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Episode 4 :: The Electric Bat Cast

Electric Bat Cast·podcast_episode·1h 17m·held·Oct 14, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Electric Bat hosts discuss tournament announcement, Labyrinth game reveal, and operator business metrics.

Summary

Kale Hernandez and Rachel Bess of Electric Bat Arcade discuss upcoming events including their five-year anniversary tournament (November 17-19, limited to 132 players, $30 entry), the Labyrinth pinball game announcement from Barrels of Fun with designers Bowen Kerins and Scott Denisey, and their Chicago Pinball Expo attendance. They also provide operator insights on arcade earnings data, video game vs pinball performance, and address community questions about routing machines and game maintenance decisions.

Key Claims

  • Barrels of Fun (new pinball manufacturer) is announcing Labyrinth as their first game with David Bowie/Jim Henson/Jennifer Connelly licensing

    high confidence · Kale and Rachel discuss the announcement with excitement about the license complexity and team (Bowen Kerins, Scott Denisey involved)

  • Electric Bat's five-year anniversary tournament is November 17-19 with 132-player capacity limit, $30 entry fee, top 24 make finals and money

    high confidence · Mark and hosts announce full tournament structure with pricing and format details

  • Roller Games is the worst-earning machine at Electric Bat Arcade

    high confidence · Rachel presents earnings data analysis showing Roller Games as the lowest earner, followed by Johnny Mnemonic, Tales from the Crypt, Centaur, and Who Done It

  • Godzilla is consistently the best-earning machine at Electric Bat Arcade

    high confidence · Rachel states this during earnings report discussion

  • Alien Resurrection shooter game earns as much as a premium-tier pinball machine despite high acquisition cost

    high confidence · Kale notes the game costs as much as a premium pin and earns 6th-7th highest in the arcade, making it worth the investment

  • Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga are the only classic arcade games that consistently earn money

    medium confidence · Rachel and Kale discuss operator experience with rare/expensive video games typically not earning despite collector appeal

  • Routed (location-operated) Limited Edition pinball machines do not command premium earnings or resale value compared to Pros or Premiums

    medium confidence · Rachel advises caller that modded LEs route poorly and depreciate more than Pros when used commercially

  • Electric Bat has over 100+ players in their competitive league

    high confidence · Kale mentions 100+ person league when discussing tournament selection criteria

Notable Quotes

  • “Who's this going to be? Another punny factory. Right. And then we saw, like, it's going to be Labyrinth. What do you mean it's going to be Labyrinth? You told me in the car, and I'm like, you mean the David Bowie and the Muppets?”

    Rachel @ early segment — Captures the surprise and enthusiasm around Barrels of Fun's Labyrinth announcement; indicates this is significant IP for a new manufacturer

  • “I don't know if that's popular enough... You kind of caught me on the spot. So I haven't thought this out all the way. But just if there's so many great ideas off the top of my head, surely one of these pinball designers that does this so dune could do something amazing”

    Kale @ mid-segment — Hosts riff on hypothetical future pinball themes; shows creative thinking about IP viability in pinball

  • “I mean, Elwynn could design a pin about trash bags and it would be fantastic.”

    Kale @ mid-segment — Humorous reference to Keith Elwyn's design reputation; implies designer talent transcends theme selection

  • “So those are the five worst earners. You know what surprises me... these are ones where people... You would just not expect these to be your worst earners.”

    Rachel @ earnings segment — Indicates operator experience contradicts community perception about which games perform financially

  • “If you are looking at reselling these heavily modded LEs, just don't put them on route because most people do not want a routed LE... That's the main thing to think about.”

    Rachel @ advice segment — Direct guidance to collectors/operators about LE resale value depreciation; reflects market dynamics

  • “How much do I enjoy playing them, how much do they earn, and are they good for tournaments. Are they good for tournaments is becoming increasingly important just due to our league being 100 plus people.”

    Kale @ later segment — Shows shift in operator priorities toward tournament viability as league grows; impacts game selection strategy

Entities

Kale HernandezpersonRachelpersonElectric Bat ArcadeorganizationBarrels of FuncompanyLabyrinthgameBowen KerinspersonScott DeniseypersonChicago Pinball Expoevent

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Operator insights show Limited Edition machines route poorly and depreciate significantly more than Pro/Premium models when used commercially

    high · Rachel advises caller that routed LEs lose value and earn no more than Pros, making them poor route investments despite collector appeal

  • ?

    event_signal: Electric Bat five-year anniversary tournament November 17-19 with 132-player limit, $30 entry, $4,000+ total prize pool, 100% entry fees to winners

    high · Hosts announce full tournament structure with ticket sales starting Saturday 9am via Eventbrite

  • ?

    community_signal: Electric Bat's competitive pinball league has grown to 100+ players, making tournament suitability a primary game selection criterion

    high · Kale states tournament viability is becoming 'increasingly important just due to our league being 100 plus people'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Video game performance varies significantly by location and game type; shooter games and rhythm games competitive with premium pinball earnings

    medium · Rachel data shows Alien Resurrection earns 6th-7th highest in arcade (as much as premium pin), rhythm games match mid-level pins, fighters match low-level pins

  • $

    market_signal: New manufacturer Barrels of Fun positioned as having serious credentials (veteran designers, high-profile IP) reducing community skepticism about failure risk

    medium · Kale states 'we were just kind of rolling our eyes like, okay, someone else is getting ready to lose a lot of money' before learning it was Labyrinth with experienced team

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.232

0:00
four three two one we're live from phoenix arizona i hope you're ready to crack open a pinball adventure my name is kale hernandez i'm rachel bess welcome to our program i know i'm here with the uh owner and operator of electric bat arcade rachel bess and i'm here with the co-owner and operator, Kale Hernandez. With my filtered water.
0:32
Okay. Lots of great stuff going on at pinball. It's a wild time. The Labyrinth. People keep messaging us. Are you getting to the Labyrinth? I think we would jump the gun to say we are. We don't know anything about it. But we will play it at Expo. apparently they're gonna they're gonna bring the machine yeah and uh what's kind of cool this is a new company i think it's called barrel of fun all i know is the logo the exclamation flipper logo i think they announced it it's barrel of fun pinball okay and if i'm mistaken sorry leave some comments uh i only skim the article right before this uh what's cool is our friends, I know Scott Denisey is involved. Bowen. Which gets me, and Bowen Kern.
1:30
That excites me. Yeah, Bowen and Scott. You want some veterans on the team. I was, before I heard, you know, when they were just doing all the lead up to all of this, we were just kind of rolling our eyes like, okay, someone else is getting ready to lose a lot of money. Who's this going to be? Another punny factory. Right. And then we saw, like, it's going to be Labyrinth. What do you mean it's going to be Labyrinth? You told me in the car, and I'm like, you mean the David Bowie and the Muppets? Yeah. So we want to know how much this license costs. I'm very curious about that.
2:02
Jim Henson. Right. Yeah, you got Jim Henson. And David Bowie. Yeah, David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly.
Game Room Goodies
company
Marco Specialtiescompany
Keith Elwynperson
Mike Vinacoreperson
Godzillagame
Roller Gamesgame
Alien Resurrectiongame
Escape from Lost Worldgame
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3game
Street Fighter 2game
Jack Dangerperson
  • $

    market_signal: Electric Bat arcade operator data reveals unexpected worst earners (Roller Games, Johnny Mnemonic, Tales from the Crypt) contradicting community perception

    high · Rachel presents full month of earnings data showing games people expect to perform actually underperform financially

  • ?

    announcement: Barrels of Fun officially announcing Labyrinth as debut game with David Bowie/Jim Henson IP and veteran designer team (Bowen Kerins, Scott Denisey)

    high · Kale and Rachel discuss the announcement with specific team member names and express genuine excitement about the IP complexity

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Barrels of Fun acquiring complex multi-party licensing (David Bowie estate, Jim Henson Company, Jennifer Connelly) for Labyrinth; hosts curious about cost

    high · Rachel specifically asks 'I'm very curious about that. Jim Henson. Right. Yeah, you got Jim Henson. And David Bowie.'

