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Jack Danger - Pinball Expo 2018 - Pinball News

Pinball News (Pinball Expo 2018)·video·51m 42s·analyzed·Oct 23, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.037

TL;DR

Jack Danger recounts DeadFlip's origin, streaming growth strategy, and vision for democratizing homebrew pinball design.

Summary

Jack Danger delivers an informal AMA seminar at Pinball Expo 2018 covering the origins and growth of DeadFlip, his pioneering pinball streaming platform. He discusses his transition from animation to full-time pinball content creation, streaming setup evolution, strategy for growing viewership beyond the pinball community, and his vision for democratizing pinball machine design through homebrew projects. He emphasizes community-building and teaching newcomers to pinball as core to his mission.

Key Claims

  • Jack Danger got into pinball about 8 years ago (circa 2010) when a friend brought a Lord of the Rings pinball machine to his animation studio in the West Loop of Chicago

    high confidence · Direct first-person account of studio origin story; corroborated by mentions of old photos from October 2014

  • DeadFlip's first major tournament stream was The Walking Dead reveal party at Chicago Pinball Expo, which saw viewership jump from ~5-10 people to 40-50

    high confidence · First-hand account of Jody Dankberg invitation and immediate growth metric

  • Jack Danger abandoned his animation career after 15 years to pursue pinball full-time 'last year' (circa 2017)

    high confidence · Direct response to question about giving up day job; mentions animation studio in West Loop and recent transition

  • Initial streaming setup cost approximately $400-$450 in equipment

    high confidence · Direct statement with specific dollar amount for rig breakdown

  • Stern is supplying parts and Multimorphic is providing P-Rock boards for Jack's homebrew pinball machine project

    high confidence · Direct statement about manufacturer partnerships for the build

  • Jack has worked with multiple manufacturers including American Pinball, Jersey Jack (Wizard of Oz animations and backend menu system design), and Spooky Pinball

    high confidence · First-hand account of past collaboration work

  • DeadFlip's growth strategy involved attending video game conventions (PAX South, TwitchCon) for 2 years to reach audiences outside the pinball community

    high confidence · Direct explanation of deliberate outreach strategy and its impact on viewership spikes

  • Jack learned CAD and Visual Pinball in approximately 21 hours to build his homebrew pinball machine

    high confidence · Specific claim about learning timeline for design software

Notable Quotes

  • “I turned it on. I flipped it. I was like, this is just electronic furniture. I don't really care what the heck this is.”

    Jack Danger@ 2:24 — Describes his initial dismissive attitude toward pinball before discovering Judge Dredd's depth and mechanics

  • “I promise you in five minutes, if you spend five minutes, one game with me, I'll have you playing pinball better than any of your friends right now in this bar”

    Jack Danger@ 9:36 — Encapsulates his core mission of teaching newcomers and democratizing pinball skill

  • “Dead flip is the name of the simplest thing that you could do in pinball, which is not flipping at all. So we're like, that sounds tough. And also it's like the descriptor for, you know, for everybody. It's like, this is the easiest thing you could do.”

    Jack Danger@ 18:14 — Explains DeadFlip brand philosophy: accessibility and inclusivity masquerading as toughness

  • “Pinball shouldn't be a competition in that vein. It's a rise in tides, raise all ships sort of thing. Everyone needs to build each other up, right? If we're fighting each other, this hobby's not going to freaking go anywhere.”

    Jack Danger@ 22:04 — Core philosophy on inter-manufacturer cooperation and community growth; contrasts with competitive industry dynamics

  • “The thing I don't like is when they tell me the games that are coming out, and then I don't get to play speculation anymore, because that is a super bummer.”

    Jack Danger@ 23:28 — Acknowledges insider access to unreleased game information; hints at NDA constraints

Entities

Jack DangerpersonDeadFlipmediaBrad SmithpersonStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyAmerican PinballcompanyMultimorphic

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: DeadFlip streaming moved from financial loss to profitability within first year of Jack's full-time transition; primarily funded by community (subscriptions/donations), not sponsorships

    medium · Jack states 'we are now back in the green, which is good' after initial months of 'losing money left and right'; mentions community support for travel through viewership support rather than explicit sponsorships

  • ?

    community_signal: Jack Danger's on-location streaming model at bars (Emporium, Logan Arcade) is designed explicitly to teach newcomers and convert casual bar patrons into pinball players and enthusiasts through real-time coaching and positive reinforcement

    high · Multiple detailed examples of teaching methodology: cradling, post-passes, punch-arm celebrations; explicit pitch to newcomers promising skill improvement in 5 minutes

  • ?

    community_signal: Chicago pinball league and Crazy Flipper Fingers in Seattle represent emerging organized team/gang structures in competitive pinball community circa 2014-2018; identity-based community formation with branded merchandise

    high · Jack and friends formed Chicago team after seeing Crazy Flipper Fingers model; made limited run hoodies ('we only made five of these'); won first season in sweep

  • ?

    community_signal: Multiple manufacturers (Stern, Multimorphic, Spooky, Jersey Jack, American Pinball) actively supporting Jack's content creation and homebrew projects; non-exclusive collaboration model

    high · Jack states he is 'allowed into manufacturing facilities for a lot of these folks' and works with 'pretty much everybody'; explicitly mentions Stern supplying parts and Multimorphic providing P-Rock boards

  • ?

