tough one. I'm going to go Jurassic. Well, I mean, if you think about it, WrestleMania has got that great, you know, the boxing ring up the top with the slammers.
    38:03
    Great designer. Fuck off and get to it, Marty. All right, it's Jurassic Park. All right, Jurassic Park. Move it on. X-Men and Elvira's House of Horrors. I'm going to X-Men. That's too early to tell. I would say X-Men just because, obviously, it's a little bit more polished than Elvira's. But I reckon Elvira's got a lot of potential.
    38:22
    Simple layout. But I think the rules are really what's going to make that machine come alive. But it's X-Men for now. Never doubt Lyman, but right now we're going X-Men. Iron Man, Stranger Things. Iron Man by a million because Stranger Things is poo. Ripley's, believe it or not, believe it or not, they're on this list against Metallica. See you, Ripley's. You dismiss Ripley's so easily. Ripley's is a freaking great game and one of the very few Pat Lawler games that I like. But it's up against Metallica. No competition there, Metallica, for sure. Let's just quickly, before we get back to the Stern Showdown, think of how many Lawler games where you hit the skill shot accurately and it drains. I think of Twilight Zone. If you were to get the 10 million shot, it goes in the pops. See you later. Think of No Good Gophers. Think of Whirlwind. Yeah. Adam's Family. If you overshoot, it goes all the way around to the pops as well. Yeah. Good on you. Ripley's is the same. Yeah. That's my biggest and maybe only really valid Lawler complaint. Those skill shots are... Look, I think the other thing about Ribleys is it doesn't have a fairly conventional layout. So it's one of those ones where you need to retrain yourself how to play that game. But once you do, it's actually quite rewarding. It's a much better game to own in a home collection versus playing in competition. I will give that. Metallica won that. Metallica is it. Western Showdown. ACDC Transformers. We're going ACDC. Hmm. Come on. Hmm. I've got the tiebreaker, so you could waste it here if you really want Transformers. There's no chance. No, I know there's no chance, because ACDC. But I just don't love ACDC. This is the problem. But it's the winner. Yeah, keep going. All right. The Beatles, Star Trek. I can be a dick here and really piss you off, because I know what you're picking. But I have to pick Star Trek. Of course. And again, this is one of these things where it's not binary. It's not winners and losers. They're both great games, but obviously Star Trek's going to win for me. Spider-Man, Monsters. Sorry, Herman. Beat it. Spider-Man. I would pick Monsters over Spider-Man. Well, how much have you had to drink today?
    40:32
    Purely because I much prefer the layout. The Monsters feels good. I really don't like the rules, really, of Spider-Man. So I would play Monsters over Spider-Man. Controversial, but that's what I would do. So you can pull out your tiebreaker. See ya. Spider-Man for the win easily. Maybe one of the greatest games Stern has ever made. In fact, the game that got me back into competitive pinball. So right there. So thank you, Spider-Man.
    41:03
    Pirates of the Caribbean Simpsons Pinball Party. Now, I am a massive Simpsons Pinball Party fan. I already know you hate this game. I do. Fuck, it's great. I would pick it over Pirates of the Caribbean. Thank you. Mainly because Pirates of the Caribbean is just a bit beige. One good mode is part of the problem with pirates? Yep. But it's just hit the ship, hit the ship, hit the ship. Everything else just seems a little bit... Tortuga, Tortuga. Yeah, yep. I hate Simpsons Pimple Party with a passion, as you know, but if I had that machine at home and I had all the time in the world, I have this feeling that I would actually really enjoy it. You definitely would, as an owner myself. and watching Carl on IE Pinball complete the whatever you want to call that super-duper fantastic wizard mode. Pretty darn impressive. That's something I had never seen before. All right. Looks like a pretty easy bracket over here. Deadpool Avengers, it's Deadpool. Although it's funny that they're going against each other with that similar kind of 90-degree shot. One works, one doesn't. Yep. Obviously Deadpool. Tron versus Black Knight Sword of Rage. And I'll let you pick whether you want the premium or the pro. I'm still taking Tron. I mean, it's a pick of turds for me, but I would go Tron. I would go Tron because of the Daft Punk soundtrack. The way it makes you feel, I really don't like the layout. I really don't like the rules, but I really dislike Black Knight. Okay. All right. Ghostbusters versus Star Wars comic, meaning not the pin, but the Star Wars comic edition. Wow. I have to pick one of these two. Good God. It's easy for me. It's Star Wars. oh really is it that easy yep um i don't know i have a soft spot for ghostbusters and i have a real love hate with star wars i would for me i would pick ghostbusters over star wars i'll give you the tie because it's not making it past the next round that's fine you can have ghostbusters it's funny one of the games that is not on this list that was made in the last 10 years we were talking about carl d'angelo trying to complete the wizard mode of simpsons pinball party he did it and he tried to do it also on big buck hunter today as of april 4th he hadn't done it he was pretty close but like several tries yeah it's a hard one to get open season carl and i were talking and i had to tell him i said i quit a league it was a location league because i had to play big buck hunter every other week i'm like i'm so sick of that piece of shit game it's the only crap game that borg's ever made and it wasn't even his fault you know just kind of i don't even know where they got the toys that don't work, modes that mean nothing, one of the dumbest spinners ever that's blocked all the time, going into the pops, the elk that is just a terrible clunky shot, all of the above. I like Big Buck Hunter. What? You know I do. We've talked about this. I do. But I like Sterns of that era because I prefer, I guess we call it the simplicity of them compared to machines today, which get very complicated, obviously, except for monsters. so you know games like that iron man avatar they they just they tell you what you need to do you've got to go and do it the the biggest obviously downside of that game is the build quality feels a little bit off and the shots can be a bit clunky watching carl i said to him oh god you know seeing you do this over and over again and failing just has me thinking damn it this is going to be an indisc next year he goes no it was there a few years ago all right that's good finally aerosmith Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden. Although I think Aerosmith is a great and extremely underrated game. I agree. It was such a strange surprise. Everything on paper said Aerosmith was going to be an absolute stinker. And from art to music, like I actually started really enjoying Aerosmith's music, which I never thought I would. The layout's great. The rules are really good. It's a really well balanced game. But up against Iron Maiden, there's no competition. Alright, we go on to the next bracket we're down to 16 here we're gonna go through this quick it was lord of the rings and you picked guardians it's lord of the rings lord of the rings there you go game of thrones versus walking dead i'll go walking dead it's i think game of thrones is spectacular but i gotta go walking dead um i would go game of thrones for me i love the layout i love the rules and and i love walking dead as well but game of thrones makes me feel happier walking dead i like the depth of that game and there's so much that you can do. There are some tough shots. I do dislike the feed out of the pops tremendously. Game of Thrones is a much more controlled game, but there are only so many shots in Game of Thrones. I still love the game, but not enough to do for me in Game of Thrones. We'll give you the tiebreaker. Thrones is going on to face Lord of the Rings. Good luck.
