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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 41: Too Much Stacking!!!

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 57m·analyzed·Aug 16, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

XP system in Venom excites hosts; debate if it spreads to future Stern games or stays Dwight-exclusive.

Summary

Triple Drain Podcast Ep 41 discusses Stern Pinball's XP leveling system in Venom (designed by Dwight), exploring whether it will become a standard feature across future games or remain exclusive to Dwight-coded titles. Hosts debate the merits of XP vs. trophy systems, accessibility for casual players, and how progression mechanics might fit thematically into future games like Jaws. A lighter segment covers Joel's achievement of the Game-of-Choice score on Godfather and the group chat humor around his stacking strategy.

Key Claims

  • Deadpool Pro machines are shipping ahead of the originally planned October timeline

    medium confidence · One host reports a text from Sterling saying his Deadpool Pro just shipped; another host (Travis) is somewhat uncertain but confirms Deadpool Pros are coming, suggesting they're being produced at Stern's new facility

  • Venom's XP system is primarily a Dwight (coder) innovation, not necessarily a directive from Stern management

    high confidence · Hosts discuss XP as characteristic of Dwight's design philosophy (RPG/progression focus), comparing it to his prior work on co-op in Turtles and character selection in Game of Thrones

  • XP systems may not retrofit well into already-produced or in-production games

    medium confidence · Hosts argue XP would be difficult to add retroactively to Rush or Foo Fighters; better to implement in new games from the start

  • Casual players don't understand what XP means and will require hands-on time to grasp the system

    high confidence · Hosts note Venom sales haven't surged on XP hype alone; attribute this to consumer confusion; compare to how James Bond code excitement builds as people play it

  • Trophy system on Avengers Infinity Quest was likely a Raymond innovation that didn't carry to other games

    low confidence · Host speculates (51% confidence) that Raymond created the trophy system; notes it hasn't appeared on Rush or other recent releases

Notable Quotes

  • “Max out my multiplier to 10x and I kept the ball above the flippers during multiball.”

    Joel (describing Godfather GC strategy) @ ~1:15:00 — Became an inside joke in the group chat; the phrase 'kept the ball above the flippers during multiball' struck the hosts as absurdly obvious/funny, leading to the chat being renamed 'Great Pinball Players and Joel'

  • “I'm now stepping into my [comfort zone]. Like, this type of code is what he's been dying to do.”

    Host (paraphrasing Dwight from Freeplay Pinball Podcast) @ ~45:00 — Indicates Dwight views XP/progression systems as his natural design preference, not a stretch assignment

  • “If a dad and his daughter are going to go down and play every single night, he just wants them both to feel like they're achieving something, and every night they're going to get a little further.”

    Host (paraphrasing Dwight's rationale for XP) @ ~30:00 — Core philosophy behind XP: accessibility and inclusivity for casual/family players, not just elite competitors

  • “Most people have no idea what the scores are anyways in pinball. They don't know how much a jackpot is. They don't know what a multiplier is. They don't know, and that's fine.”

    Host @ ~50:00 — Justifies why XP (progression) may resonate better with casual audiences than traditional score-chasing

  • “If you've ever owned Lord of the Rings, people are like, did you get the Valinor? They never ask what was your high score.”

    Joel @ ~55:00 — Exemplifies how progression-focused games attract players who care about reaching endgame, not posting high scores

Entities

Dwight (Stern code designer)personVenom (Stern pinball)gameDeadpool ProproductStern PinballcompanySterling (Balls of Steel league operator)personJoel (host)personTravis (host)personTom (host)personCarl D'AngelopersonJames Bond (Stern pinball)game

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern's new production facility appears operational; Deadpool Pro shipping ahead of October schedule suggests production ramping

    medium · Sterling reports Deadpool Pro just shipped; Travis confirms but notes uncertainty about dual facility production; hints that old facility may not be involved

  • ?

    community_signal: Casual players don't yet understand XP value; understanding grows through hands-on play, similar to how James Bond hype built as players experienced code

    high · Host: 'Venom sales haven't surged on XP hype alone...not many people are really responding.' Comparison to James Bond where excitement rises as people play. Discussion of needing to educate consumers.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Trophy system (Avengers) vs. XP (Venom) as competing progression models; hosts debate merits of each

    medium · Host: 'I would much rather have the trophy system...bronze, silver, gold gives replayability.' Discussion of whether XP or trophy approach better drives engagement.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Tension between feature mandates (Stern could require XP in all future games) vs. designer autonomy (individual coders may resist fitting XP thematically)

    high · Host: 'I don't want to be forced to implement something that you don't feel fits the overall picture.' Discussion of how XP would or wouldn't fit Jaws or other themes.