    • 2:09
    Yeah, yeah, that's all. You know, really cool in the Labyrinth, but we all remember her riding the mechanical horse in Career Opportunities. I don't remember that. That was a good one.
    2:23
    So this will be fun. We'll play it at Expo, and we will report back. We'll post some photos in our Discord. So follow along on the Discord there on our Chicago adventure, which is coming up next week. Yeah, our Chicago pinball adventure. Yeah, so very excited that this game looks like it has a great team behind it. And so I'm also nervous that, man, here's another machine I've got to work into the budget this year. Yeah. Oh, no. Good luck, guys. We're excited. We're always excited when a new operation comes on the scene. Yeah. The more pinball, the better. Yeah.
    3:06
    It's time to announce Mark. Well, Mark and the Electric Bat Arcades. Huge three-day tournament. We're having a big tournament for our five-year anniversary bash of the Electric Bat Arcade. This will be November 17th, 18th, 19th. Tickets go on sale this Saturday at 9 a.m. Yeah. People need to jump on that. It is limited. It's limited to 132 people. It's going to be huge. It's going to be a lot of Whopper points.
    3:42
    Get those burgers. Right. And not only is there a big major tournament, but like on the Friday, there's like a one-day smaller tournament. Right. And then on the Sunday, where we're going to have finals for Saturday's tournament, there will be a one-day tournament for anybody who didn't make it into the finals. The finals are top 24. Top 24 make it to finals. And top 24 are in the money, too. So 100% of that $30 entry fee goes to the pot. I was about to say, we didn't mention the entry fee. Oh, it's $30. It's only $30. It's super reasonable. So if it sells out, that'll be almost $1,000 for the winner. $1,000 to the winner and $4,000 total for the top 24. So there would be some good money there. All of the money you guys, 100% of the money you guys are paying to enter this is going into the pot. Yeah, we're paying. The IFPA fees and the trophy fees and all that sort of stuff. And the Eventbrite fees, all that stuff. All those. We're taking care of all that, so all the money goes to the winners. Where can people buy tickets at 9 a.m. on Saturday? So it is on Eventbrite.
    4:59
    There's already a Facebook post. We'll do another Facebook post for the Eventbrite link. You can go to – we'll have some Instagram stories. and then we will oh the discord there are the links already in the discord but we'll repost it and um if you're not on any of that stuff i know some people don't do social media if you go to electricbatarcade.com go to the podcast link and we'll have a link to the event bright page where you can purchase tickets that's a lot of places that'll be a lot of fun So people can find them. Right. And what's very cool, Matt and Amy, our California friends, our neighboring state, they're coming in to stream the whole thing. We really appreciate it.
    5:49
    Do you remember their Twitch handle? I will by the end of the podcast. Okay. Good deal. We'll recap. Yeah. Okay. So that's going to be a lot of fun. And that's coming up November 17th, 18th, and 19th. Big, big pinball bash. Going to be a lot of fun. Inexpensive. $30.
    6:12
    Now let's move on to our sponsors before we get into the meat and potatoes, the nut and bolts of the Batcast. Game Room Goodies. Thank you very much for sponsoring the program. Here's what we've talked. We've talked about Game Room Goodies before. We always mention, like, what kind of things you can buy there. And as the name suggests, it's things for your game room. But I really think it's worth mentioning again how good their service is, how much they've helped us out in a pinch with various parts. Just help. They're known to, like, if you have an issue with your game, they'll open one up on the showroom floor and then show you how to fix it. Like just shoot a video and send you a video about how to help you adjust something or – super helpful. And I think in this hobby, that is worth a whole lot. It's great service. Especially for a first-time owner. Right, right. Pinball machine. Pinball machine is complicated. But they also have – excuse me. I'm a little phlegmy. My allergies are – I'm having an issue. You did blow the whole backyard yesterday. I blew the entire backyard. I wore a mask, though, which helped. I wasn't blowing brown stuff out of my nose. So if you're having allergy issues, get on the Discord. Let us know your region and what you're dealing with now. What sort of pollens. We'll talk about it. We'll talk about remedies, teas, Mucinex D, whatever you're using. Hopefully we won't talk about it. That might be interesting. We can switch it. We can't talk about pinball all the time. We can. We do. I mean, it's podcast or not. We really do do that, don't we? Yeah. Game Room Goodies. Check them out at GameRoomGoodies.com. They're running a special. Yeah. If you want a pinball machine and you get in touch with them, tell them you heard about them on this podcast, the Batcast. Mention us. And they will sell you a pro for $67.50. Is that correct? Yes. And a premium for $92.50. Great deal.
    8:27
    Prices plus sales tax. Prices, like now prices, though. Again, if you're listening to this in 2032, these prices don't apply to you. They may already have the game there. If not, they can get it ordered for you. So thank you so much, Game Room Goodies. And also, Marco Specialties. You know we love Marco Specialties. We literally, I don't think we would be doing this without Marco Specialties. No, there are so many unique parts that we have that break that you couldn't get anywhere else.
    9:03
    Everything pinball. That's what they do. They do everything pinball. Marcospecialties.com. Also, there will be an expo. We're going to hang out. They're doing, they're teaming up with Stern again to do the big Marco Specialties Stern booth. Going to have some sweet games there. You know what I really like? Mike Vinacore from Stern. He shows up, and if you beat him, you get a little prize. You win something. You know, it's his birthday this weekend, I think. No kidding. We'll celebrate when we see him. Happy birthday, Mike. I wonder if he'll – you know, he has one beer a year.
    9:38
    Did you know that? Just one more than us. Yeah, he has one beer a year. I might have to have a beer with him. you got your party pants already i got my party i got my swim trunks i'm ready for the indoor pool at the uh the very nice uh um uh hotel we're gonna be in a renaissance i don't know but that buffet man i can't wait i know uh lauren and i have been making plans for the buffet okay buffet and then the pool that we're gonna play a little pinball together sounds great that's gonna be fun um what's coming up at the bat well we we talked about the uh the tournament the tournament the big we have a big tournament three-day tournament that's what's coming up and uh and anything else our regular tournament we got tuesdays every tuesday it gets 30 it gets wild it does get wild yeah especially wild last time we love it when it gets wild um i'll tell you what you know uh before we get into the you know we do a mailbag thing if you guys haven't joined us we uh we answer all your questions from the email electric bat arcade at email no not not at email email at gmail yeah uh you can send your questions there we're getting all kind of questions um discord join our discord if you want to if you're not in our discord and want to join go to electricbatarcade.com and go to the uh the podcast link and there's a link to all of the places you can listen to or watch the podcast and you can join the discord there's a little discord link a lot of fun in the discord excuse me go into the uh the batcast channel and you can you can post some questions there yes and we will answer them on the show um i'm gonna switch it up okay do you like it when i switch it up i wasn't prepared for this yes i love that with all these new games coming out and And people talking about what good IPs would make some money. It got me thinking. And I wanted to pose this to you. I wanted to catch you off guard.
    11:43
    Wonderful. I love this. You like being caught off guard? Yes. It's like I'm – And we don't edit, so here we go. Best of luck, Rachel. It had me thinking, like, what is the best IP business-wise? Not what – Not what I would – Rachel would like. let's say the guys from Stern called you and they were like you know what we we really we want we want your ideas we want to know what's going to make money what's going to blow up in uh in in 20 let's say 2024 they want they want to they're going to hurry up usually takes much longer than this but again Keith Elwyn can design a game in like two days so we'll get him on it what What IP would make the most sense? Okay.
    12:29
    Just as a business standpoint. From a business standpoint. But it could also be something you enjoy, right?
    12:35
    Dune. Dune, the book or the movie? Most people are familiar with the movie, so I would use movie properties, but I would do art. Which movie? David Lynch or a recent one. Right. David Lynch is way prettier.