    45:55
    Jurassic Park vs. X-Men. It's Jurassic Park for me. Jurassic Park, yep. Iron Man vs. Metallica. There you go. We have ACDC versus Star Trek. Well, I'll give this to you. I know you don't like ACDC, but Star Trek is the better game. Yep, for sure. Spider-Man versus The Simpsons. Now, this is interesting because you just said you don't like either game. I will go with Spider-Man. Okay. You really hate Simpsons that much? Correct. Wow, okay. Deadpool against Tron. It's Deadpool, especially as the code has just got better and better. Deadpool is a game that's got it You know, it The X Factor, whatever it is There's something where all The sum of all the parts, the result is greater It just is a magical game And another thing about Deadpool 2 It's unique, it's not like a carbon copy Of anything else you've really played There's a lot of unique things on there The modes and little Deadpool And bringing in all the shots And the power-ups, I just think it's fantastic I think if we were to do this poll when Deadpool first came out against Tron. I would have picked Tron, but not now. Not a chance. No, that's right. Agreed. I gave you your stupid Ghostbusters versus Maiden. See you, Ghostbusters. Who are you going to call?
    47:13
    Yeah. See you, ghosty. So, it's Lord of the Rings. We gave you Game of Thrones. It's still Lord of the Rings. It's Game of Thrones for me. Come on. Over Lord of the Rings. Yep. Are you kidding me? You know, I've got a Lord of the Rings here. And I had a Game of Thrones for a year. Again, the way I look at it is, if someone said to me, you've got a Lord of the Rings and you've got a Game of Thrones and you can only have one of those in your house, what would you pick? I'd pick a Game of Thrones. Is that because you've played Lord of the Rings so much that perhaps there's a fatigue factor? No, not at all. In fact, I've still got one more thing to fix on my Lord of the Rings, and I'm dying to play it again. And remember, historically, I really disliked Lord of the Rings, which is why I give Simpsons Pimple Party a bit of a leave because I know that it just means that I really have got it. I know it's a great game. I just haven't got it. I want to spend more time on it. Lord of the Rings was the same. I just really did not get that game and then I owned it and fell in love with it. So I do. I do love it. Game of Thrones for me has the edge because I prefer its... Well, I'm a flow game lover and I think... I'm talking the pro. I think the premium in early of Game of Thrones is terrible with that upper play field. I just love the flow of Game of Thrones. I absolutely love the game as well, too. I think the code update that Dwight did, spectacular. It really has opened that game up more. But since I have the power of Vito in this round, sorry, Game of Thrones. Lord of the Rings, everybody listening right now is going, Jeff, Marty's obviously hammered right now. Please.
    48:52
    And who says I'm not? But still, Lord of the Rings is going to advance to the final four. we had jurassic park versus metallica this is tough because okay before we move on between this battle as we're in the final eight here i think if i recall when head-to-head did this metallica was the one that won it all sure it was wasn't it metallica versus the walking dead uh no it was metallica versus lord of the rings interesting we might have that match up again we may metallica versus Jurassic Park. Boy, I have to think about this. I love Jurassic Park. I can't find a flaw in that game. I'm picking Metallica. I am picking Metallica too. It just has survived the test of time. Not that Jurassic Park hasn't. Again, I think it is. I can't find a fault with the game. The animations, the code, the skill required in that game. So, I agree with you. And I'm going to... This is something that I mentioned on Head to Head when I was talking about Iron Maiden and the reason why I sold it. You're absolutely right. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Jurassic Park. It is perfect in every way. But it's the imperfections that I think gives a game character and gives it last ability. And that's what I would say Metallica has. It's just got a bit more randomness and things that continue to surprise you no matter how many times you play it. That's interesting. I'm trying to think what you're specifically talking about. Well, just that everything feels so right on Jurassic Park that the analogy I gave was the difference between a BMW and an Audi. I know, it's the kind of conversation everybody has. BMWs are built to perfection Audis have got faults all over them, they just feel a little bit off, but they're a bit more fun to drive because of that unexpected nature, it sort of keeps you on your toes as opposed to just delivering to expectation every time I'll tell you what the deciding factor for me is, and again, finding no fault with Jurassic Park, Metallica is an easier game to understand than Jurassic Park so that is the factor You know, I've said this before. It's great that games are deep. It's great that the codes are fantastic. But I want people to enjoy the full extent of a game. And if you have to go deep into forums or deep into rule sheets to figure out things that aren't clearly labeled, clearly shown, even on displays, I have a problem with that. I'm not saying there's something wrong with the game because the better players find all those things out. But I don't think it translates as well. if I told you to play one of these two games Anub to play one of these two games I think people are going to have more fun on Metallica than Jurassic Park because I can say to them see that guy in the middle Hit Sparky Just keep hitting him Good things will happen You do that you get a multiball It fun What do you say to somebody on Jurassic Park? The Raptor Pit? That's a shot you're not going to make for a noob. What's the shot you're going to do? Oh, the ramp. Get the T-Rex. Hit the truck. Get the T-Rex. Okay. And that's why they added the little multiball, which I think is good. But you know what? Can you do that on ball too? Yeah, maybe not. But here's what I'll talk. I'll talk about the moment of time. And it's the Game of Thrones moment. When Game of Thrones came out, everyone, so many people, like it was such universal feedback that said, this is way too complicated. Remember, you had to start the houses and they've got all these different perks. Everyone said it's really complicated. So we're now after Game of Thrones, where that is now the standard for complexity of rules. You know, we're now used to it being complex. so Metallica is obviously before then and yes it is easily understood but you know me I don't like rules and I don't get deep into rules at all I really understand Jurassic Park's rules because we're now in that world where you have to go and understand these rules and there's no rule card that tells you what to do Jeff you've got to work these things out we both agree Metallica moves on to the final four against Lord of the Rings funny we've seen that match up before on head to head all right on the other side It was Star Trek versus Spider-Man. God, I have to think about this. I really have to think about this. Similar layout. Don't forget, similar layout. Yeah, very similar. But don't play even remotely alike. I'll give Star Trek the benefit and say we're talking about the premium or LE. I think if I was playing the game once, I would have more fun on Spider-Man. If I were to own the game, I would want to own Star Trek. only because owning Spider-Man, I would imagine, not becoming boring, but just long, long playing. You know, they both have that similar under-the-upper-right-flipper shot, the away team on Star Trek and what is it called on Spider-Man? Spidey Sense or something? Something like that, yeah. I'm going to go Star Trek here. You too? You know you're not going to get any argument from me. And for me, I think Star Trek is Spider-Man 2.0. Like, they just improved everything on it. I know rules let down Star Trek, and I still wish that we had an alternate timeline when Lyman Sheath did get to code Star Trek. I could only imagine what it would have been. It's interesting. Star Trek moves on, but if you look at the Stern Showdown logo in the background, they've got... Spider-Man. Battle Royale. And the one that we did was called the Stern Battle Royale. Wow. So, you know, I think, you know, some copyright infringement here. So Stern's going to be basically copying the show 11 months from now is what you're saying? Correct. They'll bring out a new Street Fighter-style logo and then we'll know. Yeah, exactly. All right, it's Deadpool versus Iron Maiden, which is very interesting because they both came out in the same year. We know that Twippy went to Iron Maiden. Wow. This is the toughest one for me. This is tougher than Jurassic Park Metallica. Yeah, agreed. Agreed. God almighty. I'll let you go first because I'm... You know what? If it's the pro of both models, it's Iron Maiden for me. If it's the premium... Well, yeah, because Deadpool's got that shot. Yeah.