  • $

    market_signal: Insider Connected app performance (presumably high engagement) being used to justify further investment in progression mechanics

    medium · Host: 'Stern tracks all that. So if they're like, we have way more people logging in with Insider Connected...how do we push that anymore?'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.351

0:00
the pinball network is online launching triple drain pinball podcast okay so i feel like one of you second time's a charm i think one of you should ask me if i'm ready are you ready no clearly i wasn't clearly i went through i hit this button we already had our banter going we're going and i went to make a joke about how let me just luckily We're only like two minutes in. I'm going to interrupt Joel like I always do since he was bagging on me earlier without pressing record. First, we did the intro. And Tom and I, apparently, we weren't excited enough. And then we played the intro. And then Joel started talking about the intro. And then I said, what was it, Joel? You said, we should just play the intro again. Yeah, because I was like, yeah, we got him hooked on. We played the intro. People skipped over the intro. Then we told them about the intro. so we're going to play it again. And then Joel made fun of me. Yep. And then Tom laughed. Yep. And then Joel realized, didn't I hit record? I was going to say, hey, what's the time stamp that we need when we start pinball talk? And then I looked up and realized I saw no timer. His face just went from laughing to. So I told the guys, I was like, oh, crap, I didn't hit record. And they thought it was funny. And I was like, no, seriously, actually. How do you guys know this shit? But all right. So I'm ready now, I think. You guys are still ready? I'm amped up now. Here's the intro for the third time for us. I need 15 minutes of my life back. Here we go. We, we, we're three guys who like to talk and ball. But we can't afford to cloud our days. We're going trash down the talking ball. We call ourselves Triple Three, Triple Three, Triple Three. We're Triple Dream.
2:25
much news. We recorded shortly after Venom was trained. Wait, wait, wait. There's no news? Well, not like Travis is a pinball champion right now. That's overrated. What are you... Yeah, it's a big trophy. Oh, it doesn't all fit in frame. You've never heard that before, I know.
2:46
Look, I got Andy's trophy, too, from Chicago for first place. Oh, wow. Those are... Those are both first place trophies? Yes. Oh, wow. Okay. So, is everything on that spelled correctly? On what? On both trophies. On all of them? Yeah. Josh Sharp, he didn't make any of these trophies, but it should be fine. So, what was the big one for? Or just what are both of them for? Why not?
Godfather (pinball)
game
Insider Connected (Stern app/platform)product
Game of Thrones (Stern pinball)game
Turtles (Stern pinball)game
Mandalorian (Stern pinball)game
Raymond (Stern designer/coder)person
Avengers Infinity Quest (Stern pinball)game
Rush (Stern pinball)game
Foo Fighters (Stern pinball)game
Freeplay Pinball Podcastorganization
Pinball Party Podcastorganization
Eclectic Gamers Podcastorganization
Stranger Things (Stern pinball)game
Godzilla (Stern pinball)game
Lord of the Rings (pinball)game
  • ?

    community_signal: Dwight views XP/progression coding as natural fit to his design style (RPG/role-play mechanics) rather than new direction; progressive iteration from Game of Thrones → Turtles → Mando → Venom

    high · Host paraphrases Dwight: 'I'm now stepping into my comfort zone. This type of code is what he's been dying to do.' Hosts trace evolution of character select, co-op, card tracking across games.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Dwight's innovations (co-op, character select, XP, card tracking) may become signature feature set distinguishing Dwight-coded games from others

    medium · Hosts note Dwight-coded games share progression/RPG focus; speculate on whether Stern will mandate these features or leave to designer choice

  • ?

    product_strategy: Venom's XP system positions progression as core mechanic for casual/family accessibility, contrasting with traditional score-focused pinball design

    high · Hosts extensively discuss XP as mechanism to let non-elite players reach endgame without requiring elite skill; Dwight's stated goal to help 'a dad and his daughter' progress nightly

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts cautiously optimistic about XP adoption; frame it as 'wait and see' rather than guaranteed success, but express genuine excitement about innovation

    medium · Multiple hosts say 'it's cool that this is something new and exciting.' But also: 'It's going to take a little bit of hands-on time from a lot of people.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: XP represents potential paradigm shift away from pure score-chasing toward progression/character leveling (more akin to video games like Elden Ring)

    high · Hosts discuss how XP changes focus from 'what's my score' to 'what level am I' and 'what does this unlock'—directly comparable to console RPG mechanics