    12:59
    And it has sting in it. Come on. I think you do that. I don't know if that's popular enough. Well, I think you've got to figure out a way to combine the David Lynch movie with the Sandworm. Can you imagine that Jack Danger, some of those really curvilinear shots. with like a sandworm that's coming up. That is a sandworm. Yeah. And then like you get some kind of like rumbling. And then there's just so many great things you can do with the property. Even the pro comes with a shaker motor. Yeah, everything comes with a shaker motor. But there's also like maybe something on the play field, kind of like how, I don't know if you'd use magnets. I don't know. You kind of caught me on the spot. So I haven't thought this out all the way. But just if there's so many great ideas off the top of my head, surely one of these pinball designers that does this so dune could do something amazing the original movie yes i don't know with mobius art look i'm wearing a joe dorosky shirt today oh that's we could do joe dorosky's dune it would have giger art and that was that would be even weirder i don't I don't know. Okay. But do you want to know what I want? Overall. This is the right answer. Dune? No, no, the one I have. I'm about to say. Say Dune? Tell you what it is. Dune.
    14:25
    No, it's not Dune. That's yours. The right answer. Mine, the Beastie Boys would crush. Okay. We would finally get a hip hop in. And man, the Beastie Boys are just killing it. I think they just had a street named after them in New York.
    14:45
    Shepard Fairey is doing all kinds of cool art. Well, I mean, it's a music pin. Of course, I mean, let's be real. You just get Elwynn to design it because everybody's going to buy it anyway, right? I mean, Elwynn could design a pin about trash bags and it would be fantastic. Please, please do that. Trash bags. The pin. Trash bag, the pin. Beastie Boys.
    15:08
    Okay. I mean, I like Beastie Boys. Don't you think that would sell more than Dune? No. Okay. Well, let's let the audience decide. We're going to do it. Can we do a poll in Discord? I think we can. I bet Epic Wesley could show us how. We're going to do a poll. Go into Discord. You can vote for Dune.
    15:27
    The correct answer. Let your heart lead you to the proper choice. And I think people are going to go with the Beastie Boys. It's going to get a little exciting here. A little spicy. Spice, exactly the spice, melange. I left that wide open.
    15:44
    Let's get into, oh, earnings report. This is the reverse earnings report. Yeah. I see you put this in a note.
    15:54
    Worst earning machine. We had a question. Somebody wrote in a mailbag question. And they wanted to know, we always talk about what does the best, what does the worst. so i looked at our at our notes at our data this doesn't include there's about five early solid state pins that i just don't do data on because i don't feel like it not for any particular reason right so aside from those i don't i don't know where blackjack earns um so do you have any guesses what would be i'll tell you the games that are not included is it Worst earning pins? Worst earning pins. Okay. This is not about anything. Not video games. Right. Not about video games. The pinball machines that are not included, Firepower, Blackjack, Joker Poker, Sinbad.
    16:49
    I think that's it. Or Dolly. Those five I don't have numbers on. Hmm. Ladies and gentlemen. who done it who done it is the fifth worst earner okay from the bottom but it's a great game fantastic game and there are diehards there are diehard fans that when it comes off the floor yeah it's on the board immediately where's who's done it back that's a great game not good for tournaments but uh just a fun game it's a fun game it's quirky yeah i I really get into the story where I feel like I'm really there. That's another thing Doom has going for it. Here we go. There's a great story.
    17:42
    Or the entire incredible library, which I celebrate the entire library of Beastie Boys, Beat a Body Down with Aluminum Bat.
    17:52
    So that would also be really nice. So whodunit is the fifth worst. Fourth worst? Mm-hmm. This has an asterisk. It's Centaur. So that's only 50 cents a play. It does have more plays than... Oh, yeah. So this is worth earning. This is by dollars. Yeah, this is not by play count. So Centaur by play count does much better than these, but it's 50 cents. So it's fourth from the bottom. Okay. Third from the bottom, Tales from the Crypt.
    18:24
    Weird. It's in a great spot. People love that game. and it's another game that when it comes off the floor, people want it back.
    18:34
    That surprised me, too. This was actually really interesting. This was number two? This is the third from the bottom. Third from the bottom. So you're about to tell me the worst. The second worst and then the worst. Second worst, also really surprising, one of my favorite games, Johnny Mnemonic. Oh, cool game. Great game. You have the little power glove, the Nintendo power glove that drops your ball. And ours is working. Into the tic-tac-toe. Into the matrix. Okay, so now we have the grand champion of not pulling it off. Not pulling its weight.
    19:09
    Roller games. Yeah. A Steve Ritchie classic based on a television show no one remembers Right Yeah Yeah so those are the five worst earners You know what surprises me
    19:27
    Because I still see a lot of young folks getting into playing it because that era is so hot right now.
    19:37
    Roller games? Well, the time when it came out. Yeah. American Gladiators, that whole era. It looks like a Trapper Keeper. It's like a trapper keeper, right.
    19:46
    Huh. Yeah, it's really... And again, this is one of those ones where people... You would just not expect these to be your worst earners. And it doesn't have anything to do with where they're located. Although three of these are kind of in the same room. So are we getting rid of these machines? Absolutely not.
    20:03
    I love these games. Yeah. We're going to have to at some point. We're starting to run out of room. Yeah, we're not getting rid of the games I like. this listen okay this is the benefit of being the owner of the arcade i gotta keep what i want to keep starting to cramp up oh uh okay so we went over that yeah looks like uh jet i mean rush jet from the discord had that question uh we hear about the best performers what's currently the lowest performing and those are the lowest performing. There you go, Rush Jet. Thank you for the question from the Discord. And maybe we'll do that regularly because I think... The worst earner. Yeah. Well, I would like to see if it ever changes. Right. Yeah. Yeah, like Godzilla is consistently at the top of the best earners is roller games. I also left out the games, any game that wasn't in there for the full month, if it got switched in and out. Okay. It has to have a full month of earnings. I appreciate you doing that. My thorough data keeping. The next question is from Rocket Propelled Weeb. Okay. Can we say that on YouTube?
    21:15
    We'll find out. About to find out. We're not scared. Thank you for the question, Rocket Propelled. That's on the – it looks like the Discord. Okay. A lot of fun on that Discord. Everybody get in there and have some fun with us. it'd be interesting to know how well the non-pinball games do in terms of play count revenue in comparison to pinball. Maybe divide it into categories with the fighters and rhythm games. I don't know if we're going to get it all into dividing them up. But have you put any thought into this? I would like to know also because as an operator, you probably want to know, you know, you want some variety. Yes. and you probably want to know what's working, what video games are working, what style of video games, what exact titles. Right. Let us know. Go. This is one of those things whenever you first open an arcade, and we've seen this happen time and time again where people have these beautiful, rare video games that they want to share, or even common ones like 720 that people always say they want. It's very expensive. That game cost as much as a pinball machine. You put it on location and you find out that, you know what? Once again, people don't actually know what they want. Those games make no money. The games, as far as upright, just when you're talking about your classic arcade games, the ones we remember from the 80s, the ones that earn are Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga. Okay. You've mentioned that before. Yep, and then you move up into a little bit later, and you got your fighters. Those aren't okay. Now, what about Centipede, Pole Position, all those old favorites? Centipede does okay.
    23:04