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.155

0:00
Thank you for being here. I love you. You're beautiful. So Rob Burke asked me to do a seminar, and up until last night I still had no idea what I was going to talk about. And Laura was like, I'm going to build a presentation for you. She's already in chat. By the way, if you hop in chat, whatever you say is going to be up there. Hopefully people don't say super terrible stuff, because we will have to take that down. Laura's going to put something together, but then I saw what she was doing, and it was actually making fun of me too much. So we're going to just do a little bit of an AMA. I get asked a lot of questions about streaming, what's the proper etiquette for streaming in a bar, or what gear are you using, why are you using it, how did you get started, that kind of stuff. And I have, let me pull up my phone here, which has my nudes. But at any point, please just ask questions. This will be an AMA. My wife's back there. What's up with Charlie? You're beautiful. Scott Denise is on after us, but he doesn't have a voice. So I'll be interpreting for him. I believe when he is up, that'll be it's three o'clock. Jack Danger drinks Dr. Thunder. All right, cool. So we've already got the internet going here. That's beautiful. Someone wants to know if your name is actually Jack Danger. Moving on, moving on. Okay, so Jack Danger is a name. There you go. All right, cool. It is a name. So when I, I'm just going to give you a little brief history of what Deadflip is. And if any of you also have an idea of how to, I have a bunch of tickets. Actually, Crystal, do you want, or Laura, Can I have you break tickets off and hand them to people? Thank you, buddy.
1:48
All right. So, dead flip. When I first got started in pinball, which was like maybe eight years ago, I didn't know what pinball was, didn't really care what pinball was. I owned an animation studio in the West Loop of Chicago.
2:03

“We came up with the name dead flip when we were trying to come up with like a like a tough like pinball gang name like crazy flipper fingers were like that sounds stupid”

Jack Danger@ 17:33 — Origins of DeadFlip branding; references Crazy Flipper Fingers as competitive pinball community precedent

  • “I learned CAD and I learned visual pinball and how to properly print out a piece of paper to lay on a play field and all this stuff in about 21 hours. It's not hard to learn this stuff to build your own game.”

    Jack Danger@ 19:39 — Core message about democratizing homebrew pinball design accessibility

  • “We're building this first game just to like, pique everyone else's interest... And this is going to teach people that you could just go make a pinball machine, which hopefully spawns some new designers because we, as much as I love designers, we're sitting on a lot of the same folks.”

    Jack Danger@ 20:40 — States explicit goal of expanding the designer pool through educational homebrew project

    • company
    Crazy Flipper Fingersorganization
    Emporiumvenue
    Logan Arcadevenue
    Chicago Pinball Expoevent
    TwitchConevent
    PAX Southevent
    PAPAorganization
    Rob Burkeperson
    Lauraperson
    Jody Dankbergperson
    Scott Denseyperson
    World Poker Tourgame

    competitive_signal: Pinball streaming generating sufficient audience interest to attract top competitive players to stream tournaments; initial Walking Dead reveal saw all participants preferring to play on the streamed machine

    high · Account of Walking Dead party: 'everyone that was there at the party... everyone's like, I'm going to play on this [streamed game]... and that line was just incredibly long'

  • ?

    product_concern: On-machine camera mounting (as used by Jersey Jack) faces unresolved technical limitation: vibration from flipping/nudging causes unstable video feed; Jack unable to solve despite years of streaming experimentation

    medium · Direct technical concern: 'everything's shaking... To get a constant feed out, everything's just like sort of doing this... I cannot figure it out. And I haven't seen anyone also figure it out'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Jack's future homebrew vision includes experimental technological approach: using Adafruit sensors, flex sensors, custom mechs; explicitly aiming for 'weirdest things' and novel mechanics as contrast to current design conservatism

    high · Direct statement: 'we're going to go to Adafruit, and we're going to be using flex sensors... we're just going to throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. We want the weirdest things happening in this game'

  • $

    market_signal: Democratization of homebrew pinball design emerging as key mission: Jack building documentary-style homebrew games to lower barriers to entry and spawn new designer generation using affordable old Valley/Williams mechs and open-source tools

    high · Multiple statements about learning CAD/VP in 21 hours; emphasis on 'anyone can build'; explicit goal to 'spawn some new designers because we're sitting on a lot of the same folks'

  • $

    market_signal: DeadFlip's deliberate 2-year pivot to non-pinball conventions (PAX South, TwitchCon) to grow viewership beyond finite pinball enthusiast pool; strategy yielded significant spikes in viewership

    high · Explicit discussion of TwitchCon viewership bumps and decision to focus outreach on video game streamers unfamiliar with pinball as a streaming category

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jack Danger transitioned from 15-year animation career to full-time pinball content creation (circa 2017), abandoning studio and animation client work

    high · Direct statement: 'I gave that up years ago... it wasn't until, I'd say last year, that I was like, this pinball thing is becoming such a job of its own'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Pinball streaming infrastructure evolution from duct-taped webcams and clamped light stands (2014) to multi-camera rigs ($400-450) that are now becoming standard; technical barriers to entry significantly lowered

    high · Detailed chronology of setup evolution from 'archaic' studio setup to modular portable rig; explicit statement that 'if you have a computer already, it's a little bit of an investment, but it's not back-breaking type of money'