    • 3:16
    This one's for a warm-up tournament. Oh, no wonder it's this one. And the other one's for the St. Louis Pinball Championships. Oh, look at you. Okay. Wow. Enough driving about me. Let's talk about you, Joel. I have no trophies. I have nothing to flaunt. I got nothing. Yeah. You got your stunning good looks and a badass beard. Sure. That's what I, yeah. That's what I, that's what, this is the one thing I always have on you. I can confidently say I can grow a better beard than you.
    3:42
    That's fair. Okay. Perfect. Okay. No real news. What I meant was last time we recorded, we spent an entire episode doing a very in-depth breakdown on Venom. And believe it or not, I actually got feedback on that and people appreciated it. So apparently breaking it down that way was coherent. What I think is funny is I later listened to Eclectic Gamers podcast and they talked about Venom all of maybe five minutes. And Dennis is like, well, we've exhausted that topic. On to the next. And I'm like, they talked about it five minutes and I'm pretty sure we talked about it for two hours. So I don't know. Obviously, people have different views on what exhausting a topic is. So, I don't know. Hopefully you guys enjoy the depth that we go into. Joel's taking shots at you now. I heard it. Luckily, that's the best thing about having so many different. You don't want to mess with Denim. I know. I just heard that. Civil War and TPN now. So many different podcasts is good for so that everybody can have, you know, whatever floats your boat, there's probably a podcast out there.
    4:42
    So, yes, Venom, we're still kind of in a waiting game on that. Hopefully, I know Stern is still, I don't know timeline. Maybe, Travis, you do. Like, are they still in the middle of the move? I don't know if they're actually producing games.
    4:55
    Does he work for Stern Pinball? I mean, in a roundabout way, he kind of works for a company that depends on Stern Pinball. Or does Stern Pinball work for us? He's been buying from Stern Pinball. That's what it is. Okay. I don't know. I'm just making it up now. I know that there was a Venom Premium that was out at Trent's Bar in August. I think it was out there, and I heard a bunch of people playing it. And the feedback that I've heard so far is just that it's fast. And that's legitimately the only feedback pretty much everybody has about it. So the same exact feedback we had from the people that played at Comic-Con. And, yeah, I mean, surprise, surprise, fast locks are fast. So I do think Things are being made Because I actually got a text from a buddy of mine Sterling shout out Holy crap I'm giving a shout out And I can't even think of his name Oh no This is bad when I start recording I can't Think of names Sterling he's down in Atlanta But it's a It's something you're trying to figure out the last name Aren't you no it's not I know his name It's the league that he That he runs. It's down in Georgia. I'll have to. I will think of this. Is it the Georgia Pinball League? No, this is terrible. Anyways, sorry, Sterling. I will think of it.
    6:15
    Joel is such an a-hole, Sterling. See, if Tom and I were saying this, we would know it. He texted me because he said his Deadpool Pro was just shipped. And Deadpool Pros, I don't think were supposed to be made until October, but apparently that has been bumped up. Is that the case, Travis? You're shaking your head? Like, you know, something. Yes. Well, he was. I can't confirm. Well, he was contacted from his distributor, which must not be you saying, hey, your Deadpool Pro was just shipped. So. No, because I bought all the Deadpools. So apparently it's not just shipped. So maybe they're yelling at it or lying to him, but it should be shipped soon. But if that's the case, that's awesome. No, Deadpool. Yeah. Deadpool Pros are coming. Yep. Perfect. I can confirm that. That's awesome. But that's obviously, I don't think those were made in the old facility unless they have both lines going in both locations. I don't know. It just seems, I would assume Stern is moving forward. Things are trucking along. We will see what happens. They're running a business. Yes, Joel. They're running a business. Confirmed. So I just can't focus when I can't think of the freaking name. It's something balls. Can we run the podcast, Travis? I think we should, Tom. We talked about this. Balls of steel. That's what he runs. He runs the Balls of Steel. I thought I had an idea. How could you not know that name? That's why it was bothering me. That's a classic name. Do you like how he came up with it? Something Balls. I knew it was Balls. Curly Balls. I'm so sorry. Balls of Steel. Balls of Rush. Apparently, Deadpools are coming. So that's exciting for anybody that's been waiting on a Deadpool Pro. Those are coming. So I'm guessing this turn factory is up and running. or in the early process of being up and running. So I'm hoping that means Venoms, Venom Pros, which we are told mid to late August, are on their way soon. So hopefully for the Flippin' Out stream, I will have one hopefully within the next few weeks. That's kind of where we're at, and hopefully it will be on location. People will be able to get a little more hands-on experience. In the meantime, though, in the last few weeks, we really don't have anything new to report on Venom.
    8:23
    Free Play Pinball Podcast did a really good interview with Dwight. Dwight is still very stoked about the code, as he should be. That's very exciting. One thing that was mentioned, though, on the Pinball Party podcast was now that this type of XP system is being added to pinball. And obviously Stern has, like, fleshed this out in Insider Connected as well. In my mind, I feel like that would be kind of a waste if it's only on one game. Do either of you feel that this is potentially a future-type move for Stern? Do you think this is something that, or is it just a Dwight thing? Maybe this will be part of Dwight games from here on out? I'd say it's possible, but I think it's going to be more of a Dwight thing. Okay. Because the only thing about it is like. He's more into the, like, I don't, how do I say it? Like Dungeons and Dragons type of stuff. Or like R&D, like not R&D, but the role play or. Role play. Guilds. R&D. There it is. You know, we have, we, you know, this is our second recording because Travis's mic's already out. video is already out, so you can tell that time limit's already passed once.