    We had that up north for a while. It's in the back with monitor issues right now. Pole Position, nah. those don't people think that they want those games because they like to see them like they like the feeling of oh i like this is what i remember but then when you sit down to play it you're like oh okay things have moved on from here i'd rather play outrun yeah so and then we get fighters are next and relative to pinball machines a good earning fighter in our arcade we do Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Street Fighter 2 those will earn as much as a low level pin oh wow that's impressive then there are the rhythm games we have all these Japanese rhythm games that Chewie manages and those will earn as much as a mid level pin and then we have Alien Resurrection, the gigantic shooter and that is usually about the 6th or 7th highest earner in the entire arcade and that costs as much as a pin. That costs as much as like a premium pin. Yeah, that was an expensive game but it earns as much as an expensive game. So that was worth it for us. I mean it looks so cool. Man, it does look cool and I like how I like a shooter that has a like a full-size like machine gun looking thing with a grenade launcher kids love it yeah this is the number one game that we see funny when there's a little kids playing yeah little kids and they're like shaking they're like boom they get real excited about it and they have a big monitor to play on cool that's in our arcade i would love to hear from other we get other arcade owners chiming in in the discord i would love to know your experiences for us with video games with video games right up in flagstaff we've noticed that we have video games are relative higher earners than they are down in tempe really depends on location your area is really going to dictate what what does best but i can tell you that i have never known any arcade owner to say those really expensive rare video games that are killing your pride Your little jewels of your collection, those I've never heard be good earners. Okay. That makes sense. Now, and I've heard you say for years that the top earners as far as like video games, of course, Ms. Pac-Man Gallagher, together or separate, earn. But you've always said the gun games. Gun games. Area 51. Mm-hmm.
    25:58
    What is it? What's the other thing? Maximum Overdrive or something. It's bundled with our Area 51. I forgot. Oh, Site 54 or Site Maximum. Geez, I don't even know. Well, the audience will let us know. This is how much I play Area 51. Of course, that Aliens game.
    26:19
    And then also Drivers, Sit Down Drivers. Those earn well. Unfortunately, the footprint is huge, as you can imagine. Yeah. But those are great. We have had them in the past, and they did do well. Yeah. But the amount of room they take up for us, pinball machines would do better in that space. Because we've noticed they especially earn when you have two. So two people can battle it out. Right. Yeah.
    26:48
    Yeah. So there you go. Video games. We all love them, and they make money. They're great to have in your arcade because that lets people – it's an entry point. everyone knows how to pick up a shooter there's there's no learning curve yeah and we like to think it's like a gateway because if you put them near the pinball machines they see how much fun we're having and they're like oh i want to play with those folks yeah and see what these analog things are all about yes thank you so much and that was from uh rocket propelled weeb on the discord thank you for your question yeah that's awesome um this is from pinball windfall on the discord this is some tiny type here I can barely read it but I'm going to give it a shot I'm not scared just start picking words you can tell when I start making stuff up usually you've got me good recently I keep you on your toes thank you pinball windfall his question is he's liking the new podcast Thank you. Thank you for listening. We're enjoying it, too. We're enjoying all this stuff. Like the new podcast, and I appreciate the inside look from operators. I'm considering putting some games on route, but I think my current collection of machines are too nice and heavily modded. Do you recommend starting to route some older machines or maybe stern pros from the secondary market? This is a great question. It's a great question. And my answer is, how much money do you have? because we know multiple people now that are operating LEs, modded LEs, and I don't know that they earn any more than a premium would. Right. And I'm not – the premium or pro, some people will enjoy – there's not necessarily even an earnings difference between a premium and a pro. So if you're very, very attached to your heavily modded premium games and you don't want to put them on route just because you're nervous, right? Right, right. Then I would think about going to get some pros. But guess what? These are the games you have. These are the games you have right now. If you had a location, you could throw them out there and earn some money with them. Certainly. And I think depending on where that is, you can earn a lot. How much effort you're willing to put into making your location a special place that people want to be. Right.
    29:31
    I think this is kind of like – this reminds me of when I used to sell real estate back in the day in Another Life. That was no fun. I hated that.
    29:40
    A friend got me into it, and we made money before the bubble burst, before 08. And then it was like, oh, what the hell are we going to do? I'm just imagining you with your little pencil in real estate school, like opening up the floor. Oh, they loved me. I bet they did. I was a huge hit. Yeah. I was a huge, everybody wanted to sit next to me and have a good time. Yeah. I passed the first time. It was the test. You know, it was great. It was really easy. But so everybody thinks their home is worth more because of the pool. Oh. Right? The liability of the pool.
    30:14
    They, oh, you know, but this home has a pool. most buyers don't care especially where you you were in south carolina it's not like in phoenix oh no pool's a big thing in south carolina too oh really well it's hot any place where it's super hot pools pop off okay florida anywhere in the south and out here too um so i think that goes back to your point the games are not going to earn more because they have you know a special a 3D printed sign that goes along with the theme. There really aren't. Mods will make you no more money. Right. And the fact that it's an LE, you're not going to make more money than a pro or a premium.
    31:00
    But the issue is most people who have these LEs that are heavily modded, they – They want to sell those later. Yeah. It's like an investment. So they're trying to keep them in really nice shape. Right. Right, and these things are going to get road hard, and no matter how clean you keep them, I mean, you can add protectors, but you're going to get shooter lane wear, which I know we've seen it. These collectors, that's the first thing they look at. Yeah, the stuff that doesn't matter as far as enjoying a pinball machine. Sure. So if you are looking at reselling these heavily modded LEs, just don't put them on route because most people do not want a routed LE. When they're looking to purchase an LE, they might as well just go get a pro or a premium. That's the main thing to think about. If you want to just put these LEs out there so people can enjoy an LE because most people don't route LEs, do it. Do it for the fans. But I don't think you're going to get more traffic or more plays just because it's a heavily modded LE. Right. And then just ask yourself, if you were going to buy another LE in the future, would you care if it was a routed LE? How much of the value would that remove for you? Right. We don't buy LEs. We don't buy. We have. We have some. Not stern LEs, right? Yeah. So we have the Godfather LE. Yeah. Do we have any other LEs? Well, I think all of the spooky stuff isn't. It's a different system. They call it something else. I don't know. But either way.
    32:43
    That's a good question, though. Yeah, good question. Start with the things you have. Let's see what we have here.
    32:52
    This is from the Batcast channel on the Discord. I love that channel. This is from Pinball Innovators and Makers. That's cool. Neat. Is that a podcast?
    33:03
    I think I saw that on a list of great podcasts. I think it is a podcast. Go check them out. Search Pinball Innovators and Makers. Thank you so much for the question.
    33:17
    Super amazing show. Oh. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. In addition to the teased info about cash, tokens, and cards, I'd like to know, number one, At what point do you decide to sell a game? What criteria do you use? We'll break this into chunks. That's the first one. At what point? You don't really sell games. I don't sell games. I've only sold a couple of games. We haven't gotten to the point where we sell games. We're getting to that point. I think the criteria is room. Square feet. It's space. Where do we put these things? Where do we put them?
    34:01