    55:07
    Okay. So if you could only have one of those machines in your house, which would you pick, Deadpool or Iron Maiden? Damn you. And the reason I never bought an Iron Maiden is because everyone bought an Iron Maiden. I didn't have to own it to be able to play it. Yep. In fact, when that game came out, it was at every single tournament. I love, love, love playing Iron Maiden. Would I love to have it right now? You bet I would. But it's Deadpool is the one I want to learn more. And the call-outs, the animation. I'm not a huge Little Deadpool fan, but I do like the Snick shot. Is there a more satisfying shot in pinball than making the ramp? You know what's really funny? I remember you and I spoke very early on about that shot in particular, and you said to me how much you thought it was clunky and it was stupid. But then over time, you realize that it's almost like that's intentional, because if you got that shot every single time, it wouldn't feel special. So it feels special, and you've talked about it. When it just feels like it's not even going to get up the top, but it just grabs there and then comes around, you just feel so good. That's kinetic satisfaction right there. This is a close one. You know, by doing this, by killing Jurassic Park and Iron Maiden, Keith will never come on this program ever. I doubt he would anyway. Oh, are you kidding? Come on. No, but here's the thing. If I had to have one of those machines in my house, and even though, yes, I had Iron Maiden and I sold it, I would actually have Iron Maiden. I would put Iron Maiden ahead of Deadpool. Not by a lot. Just a whisker. I'm picking Deadpool. You're picking Iron Maiden. You have the tiebreaker here. It's Iron Maiden. Okay. And you know what? There are no losers between those two. Really. Correct. In fact, I think I'm probably in the minority because when the voters were put to task, Iron Maiden was the one that won the Twippy, although the code was a lot different. I will say that. Okay. Final four. Just like head-to-head in the semis this time, Lord of the Rings versus Metallica. I have to go Metallica. Yep. Time. Easy. Okay. we have Star Trek versus Maiden. See it's so funny because this is such an easier one than the semi-final match before between Deadpool and Iron Maiden. It's Iron Maiden for me and you have both you've had both games. It's Maiden for me is it Star Trek for you? It's Star Trek for me yeah it is but again just just and even then I know that that doesn't sound right. I actually think Iron Maiden is a better game than Star Trek, just on paper. But obviously, I'm a bit biased because I really freaking love Star Trek. You know what? I'm going to give this to Iron Maiden. I think it's the better game overall. You didn't sell the game because you were bored of it by any means. You've said before, Star Trek is a game that will never leave your home. Sure. So that's a game that you're not bored of. Correct. In fact, I don't think you've completed the wizard mode. Is that the five-year mission? Yeah, no. I've only got up to Enterprise and Mok a couple of times. No, I haven't. And so for me, there is still that one more go. That was the problem with Iron Maiden. It sort of lost its one more go feel to me. And I think it's because I felt that getting to anything that was significantly rewarding was too far away from the start button. But I still think Iron Maiden is a better game than Star Trek. That's logically, with taking all the emotions out of the way, I think Iron Maiden's a better machine. Okay. Hey, in our final matchup, I want to point this out. I really want to emphasize the point of these two games. No action button to be found between Metallica and Iron Maiden. All right? And that was the one factor between Jurassic Park and Metallica. I'm like, nope, action button. I'm just kidding. Because I actually think it's great in Deadpool, right, with the booms? It's a heavy hot battle of the bands. Metallica, Iron Maiden. Oh.
    59:06
    It's easy for me. It is for me too. It's not easy. It's not easy. It's really easy for me. Really? Okay. I've got Metallica. I've got Metallica too. Why was it so easy for you? Because I just feel joy every time I play Metallica. There's so much to do. It's varied. I kind of like the fact that it's not a mode-based game, but there are objectives, almost like modes that you're always in, in Metallica anyway, whether you want to go for Grave, Consider that an active mode. I love crank it up. I love the fact that sometimes things just happen that you're not even aware of, and you go, oh, okay, cool. Obviously, I've activated that mode or that whatever it is just by playing the game. And I really think that this is the best balance of theme integration, the music, the audio, the call-outs, the rules, the layout. Everything is designed to feed back to you as a player the sense that you're achieving something great and that you are a great player. Metallica, all the way. It's crank it up that puts it over the edge for me. It's that how high do you want to build it up? When do you want to cash it in? You know, I think that is spectacular. And in fact, do you want to try to get to end of the line? It's very difficult to do. I know a lot of Metallica owners certainly have done it, but you talked about getting to the end of Iron Maiden without obviously getting all the super bonuses and stuff. I've said before, I'm not a fan of secret skill shots at all. I think it's gimmicky, and I've seen it disappoint so many people in competition, and especially at places like Pinberg where you have a lot of new players, and a player can be playing a long time, a person walks up, does a shot worth $20 million, and they're like, really? Things like that bother me. It's minor. It is very minor, but Metallica has just been there for how many years now? Seven? So there you go. Metallica, just like in head-to-head, we'll see. I wonder if we're in the minority. We're a couple of old guys. Maybe it's Jurassic. Maybe it's Deadpool. It wouldn't surprise me if it's either of those two. I think, I mean, I don't think Walking Dead will compare to Jurassic Park and Deadpool. I think it's going to come down to one of the four between Jurassic, Deadpool, Iron Maiden, and Metallica. But we said it's Metallica. There's your winner. You can take that to the bank.