    • And a buddy of mine, Brad Smith, bought a Lord of the Rings pinball machine. And he called me up. He's like, hey, dude, I bought this pinball machine. I don't have anywhere to put it.
    2:14
    Oh, they're in that box right there. And he's like, can I put it in your studio? And the studio was just being built, so I was like, yeah, we got room for it. Bring it on in. And I turned it on. I flipped it. I was like, this is just electronic furniture. I don't really care what the heck this is. So he called me a week later. He's like, hey, I bought a Judge Dredd pinball machine. And I'm like, dude, if you don't have room to put these in your freaking house, you need to stop buying these damn machines. So we brought it in, and I put up the head. we plugged it in and something about the shots on that game and the humor and like the animations and stuff it just sort of like it like clicked for me and i i was like i'm gonna go on the internet and i'm gonna learn how to beat this game i'm gonna learn everything about it and i'm gonna show my friends what's up that's when i found out well you can't beat a pinball machine and that's when i found out there's like so much nuance to like those two buttons that are on that game and you know that's where i discovered leagues and stuff like that so uh the myself my friend Nick, Brad, and Dave, we all worked in this like shared workspace that we had. And we're like, let's start, let's start a, let's start a group. Let's start a team. You know, we saw what the crazy flipper fingers were doing in Seattle. And we're like, they have a pinball gang. Like we have to be Chicago's pinball gang. That's going to be dope. Just the four of us walking around with matching hoodies. Uh, we only made five of these. Um, I'm sure we'll make more. I don't freaking know. But, um, that's when the Chicago pinball league or the pinball Chicago league, I keep getting wrong is it the pinball chicago league pinball okay yes so when that just started we were one of the very first teams to sign up we're like we're gonna do this we're gonna represent uh emporium and wicker park and so ben was writing everyone down and we chose the bare minimum of players which is just me and my three other buds and uh our pinball skills were still super super rough but we we like swept that first season and it was incredible like that winning all that stuff just like fueled the fire of what needed to happen and to keep going and going and uh that's when we discovered like the papa videos on youtube and discovered that they were also like streaming on twitch twitch was still something that i was fairly new to as far as like watching because i still didn't understand why people would watch other people play video games when you could just play video games and why the hell are they giving these people money blah blah blah blah uh thank you for your money folks i do appreciate it um but the uh But so we're like, if we built one of these rigs, because we supported the Papa Kickstarter that raised, I think it was like $10,000 to buy all this crazy equipment, like TriCasters, stuff they use for television stations that they had all this really expensive equipment. And I'm looking at this, and I'm like, I think we could do these with some shoddy webcams we have laying around and stuff. So we just grabbed everything we could, sort of cobbled stuff together. A lot of things were duct taped. And getting a piece of software to rotate a camera 90 degrees was like a pain in the butt at the time. But we figured it all out, and it had to run on a Mac, which was terrible. But when we fired up our first stream over a Stern Tron, everything was, like, the color was crap. The picture was crap. The audio was out of sync. But we're looking at this. We're like, this is dope. Like, now we can record ourselves to see what our progress is. You know, I want to play. and when I screw up, I want to go back and watch what happened. And when I jump into anything, I want to go as hard as possible. I just want to know everything about it. And I dedicated, I was like at 5 p.m. every single day, I don't care how busy I am, I'm going to fire the stream up, I'm going to play two hours max, two hours max, the same machine all week. We streamed for Monday through Friday on a Tron. And then the next week, Monday through Friday, on an ACDC. I don't know how anyone watched that crap. It was so boring. Like, I can't go back and watch that. It was, like, too much of that one game.
    6:05
    But doing that allowed us to completely explore everything about a machine, like, through accidents, through flips. Like, one day we were just dedicated to only doing, like, flipper skills and make a game out of, like, okay, we're going to learn how to post-pass. You know, all right, I did three. All right, now I did four. My friend steps up. He did five. Okay, now I've got to be able to do that. and that in itself taught us how to play better but then going back and watching that and seeing your mistakes was also huge so i mean if anyone's looking to start a pinball stream i wouldn't say jump in don't jump into it because you want to like you know make all this money or be big by god i don't make any money but it's uh it's great for um a learning tool for watching the stuff that you do so you can learn upon that it's really really huge and i'm not gonna lie like so This rig that I brought, it's a stand, a whole bunch of clamps, cameras, it's everything to get started.
    6:59
    All in all, I'd say that thing was about $400, $450 to put that together. For anyone that wants to get in that, if you have a computer already, it's a little bit of an investment, but it's not back-breaking type of money. You can buy it piece by piece, piecemeal.
    7:14
    In that document, How to Stream Pinball, that I built, I show you how to stream pinball. If you've only got one camera, you can make this work. If you've got two, three, four cameras, you can make it work in any sort of layout, but all you need is one. You don't need a microphone if you're just watching yourself play, but if you want to actually interact with the internet, who's giving me money right now. Thanks, guys. I love you.
    7:35
    So once I started doing that, my dedication for streaming pinball every single day was unwavering, but obviously the other guys are like, man, listen, I've got to work or I can't do it this day. So seriously, everyone started falling off. I don't know when I met you, but I was looking through some old photos from October of 2014. Good God, yeah. So I have a lot of photos of Crystal hanging out at the old studio.
    8:02
    And we had some good times there, but man, our setup was so archaic. But when I first discovered that I could sort of pack it all up and go on location, the bar that we represented for the Pinball League, Emporium, you know we were friends with them obviously because we represented their bar in in the league and roper who was the manager there he's like dude like why don't you do your show here and that was our first like holy crap like we can do this outside of just this weird little room that we're in so i packed up everything it was like a heavy desktop and monitors and stuff and uh i brought it over there and we had to we had to move a game out because i wasn't sure what the hell was going on and the way my rig worked out at the time was a giant light stand that had to be behind the pinball machine, come over the top of it, and just cameras duct tape to the top of the thing, aimed straight down. The microphone is crap, but setting all that up and all these lights, and we were using like fancy lab, like five, six hundred dollar lab mics at the time. Like, it didn't make sense, like the weird balance of like equipment that we had, but instantly people were just coming up going like, oh god, like what's going on? Are you like are you doing a blog? Is this a podcast?