    9:31
    No, RNG or his, yeah, he loves this idea of building or progressing, and it is cool hearing him talk about it more and more and how amped up he is about it. I agree. If it sells a lot of games, I mean, it could become a thing. If the demand is there, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I. I really think like, I like the idea of being able to start at a point somewhere in the game with your insider connect. Sure. I think that would make a lot of people happy.
    10:17
    All the Joles of the world. Or the ability to skip. And the time graph. Or the ability to get through earlier points faster the more you do it. Like, it's like, let me get through, you know, I'm all for, and that's where they're talking about roguelike, roguelike games, where it's like the first times you play these games, the first few levels just kick your butt. But it's like the more you build, all of a sudden the first few levels, you're going to be able to get through them faster and faster and get to the later levels quicker. I'm all for it. Like, I'm very curious to see how this works. But if we look at the last few, like, I don't see how XP would fit in Rush's code, or I don't see how XP would fit in even into Foo Fighters. Well, so I would say this. I would say I don't think retroactively they should try to implement something like this into games that have already been produced and are in current production. I wouldn't mind seeing it done in games that are coming up, though. But it's not necessarily having, to me, if it were me and I was coding a game, I wouldn't necessarily want that in my game if I already had an idea or a skeleton of what I wanted. But I'm okay with somebody like, say, it's Dwight to come up with this and implement it across the board after the fact, if you make it an ongoing ecosystem with the Stern Insider Connect. So maybe there's some way they could do that to where it's kind of a separate thing from the actual, like, full code of a game, if that makes sense and that it's just another layer on top of that. So I don't know. That's kind of the way that I see this playing out, if they were going to go ahead and implement it. Because to me it would be a little odd if this wasn't on any other games and if it just showed up just in Dwight-coded games. Because then you would be looking at, what, one version of this every 18 to 24 months or however long it would be. So I could see something like that. But I also understand why certain coders would not necessarily want that in their game either. But I argue like, you know, competitive play or cooperative play and like impossible mode. Those are all Dwight things, which are good things, but they're not incorporated into, you know, other games. So I still think it's just going to be a Dwight thing. I mean I thought I heard a rumor or somebody said sometime that there were talks of like bringing co-op into even like Godzilla I don't know but I really think it comes down to whether or not the coder wants to do that or whether or not because I would be curious and we've talked about this before but when it comes to Stern code there's a base level code that's built into every like every coder isn't coding their own DJ mixer you know like that's a set code that I'm assuming they can just copy, paste in, and then kind of tweak to make their own. So I'm curious how much, like, taking cooperative play and just copying and pasting that into your game, like, how much that would take. I would assume there's just – I would assume a lot of testing. Because, like, Dwight did something unique with Turtles with co-op play where if – depending on how many of the episodes you got through, it would get you to the wizard mode. So once you get through four episodes, that's when team-ups lit. But what Dwight did was he allowed team-up to be lit for everybody playing. So you'd have to have that type of logic in there where what type of modes do you, even though one person's played it, you allow the next person to play it as well so it's not all combined progression. I don't know. There's some logic there. I think it could be incorporated in other games, but it really comes down to whether or not the game lead or the game designer wants it in their game. Unless Stern just comes down and they're like, boom, no, this has to be in every game from here on out. It could be an important part for home games, too. Because let's face facts, getting to a wizard mode and getting deep into a game, it's not necessarily guaranteed for everybody. It takes a very skilled player over the course of three balls or even with extra balls, say you have five balls total in a game, to get to a wizard mode a lot of the times, or at least to the end game. Yeah. So I can appreciate something being added in to a game that allows for everybody to eventually experience it. And it allows for people to continually play until they get to it. And it's kind of what we talked about last podcast, that not every single game has to be geared towards the high end player. Not every single rule set has to be geared towards the elite level player. Sometimes it's good enough just to try to appeal to the masses. And that's whenever you're selling a product, that's probably, well, not probably, that's most certainly the direction you want to go. You want to try to appeal to the most people. Now, obviously, right now, what we're seeing, not many people are really responding to hearing about the XP with Venoms just flying off the