People say I'm crazy, just a little touch, but maybe showers remind me, I'm psycho, too much, that's why. I always feel like somebody's watching me. La-sit, la-sit, la-sit, la-sit, la-sit, la-sit, la-sit. Ah, mystery is upon us in the world of pinball, a release that nobody saw coming, yours included. the mystery, the Winchester mystery house from Barrels of Fun landed on the pinball world yesterday. And I will say it really landed in a really spectacular fashion for a lot of people. It's hard to tell, right? It's hard to tell because you get like a game like this comes out and it really explodes in the vacuum. We're all in on pin side. The response has been great. The response on Facebook has been great. And overwhelmingly, the sentiment around this game's reveal and the launch has been nothing but positive. And I think what this underpins for me in general is this community is starving to get excited again. I mean, legitimately, we are really starving to feel what we used to feel much more consistently. And so I want to talk about this release. I've absorbed so much of the videos, the featurettes. There's our videos from Flip N Out Pinball. Carrie's got videos. There's other videos people have made. I don't think I've seen like such an overwhelming amount of content ready to go on day one, which was really well done. I mean, you have to give credit where credit was due. and the orchestration of delivering a mystery game in a mysterious month like October on the eve of Pinball Expo on the 13th day at the 13th hour, all of it really worked very well for barrels of fun. Now, I've said it last night, I'll say it again, with Winchester Mystery House getting this response and Dune Pinball seemingly getting a lukewarm or negative response, I do think David David Van Es is going to be in some trouble now really understanding what the pinball market wants. And I want to talk about this after sleeping on it because after reading through Pinside and after reading what everybody is saying, I still think that something phenomenal happens in this hobby when FOMO is back. And FOMO is back. And I've spent about 12 years witnessing FOMO for almost all of those years in pinball. And what FOMO tends to do to everybody is it has everybody suspend common sense in favor of excitement. And that's great, right? That's what we want to feel. We are grown men who want to be excited about pinball launches. We haven't felt that way in a long time. Stern Pinball hasn't released an exciting game in years. I mean, let's be honest, in years. And we all know what the Stern themes are. Do you actually think Stern has a game that's not going to be Pokemon, The Walking Dead, Transformers, or Fallout? Like you actually think there's something coming out that's not one of those games. And so we already know. We know it's Sonic the Hedgehog. We know it's Beetlejuice. We know it's Raza. We know it's Back to the Future. So in a world in which we know it all, it's fun to be surprised and delighted like this. And I think that goes a long way in creating the excitement, the enthusiasm. I didn't know this was coming. I mean, I'm reading people on Pinside. There are dudes that are like, I didn't even know the Winchester house existed, and I just placed an order, a non-refundable order for an $11,600 game in which when I'm going to get it is a mystery, in which what all the accessories are are still a mystery, in which the number one mystery is, is it even fun to play? They don't even know this yet. And this was enough yesterday to separate 11-6 from people. And that just goes to show you the power of FOMO and the power of excitement. It suspends common sense. And I like to pride myself on being maybe the only pinball content creator left who tries to bring a little bit of balance and common sense into the hobby. So for example, Common Sense. This company has never made two games at the same time ever before. So do you think in the midst of needing to sell Dune games, and they still have Dune on the line, do you think they're going to make these games quickly? okay common sense says no are they going to bring four games to expo and give the illusion and they will do this and they do it well they're going to give the illusion that because they've got four games there and they're definitely going to get some games out in maybe october early november they did the same thing with dune they will make a small batch run and then they will say something similar like they did with Dune, that they want to make sure the quality is there on the early builds, and then there's going to be a pause between the rest of the games being made. Okay, we saw it with Dune. So common sense to me is that if that's what happened with Dune, something similar is going to happen with Winchester. Okay, now let's ask some more questions because I get the hype and I get it, And maybe I'll start there real quick. Like, yes, this is a campy theme. Yes, Haunted House is a really good sort of territory from a theme standpoint to excite this community. This community does err on the macabre. Like, we like stuff like this. It just works well. It's the time of year where everyone's getting into that spooky vibe. And I think they did a really good job. And I think the storyline of this game is super intriguing. I didn't know about this house. I really didn't. Maybe I heard about it, but I learned about this yesterday like a lot of you. And it is a rad story. When you hear this story, it is one of those unique, like real life is more exciting than fiction kind of story. If you're around a dinner table and you want to tell people something interesting, this is a great story. that the Winchester family went to a seance and to like save the family from the evil spirits. They had to build a mansion and just keep building it And if they stopped building it the evil spirits would return I mean that incredible They had to make a house to catch all the good spirits I mean, what a crazy, crazy story. What a crazy, crazy place. And here's the great part about Winchester Mystery House is that nobody, and I mean this, nobody is coming to this game with any baggage, like you don't have any