    9:15
    And that was something else that was like an aha moment. Like, I would love to show other people how to play pinball, and this was such a great way to get people interested, because they just naturally wanted to come over and see what the hell was going on. So to just, like, put those people in a headlock and be like, I'm going to show you how to be a great pinball player.
    9:33
    The pitch now is when I'm on location and someone comes over, I'm like, I promise you in five minutes, if you spend five minutes, one game with me, I'll have you playing pinball better than any of your friends right now in this bar and then you can go beat their ass for some cash and then show them how to play and then that becomes a cycle and to this day whenever i'm at like logan arcade or emporium or any of the emporiums there's always someone there that's like dude i ran into you like do you remember like three months ago you were on like star trek you show up dude this is my friend steve he's like he bought a pinball machine and uh that's very humbling that you know that is sort of spreading i would like that to spread a hell of a lot faster but it's moving up. It's moving up.
    10:13
    I'm just going to ramble, folks. If you have anything to ask, please. My first introduction to Stern was actually here at Chicago Pinball Expo when they revealed The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead was the big game that they were showing that year, and they were setting up for the Stern party that they were having that used to be in that room over there but is now going to be here tonight. and uh Jody Dankberg and Wason were coming out of a room and they were like holding these big banners or something and I was sitting there by myself with all my gear sort of duct taped together and I like hopped up and I helped them like move a banner out and Jody's like oh you're that dude that does those podcasts and I'm like I guess close enough that yeah I do those podcasts and he's like hey do you want to do you want to like record the Walking Dead party tonight and I was like, holy crap, let's freaking do that. So I went in there. They were setting up the games. I set up all my gear over the Walking Dead. It was me and all the rest of my Deadflip dudes had, like, wireless labs on again. Way too much money for the audio stuff at the time. And everyone that was there at the party, because there was a lot of heavy hitters there at that time, and everyone saw those cameras, and they're like, of the, like, four games that they had lined up to play in the tournament, everyone's like, I'm going to play on this. and that line was just incredibly long. And that was our first major tournament that we streamed. We got to see some of the world's best players duke it out on the show that we had. And when we tweeted that that was happening, our viewership at the time, which was like maybe five people, if we had like ten people, we're freaking killing it right now, jumped up to like 40, 50, and we're like, what the hell is going on? Because there was an interest in people wanting to see these people play games. My man.
    12:06
    Growth. Yeah. Sure. So the growth of the channel was it was a slog for about a year and a half where it was like very, very minimal. Very minimal. And I got partnered with Twitch really early which meant like I had some extra benefits that a lot of streamers didn't. One being that I was able to be invited to these partner parties at the first TwitchCon that they were holding. It was the very first convention that they were holding. And I was like, cool, I'll go check this out. And what I learned at that event was that, I don know how to say this nicely like preaching to the pinball people like we need you guys to watch obviously and you love to watch And if you like watching pinball streaming you going to watch pinball streaming But to grow those numbers, that's sort of a finite number. You've got to reach outside of that pool to get – are people trolling the crowd? I see Scott laughing, which means people are – oh, thank you for the money, Scott. I appreciate it.
    13:20
    I decided I was going to go spend the next two years only going to video game conventions. I just wanted to go to PAX South. You sons of bitches.
    13:32
    Going to PAX South, only reaching out to people that didn't really know what this was. I'd bring a pinball machine with me to all these events. And bringing pinball machines to TwitchCon was humongous. Because all these streamers coming up going, what the hell is this? You could stream things other than video games. Like early on in Twitch, that wasn't a thing. So they're like, you're a partner and you're streaming this? Are you allowed to stream pinball? This isn't a thing. And just piquing the interest of people that didn't know what this was huge for getting those numbers up. And you could see after that first TwitchCon was a huge bump, like a huge bump in that. And just for overall pinball viewership in general. And every year at TwitchCon, that is my primary goal, is just to reach out to everybody, get people in there, and just, I'll see my numbers just spike, like, weeks after, you know, that event is over. And, yeah, Crystal. Laura wants to know when you gave up your day job. Oh, my God, I gave that up years ago, bud. No, okay, so I was an animator for 15 years. I owned my own animation studio in the West Loop, like I mentioned, and it was great, I loved it, but it was getting a little daunting, spending 22 hours leaning over a tablet, drawing every single day.
    14:51
    It wasn't until, I'd say last year, that I was like, this pinball thing is becoming such a job of its own. It's requiring so much of my time that we're going to just not take any animation jobs and see what happens.
    15:09
    All those hours that I was putting into animation, I was now able to put into promoting myself and going to new events. and speaking to pinball events about visiting them and streaming there, or traveling to go stream in other locations. I was in Australia. I'm heading over to the Dutch Pinball Open in Amsterdam, and that's all through the courtesy of the people, the community that watches the show. I can't afford to do that, but the community helps me do these things.
    15:39
    It was terrifying for the first couple months because I was losing money left and freaking right. the rent on my studio, maintaining games, needing new gear, because traveling with all this gear, this stuff breaks. It doesn't break a lot, and that's why I've got this really awesome-looking rifle case that gets me in trouble all the time with the TSA, but you do have to upgrade things, and I want my stream to look as good as it possibly can at all times, so needing to purchase that stuff is a necessity. But we are now back in the green, which is good. So we can only go up from here. Yeah. How many days or how many hours in a day or a week or month do you dedicate to pinball and streaming? Pinball and streaming. So when I wake up at seven in the morning, I take my daughter to school. Then I go to my studio and I spend all day answering emails, plotting out new events and things that I'm going to do all day and then designing graphics for the show if I need to. And then when five or six o'clock comes around, it's six o'clock now. It used to be five o'clock, but I needed that one extra hour to like get the rest of my stuff done at six o'clock is when I fire up my cameras, if I'm on location