shelves. I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand what it means. Yeah. Just because we have a grasp on it, just because some of us have played PC or console games that have seen an XP leveling system like this, it doesn't mean that everybody truly understands it. So I think it's going to take a little bit of hands-on time from a lot of people. I think it's going to take possibly a Deadpool situation to where people see the code flesh out. And that's exactly what we're seeing with James Bond right now. Yeah. We're seeing that start to go up. So, yeah, hopefully it works itself out. But I think they really, if they're going to lean into this XP, which I truly think they need to, they need to really make it apparent to the consumer what this is and what this means. And just educate people because pinball is difficult enough explaining it to a casual. Now you put an XP system on top of it. I mean, people might get lost. So it's just simply just telling people. And the way I've explained it to several of my non-pinball friends to where they're actually interested in it, it's just telling them, hey, if you play long enough, you're going to get a bunch of points in the background that just level up your character. And eventually you're going to be strong enough to take on different parts of the game. And you can keep rematching against that. And you can pull that over game to game to game that you don't have to do it all in three balls. It could take you 30 balls. It could take you 50 balls. So when you start to quantify it out like that, that's when people start to wrap their minds around what this truly is. yeah I agree and I'm just trying to think ahead like I think it makes total sense in Venom because it is a fighting type game of like okay the stronger you get your attacks are going to be worth more your teeth they're not going to regenerate as much so it makes these one-on-one battles when you get to certain thresholds easier that makes total sense to me but what I'm trying to think about and this was one of the questions I was asked on Facebook people wanted us to kind of guess or think through if Jaws happens to be the next game, like what would we see in that game? And we can definitely get on that route. Okay, good. That's a good idea. I think you might be on to that. Water. Maybe a boat. But the question is, like, Dwight has made it very clear that Venom is not a mode-based game. It has many modes. It has this. But he's like, that's not what he's saying. So, you know, I think mode-based games are a very normal thing. I'm trying to project here how modes would fit into Jaws or the concept of Jaws. But if we go one step further, how would XP fit into Jaws if that became a thing? You're going to eat a lot of people. So you're the shark in the original Jaws. Why not? Okay. You played Maneater before, haven't you? The console game and on PC? The Daryl Hall and John. Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. But, like, you literally play as a shark, and you get XP for eating various sea creatures, eating humans, destroying boats. I think we got our answer there. I was just trying to think, like, if there's a mode that it's like escape this. It's like, well, how would XP help with that? And the only thing I could think of is once you get to certain levels, maybe it takes less shots, or maybe your ball save is a little longer, or maybe it's a little easier to light your outlanes, you know, like something like that where the game gets easier the higher level you get. You could do different things like that. I would say if I had to choose between an XP system, and you guys remember the trophy system, those on Avengers Infinity Quest? Sure. I would much, personally, I would much rather have the trophy system. I wish that they would have that across the board on every single game. Because even though you have the achievements, I think it's pretty cool that you actually can get kind of in-game type achievements that's geared towards doing so well in certain modes. So you have purpose to keep going back to the mode and it's bronze, silver, gold. So you have three different tiers for it. So to me, that's what allows for a lot of replayability with a game. So I don't know, maybe somehow they can implement something that maybe is geared more towards the trophy type system. And then maybe just include XP with that. Maybe that's something you could do. I think refill. I mean, replayability alone is an interesting thought in pinball, right? I mean, And there's a lot of people that once you get to the final wizard mode, they're like, I'm done. They don't have that urge to play it again. But it sounds like, at least listening to Dwight, the main reason he was all for XP is because he wants XP to give the player the ability to almost guarantee that they can get further in the game. His example was like if a dad and his daughter are going to go down and play every single night, he just wants them both to feel like they're achieving something. and every night they're going to get a little further and a little further because the game recognizes the time they're putting into it. And they can play co-op. That's what he was saying too. Like co-op will help with all that. So I think what you're saying, Travis, is not you want somebody to like hold your hand through the game or help make the game easier. You want like give me deeper instead of just completing the mode, give me the ability to complete it in three different ways, and then I earn three different potential trophies in that. And I know Insider Connected tries with some of their achievements to do stuff like that, of like, here, try to attack this a little differently than you normally do just so you can get that achievement. So I think the bones are there. I think Stern has a ton of options of what direction they want to go. I just think this XP thing is, in my opinion, and I think the three of us were all like, that's what excites us most about Venom, and it'll just be curious if this is a one-and-done thing, like the UV ink that was printed on Stranger Things. Is this a one-and-done thing, or is this a, no, this can be a new thing that they start to build into every game. Yeah. I mean, it's curious because we've seen Stern do certain things that come off as one and done. You just talked about the UV kit. I just talked about the trophy system on Avengers. You know, we haven't seen anything like that on Godzilla.