prejudices, like we did not want Dune. And then when they revealed Dune, you really didn't want it. And you'd saw the movie and it didn't connect with you in a way that makes you want to own a pinball machine. Now, what's crazy about this is that a lot of you out there have not heard about this thing or have never talked about this thing socially. And if I were to do a poll and said, how many of you want to buy a Winchester Mystery house game, it would have like landed nowhere on the pole. And this is why games like this are tricky because they are an anomaly. And I think they did it right. I think there's enough of a world under glass there. It definitely has intrigue. And because it came out of nowhere, it was like an intrigue sandwich hit all of us as we are so bored and tired of what Stern is putting on the plate with Star Wars. We don't want another Walking Dead. We are very impatient to wait for Beetlejuice. And there's nothing else. Like right now, everyone has ordered a Harry Potter, has their Harry Potter order in, and the wait to get your Harry Potter is going to take a while. Other than that, there is nothing else. There is nothing else compelling happening in the world of pinball, and it hasn't been happening for a while. And so they served up a sandwich that we were not expecting and it looks really good. The analogy I used, I'll use it again. I feel like the majority of pinball collectors have been starving just to have some action in the sack. You haven't been laid in like a long time if you're a pinball collector and all of a sudden you're at the bar and in walks this like somewhat attractive woman and she offers to buy you a drink. now she's got your attention and the likelihood if she like keeps the conversation intriguing enough you're going to want to go home with her because you're a horny pinball collector this is what this game did to a few hundred people in the pinball hobby yesterday and the latest i've heard is that they've sold half of the allotment of 525 so i want to say congratulations to barrels of fun, you got 250, 270 people to commit a non-refundable deposit for a game they've never played in one day. Now, everything is relative. That's a tiny, tiny number if Stern were to release a game, if Spooky were to release a game, if any other pinball manufacturer released a game and only sold 250, it's somewhat of a failure, right? But because they're only making 525, all of a sudden this seems like a success and it's well on its way to selling out. And it most likely is going to sell out. I mean, just look at the momentum, look at the vibes, heading into Pinball Expo with the right momentum and with the right vibes. And it's FOMO, baby, because this is what FOMO does. people are now afraid of missing out. I mean, it's literally the definition of FOMO. When I hear people say it's going to sell out, it's going to sell out. Like, look at all the distros, look at their correspondents, look at their communications. All the dealers and distros are like, get your order in while they still last. And people still have memory of sitting and waiting on Evil Dead and then Evil Dead sold out. And then you had to spend three thousand over to get one. And I think this game is going to sell out, but I don't think it's ever going to go up in value. I'm going to explain why right now, because as well as they did such a great job revealing this game, releasing it, getting all the right content. I think common sense is now going to set in when the hype of the reveal day dies down. And here's what I think is going to happen next. I think people are going to go play this game at Pinball Expo and that's going to be a super important moment to either justify or make people feel anxious about committing that $2,000 to buy an $11,600 game. Okay? Because you don't know how this game plays yet. Now, someone has already played it that people trust. Kerry Hardy. and if you listen to Kerry's review of this game I think it adds more mystery to this game than confidence so he tells the story of how he was traveling there he had two hours of sleep he wasn't at his best when he first played the game he had all these issues with it issues with the shots issues with the kinetic feel issues with the flipper feel all this stuff he then wakes up the next day is more recharged and they increase the flipper power. And then all of a sudden it's a great game. You know, and that's why my concern is even talking to him last night, he was saying stuff like Canada, Chris, the shots are not like a fan layout. Like it's a difficult shooter. It's going to be tight in certain areas. The left out lane drain, you can see that thing is going to be a monster that's going to eat people alive. Like, look at it. It's like an orbit right into the drain. And even though there's no pop bumpers in this game, I bet that right sling is going to send that ball into that out lane so much and make it really unfair. And hey, gang, you know how I feel about unfair left out lane drains. That one design decision can be enough to spoil the fun of a game. Hello, Wizard of Oz. Hello, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And I'm just a little bit worried because Carl is such a good player. How do you take probably the best player in the world? He's like one of the greatest ball control guys in the history of pinball. And if he's designing it and setting up the layout, I'm just a little nervous that because he's so good, this game can be brutally hard, but when he's playing it as he's designing it, he doesn't know that because everything comes natural and easy to him. So again, all of these questions will be answered when normal people like me and everybody else jump on the game at Expo. Okay, so I think that common sense would have been that a low IP like this, like this game, No way the IP was expensive, but it's as expensive as Dune. So in game I thought common sense would make people at least wait a little bit just a few days I not asking you guys to wait months If you just wait three days you going to get objective third gameplay footage of this game and get first-hand account what it's like to shoot. But no, like 270 people, they've