or if I'm at home and I stream for an undisclosed amount of time because I'm usually drinking. So it's I aim for about four hours, but pinball is my day and night job. So I am always constantly working on that stuff to make sure I'm bringing awesome content. The Stern reveals that I get to do, fantastic. Also working with Spooky Pinball. I love coming to your facility and showing those games off. Chuck, you make some amazing pinball machines. We got to get back on that, Alice Cooper, very soon. What's that? Oh, dude, come on. Come on. I'm in. Oh, yeah. Okay, cool. So we came up with the name dead flip when we were trying to come up with like a like a tough like pinball gang name like crazy flipper fingers were like that sounds stupid like we want something tough you know uh i love crazy flipper fingers i'm sorry i didn't mean to bash you guys um please don't kill me but the we were we were just looking through i had this big notebook and i recently found this thing like six months ago uh and we had all these like ridiculous names like that's too tough that's a little too you know you're trying too hard blah blah at the very bottom was the, we wrote dead flip, just like whatever, but it was the name of a pinball maneuver. And it's the name of the simplest thing that you could do in pinball, which is not flipping at all. So we're like, that sounds tough. And also it's like the descriptor for, you know, for everybody. It's like, this is the easiest thing you could do. Everybody can do this. So we just ran with that. Also, it fits on knuckles if I ever wanted to get more knuckle tattoos. So yeah, why not? Dead flip. Feels good. What do you see for the future of pinball? Well, thank you. Laura, you can just raise your hand, dude. You don't have to type in the chat.
    18:41
    Jack is mansplaining what deadflip is. Wow, you guys suck. Hey, I love you guys. The future of pinball. There's no knowing. I mean, technology is getting crazier and crazier, so I'm sure once that stuff starts getting adopted, like, so you may or may not know that I'm also building a pinball machine, and we're doing it under the guise of like we're creating a little mini documentary slash reference and I'm using the awesome talents of people like Scott Denisey and the secret Skype, I mean Slack that I was invited to that, oh, I'm sorry, I won't talk about that. Yeah, got it.
    19:17
    Where everyone's like building their homebrew games, like Ed over there with his nightmare before, or I'm sorry, with his ghost in the shell.
    19:26
    I'm using them all as reference. So what we're doing is we're building a pinball machine with the caveat of I'm a complete noob. I know nothing of what I'm doing. But we're going to show anyone can build one of these. I learned CAD and I learned visual pinball and how to properly print out a piece of paper to lay on a play field and all this stuff in about 21 hours. It's not hard to learn this stuff to build your own game. Money is a bit of a wall there to buy the mechs. but you can find old, busted Valley Williams mechs to use in your games just to get the thing made. Stern is hooking us up with all the parts we need to get this game going. We could spend months on a design on this, but we just wanted to get the thing done. So we created a cute little design, got the mechs from Stern. Multimorphic is supplying us with the P-Rock boards to drive the whole thing. But speaking to the future, what I wanted to get to was the... We're building this first game just to like, pique everyone else's interest. Like anyone in here has, you all have an idea of like what you like on a game, what you don't like. You could probably sit down and maybe pencil in like a layout that you like. And this is going to teach people that you could just go make a pinball machine, which hopefully spawns some new designers because we, as much as I love designers, we're sitting on a lot of the same folks.
    20:54
    Yeah. And are you open to cooperating in some way with other manufacturers? Absolutely. I work with pretty much everybody, which is a very unique position that I'm in. So, yeah, I did American Pinball's reveal. I did the Wicked Witch animations for the Wizard of Oz for Jersey Jack back when I first got into pinball. Like, I dove in head first.
    21:15
    Also, Jersey Jack's back-end menu system, that was all me. I designed the look of that colored grid thing. I should probably come up with something for Stern because they're still using that dot matrix stuff. But yeah, I'm open to working with absolutely everybody so it's pretty cool. I do, I have my favorites but you know, I'm just a... . Well the good thing is that none of them have asked you to sign some exclusivity deal. Right, it's a very, like I mentioned I'm in a unique position. Like I'm allowed into manufacturing facilities for a lot of these folks and they understand that I'm not going to be sharing that information, if that makes sense. So yeah, it's very unique. It's a very, I feel honored in that position and pinball shouldn't be a competition in that vein. It's a rise in tides, raise all ships sort of thing. Everyone needs to build each other up, right? If we're fighting each other, this hobby's not going to freaking go anywhere. My beautiful wife. What's your favorite opportunity that's been provided to you through this work? My favorite opportunity that's been provided me through this work. I don't pay for my drinks when I stream at bars, right?
    22:40
    Which is, that's quite a benefit. What's that? What is in Canada? Oh, yeah, I went to Canada, yes. I drove with Scott Denisey to Ed Robertson's house to drop off a freaking TNA, you know?
    22:56
    I've met more celebrities through being this pinball person than I have in any other aspect of my life at all. And I've worked on feature films. and just the hobby is so eclectic and crazy, and there's so many great people in it. Welcome back, Crystal.
    23:18
    But yeah, being able to meet people, being able to go into these facilities where I get to see all these awesome people making these games,
    23:27
    seeing... The thing I don't like is when they tell me the games that are coming out, and then I don't get to play speculation anymore, because that is a super bummer. when you sit there and everyone's like, I wonder if the next game's going to be Bill and Ted. And you're just like, I can't talk about it.
    23:43
    I whisper in my daughter's ear. So if anyone's spreading rumors, it's her. But yeah, I'm going to jump back to the future thing really quick.
    23:54
    I'm going to build a second game after this first game. This first game's just showing what's going on. But I wanted to learn how to build a pinball machine. But the second game, I'm reaching out to all of my super tech nerdy dudes who, they're like, we're going to go to Adafruit, and we're going to be using flex sensors. We're going to be using, like, all these weird new technological little gizmos we could throw in a game. We're just going to throw shit at the wall, sorry for swearing, and just see what sticks. We want the weirdest things happening in this game. We want to come up with crazy mechs. You know, I want a spinner to pop out of the play field, and then you shoot it. I want, like, just the craziest things going on in a game. but I also want other people to come into this hobby designing stuff so we can you know we're not just saying Crystal go work for Spooky at Ding Dong he offered you a job and a car he offered you a car right now just go right now get off the stage you're working do we have any other questions Oh, absolutely. My pleasure.
    25:13