    21:18
    Yeah. You know what I mean? So, and I think the trophy system, you guys can correct me if I'm wrong and I'm sure they'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that was kind of Raymond came up with that and kind of implemented. I think I'm not positive. I think that's correct. 51% on that. So, yeah, it's just like we didn't see a trophy system on Rush or anything like that. So, you know, I don't know. Different strokes for different folks. I just think that anything that Stern does, hopefully people catch on with it, and then one thing kind of sticks to where they'll go that direction. And I think the XP stuff, I think it is a great idea. I think making the game more accessible to every single pinball player, that's not a bad thing. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And I'm excited. I'm excited to see where that goes. I'm excited to see more people play it. And, yeah, just to see what's, yeah, where Stern takes that or where Dwight. I think it's, what I do really like is it sounds like, and this happened in the Freeplay Pinball Podcast, where they were like, man, Dwight, now it looks like you're, you know, from a coach standpoint, it looks like now you're, like, stepping out of your comfort zone. And he's like, no, it's the opposite. Like, I'm now stepping into my, like, this type of code is what he's been dying to do. And that's awesome. You know, props to Stern for, like, letting him do it and to see what he did initially in Turtles. I mean, it even goes, like, Game of Thrones, you could pick your house. And then in Turtles, you pick your character and then co-op. And then it goes further with Mando, where it's taking track of all your best cards. Like, they're letting him do more and more. and I'm excited to see kind of how deep he goes with it. Yeah, and I think it fits the theme. And the question is, if it continues on, will it fit other themes? I don't know. And I think that's something that, you know, as a designer, I want to be forced to implement something that you don't feel fits the overall picture. But at the same time, it is, you know, if that ends up being something – because you know Stern tracks all that. So if they're saying they're like, we have, you know, we have way more people logging in with Insider Connected than we do any other game. Or, you know, look at, like, it's clearly there is incentive to do this and people are doing it. So how do we, you know, push that anymore? And there's other parts to this, too, that's interesting. I think the fact is if you're doing an XP system and you're doing speed runs to where it's all time when you defeat certain people, you make it to where it doesn't really matter how many points you score in the game. What really matters is when do you get to the end game? And we're kind of comparing that to what happens again. Or I keep bringing it up, PC and console games. Whenever you're leveling up your character, say you're playing, I don't know, like Elden Scrolls or whatever that game, Elden Scrolls. Elden Ring. Yeah, Elden Ring, whatever it is. Yeah, all those games where you get XP, right? You're not necessarily thinking about, okay, what's my score at all? You're thinking about what level can you get? What does that unlock? What more gear can you get for your character? What weapon can you get? It has nothing to do with score. So I almost feel like it's definitely weird having a pinball machine and not have to worry about score. But, again, you make it. Most people have no idea what the scores are anyways in pinball. You ask a lot of people. They don't know how much a jackpot is. They don't know what a multiplier is. They don't know, and that's fine. They just know, does the game shoot well? Does it look pretty? Does it sound good? and does the blinky lights do cool things. That's what it boils down to. Yeah. So you create that atmosphere, you give XP, and you fight Gnoll eventually. Yeah. I think that's – well, I just think it's funny that, like, you talk about Lord of the Rings. Nobody – if you've ever owned Lord of the Rings or borrowed it, people are like, did you get the Valinor? That's all they ask. They never ask, like, what was your high score in Lord of the Rings? Because that is a game that people care about progression. And that's just how I look at pinball machines. How far in a game can I get? Have I seen everything in the game? Like Hobbit. I know when I had Hobbit, my goal was to get to the third wizard mode because that's kind of as far as you can go in the game. I know I did it. I have no idea what my score was. I don't care what my score was. So I just think this is cool. I think this is cool, and I think this might appeal to a completely different group than others, but also at the same time, I don't know, the majority of people may love it. Tournament players may love it. I really, this is kind of a wait and see situation. It's just cool that this is something new and exciting to be looking forward to.
    25:51