    61:31
    Verified by head-to-head. Verified by final round pinball podcast. Metallica. the greatest Stern game ever made. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, so Metallica was the game that got me actually back into, that was the first game I ever played in the competition. It was against James and I beat him. And then Star Trek came straight out after and that was when I went, oh, I've got to have this machine. So that was the start of that. Well, that's actually a great segue for us because guess what? Another episode, another sponsor for us, Marty. I know, it's so tough to choose which one will get the final round Pinball Podcast seal of approval. I think this week we've got one everyone needs right about now. We have our first pinball company sponsoring us, and they've chosen our podcast for the big reveal. Are you tired of the same old themes, 70s rock bands, old movies? How about something fresh and new? You thought Netflix could only give you stranger things, now they've done one better. It's the new Joe Exotic pinball machine. I saw a tiger. Enter the tiger cage and collect rewards like expired meat pizzas, Joe Exotic condoms, and badly dyed mullets. I'm not cutting my hair. Lock balls in the Prince Albert ring to start multi-ball, where you can add a ball just like Doc Antle adds wives. Complete modes up the ramp to earn letters and spell Big Cat Rescue to get to the wizard mode. Find Carol Baskin's husband. Search tiger shit, train the river. travel to Costa Rica or come to the realization who the fuck would want to be married to her hey all you cool cats and kittens it's Carol at Big Cat Rescue it's the new Joe Exotic pinball machine from Home Pin well they've got my money that's it I mean here you go how much is it is there an LE I'll take that thank you very much I will deposit down sight unseen but seriously Jeff how bonkers is Tiger King it's so good anyway well as soon as we get it we definitely have to start streaming it don't you think absolutely and as we said before right now everybody locked away streaming has just really become everybody's favorite pastime we talked about streaming on the last episode and we're going to continue that conversation with somebody who is an expert at it just like you marty we go to houston right now in space city phil grimaldi joins us hey phil how are you hey jeff i'm doing Well, thank you so much for having me. So as Jeff said, we did talk about last week about streaming from home, and I really touched on the most basic of setups, being if you've got Logitech webcams, you just need two, maybe three, and you can set up a pretty basic stream. We started delving into more complex setups and thought, well, hang on, let's just wait until Phil comes on board to talk about the next level where you're talking about camcorders and maybe even multi-camera and multi-machine setup. So keen to get your thoughts on what somebody would do to take it to that next step beyond just webcams. Sure. And myself, like most people, started off using the webcams and you kind of quickly run into a lot of the limitations of those webcams. It gets really difficult to dial in the settings. And if you're after a really nice picture, there's just limitations there with what you can do with those. And then beyond just the limitations of what the technology can actually do, some of the software settings can just be really infuriating to work with. Logitech cameras in particular are notorious for not storing your settings. And every time you reboot your computer, you kind of lose all those settings. And they're really finicky when it comes to lighting. So if the lighting in your room changes or the sun comes down or whatever, you need to dial in those settings again. It gets really, really cumbersome. So the next stage, and if you want to graduate and level up from your C920 cameras, is to move into camcorders. The big difference there is then rather than all of your data from your camera being transmitted via USB cable, everything is being done via HDMI. So you need something in your computer to capture that HDMI signal. So you need an HDMI capture card. and you can get these capture cards that are like external ones that connect to your USB drive and you just plug the HDMI cable from the camcorder directly into that. Or you've got like a tower computer, you have internal HDMI capture cards, and you can plug those into your motherboard and those have like a really nice connection. And then everything is just being fed directly in your computer from the camcorder. And those camcorders, then all the settings are being stored directly on the camcorders. You've got the nice zoom capabilities there. you can dial in all your settings everything gets uh stored and saved and you get the added benefit of generally speaking 60 frames per second which is going to give you that really nice smooth ball motion across the screen the other thing i've noticed about camcorders and the the camcorder of choice for streamers particularly pinball is the the cx405 and the reason why that camera is good the price point is a the first part it's it's actually quite a reasonable, it's not definitely the best quality, it's not, but it handles sudden fluctuations of light really well. And when you're talking about pinball machine, when you've got flashes going off, that's really important. It doesn't have a great flash and then take a couple of seconds to refocus itself. It knows how to manage those. Plus, it also works well in low light situations. So if you have a dark room and you've got a pinball machine that doesn't have great GI, you can sort of boost it up quite nicely without it starting to get all artifact-y. So the CX405, Sony, I think it is. Right. Yep. I think that is the streamer's camera of choice. But then you're talking about the capture device, and you can pick them up for $100, $150, all the way up to one of mine is an Inogenie capture device, which I think is about $600, $700.