    Absolutely. Thank you. I could see cameras pointing at the player becoming a more like used utility, sort of like Jersey Jack has them in all their machines A lot of people that when they first started trying to build rigs after I I was like streaming for a while they like have you tried this like putting clamps for cameras on the machines to like so it's totally hands off like clamp a camera to the the back box and aim it down at the play field and then crop it weird in a thing and it sounds good in theory looks great on paper but when you play a pinball machine everything's vibrating everything so So to get a constant feed out, everything's just like sort of doing this. Because when you flip, when you're nudging, everything's shaking. To like bracket that down completely and not get that sort of like wavering disturbance is something I cannot figure out. And I haven't seen anyone also figure it out. So if you know the answer to that, let me know. Because that would reduce a lot of the freaking stands I got to bring everywhere.
    26:38
    How are we doing on time? So we can pull some numbers. Okay, yeah, we're good. We're good. Dan? I'll holler at you later. It's fine. Well, do we, how many of you bought a raffle ticket for the Project Pinball thing? I think they're all purchased. 500 tickets. And only three of those people are in here. Hell yeah. Oh yeah, internet. Did any of you buy a ticket? Okay, we got Bill. Our dude. The chances are high. Yeah, three people bought a ticket so we're gonna going to see what happens. Oh, is this the game coming in? Yeah. So we're going to be pulling a name soon, and the winner is going home with that bad boy. It's a refurbished World Poker Tour. There's a question in the audience. Ta-da! It's a Vault Edition World Poker Tour. That is to win this pinball streaming rig that we have here. Yeah, buddy. Yeah, dude. Yes, Laura. Did I say I was going to explain it? Okay. Yeah. So, um, a lot of people that are new to my channel, they're like, uh, it's a thing. Like if you subscribe or what, I'm like flippers in butts up. It's, it's ridiculous. I know. Um, but the, the butts are grounded in pinball. So when, uh, before, yeah, thank you for the flippers and butts in chat. So I used to just say flippers up, you know, when people would subscribe and then we added the butts later. The butts are a reference to, uh, everyone's favorite pinball machine, uh, WWE, you know, I'm sure everyone's played that game. Stern's WWE. Um, the extra ball animation in WWE is two butts coming in from off screen, smashing each other. So if you've ever gotten an extra ball, it's, and I'm guessing, I don't know whose butts they are. It's actually just two butts smashing each other. And then it just says extra ball really big. So we, uh, we just took, we just took the butts for ourselves and here we are. So that's the butt story. It's pinball. It's pinball. So don't, don't sweat it. Don't sweat it. Where did my dude come from? Where did my dude come from? Oh, I was drunk and said my dude with a slur. Nice butt story, Jack. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. Do we have any other questions? My man.
    29:15
    So, yeah, do I enjoy streaming on location or in the studio more? It's a mood-based thing. I like streaming at the studio because I can put on stupid costumes and just be like a complete freaking idiot.
    29:31
    But location streaming is probably my favorite because everyone's around you. You're exposing this. We'll take like Emporium and Logan Square. They've got like maybe 10 pinball machines, 10, 12, something like that. But it's mostly that bar is for people that just want to play pool. and want to play skee-ball and air hockey and stuff. But when I set up my stream there, if you watch one of those shows, you are going to have a list of names this long of people that we came over, we're like, what's your name? Teach them how to play. They leave, bring some friends back, and it's just a constant thing of teaching these people what's going on. And the reaction is the same every time.
    30:14
    When they're playing, I'm trying to be as excited for them as humanly possible so that they are also excited. So I'll let them play their first ball just to see what's going on. And then if I can, like, through coaching, get them to, like, cradle the ball, right there is a great opportunity to be like, you are now a better pinball player than, like, half the people in here. Like, you're cradling a freaking ball, you know? Like, no one else, look at that person over there, like, using his feet to flip. Like, you just, like, you've cradled the ball. That is a great step towards, like, learning how to play better. And if they're doing pretty well, showing them how to do a post pass is actually not that hard, especially for someone who doesn't know anything about pinball. The nerves of, like, oh, I'm going to drain or my score is going to suck, they don't really care about that. So showing them how to post pass, when they successfully do it, punch them in the freaking arm. You just did something so incredibly important to learning how to play, and when they show that to their friend, it's like black magic. The fact that you stopped this ball and you moved it over here with these two freaking buttons is incredible. Yeah, location streaming is just tops, absolutely. And this guy has a question.
    31:25
    I feel like you play better after you've had several beers. Yeah, right. I grew up in the 60s and 70s, and most of your pinball machines were in pool halls and bowling halls. Oh, yeah. And that's where I learned to play it as a little kid. Drinking and playing pinball. So for me, it's a bell curve.
    31:48
    I'm like here when I'm not drinking, and like two beers, I'm like here with my skills. I'm really good. But like when you drink more than that, it starts to like fall back down. But when you're drinking, you don't just stop drinking.
    32:06
    That sounds like I have a problem. But like you're at a bar. Or when you get here, you're like, man, I'm killing this. You just enter a zone where you can't be stopped because your nerves are gone. And maybe you're flipping when you shouldn't, but it's working perfectly for you.
    32:23
    But when you're doing one of these, you're just like, this isn't doing anything anymore. But, yeah, I play better with a few beers in me, but I can't just have a few beers.
    32:35
    There's a question in chat about Internet speed and being in bars on location than the challenge of dealing with that kind of stuff? Wait, one more time? Like the challenge of dealing with internet and location? Oh, yeah. So therein lies the big thorn in the side of streaming on location is the internet.
    32:53
    Or, yeah, or anywhere. Because whenever I go... So I opened up my new studio. It was like a five-month argument with Comcast. I know my number says 100, but it's not 100 all the time. It's like two, like 150, like 30. When you stream, you need as clean a line as possible, no noise on the line. When you're on location, if you're in like a crappy dive bar that doesn't have Wi-Fi, like how do you stream pinball and you want to be there? I invested in a Verizon hotspot.
    33:27