    And so my criteria would be a combination of how much do I enjoy playing them, how much do they earn, and are they good for tournaments. Are they good for tournaments is becoming increasingly important just due to our league being 100 plus people. I guess we can – we are kind of toying around with the idea of selling Escape from Lost World. We are. Because it's horrible for tournaments, and it's such a quirky game. Sometimes it's hard to keep running perfectly. but it's such a cool game we don't yeah it's unique so I like to have it man there's no game like this but Room and whether it's works in a tournament well and I would also say I don't want to sell anything I want to trade there you go I want to trade for a game that I would like to put in the arcade but really we wouldn't ever sell anything if we had enough room in the back to store them. For sure. And I don't want to bring pins back to the house. I like the extra room we have. Yeah, just in the past three months maybe, we don't have any pinball machines at our house. It's been nice. Yeah, it is. We've added a cold plunge, which is cool. Yeah. It's something else. Question number two. I hope we answered your first question. If not, just write us back. Yeah. Be like, we need some clarification.
    35:33
    Number two from Pinball Innovators and Makers. How many plays for cleaning, rubber replacement, and ball exchange?
    35:44
    How many? I don't do it by number of plays. We kind of look at it. Are they wearing? Right. You can tell when the rubbers are getting, start to crack or get some wear on them. Yeah, if they just look. Yeah, we just look at stuff in the arcade. Cleaning, I mean, that's real obvious. I don't know how many plays, but... I can tell you that Jurassic Park and Foo Fighters get cleaned once a week. Right, right. Sometimes twice a week, even.
    36:17
    You know what I like? The art on Walking Dead. Like, you don't have to clean it as much. It can be a little grimy, and you can't really tell. If you're a lazy operator, get a walking dad. I need to get with Zombie Yeti. We need more of these games where you can't really see the ball marks. Yeah, do some splatter paint across the front. Yeah.
    36:41
    Some black grime. So there's no set amount of plays. We just kind of look at it. Now, the balls, you can see the balls, too. They'll get less shiny. Yeah. And once you actually take them out of the game and look at them, you can see all these scrapes on there. And that just tears up the play field, and we'll change those out. If it's a game with not a lot of magnets, we like to use silver jets. Man, those things last for a long time. They last for a long time, and they look good. And they're super shiny. Yeah.
    37:09
    And if it's a game with some magnets, we put – Standard Marco pinballs. Order from those folks. PB-116. Tell them we sent you. I don't know if they're going to do anything special, but just tell them we sent you. You tell them you know the owner.
    37:28
    This is a good one. This is question number three. How often do you go through diagnostics proactively? Yeah, proactively.
    37:43
    To look for tech errors. And we did this yesterday or the day before the arcade. I was checking out the Stern Insider Connected, and it tells us on the Sterns what we need to look at. Right. That's a really cool feature of Insider Connected. And that's just on the pro accounts, right? Like if you're a home user? Yes. Okay. It's on the pro accounts. Okay. I feel like you're an operator.
    38:13
    So you can tell right now if any of those Insider Connected games have credit dot style issues. Yes. And as far as like looking at the tech reports. Tech alerts, I think. Tech alerts. I guess anytime, sometimes when we're cleaning a machine, you know, you open the coin door, bing, bing, bing. Yeah. We have an issue But we don have a set schedule Once a week though would be about an average probably once a week Right But I think any time I think we tend to see those issues before they pop up One that comes up a lot are the EOS, you know, broken EOS type things. Right.
    38:55
    If it's a modern stone with a broken EOS, we kind of let it ride because the software takes care of it. No, we don't. We fix all that stuff. But I might put it off till the next day.
    39:08
    Cool. And the fourth and final question from Pinball Innovators and Makers. Do you have a target of dollars player per hour? Nope. We don't get into any of that stuff. None of that. We don't. I don't even care. Like if someone wants to hang out, we have a lot of people that will come and bring their laptops and be at work. in the arcade for 12 hours. They may only play five or six games. They're just using the Wi-Fi. Using the Wi-Fi, hanging out at the table at Starbucks. We all like a Starbucks arcade, right? Yeah. They come, they get a cold beer, do some work, get on the Wi-Fi. I care if they're having a good time and if we're providing a place. I mean, they're not hurting anything. Sure. So enjoy it. And there's plenty of room. We have a big room. Yeah. I hope we answered all of your questions. Thank you so much for the questions. And if you're in the area and you work from home and, you know, light bulb just popped off. Come work with us. Maybe you want to work at the arcade. You can get some food. They even have coffee. I think the coffee's free. It's not free. It's not free? It's like a buck. It's a dollar. And they give you an actual mug with fresh drip coffee. Nothing fancy. Yeah, I think it's like Folgers or something. This is the truck driver stuff. Yes, we are.
    40:30
    It's what you would expect to have. There's no lattes. There's no syrups. You don't even get cream. There's no creamer. Is there no creamer? No. So you better like it black. That's probably some... They can get some from the kitchen. Yeah.
    40:45
    I got a little thing going on here. It's from blowing the backyard. So to add on, C... It looks like C Flake wanted to add on. Okay. He said, ooh, related to number one. do you add cliffies a hard top or replace play fields we do some of those things some of those things we do have protectors on most scoops some of them are cliffy brand protectors some of them are um we're also famous for ripping off the stern's uh protectors that don't work properly like rush on rush and monsters that's right i've forgotten about that hit those those shots really well now yeah those are a little yeah because they were they were kind of they lasted a couple of days um hard tops no i have replaced a hard i have done a hard top on a taxi at one point and i did not like it sold that game right um definite no on that and also along those lines playfield protectors we actually if we buy a game with a playfield protector we actually take it off yeah um i feel like more dirt gets caught underneath that playfield protector we're talking about the ones that are the thick mylar that there's no adhesive they're just kind of Sure. Attached by physical means. I don't really like the way there's arguments on both sides. This is just one man's opinion. Some people, this is one man's opinion, my opinion. Some people say there's no difference in the play. I feel like there's difference in the play. Like you get a lot of the ball sliding instead of rolling.
    42:32
    So I don't like the play field protectors. Some people swear by them, do whatever you want. We don't do them, and we usually take them off the machine if we buy a machine with one on. And we have done playfield swaps. We have done playfield swaps on Whirlwind, and that thing's beautiful. Yeah.
    42:51
    Thank you. Who did that for us? Kevin? Kevin at Starfighters did that one for us because we had just finished. He did a jam-up job. He did a great job. We had just finished Nitro Groundshaker. We absolutely did not feel like doing another playfield swap. And that has to be the easiest playfield swap. A classic ballet has to be the easiest playfield swap. And we were still like, we were like, bump that. Yeah. We don't want to do that again, especially on something like Whirlwind. And Kevin knocked it out of the park, Kevin Curtis.
    43:23
    And it's beautiful. But that was fun. The Nitro Groundshaker playfield swap was our COVID project. That's right. And we treated it like a COVID project. We made it last the whole length of COVID. Some people would do this play field swap in two casual days. Like eight hours. Yeah. It was like, God, I don't feel like doing that. We're going to do this again. Yeah, but we pulled it off. And some people really enjoy that part of it. We like fixing games a lot more than we like, let's take this piece. Building machine. You're basically building a pinball machine. Staple on all the, yeah.
    43:58
    I guess you added this because it's kind of, this is from Huckabuck on Discord. what pet names do you have for your games and does that change when you become when they become more or less lucrative we have no pet names for any games we call them by their we call godzilla big papa we don't do that i do that in my head oh i'm going to empty big papa you didn't know that i didn't know that it's a little something i do i stand corrected now there's no way i can read this you're gonna have to take that one okay that tiny type okay stern insider connected um i'll take this one okay i didn't realize that whenever you did this you couldn't oh yeah you can't this is from gunfu matt uh via email correct via Or Facebook? No, this is some Facebook, it looks like.
    45:03