already seen enough. And it's really funny to me when I see guys like Iceman and, you know, Neil McRae. These are guys that like should know better and they just can't act better. They like literally get sucked into the FOMO and it's like they've already seen enough. And I just want to stay on that point for a minute. Did you already see enough to know that you should commit to spending 11-6 for this game right away? Wow. All of a sudden, like theme doesn't matter as much. Artwork doesn't matter as much. How long you wait for the game doesn't matter as much. It's like you turn off all common sense because common sense to me says this, says the following. If you ordered this game early, right? If you're one of the first 250 people to get this game, let me ask you one question. When are you getting your game? You do not know. For the majority of those people who are waiting on this game, by the time your game is ready for you to buy by the time it's a few weeks out. We're talking months from now, not weeks. We're talking you're going to be able to see Beetlejuice by the time you're asked to pay in full. You're going to see the next Cornerstone from Stern. And here's what's going to happen. A lot of people are going to run in right away because of the FOMO that they missed an allotment of this game. And they're going to give $2,000 non-refundable. I want to talk a little bit about the timing here when it comes to barrels of fun. Why are they revealing a game with 25% of the code complete? Have you thought about that? Again, common sense. Why would a company reveal a game when the software is so incomplete? So how long have they been working on this game? They must have been working on this game for at least a year, I would assume. So in a year's time working on this game, 25% of the code is done. All right. So common sense. Then how many years is it going to take now to complete the code? Can people do the math? And also when I think about it, how is it that a company, again, common sense, we've seen this before where like a company has game A that is not very successful and then company rushes to market game B. Give me an example in the history of pinball where that has ever worked out well for a single manufacturer. And yet all of a sudden, I didn't hear anybody asking those questions yesterday. I don't see anybody raising that question anywhere. So why, in a world in which Dune still needs to be made, you've got people that order Dune that are still waiting for it. How is this company in a position when Dune was not very successful? how are they in a position now to create a second line and what does that look like have they communicated how many games of each line they can now make a week or month when I raised that question when I had Brian on my chat the answer was something like we don't want to give a timeline because when we do we can't always guarantee when vendors are going to supply parts and that could equal delays. Okay, so you know what that tells me? They haven't ordered 525 parts to build every single game yet that they're going to order parts in batches. I'm a little bit worried for one reason. I don't think, and I don't know what you think, common sense. I don't think because Dune wasn't that successful that Barrels of Fun had the revenue necessary to hire additional people. So then think about that. Do you think they hired more people for a second line? I know they've hired a few people here and there, but when it comes to manufacturing, like actual people on the manufacturing line, do you think they hired more people, have more salaries going out, took on more overhead to get this second game to market? And maybe they did, but I would like to hear how many new people have they hired? how many games can be made on the second line each week because without that knowledge, you are throwing your money against a game blind. You have no idea when you're gonna get it. And so here's what I think is gonna happen. And again, I could be wrong, but here is my guess of how this all goes down. And I think it goes down very much like Dune's reveal went down. I think there's gonna be that initial excitement of a new game reveal. And this has way more excitement than Dune. It just does. Like Dune had like zero excitement on launch. Okay, so they're going to have a really good week. I think they're going to sell all 525 without a doubt. I think they're going to sell all 525. I think people are starving, like I said, for something unique, something different. 525 people will lock in non-refundable deposits on the game. And then I think they're going to get just a few out there. And then I think there's going to be a drought. And I think what's going to happen is you're going to get a handful out in like November. And then I think there's going to be a pause. There's going to be a little bit of a delay. It's going to be like, it's going to be the same thing that happened with Dune. A confusion on how many they're making a week. And just a handful are getting them. But here's the real issue. There will only be, and I mean this, there will be maybe at most like 50 of these games made. And then we're going to see Beetlejuice. I mean that. and so literally you're going to have hundreds of people that locked in their money and their commitment to this game and then we're going to see Beetlejuice look I get it this game is refreshing it came out of left field but trust me when I say this there's no way there's no way this thing is going to have hype once Beetlejuice hits Beetlejuice is going to put out this mystery house fire instantly. Everybody knows it. I mean, it was funny that Spooky put up the image of Beetlejuice the gift. I thought that was a little petty. I have to be honest. I thought it was petty. It was like, all right, you got to be able to allow David to have his moment and he has a moment. And you know what? None of us could have guessed that the response to Winchester mystery house would have been this good, but you got to let the man have a moment. They did it. It worked out and the response is great I don think it going to hurt Beetlejuice at all In In fact I think what going to happen