    I think it's called a Jetpack. I think there's one on the table here somewhere too. Whatever, it doesn't matter. that is great if you have a solid cell signal if you don't have a cell signal or a good internet where you're at you just record local and upload it later if if I don't have a good cell signal or wi-fi I just get angry and like throw all my gear in the trash and freaking go home because I like I live for the the live experience I want people to tell me live that they think my hair looks stupid so I can tell them that they're stupid and then it's a bad argument back and forth But yeah, invest in a hotspot. The only problem, and that's where the money comes in for streaming. So this has expenses. Thanks guys. Your hair is stupid, thanks. My cell phone bill is like almost $300. It's bad. And that's with, when I'm streaming on location and I have to use my hotspot. I also have to drop my bit rate down so that my, oh yeah, there's a hotspot right there. So you just like connect your computer to that bad boy, put it up as high as you can and then go for it. Um, but it is part of your cell phone bill, so it's going to be expensive. Um, but you just drop your bit rate down, which affects the quality, which like on everyone else's end, they're like, you know, I can watch this, but it's not as like crisp as it should be. So there's a, there's a lot of dancing there. And, um, yeah i don't know just buy buy a freaking hotspot put foil on an antenna yes cool there is a question about uh what liability precautions do you take when in public with random people on camera ah yes liability so um like any filming that you do in public you should have a notice that people are being filmed because if someone finds their likeness on you know like this twitch fails website, which is a thing that goes through Twitch and finds stupid stuff people do, and then they become like this big meme, and they didn't agree to be on the show because there was nothing to sign. When you stream on location, just print out, it's a very simple form that says you're being filmed, right? Slap that somewhere for people to see, and you're good to go. Some places don't care, but it is a really good precaution just in case. I mean, If you're just a person, I don't know. I don't want to tell people to be Lassity School about it, but print something out, slap it up. Even if you've got to put it on the freaking machine next to you, just put it there just so people, you can be like, you're being filmed. Usually I will have something in a small format of that, but when I grab someone over, I'll be like, you're on the Internet, so if you have a warrant for your arrest, you can leave now or stay here and play pinball, and you're going to be good to go. I'm in. Someone, yeah.
    36:18
    Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I'm very trusting with my gear. Very trusting to the point where if someone, even remotely curious about stealing something, wanted to, they could just walk away with everything. So if I'm playing, I'll just grab a string from the bar and be like, hey, do you know what pinball is? No, check this out. Sit here, play this game. I need to go take a piss.
    36:44
    And I'll come back, and they'll be gone, obviously, because I scared the shit out of them. But the cool people, they'll still be there playing because they'll have realized that the internet can see them and they can talk to the people sitting there.
    36:58
    But there's been many circumstances where people say mega terrible things and I'll have to delete the video immediately because I can't control what people say in public.
    37:09
    Or there was one circumstance. I was streaming at a place called Lemmings, and these two drunk ladies came over, and they're like, are you YouTube famous? What's going on? and they're pushing me around while I'm sitting there talking to the camera, and they absolutely shoved me out of the way, and were just eating the microphone, screaming at people, and just terrible, terrible, terrible stuff, and I just had to pull the plug on the computer. I'm like, there's no salvaging what's going on here. You're obviously not leaving, and I can't do my show right now.
    37:41
    And there's also circumstances where the bar will just get too full, and I'm sort of getting pushed around while I'm playing, and I'm like, I can't really work on what's going on here. But I've never had anything, I take that back, I have had a few pieces of gear stolen over the years. Nothing too crazy. But the biggest catastrophe I've had was like someone spilled a gin and tonic on my laptop once.
    38:02
    And the thing still works. So whatever, it doesn't matter. Should we do, you want to pull your raffle really quick and we'll ask a few more questions? Yeah, bring that up here. So I currently have about 17 pinball machines in 400 square feet of space.
    38:19
    And we need way, way more space. Oh, it's for the game? Bling bling. But all of our pinball machines, again, a unique position we're in.
    38:30
    I am a pinball babysitter. So people who watch the show donate games. They'll have them delivered to the studio. I'll play them for a while, put up a big score, send them back on their way. So we have an ever collection of pinball machines Stern only recently started dropping off all of their new games as they coming out but we are so out of room They called me like a week ago They're like, hey, I got a Deadpool premium coming your way. And I'm like, cool. I don't have freaking room for this, so send it back. And who the hell does that? But ever since I started building this pinball machine, I am so beyond out of room. It's crazy. All right, we're going to pull a number here for the people that are going to win this. Am I on this list? Did I donate money to you?
    39:16
    I don't think so. So how do you want to do this? We're just going to ask Siri to generate a number between 1 and 500? Well, before we do, we want to thank Jack Danger for everything that he does. Thank you. Jack does so much for the kids' charities, not only Project Pinball, but other kids' charities out there. He's constantly coming up with great ideas. We did the Thrill at Stern Villa with Jack. We raised $2,450 in a matter of a couple hours. Yeah, that was fun. That was a lot of fun. And I think you might see another one of those pretty soon, too. It was pretty cool. Well, it was very cool. We had a lot of new people coming in. They weren't aware of the two charities that were being showcased that night, and it was great. We got some good feedback, and it's all because of Jack and what he does. So what a great guy. No, no, no, no. Don't clap for that, please.
    40:13
    No, no, no, no. I think I asked for that, actually. Yeah, clap louder, please. He's modest sometimes.
    40:20
    With the World Poker Tour, this was donated by Rob Burke from the Pinball Expo. So if you see him, please pat him on the back. Give him thanks. This was made possible by his generous donation.
    40:39
    Okay, what we did was we sold $10 entry tickets, 500 of them. And we were able to sell them out quite quickly. And we have a donor match. So every $10 donation became $20. Oh, damn. So how about that? Congratulations. That's awesome. So we have all 500 names here. I have a number generator. Wait, why is this one sheet yellow? I have no idea. Oh, okay. They ran out of paper.
    41:06
    Some are heavy car stuff. Yeah, what is it? This is like generic regular leaf. We had to throw it together this morning, so no coffee. So you're going to randomly generate a number? Oh, yeah, there it is. Right there. Wait, between one and ten. Wait.
    41:22
    I got to set it up. Oh, yeah. between one and 500. There it is. So all we got to do is hit that button, huh? I'm going to hit it in front of the camera here. Do it.
    41:34
    I'm also going to call your mom to see it. All right. Can you guys, oh, you can't see this at all? Okay, Crystal, here's your first job.
    41:45
    All right, here's your third job. I'm going to click this. And this is going to take two seconds. Keep sliding that down a little bit. That looks good. All right, good. All right, drum roll.
    42:19