    And just so you know, anytime you see me digging in my ear, I'm not like playing with wax. I'm readjusting my hearing aids. I notice when I watch the thing, I'm like readjusting things. People think that you have dirty ears. Yeah, why is he digging in his ears? I'm just... Adjusting the old hearing aids, which is some of the best money you can spend. Oh, man, I tell you what. I'm glad you talked me into getting them. I can hear birds again. That's great. So, Gunfu Matt, the Stern Insider Connected, would you pay Stern a small swipe fee to use their QR system? I'm sure that's the ultimate endgame with Insider Connected is to charge through a Stern wallet so you can load up with PayPal or credit card, way less labor for operators. What do you guys think about that? have we touched on this before uh maybe just we've probably just in the car i don't know not publicly maybe one issue with payments with uh stern insider connected the way it is now with the qr code there's a huge security hole there uh where anybody could steal your qr code and now So they're especially the folks that were posting them like on online. Yeah. Like and I know you can regenerate a new QR code, but that's still a gigantic security hole as far as like payments go.
    46:32
    And as far as like starting to like what do you say, like like if they take a fee for like payments. Right. We probably wouldn't get involved in that just because I mean, if if we had nothing but sterns, I think that would make more sense. But we have so many machines, you know, and trying to explain to new people, you can these you can do this way. But these classic ballads, you can't. So I don't know if we would get involved with something like that. possibly it depends how they present it.
    47:09
    My guess is they would want to go to like a tap system for payment if Stern even wants to do that. I don't even think that's rumored. I haven't heard – we know the lead programmers on Insider Connected, and they're not giving away any information like that.
    47:29
    It's top secret stuff. I would imagine if they want to go in that direction they're going to add NFC to Spike 3 and then they could do stuff like that it would be more secure just like when you're paying for stuff at a gas station or any place else that would make more sense but right now I don't know if it would be a good idea to do payments over a QR code I like a one size fits all very easy Again, people have often had a couple of whiskey sours.
    48:03
    I need them to know from machine to machine, this is how you make it work. Just last week, I got on the board where you write down the clipboard if something is not working properly. I put four tokens in Dolly. Game wouldn't start.
    48:21
    I walked over to Dolly. I was there when they wrote it down. There's two credits on the machine. You have to hit the little start button. Right. And if it's not bright and flashing, for sure, is for people who are new to pinball. They don't see that. That's a silver button on a silver door. And then and then on classic Gottliebs are also hard to find. Yes. If you look down there, like underneath where you where you put the money and and what's kind of cool with Pulp Fiction, the guys at Chicago and what's the other company that's putting that thing out? That did the Aliens game? Oh, the one that Sharpworks at. Yeah, that one. Anyway, they're doing Pulp Fiction. Live and unedited. Raw Thrills. But it's not actually Raw Thrills. It's the other company Oh, Play Mechanics. There we go. I knew we'd get it. Wow.
    49:29
    They are doing the classic style Bally Coindor, but there's a little LED around the start button. Smart. Yeah, super smart. They've been in arcades and they've seen new people. We don't think about this. Some of these people playing these games are 20 years younger than us. They've never seen these things. So I think they're thinking they just put the money in and the game starts. Right. Yeah, but this happens all the time. Especially if you've been to a Dave and Buster's, that's what you do is you swipe your card and it goes. We also get a lot of, I put a token in and nothing happened. Yeah, put three more in. Right. They don't read the card.
    50:11
    Long story short, less confusion, like simplifying anything and everything is something we try to do. Right.
    50:21
    Okay. Who was that from? Oh, that was on the YouTube. Man, I really can't read that. I don't know who it's from, but thank you. It's Gun Fu Matt. Yeah. Matt M. That was a fantastic question. Thank you so much. Now we're moving on.
    50:42
    Gutter Ghoul. Gutter Ghoul always has the great questions. We're going to have them on here. I'm going to tell you what. We might have them on. Okay. Right now. Should I call him? No, I'm going to do something special.
    50:55
    This is what we're going to do. So as some of you folks know, when you get 1,000 subscribers on YouTube, you're able to go live. So we're going to do this. I'm just making this up right now. You just shoot from the hip. That's how we do things. Let's see what happens. Yeah. Surprise once again. So if you guys can help us out, let's try to get to 1,000 subscribers. once we hit 1,000 subscribers we're going to do a live batcast from the Yucca Taproom stage oh okay and then we'll have people on stage with us that would be cool right I mean it's already unedited this would be awesome so if you want to see a real show go subscribe to our YouTube channel get your friends to do it get your parents to do it call your uncle and your aunt and get them all on there. Once we hit 1,000 subscribers, we're going to be live from Yucca Taproom stage. That's going to be great. I love his electric bat tattoo.
    51:54
    It's like a zombie hand. He has one of the coolest. Yes. Ty Bull is giving electric bat tattoos to everybody. Seems to be. People are flying in to do it. Yeah, and they're all very cool. Very cool stuff.
    52:12
    Got a goal. Questions? you need a button I need like a little cough button for operators looking to expand floor space what pain points push you to do so do you see the writing on the wall but wait to make a jump or is it smarter to get ahead of it and expand before bursting at the seams for us it was Here's the deal. The space that is now the giant room in the arcade was storage for the arcade, for Yucca Taproom, and a couple other businesses. That's not a good use of retail space. We were lucky to have that right next door. It was fantastic, but that's a terrible use of retail. So that was going to be turned into some kind of retail, and we got first dibs of, do you want to pay rent and open this up as an expanded? For sure. Pay some more rent. And we said yes, because if we didn't do that, then we would have had no storage, and those games would have had to go somewhere. And wherever they would have gone, it would have been way less convenient.
    53:25
    And also, we had these huge tournaments. People were kind of squeezing out the door. For sure. That's what I was about to say. That was the real deciding factor for me. I mean, people were just like, we need more room. And we felt like tournament entries were dropping. Because it was sardines. Yeah. Now we have this big room and, you know, like 100 people come to the tournaments. And most importantly, we have a workshop now. Yes. Man, that is a huge plus. if you're going to be operating all you operators, if you're going to be operating a pretty decent sized arcade with 40 to 60 to 70 up to 100 machines, you have to have an office and a workshop. Some place where you can pull machines.
    54:16
    Some place where you're not working on major problems in front of people. For us, a lot of people can do that when the business is closed, but we're not ever closed. We're never closed, right. So it's really helpful to have a door between, you know, so you can really have some quiet and think about- Really concentrate on stuff. Why this thing blew up. And that's so important. And actually, our workspace in the back is larger than the original arcade. So that front room in the arcade, our workshop is bigger than that. Right. Thank you so much, Guttergool. And Guttergool has another question about marketing, but we're going to save that for a marketing episode. Okay. I'm going to have to plan that one out. Okay. We'll add that to the marketing episode. Do you want me to ask you some questions? I feel like you've read these and I haven't necessarily. You want to take that on? Sure. Okay.
    55:19
    Oh, this one. I'm going to ask myself this one. It's me, AJ. do you guys have to deal with amusement taxes at either location flagstaff no tempe yes we are really lucky that in tempe i mean i guess we'd be even luckier if there's no amusement taxes that would be best uh it's about it's 20 a game a year that that is very reasonable what was it in south carolina when we left so if it's if it's still the same way it was over 200 for two years i mean it And well over 200.
    55:55
    They really hit you in South Carolina. They consider it gambling, right? No, they don't consider it gambling. Well, yes, because of laws on it. But you know, in South Carolina, it's still illegal for someone under 18 to play pinball. It's not enforced.