is I think people are going to regret committing the money before seeing Beetlejuice because here the other part that going to happen Again this is just common sense because this always happens. There's going to be 525 people locked in to buying a Manchester mystery house at 11.6. A lot of money people, by the way. I didn't even talk about the price. a lot of money. This is a lot of money for a game like this and you all know it. But for a lot of you out there, you have a lot of money, so you don't care. 11-6, commit it. Then you're going to see Beetlejuice and you're going to have people that can't afford both. They can't afford to commit or they don't have room for both games. And what happens when Beetlejuice excites those people more than this? Because, you know, when you look at a game in a vacuum, it's easy to try to like convince yourself you have to have it. But when you juxtapose it to something else, and if that something else is nicer, you know, the same way like Harry Potter just took all the hype away from King Kong. I do think Beetlejuice at $9,999, Beetlejuice is going to be so much cheaper than this game and have way more in it, look way better. I mean, the art on this Winchester game, it's all right. It's not great. Like if Stern made this game or Spooky made this game or JJP made this art package, y'all be railing on them. But all of a sudden it looks amazing. I get it. I get it. You just want something different. This is what's going to happen in December. There will be, I think, less than 50 mystery houses even made. Spooky Pinball is going to like drop Beetlejuice. and when you talk about FOMO, I'm sorry, but only 999 Beetlejuices, the demand is going to be 10 times greater than the demand is for Winchester Mystery House. And then you're going to get people who are locked in on Mystery House who are going to sell their deposits. And history has shown us they are not going to be able to get $2,000 for those deposits because the hype's going to be gone. And then what's going to happen is this. If you listen to Kaneda and you waited on Winchester House, even if you wanted it, if you waited, you're going to be able to get one for cheaper. This game is not going to go up in value. This is not going to be the next Evil Dead. It's more like a better version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It's a unique game. it's different you know but again like 11-6 is a lot of money and for a game they're only going to be able to slowly make and so that's what I think is going to happen and the most concerning part for me is basically the code this is the one thing that like I really don't understand how these veterans like Neil and Iceman are just running at this thing this isn't like Batman 66 where you know that Lyman is on it and he's the greatest coder of all time. Who's coding this game that you know? Who's coding it? And the code is only at 0.25. Okay. Do you think Barrels has a big software team? And unlike Labyrinth and unlike Dune, they don't have any assets, gang. Those two had like all the movie assets to arrange in the code. So it was a matter of just putting stuff in. there's no stuff to put in here they've got to make it all they've got a code they've got to animate that's a lot more work that's going to take a lot more time and so it's on 0.25 in October of 2025 how much you want to bet that a year from now it's not even close to being done so I think a few things have happened here I think they needed to get this game out because dune sales were so bad. I think the response to this game has been super positive. And I think it totally makes people feel good to be back in the FOMO wagon again. And that's what's exciting. Like everyone who's placing an order right now, you know what they're hoping is that the game sells out. So it justifies their decision because they haven't seen enough to know it's a great game yet. They haven't seen enough to know it's a fun pinball machine yet. They haven't played anything yet. And when you run in like that on a theme that these guys didn't even know existed, on a theme these guys didn't even want two days ago, trust me, it's a recipe. A flame that burns bright quickly burns out as well. And I think people need to remember that. I think this game burned very bright yesterday, but given a few more weeks, we'll see how sustainable the excitement is around it. And I would just caution everybody to just wait a few days. I'm not saying don't buy it. I love the excitement around it. I love the enthusiasm. I love that I'm now headed to Expo, super excited to play this game. But just wait. Just wait three days. If you're a grown man that can't wait three days to get more feedback, I don't know what's wrong. Are you that starving for a new pen? Maybe you are. Maybe you are. The mystery that I'm really curious about, how many dunes did you really sell? How are you truly doing as a company? And do you really have the ability to set up two lines that you've never done before? And can you execute it? I think this is going to be a gargantuan challenge for barrels of fun. I think it's easy to reveal a game. It's easy to take deposits. Anybody can do that. Where all of these boutique companies fall down is when they rob Peter to pay Paul a little bit. Not saying that's happening here. But when they start looking to another game before the paint has dried on the previous title they need to finish making, that has 100% of the time never worked out for boutique pinball companies. I'm a little bit surprised nobody's asking those questions. Nobody's raising any of those concerns. covered this hobby for way too long. I've seen this before. I hope it works out for everybody, but my gut is telling me this game is going to slowly make its way out. And by the time it makes its way out, you're going to see Winchester's trading not for like 14.6 or 13.6, like 9,600 as people try to get out to go buy the latest new stuff they could have faster. That's going to happen, everybody. Kaneda out. Happy Tuesday. Heading to Expo this week. Love y'all. Later. I always feel like somebody's watching me. Tell me you can't. I always feel like somebody's watching me.