    All right. Transition. I don't have one. Godfather. Okay. So Godfather. I wanted to bring this up because. What a transition. I know, right? You like that? That's pro. That's a pro move right there. He just wants to brag about his score. But it's not even a score to brag about. So here's the deal. I've streamed Godfather three times, and I really don't care about score until I happen to look, and every game comes with a default leaderboard. What I realized is after streaming the game twice, I hadn't even got on the default leaderboard. I hadn't been there. So I know Carl D'Angelo is like in the – How would your XP score, though? Oh, I would have been crushing it. Yeah. I know Carl D'Angelo is like in the billions, and he's like trying to do absurd things. So I'm like, okay, let me look at the leaderboard. You're not God, Joel. I know I'm not. But when the lowest score is 75 million, and I can't break that. I feel just it was one of those like that's the lowest score. And the GC of the game by default is 300 million. So I went into my third stream like, okay, I have to get on this leaderboard. So my brother and I are playing it. A key to that game and a big part of that game is all about the multiplier. And so I actually picked the house or the family that was yellow, and that actually allows you to earn weapons quicker so that you can get to that max out, that 10 times multiplier, faster. So that's the direction I went, and it actually paid off for me. And luckily I had one game where I actually got like 330 million points. So I got GC. I'm still not on the leaderboard, not on the top 10 leaderboard, but I got the GC of the game. Yes, Travis. Or Tom. You're holding me up your hand. I have to fuck?
    27:42
    What? What did you tell Travis and I? So, yes. So, how did you achieve this? Well, hang on, hang on. Let me tee this up. Because somebody out there is listening and laughing their asses off right now. We got a little bit of a group chat. And Joel was ready to just start bragging nonstop. And I don't blame him. Because he got the GC. So he said on a group chat with Carl, he's like, oh, I got the GC. I got $300 billion. Yeah, yeah. And then Carl asked him, what was your strategy? What I did, that group chat. Hang on. I will happily answer this. I got the popcorn. So I was ready. Yeah. Because I was in a situation to where one of the best pinball players in the world had just asked Joel, what was his strategy? Genuine curiosity. I'm curious what strategy he used. And my answer was, I maxed out my multiplier to 10x and I kept the ball above the flippers during multiball. That's what I wrote. And not realizing that apparently that statement kept the ball above the flippers during multiball was, you guys lost it. You're like, oh my God. You just, it was everything. So I really enjoy that group chat because I feel incredibly out of place. Not going to lie, I peed in my pants when I heard that.
    29:05
    It was just so awesome when he said it. It was like everybody just stopped typing, and all three of us were just trying to process exactly what Joel had just said So that group chat was our names and then it went to Bond 60th owners which I no longer that And then it became Great Pinball Players and Joel And it was that for a long time. And so I said, guys, I got the GC on a Godfather tonight. Please give me this for 24 hours. So I just changed the group chat to Great Pinball Players. And it has since changed back. I'm pretty sure it's changed back. It's just Great Pinball Players and Joel. But, yeah, Carl being genuine, I wonder what strategy he took.
    29:44
    Max at my multiplier kept my ball above the flippers during multiple. That's the strategy I took. And I will say if anybody watches that stream, that's 100% what happened. And that's my issue with Godfather is because everything stacks, I was just in this multi-ball for – I was multi-ball after multi-ball after multi-ball. I got to five-family multiply. It was just like one would finish, another would start. And I was just kind of – I was just – I was drooling out. I was keeping the ball above the flippers, just trying to, you know, it's like. Flipping the flappers. And that's another thing about Godfather. Owen needs to eat his heart out. When Joel comes out with his first pinball tutorial, my God. Look out, Owen.
    30:27
    I'm asking my brother, I'm like, what should I shoot? He's like, I mean, when you have a mode going or job going, you have a job going and two or three different multi-balls all at the same time, and it's the light show of Godfather. It's like, what do you shoot? The joke then became, shoot everything, you know, the Woody quote in Toy Story. That's what I felt like I was doing while in multiball, and I was watching my weapons, and once I'd get to 10x, I'd hit it just to, you know, let's keep it. And that's just the strategy I used. And a whole bunch of points came out of nowhere. So is it a strategy I would use to coach someone how to play Godfather? No, it's probably not the best, but it worked. I don't know. I mean, you just created a new T-shirt for us, Joel.
    31:11
    Keep the ball, though, the flippers during multiple. We're rolling in the money now. That was what I did. With Joel's face right there. What I would love is for Carl to, like, he was probably sitting there, and he's like, oh, what a strategy I haven't thought of. You know, it's good. I know my mind doesn't think the same way his does. So maybe he was, like, prepared, like, you know, wetting the pencil, like, oh, what do we do? Oh, oh, that's what he did. Okay, never mind. I like how you think Carl was really expecting a serious answer from you. I hope.
    31:42
    A little bit of me feels like there might be the tiniest ounce of not respect, because I know there is nothing but mutual respect from Carl and I, but I don't think Carl looks to me for actual pinball playing advice. Carl, when you're listening to this next time, I want you to think about this. When you're at your next tournament, which is probably going to be pinball at the lab, I want you to contact Joel for your first game and ask him what should we do on this game. Yep. I'm ready. I'm ready to coach. But anyway, so this kind of leads me to another conversation, which is stacking, just stacking in general. And if you look behind me, I've also – I currently have a Spider-Man, Spider-Man Vault. So Zach came and picked up Foo Fighters, and this is from his personal collection, which he's selling. and we thought this would be a fun game to kind of, I don't know, whet the appetite for Venom because it's Spider-Man.