    56:16
    But it shows you the mindset. Yes, 100%. Well, you're in the Bible. You're in the Bible, though. Right. And it was very much looked at as gambling. I remember even when I was a kid, there were these bingo machines that actually paid out. Right.
    56:32
    And, you know, there was even like video poker back then. That's all gone, and it's been replaced with the lottery, scratch off and the lotto. So they would allow actual gambling, but pinball just got lumped in with that. The whole idea of it, yeah, I think that's why there's still that. you have to be over 18 to play pinball machines. Once again, that's not enforced. We used to play all the time in high school when we were under 18.
    57:02
    Yeah, so it all depends if this is an operator posing this question, yeah, do your due diligence, check with local laws because lots of times there are taxes you have to pay and they may be state and by city, county. State, city, and permit.
    57:22
    What else do we have? From Don M. via email, are flipper coolers really worth it, or just a way to get even more money out of people with disposable income? We don't know. We have no idea. We've thought about using them on some of the spooky games.
    57:44
    We've thought about using them on multiple games. We never have If you used them especially on a game that gets a lot of traffic so if you used them on location we would love to know this is to anybody We would love to know your success rate with those Do you think it worth it Right. So our buddy, Jay, Jay Collins in California, said he he installed some on some of his flippers and he feels like it does something. OK, I trust Jay. He knows a lot. Right. And you can buy kits. I don't know which website this is. You know, do a little Googling. We can buy a whole kit where it's like a bracket with a heat sink and a fan.
    58:32
    People used to say you have to use these on Spookys because, you know, they have the weird flipper issues. I don't know if that's going to really help.
    58:41
    I think both Spooky and American have – they haven't really figured out flippers now. Like even Galactic Tank Force does weird flipper stuff. Hot Wheels did weird flipper stuff. Yeah. Where they just fail all of a sudden. And then they're back. I think that's just something they need to figure out on the software end. I agree. I think that's the software side. Yeah. But we really don't know if they work or not.
    59:06
    Now, there's data where even on that website that sells it, of course, I mean, but I think it's all honest. Really? They have some favorable data on their website?
    59:17
    They will show you it does reduce heat. Of course it does. You add a heat sink and a fan, it's going to reduce heat, which in theory would make everything more efficient.
    59:31
    Is it noticeable? That's what we want to know. Is it noticeable to the player? That's the real thing.
    59:37
    Okay. And we don't know. Yeah, we don't know. I can tell you players notice when flippers fail. Oh, yeah. Or get weak. Yeah.
    59:47
    Or if they miss a shot, they might like to blame it on a flipper that they'll say. Yeah. Okay. Cheeky pseudonym. Tournament setup. What is on and off the menu of game adjustments if a game is taking too long in tournament play? Steeper pitch, tighter tilt, removing key rubbers, disable a mech, hard mode in the rule set for modern games. And if you had to rank these adjustments, which would you do first or last?
    60:19
    Okay. They want to know what we do. What we do. Increase the pitch. Make the... Uh-oh. There, it's back. We're back. Okay. We had a little weird hiccup there. um we increase the pitch it's doing it's doing that weird thing where it puts like thumbs up is it about at an hour is that when it does that oh maybe yeah that's weird okay for people listening weird stuff is happening on our monitor and we're trying to tell if it's still recording it seems to be doing well so moving on things that we do we increase the pitch we um we do we don't change games we have them on kind of a moderate setting because we don't want to change a game for a tournament because we have tournaments at least once a week so i'm not going to go and change 60 games and then change them back so we have them at a happy medium and if a game is taking too long in a tournament we don't put it in the tournament right that's kind of generally it's kind of getting to the point where we need to do something with Godzilla. Godzilla is taking a long time. If you get some heavy hitters on it... Isn't it over like last game? The last tournament was like over an hour? No, it wasn't over an hour, but it did take... It took longer than the other ones. So the things that we would do... Increase pitch. I think what I would do for Godzilla would be something in the menu side because I'm not going to make it way steeper because then I have to... One of us has to get on our hands and knees and raise the game or we could buy something that makes that a lot easier but we tend to raise games the old-fashioned way breaks your back i would do some some menu settings because that's going to be really easy to change back so i would put it i would change those before i started removing rubbers uh shorten ball save time or remove ball saves um all of the things that you can do to make it harder i would i think it would just straight up remove ball saves yeah um which josh would love yeah right there you go uh also making the the slings more uh lively more more sensitive is something you can do to um make a game a little tougher for a tournament player but But that's basically what we do. Yeah. Here is a question from Easy Dave. Oh, Easy Dave. I hope it's an easy question. Where does Easy Dave get in touch with us? This looks like it was on the Discord. Okay.
    63:02
    Thanks for all the useful information and your generosity to so willingly share it. Hey, man, we love pinball. We want other people. We're wide open. Yep.
    63:11
    For better, for worse. I am a new operator. Pinball has exploded in popularity at the tavern I have my machines. I have three machines with Stranger Things on the way, and there are four other machines at the bar. I have all kinds of questions. You have all these cool, unique tournaments. Oh, thank you. Do you have software you recommend to help manage and track the tournaments? Very easy question.
    63:35
    Match Play. Right. Use Match Play. Pay $30 for the annual professional subscription so you can have larger tournaments. There's other benefits.
    63:47
    It does everything for you. It even has IFPA-submittable results so you don't have to sit there and do comma-separated values by hand for everything.
    64:00
    Use MatchPlay. Next.matchplay.events. Can you run a tournament with the free account? You can. Okay. I believe it's capped in size. Okay. And some of the formats may be only available in the Pro. I'm not positive. But if you're really going to get into this, especially as an operator trying to build up an arcade, just go ahead and – Yeah, spend the few – it's literally like $30 a year. And it's supporting some software that helps all of us out. And then once you pay for it, you get notifications. Yeah. That's cool. Yes. I love having notifications because you get them. You're using your Match Play account when you go play other tournaments too. So it will send me a text message saying, Rachel, go play this game right now. Yeah. And if players want to get notifications. They can also. Yes. Pay the $30 a year. It's good to support the guys that are programming the software. Yes. $30 a year. And as soon as your round is up, it's time for you to play. Like, bing, you get a notification. Either text message. They'll even do email or Discord. Did you know that? Yeah, I saw that. I didn't try and set it up. Yeah, that's what I do. They'll send it. I think that's actually free. They'll ping your Discord, and you're like, oh, my game's up.
    65:21
    Cool. Great question. Yeah. This is more? This is more. Okay. There's a few more. Our league has grown from 15 to 19 to 35 players this year. We play eight-week seasons, and we like to throw a party after each season the league pays for food and pinball. Any ideas for fun ways to engage everyone? Cool awards, group games, anything to help us make it even more fun? I think me and you have kind of the same answers for this, and I haven't talked to you about this. So as far as, like, prizes? Oh, I was thinking about for, like, fun things to do.
    65:58
    Adam, stall ball. Oh, after a tournament. Well, this is like for a party, right? Oh, just a casual. Yeah, this is a casual. This is a stall ball. Yeah. Stall ball is the way to go. If you don't know about stall ball, it's very easy. You don't need any software. You get together. Usually everybody puts in a buck. So, you know, you get it's good to have like at least eight people. Last time we did it, we had like 25 people. and it was a $2 stall ball game. That's some real cashola. The winner won like over 50 bucks.