    67:27
    Oof. Bragger. It does. It's actually a 4K capture card, which is a bit of overkill, but it's just rock solid. The other ones that people use are the Elgato Cam Blink, which is a good one. It's a nice little small form factor as well. You can also get the HD60 as well. They're reasonably priced as well. Phil, you realize that Marty's getting paid by every one of these companies for dropping every one of their names. You realize that, right? How do I get in on that? I want some of those $700 capture cards. My goodness. Yeah. Yeah, well, I did it because, and it comes back to what you were saying about USB cameras as well. If you've got these capture cards, and this is mainly for my mobile stream via my laptop. I do also have a tower that's got HDMI cards in it as well. But the thing about these setups is the more you take things in and out, the more you've got to reconfigure. And there were some capture devices that I had that just didn't hold on to their settings all that well. So when I found this Energeny one, it just works every time, no matter what. Yeah. If you are shopping around for those things, too, I've found that, especially with the CX-405s and some of those older cameras, I mean, they've been on the market for a long time. You can find them used on eBay for quite cheap. A lot of times, some of these equipment can be pretty reasonably priced if you go on the used market, I've found. So I don't know about some of the newer 4K technology that you're talking about. But, yeah, price-wise, you can do pretty well if you look on the used market. One thing, Marty, you and Phil were talking about was lighting. I noticed when you're playing pinball, as a player, you're trying to avoid glare from above from certain lighting. And maybe when you're playing, that glare isn't there. But when you're streaming, that can be a problem. I was at InDisc where they were setting up. There was no glare on the machine as a player, but they had to do these tarps to protect the light on the ceiling that would come in on that angled glass and obviously affect the stream. So is that a big area of concern? I mean, where you set up the machines, where you set up the streaming? Totally. Most of the streaming I do is almost exclusively tournament streaming. So we're doing this in conference halls and breakout rooms at hotels and things like that. And you don't have much control over where the lighting is located. It's in the middle of the room and the ceiling. There's not much you can do about it. I've tinkered around with the ideas of kind of like having like an umbrella over my streaming rig to block off some of the light. I've never really figured out how to do that. You can kind of kill some of the glare from lights if you have an external lighting source. So if you have a light source connected to your rig, you can turn that on and kind of block out some of the, or it's more like not blocking the glare, but just kind of like competing with it a little bit, and you can knock down some of the glare a little bit. But when you're streaming in tournaments, sometimes you really don't have much of a choice and you just need to deal with it. You can dial in your camera settings a little bit and tinker with them a little bit to try and find something that works okay. But for the most part, you'll see in a lot of these big tournaments, they're sort of just, you have to deal with it. It just is a reality of the beast. But you do bring up a vital point, Jeff, in that lighting is really, really important. Just when you're trying to get the best quality visuals for people watching, lighting is really important. And I'll sort of still talk about the home stream setup this time with camcorders in that the brighter your play field is, the less the camera has to work to find the right light and the less your capture card has to do to try and get the right lighting balance as well. So if you want really rock-solid 60 frames per second streaming, then you really need to brighten up the playfield. So you can either do that by having really good ambient lighting in the room, or you can use things like box lights. I've got professional photography box lights that shine nicely diffused bright lights onto the playfield. Again, another plug. I've also got pin stadiums on my machines, and they... There we go. Yeah, there we go. You knew it was coming. but if you are streaming pin stadiums are completely invaluable especially the extreme ones because you can actually move them from machine to machine and it also means that when I play at home and I have my pin stadiums on I can turn my room lights off completely and I just get a nice consistent bright image but regardless of what brand and who I'm shilling the point is the brighter the play field the less the camera and the capture card has to do so the better image you're going to get. It's kind of a double-edged sword there too. So as you're flooding the play field with light, if you're doing this in a tournament setting, you have to also take into consideration the players who are actually playing this game. And I've run into the problem too where I'll set up a nice lighting on the play field and then the players will request me to turn it off because it's distracting to them and they don't like having the... I have a light that comes from the top, so it's attached to the top of my rig and shines down. The pin stadiums aren't quite as bad, but you'll still have players who really do not like playing with those pin stadium lights. And if you're trying to run a high quality tournament, you need to cede to the player and do what's going to be best for them. And so you kind of have this balance of what's better, the visual on the screen or on the stream or your players being able to play at top capacity. That's interesting because pin stadium, listen, I'm a big fan as well of Scott and everything he does. they're a major sponsor of pinberg and we saw on the biggest stage if you will in competition pinball pin stadiums on all those machines i didn't hear one player complaint i was up on stage not as a player but i didn't hear one person you know talk about that being a problem for me as a player i want to see the play field and the older you get certainly once you're past the age of 40 and I just creeped past it, you find it difficult to play in darker scenarios. It's like the whole play field kind of closes in on you. You know, for those that play Fortnite, you know, when the storm is coming and it just gets smaller and smaller, that's what it's like in dark areas for me as a player. So brighten it up, you know, with glares and things like that, I can move my body to go around certain glares. You know, I might, I might like a certain stance, but if I have to crouch down a little more or stand straight up to avoid a glare i'll do it but you remember pinberg a couple of years ago that whole remember there was that whole road that just had it was dark yeah but they turned the lights off because people were complaining about the glare from the lights on the entire road so again it's what what phil's saying and what i'm saying lighting is really really really it's it's crucial not just for for a stream but also for the player when you're at home or at a small location you've got greater ability to you know move things around so you've got lighting for both viewers when it comes to tournaments and and also bigger locations you don't have so much choice film yeah that's exactly right um and there's not i mean it just kind of is what it is i'm very much on in the camp of you know pro pin stadiums when i got to the pinberg stage for the first time and i saw that big row of games with the pin stadium lights on them just kind of glowing at you when you're playing them they had were perfectly you're able to see everything you didn't have to worry about any of these weird oddities of getting in the way of your playing i really enjoyed that but that's just me as it's very idiosyncratic you'll see some players with the headlamps on them because they can't play if they can't see the game and so it's going to be at an individual level and at some point you just need to say this is what it is we're doing the lights we're not doing the lights and as a tournament director if you're also in charge of the stream you kind of have that uh that leeway so then talk about taking that next step up from from a home setup to a tournament setup and jeff mentioned before i i've had melbourne uh silver ball and so i can switch between eight machines and i based mine off carl d'angelo's indisc setup not the the mobile rig i do have a mobile rig as well But what is it going to that next step? For somebody that's running regular tournaments with multiple machines, how do they set up something for that? Well, you know, the first time I ran a major tournament, it was TPF, I think it was 2016 or 2017. And at that point in time, I was still running the webcam setup and I had 20 plus, 20 or 21 C920 cameras over every single one of the machines. And I was dialing in all those settings. It was very convenient and nice to have all of those games cammed up, and you could just switch between them for the different games, and it was easy for the commentators to switch around and follow different games. However, it was just, at the end of the day, so difficult to dial in all of those different cameras, run all of those different wires. And so I ultimately came to the conclusion that the now kind of ubiquitous mobile rig is probably the best way of going about tournament streaming. And we've even seen Pinberg and Papa go this route as well. It just offers you so much flexibility in terms of which games you want to watch and also making sure you have a very high quality camera on all of those