    352. Let's see who it is. Okay, we have a winner right there. Yo, do we have a Brad? There's no Brad in here. All right, no one won.
    42:48
    Brad Grzelka. Does anyone know Brad Grzelka? Internet. Are you Brad? Why does this microphone sound so much better than the one I was using? Hey. Ooh, Brad. Griselka.
    43:04
    Anyway, Brad, you won. I don't know how the hell we're going to get a hold of you. I'm sure Dan will figure it out.
    43:10
    We have their contact information. No problem. We do this professionally. Even though it doesn't seem like it at times. All right. Especially with these live callings. We need to take some lessons off of this guy. All right, Crystal, type the clipboard. It's at the top there.
    43:30
    Marty. A box story? Oh, God. You want to use my microphone? Yeah, give me your microphone. Hey, everybody.
    43:41
    Thank you, guys. Dan, love you, buddy. What time is it? 1154? Okay, so we'll make this quick, and then we'll draw the number for the rig here. There are several box stories. Sometimes when Stern drops off a brand new pinball machine and you take that game out of the box,
    44:01
    like any young child would with a giant box, you want to climb in this thing, right? So I will make it my job to, like, play pinball, drink, and figure out what fun things I can do with this, like sitting inside of it, maybe sitting on top of it. And more often than not, it will break while I'm sitting on it. and there was one moment where I was by myself in my studio streaming,
    44:25
    and it collapsed on me in such a way that I sunk down, and the walls came in down and in front of me, actually trapping me in the box where I could not, no matter what I did, get out of this thing, with me just flailing while people are watching me going, what the actual hell is going on here? And it took me rocking back and forth to fall over to try to slink out of this to finally get out. But for a good, like, 30 seconds, I was, like, terrified for my life that, like, that's where I was going to die. Like, I was done. Were you or were you not wearing a full-body suit? It doesn't matter if I was wearing a full-body suit. Anyway, let's pull the raffle ticket for this. Laura, do you have the numbers?
    45:08
    All right, folks. Whoever wins this, again, congratulations. There's a lot of gear here. We've got a blue snowball, which is the microphone I originally used. All of this is brand new, when I say originally. This is all brand new gear. Blue Snowball, we got a microphone stand with all the appropriate clamps to hold a camera up top and a camera for it. And then a camera for a DMD or LCD with the, all of it's in there. An entire rig waiting to go. You plug that into a computer, it's ready, and I'm happy to help whoever gets it to make it happen. I didn't get a ticket. Oh, Laura's going to give tickets to everybody else here, too.
    45:49
    Yeah. Charlie. Come here. Wait, what? Charlie, it would have been me to tell you this, brother. Here's your daughter.
    46:04
    All right, damn it, I'll take care of her. Yeah, if you didn't get a ticket, raise your hand or go to that very short young lady over there. You didn't get a ticket? Internet, if you didn't get a ticket. Keep your hand up.
    46:29
    And now Jack's seminar on prostate exams. Yes. Okay. So I love the Internet so much, guys. I just really quick, before I pull this, I want to say thank you all so much for everything. Like this started off as like a simple little thing that I did. but through the support and the viewership and everything from everyone here, everyone on the Internet, like I can't do this without you, and thank you so very much for, like, helping me generate this content that I do. So I love you, and I hope you all win this rig.
    47:04
    Just make sure to share it with each other. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You could do it through blood work these days. Okay, awesome.
    47:12
    Is that it? Did everyone get a ticket? This young lady needs one. Did you get a ticket? No? All right.
    47:26
    Are you going to have her pull it? Why? Yo, Laura, there's a hat right there in that box. So how's everyone's expo? Going all right? Oh, yes.
    47:44
    What do I think of virtual pinball? I think that it's coming along. I was one of the absolute screw virtual pinball. I think playing it's going to make me suck as a player.
    47:57
    Playing the video game pinball on your phone and stuff, that was a great way to kill the time when you're sitting on the toilet and you want to learn rules and stuff.
    48:05
    But the actual physical cabinets, I was never really sold on it, but the folks at Zen Studios that make pinball effects, They sent me this virtual pin. It's called, like, their championship cabinet or whatever. It's still in beta. But they sent it to my studio, and they're like, just give this a shot. And when I plugged it in and I turned it on, I'm like, yeah, all right, here we go. But the second I flipped a flipper button, I felt a coil fire in the game. Like, they put actual mechs in this thing where, like, the biggest concern was, like, I want to feel it. No, I need to feel the ball. I need to feel the – and they put actual coils in there. So when you flip, it fires. There's a shaker motor in there that moves a little bit when it's hitting stuff or riding rails, so you feel the ball a little bit in there. So it's getting close.
    48:49
    I don't think it's there yet, but it's getting really close. The video game stuff is video game stuff. That's fine. But, yeah, the physical virtual stuff, it's close, but it's not quite there yet for me.
    49:02
    I think the video game stuff is 100% getting new people into it. I know so many people that tell me that. story. It's like Pinball Arcade is what got me into looking for the real machines when I found out medieval madness is an actual thing I can touch. Yeah, a lot of people gave me that story. So huge props to those companies for putting those things out because it's working. All right, I think we're going to pull a ticket here. Are you ready? Yeah, pull that one. Do you know how to read? Not yet? Okay, we'll figure it out.
    49:37
    Can I hit you with the microphone? No? Okay, cool. So the number is, and I think the first three numbers are 148.
    49:47
    Everybody. Alright. 9-1-4-3. Listen, if it's nobody, I'll... She doesn't get it. Get that out of here. How did you choose your own number, you ding-dong?
    50:08
    She said she wanted it. You get to keep that ticket, okay? Can you grab another ticket? Sorry, guys, it's rigged out of control.
    50:21
    Wait, Charlie, I need the ticket that you just pulled, dude. Not that one. I need, let me read. Okay. One, four, eight. Woo! 9-1-6-2.
    50:35
    My man. Yeah? Dude, congratulations, dude. Hell yeah. Hold on. Let me show you what you got here really quick. So this whole box essentially is yours.
    50:50
    You got the microphone stand. This is a powered USB hub. Cameras galore. Microphone stands, clamps. That's all you, brother. What's your name? Austin. Pleasure to meet you, brother. holler at me on the internet and if you need any help i'll help you set stuff up dude congratulations brother cheers all right well internet if you have any why i'm sorry audience uh fans friends lovers uh do you have any other questions before we uh pack this up i'm gonna be here all day baby make sure that you're here for the uh the sternorama thing tonight it's free beer is it free beer okay it's free beer and i'll be hosting it i think it's in here yeah all right i love you Guys, thank you so very much. Make sure to come back for Scott Denise's talk. You're beautiful. Have a wonderful day.