    66:37
    So you all get in a single file line. Well, I guess most importantly, the game. The game has to be a game that has areas where the ball stalls. A saucer. A scoop. A lock.
    66:55
    Anything that holds the ball for a number of seconds. Right. We usually use Whirlwind. It has a lot to do with where it is. We can have a big, long line of people. Creature is also a great game.
    67:09
    I'm surprised we haven't done this yet. James Bond, the premium would be a cool one because you have that little scoop on the left. Yeah. And then you have this. You have the lock, the rocket. You have the jetpack lock. You have the Q scoop. You have the Q scoop, but you also have the pause where the pin pops up on the right end lane. That might almost be too many areas to stall. Next tournament, we're going to do that one. Okay. Although we might need to move it because where it is, it would be hard to have a line of 25 people all snaked around that area. so everybody gets in a single file line and every time so yeah coin up the game for everybody go ahead four player game yeah four player game score doesn't matter at all does right start up a four player game and then the first person in line starts the ball and as soon as they stall the ball put it in a saucer and a lock they they run away from the machine and the next person starts playing and so on until they lock a ball. If the ball drains, that person is knocked out. All right? That's right. And then you just keep going until there's one person left and that person gets all the money. Now, what happens during a multi-ball? Our rules are that you have to drain it down to one ball. Okay. Yeah. You have to drain it to where you have one ball. One ball. And then try to stall that ball. Now, if you inadvertently stall one of the multi-balls, do you leave? Does the next person play? Boy, I haven't even seen that situation pop up. I'm sure it has. Right.
    69:07
    Yes. Okay. I'm going to say you do. And this is your game. So you make up whatever. But basically, that's how it works. It's very casual. is friendly very casual so we're not we're not going to get super hardcore about you knew that you had a ball trap stuck so right this is not i've been stall ball yeah it's it's friendly it's fun and the best part at the end uh the the winner takes all the money yeah it's a lot of fun very very casual split flippers also a great thing to do for for a party um those would be things that i would encourage did you have anything to say about prizes Like what would be some fun prizes? We get prizes from all kinds of places.
    69:51
    You can, one thing you can do is reach out to your local distributor or whoever you buy machines from. Or you can try to reach out to somebody you don't buy machines from. I mean, it doesn't hurt to ask. I mean, that would be kind of a.
    70:05
    They usually have like some trans lights or some other stuff they can donate. Those make great prizes. If you are at a location with a bar, a gift card from the bar, 10 or 20 bucks, so somebody can get some cheeseburger or a drink or whatever.
    70:24
    And we like to buy all kind of crazy knickknacks. We get a lot of stuff from local businesses. We do stuff with Zia Records.
    70:34
    Yeah, and then we like to just buy some weird stuff from wherever. Like socks? Sometimes you win socks. But those are stern socks. Sometimes they're stern socks. We do have some special socks we're holding out on. We can tell them. It's Pulp Fiction socks. We have some Pulp Fiction socks. But when the Pulp Fiction machine comes, we're going to give those out at some point.
    70:54
    Yeah, so there you have it. Yeah. Third question. This was one that we answered earlier. How often do you clean play fields? I like my machines to shine, but I don't want to overdo it. Yeah, don't overdo it. Don't be sitting there with a Novus 2 all the time and wear out your play field. They should be clean.
    71:14
    Just clean and dry. Clean whenever they're starting. If you can look at it and you see this looks dirty, then clean it. I think that's much easier to keep track of them by number of plays because machines wear so differently. The same number of plays on three different machines is going to result in very different play field grime amounts. And then finally, any general tips for running successful leagues and tournaments? The number one thing I can say about this is to be consistent in your rulings. And that was one thing that when Tracy Lindbergh ran the league in town that she always stressed. And I could see the benefit of that because listen if you play in a pinball tournament you if you do this regularly you're going to end up on the the side of a ruling that you wish that you were on the other side of that happens it's just going to happen you're going to get dq'd something's going to happen but if you're always consistent with everybody then it makes that so much easier um certainly That's my number one tip. And then make it fun. Be fun. Be fun people to be around, right? There you go. And post about them. Let people know, whether it's physical posters, social media. The more folks you have, the more diverse the group.
    72:49
    Encourage good times. Cool. That is the last non-marketing question. We're still taking marketing questions for the marketing episode that's upcoming. So send us those questions along with anything else. And this is all about how to market an arcade. I guess the tournament stuff will come into that. Yeah.
    73:11
    What are the good avenues, social media, email? How do you market things? Right. Yeah. And you can reach us at electricbadarcade at gmail.com or on our Discord. Those are the two best places to send us questions. We're going to see them there. Sometimes we find things buried away in a Facebook message or something.
    73:37
    Use email or the Discord. Be our preferred. Okay. You get a lot of Instagram stuff. I get Instagram messages, and I respond to everything. Yeah, yeah. So Instagram is also good. Yeah. I don't usually see those.
    73:50
    Because I'm doing it. Because it's you. Because you're doing it. You don't want to mess with that. No.
    73:55
    So, if you want to vote for Dune... We're going to try to figure out... As the best... We'll put a poll up in Discord. Right. Dune or Beastie Boys. Or Beastie Boys. Right. Both great. Right. One's better than the other. There's good machines on both.
    74:14
    I don't know about Dune. I feel like so many people don't... But just think about how good the game... You could, like, integrate such... I'm a fan. Wonderful. You don't have to sell it to me. I'm a fan. Even if you didn't know about it, like just the sandworms. Oh, it's beautiful to look at. The giant fat guy that floats in the air. Yes, that also. Yeah. What's his name? Okay, well.
    74:41
    What? I can't remember. Oh, you can't even remember? I can't remember. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Okay, if you want to vote. Baron Harkonnen. If you want to vote for the super popular Dune where everybody knows the characters, there'll be an option. Or if you want to vote for Beastie Boys that everybody knows about, you can also vote for that. Okay. Good times. All right. Are we done with the questions? We're done with the questions. We're done with everything. Yeah. Okay. And we're well over an hour. Yeah. I can't even see that far.
    75:16
    All right. I'm going to go take some allergy medicine and hope you guys are good. Let me know about your allergy remedies in the Discord.
    75:26
    We'll see you in Chicago. Cold remedies, any of that stuff. Yeah. After our tournament on Tuesday, we are headed to Chicago for Expo, and we're going to see a lot of friends there. Can't wait. A lot of local people are coming up there. Yeah. Some, it's their first time, and that's going to be a lot of fun. So we'll see you guys. Meet us at the Marco Specialties Group. Thank you so much for the sponsorship, Marco's Specialties, everything pinball. If you need any parts, give these folks a call. They have A+, the best enterprise class customer service anybody has ever heard of. Wonderful people to hang out with and talk to. And they love talking about pinball. You've got to have people who are really into it working for you. It's very important. It shows. They build excitement. Yeah. and uh thank you so much to game room goodies if you need anything for your game room jukeboxes air hockey basketball pinball machine a home claw machine a home what would that be cool a home claw machine what if like if you had kids and they wanted to have like snacks or something they had to earn them oh i like that you can't eat you can't eat at all you have to get a like a card a little swipe card to eat no not to eat what if you did that for like playstation anyway i can see a lot of ways like you're no longer grounded if you can win the stuff scooby-doo anyway guys thank you for joining us we are going to head to uh the arcade yeah probably uh get some things fixed and um we'll see you guys next time thank you so much for joining us the bats are out
    77:13
    Thank you.