games. So you can just have one rig with top-notch, good quality equipment attached to it. And it's mobile and wireless. And so you can just move it around to whatever game you want to follow. It has some limitations. So most people are using these Blackbird wireless transmitters that are offered by Monoprice. They're cheap, cost like $170. They have a 200-foot range or so, but you need a lot of sight. So you're limited in terms of where you can stream. If you've got a big open room, you can just pop your booth right in the middle of the room, and you can kind of just move the rig around But in a lot of big tournaments you might have a multi setup where your games are in multiple rooms and that sort of thing isn going to work out at all In that case what you want to do is just really think about logistically how are you going to go about doing this? You might have to set up different stations for your wireless transmitters and receivers and run cables back to a different room. Do your homework, right? Get the layout of the room. How is everything going to be laid out? How much space is in between? Is there going to be any columns or anything like that that are blocking your transmitters. Think through all these little things that might cause you problems. But as long as you have the right equipment, as long as you think through the logistics, you'll be able to run a pretty seamless stream for a big tournament. Phil, you just mentioned about changing from TPF having all those cameras to this mobile rig. Now, I've had Carl D'Angelo on Pinball Profile, and he credits you. Everyone talks about it being the Carl rig, but he credits you for really creating that. So let's clarify that. Where did it come from? Was it you? Was it Carl? Was it both of you? That's really interesting that Carl gives me credit for it. I'll tell you the exact story. I had sketched out an idea of the original rig. It was originally planning on having it fabricated out of steel and I had contacted, you know, some local fabricators and I'd gotten some quotes on it. And I can't remember why, but for some reason, I sent Carl a message and I sent him my sketches and I thought and I asked him like, hey, have you ever thought about doing something like this? I think it would be really easy to move games around and this could really work. He sent me a message back and was like, no way, I've been thinking about doing the same thing. I was going to make mine out of this 8020 aluminum and he linked me to this 8020 website. And at that point, so 8020, if you're not familiar, is this company that produces aluminum extrusion. And you can basically just tell them which, if you want a piece of aluminum that's this long, they'll custom cut it for you. And it's basically like an adult erector set, right? And you can just order the parts that you want and then assemble it. So you can make your own design and then assemble it. So after Carl sent me to the 8020 website, I kind of realized that aluminum was going to be far better than steel at this. It's going to be far lighter. It would be easier to take apart and put back together again. So I designed my own rig using the 8020. Carl, at the same time, designed his rig. And then at the end of the day, I think Carl put in his order before mine and I put in mine after his, but I got mine back sooner because, you know, the way I had designed it, it required fewer custom cuts. So we both had two separate designs of a similar, functioning rig. And ultimately, I think we both put up our designs on Tilt Forms. You can get the bill of materials for both of ours and order it yourself. I think Carl's probably, it definitely is more aesthetically pleasing. It just takes longer for them to construct or to fabricate because it uses some custom cuts and some custom joins. So it looks better. But if you want something you know in your mailbox sooner my design kind of comes faster so it was sort of a yeah we both kind of came up with it at the same time i think we both independently had come up with the idea but i give carl credit for using 8020 i was originally going to make mine out of steel which i'm thankful i did not go that route and if you're in australia we don't we didn't really have access to 8020 because they're not going to ship it to australia carl also he redirected me to 8020 so at least i got all the measurements and i understood what i want um Jimmy Nails, who runs the Brisbane Masters, he was the first one in Australia that I knew that managed to get that aluminium rig as well. So if anyone in Australia is interested in it, get in contact with me or even Jimmy Nails if you've got any contact details and I can get you in touch with a company here that made it. I effectively said to them, hey, Jimmy Nails got this rig, I want one, and a week later it was shipped down to Melbourne. So if anyone's interested in one in Australia, Get in contact with us. So now you've got the easier gear. You've got this great mobile setup made from aluminum, but still there are going to be problems that happen when you're streaming tournaments. And that's the majority of what you do, Phil. And I'll ask you this as well, Marty. What are the biggest pitfalls you always seem to come across, whether it's at a tournament or whether you're streaming at home?
    82:06
    For me, the biggest issue I've got really is time. You don't know what you know until you actually get to an event to know what the layout is going to be. Have I got enough cables? Have I got the right length of cable? Have I got the right line of sight between the transmitters to the receivers? And sometimes you only have an hour to two hours to set up. So I've many times started the stream midway through a tournament just because I haven't had enough time to set everything up. Yeah. And when you're talking about these rigs, the important thing to keep in mind is there are just so many points of failure that could so many different things that can go wrong. And you're talking about you probably have like 30 different cables, different battery packs and these wireless transmitters and the cameras. And any one of those little components could fail at one time. And then troubleshooting those on the fly while you're stressed out and you're trying to do this broadcast can be so stressful. And so like I've had, you know, one time I set up my wireless transmitters and they just were not syncing for whatever reason. So I had done all the testing on this at home. Everything worked perfectly when I was at home. But when I got to the venue where I was doing the streaming, I could not get my wireless transmitters to sync to one another. And so I did tons of, you know, just troubleshooting and plugging things, unplugging things and plugging them back in again, trying different cables. and then ultimately I realized it had something to do with the outlet that I was plugging these transmitters in it was or it was like a some kind of power strip there's something goofy with it and if I plugged into a different power strip everything worked I have no idea like it to this day does not make sense to me why this was the case but it was just that one little point of failure like that you wouldn't even expect to be affecting your stream at all and it kind of terrifies me when I do these big, especially TPF, which, you know, we can be clocking like 400 viewers at any time. It can be stressful just knowing that at any moment in time, like one of these little components could fail and then brings the whole stream down. And I think even at TPF, we had something like we had the whole rig plugged into an outlet with a ground fault trip on it because it was near a sink. And I don't know why, but it tripped the ground fault and totally killed the rig and killed the stream um all these little things that just and it is it's kind of like you know of course like it if it could go wrong it will go wrong and no amount of planning seems to help at all but i guess it's i have the utmost respect for these professional broadcasts that somehow seem to do sporting events you know around the year without any sort of major hiccups because i seem to manage to find every single little thing that can go wrong well i think it comes back to budget, really, because those professional broadcasters, they've got gear that's worth hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we don't make anything out of streaming, really. What? We don't. You know we don't. One of us does, but not everybody.
    85:12
    And sort of to your point as well, so as I said, I've got the mobile rig, but I tend to more so use my multi-camera setup, so I've got 8 to 1 HDMI switches, they're also monoprice, Again, Monoprice, shilling them as well, but just reasonably priced for what they actually do. So I've got four 8 to 1 HDMI switches. I've got 24 camcorders. And Jeff, you would know because when we set up that stream for the Pinball Profile World Tour at Ryan's house, that took me nearly four hours to set that up. And even during the stream, there were just lots of things that were going wrong. so my advice really is to people is if you've got the opportunity to go to a venue before you set up your stream a day before, a week before, whatever it is absolutely do it so you can start doing a bit of risk analysis determining where your points of failure are going to be and where some issues are going to be so at least you're prepared you're expected for some of those things and like you said Phil you've got redundancy there just in case unfortunately it's still tripped but at least you know you're aware of what could go wrong to better mitigate it. Well, it was worth those four hours of setup because you got to see one of the world's best players win a major tournament. So anyway, that aside.
    86:36
    He won it, Phil, is what he's saying. Oh, did I? If you have any more questions about some technical support or any suggestions, please send them to finalroundpinball at gmail.com. We'll be glad to answer those and share those with our listeners here on this podcast. While we've got Phil on, Phil and I had this conversation. It was just really a phone call. I started to record it. I was going to make it into an episode of Pinball Profile, but technically it didn't work. But still, it was a great conversation. This is something Phil and I did about a year ago. And we're going to kind of relive it right now because what Phil and I were talking about is when you're streaming at a tournament, what kind of guidelines do you want for commentating? and Marty, Phil, myself, everyone listening, we all have different views of what we would like to see in commentating, but maybe there are some common things. And for me, the number one rule in commentating is don't talk over someone else.
    87:34
    My number one rule when it comes to commentating is remember who your audience is. It is the people that are watching the stream, not the person sitting next to you, not the person eating a sandwich five meters away from you, not people walking past saying hello to them. Remember that this is a broadcast. The only people that are important to you are the people watching your stream. And I think not a lot of people really realize that. And as a viewer, it doesn't make a great stream. To me, one of the most important things about commentators is the audio. It's one of the most underappreciated parts of the stream. We just talked a lot about the different camera gear and the visuals and make sure we have lots of lighting. I think audio is one of the most important parts of a stream. You want to make sure that you have a really good audio quality. Too many streams have really low quality microphones. The commentators can't really hear themselves talking. So they're speaking really loudly into the mic. There might be a lot of background noise. So having a good microphone and making sure that the commentators know how to speak into it, where actually they need to position their mouth, things like that. And I think now it's becoming more and more common to have game audio being piped into the stream as well. So you're actually able to hear the jackpot callouts. You're actually able to hear the flippers flipping and the mechanisms chattering away. I think that actually adds a lot to the ambience of the game. And so I think as people are setting up their streams, audio should be a much more important component of the streams. That's a good point. It really gives you that feeling like you're there, too. another great innovation that we've seen over the last year or so is scorebit and i think that's really nice to see that immediately when some of the fonts on some of the displays aren't exactly great i know maybe the worst font in pinball over the last few years is trying to read a display for aerosmith that white on the light blue you just can't see it even when you've got a camera dedicated to it but another point i find and i guess i'm looking at it more from a broadcaster standpoint I don't enjoy when commentators second-guess the players and their decision-making. I just don't really see a lot of that in sports. You know, it looks like you don't want to be the know-it-all, and you don't want to be talking a lot about your own stories, and here's what I would do. Just kind of evaluate what the player is doing and maybe try to see what they're trying to do. And, you know, sometimes people can do it, sometimes they fail, and then that's where a lot of the second-guess comes in. It's a big turn-off for me. Okay, I agree to that to an extent. Obviously, it depends on how it's done and how much humility it's done with. I like to know either what's at stake or what they could have done differently or better. But yeah, the whole, well, if it was me, I would have done this. Well, it's not you because you're in the booth. True. So it's a fine line. Yeah, I mean, I think you can balance that a little bit by trying to maybe get into the player's head a little bit and tell the chat or tell the audience what were they trying to do or what do you think they were trying to do or accomplish rather than saying, oh, you know, that wasn't a good idea or good strategy. I'm just saying, oh, I think they were trying to do this particular thing. It didn't work out for them rather than saying, oh, that was a dumb idea or that was a bad decision making right there. I think that's why they start talking about it being pilot error it's a nice inoffensive way of basically saying they screwed it up or they misfired or whatever it is just saying you know what it happens move it on as a player too I mean you can get in the head of a player I mean everybody's been under the well most people have been under the camera before they've played in high stress situations people make mistakes right I mean, I've definitely made a lot of like pilot errors or so to speak. And then I go back and I think, oh, my gosh, what was I thinking? So, you know, as a commentary, you want to give the player a little bit of benefit of doubt and realize that they are human. They're not going to make superhuman decision making or superhuman play at all times. So it's important to add a little humility to it. Most of those competition streams have more than one person commentating. So I think it's important to let each person behind the microphone talk equally. So you have to be conscious of that. If somebody is dominating the conversation, it doesn't offer different dynamics. And I like to hear the different people's thoughts, voices, strategies. And for the most part, most commentators are doing that. So, Jeff, you have a background in broadcasting. Is there like a strategy or are there different roles that you can put people in to say, like, here are the things that you're going to talk about or here are the things that so-and-so is going to talk about that kind of helps balance who's talking and how you can get that balance? among the commentators? It's a lot easier when there are two people because you would have somebody doing a play-by-play and another person doing color commentating. With three people, you have to figure out what the dynamics are going to be. Maybe somebody is an expert on rules and they can go over that aspect of it. But I think there's still, whether it's two people or three people, you need to assign someone as, okay, I'm the director. I'm not going to be dominating the conversation, but I'm going to be pointing to you, which people can't see on camera. Okay, you go, you go, you go. Or put your hand up behind the camera and say, I've got a thought to say, let me jump in here without interrupting. It's like you're reading my mind, Jeff. And apologies to everybody listening. I'm about to pay Jeff a compliment, which pains me to do. But not only are you obviously a really good commentator as an individual, and you do a lot of those one-on-one interviews, which just really connects the viewer to the players. So that's great. you do that well but what i've noticed that you do really well is whenever you are on the commentary booth and there's two maybe three people there you do act as director and you sort of preface people and ask them questions and you guide them down to their lane of how they commentate so my point was going to be and you just made it somebody on that panel needs to consider themselves the director and they're guiding the conversation as opposed to just letting people speak free form. There you go. I feel dirty for saying it. I feel great. I'm going to capture that and I think that's going to be our soundbite. So when we're up for the twippies or whatever, that'll be the clip right there. But it's true. It's true. Thanks. A stream is always really good when you're in the commentary booth. And you're not the only one. There's obviously others as well. But it's really, you brought up that point as I was thinking it, which is have somebody lead the group. Phil, you're in Texas there, and I got to tell you, my favorite person by far when it comes to being in the booth, although I'd rather see them play, and a lot of times they are in the finals, but give me Stephen Bowden any day of the week. I love Steve Bowden on the mic. He does such an excellent job. He's one of my favorite commentators, and I'm super, super lucky to have him in the state of Texas right now, so he can commentate on a lot of my streams. But, yeah, more often than not, he's actually in the finals. But yes, yeah, some sort of magic. What is it that you think makes Steve excel? I can't articulate what it is, but I know he's my favorite. The reason I mentioned his name is because, first of all, he's very personable. He's funny. He knows the games. He's a great player himself. He's got a very infectious laugh, which I also enjoy. And I've just never felt uncomfortable ever listening to him talk. And I've learned a lot, too. from when I first started playing pinball. So to me, he is the gold standard. Yeah, I would agree with you. And I think that the secret sauce that he has is he knows the audience. He knows that there's a variety of people that are experts watching and people that are new to it. And so the language that he uses is very succinct, but any person that's new to veteran understands exactly what he's saying because of his razor focus language that he uses to describe what's happening as it's happening. One of my favorite events that he commentated on was, I think, the 2018 TPF Finals. And this was Robert Byers' win. But what Steve did was he gave such a sense of excitement and made you really just get into this game. And he can emote in such a way that gives you a sense of what's happening is really, really extraordinary. and it helps the audience, it helps the people that are watching really get into that moment. That's one of the things that I can't quite articulate, but he has a good way of bringing you into that and making you emote and making you feel happy about watching pinball. It's unfortunate, like all of us, we didn't get a chance to see you at TPF. We will in 2021, but you've got a big event that I was very lucky to be at in Houston, and that's coming up in November, your big Houston Arcade Expo. I have been coming to the Houston Arcade Expo since I moved to Houston, obviously. I was pretty much blown away by how awesome the show was and how kind of unknown it was amongst all of the big conventions around the country and the world. Not a lot of people talked about it before I moved down to Texas. I didn't even know it was a thing. But I was used to going to the Chicago Expo before moving down to Texas. And I was like, hey, this is actually bigger than Chicago and better, I think. What's going on here? And yeah, about three years ago, I kind of threw my hat into the ring to be the tournament director and took over. We've kind of revamped the whole tournament and is now called the Space City Open that takes place during the Houston Arcade Expo. The expo itself is just a fantastic time. It's a big party atmosphere. Everybody's having a good time. Lots of live music goes all night. Everybody's having a good time drinking and, you know, just catching up with everyone. And then the tournaments have kind of morphed into, you know, a really top class event. We switched over to a match play format two years ago, and we started off with a cap of 60 players, which wasn't a whole lot. And just last year, we shuffled around our rules for the tournament a little bit in the format, and we were able to increase our limit to 120. And we sold out. We filled up 120 players. So that puts us at one of the bigger match play tournaments in the country, if not probably the world. Phil, explain to Marty how that tournament works, because it's difficult to get into the playoffs. Sure, yeah. So it's not like every other match play tournament out there. The way we had to do this, because we could not, we're limited in space and the number of pins that we can have, we use a multi-phase or like a multi-session match play format. So there'll be four distinct qualifying sessions. Each player can play in up to two of those sessions. And I think it's capped at like 52 players per session. And you can play in only one or two. And so you play in that 52 player session. And I think we took the top five or six and there's only five games per session. So you really have to knock it out of the park on all five of your games. So first and seconds only. If you get a third, you're pretty much out of the running. And yeah, it's a whole lot of fun. It's very, very taxing for the players. So definitely puts you through your paces. You need to be on point. Like I said, if you get a third or fourth, you're pretty much you're pretty much toast. But it's a great format for if you want to increase your player cap and make sure everybody has the opportunity to play in the tournament and see the show. It's a good balance of balancing show time and tournament time. Yeah, it's a very good format. Thanks very much for coming on, Phil. I look forward to coming over there once we can get out of our houses and I can travel again. Keen to check out your setup at TPF. I'm going to be there next year by hook or by crook, guys. So I'm looking forward to meeting you, talking tech, and let's keep up all the great streaming. Thank you so much for having me. I'm sad we couldn't see you at TPF. We're all heartbroken over it, obviously. But, you know, the show must go on. We'll be back and we'll be having even more fun next year. Thanks very much, Phil. Thank you. We actually had some questions about streaming that came from our last episode. Hopefully we answered some of those for you this episode with Phil joining us. but there was a question received on our Facebook page for Final Round Pinball Podcast. Yeah, so thank you, Andre, for reaching out to us on Facebook. And everybody, please feel free to log into Facebook and have a chat with us. We love that kind of stuff. Andre writes to us saying, I think there's lots of people out there, including myself, turning into this in these times. I have a question I haven't been able to find an answer to online. Is streaming music game themes problematic? I was going to start with Metallica, but don't want to end up with copyright strike on my account. Thank you. And it's interesting because I did notice recently that a stream by Chuck Webster was actually flagged by Facebook because he was obviously playing a machine that had music that was copyrighted. Really what happens is that with Twitch, they won't really flag you during your stream, but they will flag you after. and what will happen is that they will just silent out those sections that are copyright infringed because I don't think they've got an agreement with any of the record companies to monetize it so they will just make that three or four minutes of that song silent. When it comes to Facebook and YouTube, it's a little bit different. Facebook will link it to the original music or they will actually flag it and bring it down effectively and YouTube will do the same thing. It will either link it to whoever's the record company that's got the rights to the music or they will completely take it down. But as you're doing it live, it's not a problem. But a lot of people like to archive. So I guess it would make sense to maybe turn the volume down on something like that. Yeah, correct. My streams of Iron Maiden would get flagged every single time. Interesting. Thanks very much. Again, email us finalroundpinball at gmail.com or check us out on Instagram or Facebook. And also, I just wanted to say thank you to everybody that's reached out to me in the last couple of weeks, because since we did speak last week about just getting a basic setup, I've actually had four people reach out to me wanting to set up a stream. So I'm really pleased by that, and I hope more and more people do it. Very nice. As we look to our next episode, Episode 6, we have a special guest joining us, because the topic of conversation will be about tournaments. I know they're on hold right now, but they will be back, as we know for sure. and what makes a tournament successful. This guest of ours compiled all kinds of data on that. In fact, he would send out surveys after every single major tournament. He's Doug Polka. You know him from ReplayFX and from Pinberg, one of the best tournament directors you'll find anywhere, and he will give us his insight, and we'll also put out a poll on the next episode where we can get feedback from you, the listener, on what makes a tournament a great success in your eyes. Awesome. I'm really looking forward to it I've met a really nice guy obviously got the weight over his shoulders when he's having to run a tournament like Pinberg and Papa back in the day so I'm looking forward to speaking to him That'll be on the next episode Until then, thank you very much for joining us My name is Geoff Teolis And I'm Martin Robbins Thanks everybody for listening Stay safe, stay at home Stay watching my stream, Melbourne Silver Bowl