    32:40
    Side note on that, this game's been played more by my son than any other game I've ever owned. He loves Spider-Man. He plays this almost every single day. He loves this game. He's a good boy. He's three.
    32:52
    My brother and I streamed this one night. I know this game has a lot of love, and I know there are some people, I think it's Steve Bowden who says this is his favorite game. I mean, this game is well loved. I'm not in this conversation. Is this your favorite game? Yeah. How is this your favorite game when you have Rush?
    33:09
    Oh, yeah. Ooh. Uno reversal card. But this is one of your favorite games. This is one of your favorite games. Okay. I know this game gets a lot of love. I know it's Lime and Code, Steve Ritchie layout. It shoots really fun. It shoots really well. I will say I enjoyed the layout. Another thing that really stood out to me, this makes me sound spoiled, but I haven't had a DMD game in the house in a while. And just, like, to see this era of game, there's a ton in here. Like, there's a lot of mechs going on here. I don't know. It feels like a relatively packed game for what it is. And then I really just am such a fan of DMD animations. This has a color DMD in it. But I just really like DMD artwork. And that's why I really like the CGC remakes, the extended DMD. There's just something about that Matrix artwork that I'm a big fan of. Here's a good question. Yes. Do you guys prefer DMD or LCD?
    34:10
    In the era of DMD versus LCD? Or pinball. We're a pinball podcast, Joel. We're talking about pinball. Right now, I still prefer LCD. Everything I own is LCD. Okay. What about you, Tom? I guess LCD but DMD is a close second because of Rush right no it has nothing to do with Rush but I just really love the artwork of it I will go on record and say I prefer DMD over LCD that's a hot take everybody are you saying that are you going big picture here in all the DMD games do you like those more or do you actually feel like it communicates Do you actually like the screens better? No, I just like the DMD screen better than the LCD screen. You just think it communicates. I mean, I've said this before. I think there's enough information on it. I honestly never look at the LCD unless I'm trapped up and I need to find information anyways. Okay. So I don't get to see any of the animations play out. I don't get to see any of that. And even if I'm off to the side watching somebody play, I'm not staring at the LCD screen. I'm staring at the screen or at the, excuse me, staring at the play field because I'm watching that be played. So that's just my personal preference. I just much prefer EMD over LCD for that reason. Well, feel free to share your thoughts on our Facebook page or write us at TripleDrain at gmail.com. This would be an interesting thing because I personally feel like my favorite pinball art is the CGC Remakes DMD. It's colored. it's huge and it's just I really love the way that looks and I've said this before if Stern was to ever vault a game like Lord of the Rings or Tron or whatever Walking Dead I would love for them to go the extra mile and like do that go with an extended DMV colored yeah like make it go ahead and go with colored just go Sega size I just really love I really love that. And I think that would be a perfect happy medium, right, for Lord of the Rings. People are like, oh, bring movie clips. No, we're not going to do that. Well, just look at the background for Spider-Man. Yeah. That looks gorgeous. Yeah. It's awesome. I mean, granted, the frames per second is a little off right now, but you know that a color DMD looks gorgeous. To me, it just pops. I just, whenever I'm at a show.
    36:41
    I think Godfather is right next to it, 27 inches or 26 inches. Yeah. I mean, again, it's personal preference. I'm not going to, like, shame LCD screens or anything like that. It's just my personal preference. If I go to a show, my eyes get drawn to a color DMD. I will stand there and wait to see animations come up on a color DMD that I haven't seen before. So, like, Big Lebowski, when it was essentially color DMD with movie clips, that's kind of a perfect.
    37:14
    Yeah, I would say that's a good mesh. I mean, I understand the place of LCD. Obviously, Jersey Jack did it with Wizard of Oz, and then it just kind of escalated to where everybody had to play catch up with it, and they had to kind of follow suit. But, you know, like I found myself even playing Pulp Fiction a couple weeks ago in Chicago, and I felt like everything you understood what was going on just based off looking up there. You got an idea with what was happening. Oh, yeah. It's just numbers. Yeah. No, it's not just numbers. It's both alphanumeric. Yes. Thank you. There's letters too, Tom. How dare you?
    37:52
    Time to piss Tom off more. So I don't like Spider-Man is what I'm going to say. I do. I appreciate this game. But the biggest complaint that people have against Spider-Man is they feel like it's wood choppy.
    38:06
    And I've realized I don't like smacking. It's wood choppy. Okay. So what do you have to do in this game? You have to defeat all four villains. Then you get an extra ball. Then you defeat all four villains again, and that's how you get to the Battle Royale. Then you have to defeat all four villains again and all the modes, and that's how you get to superhero. So people think it's woodchoppy. People call Metallica woodchoppy because it's like you have to do these things. You get to one step, and then you have to do them again. Then you get to another step, and then you have to do them again. So that's the thing where the modes don't, like, Sandman. When you're fighting Sandman, the only difference between fighting him the first time, second time, or third time is you just have to do it more. Like, that's not – that's what I feel like is woodchoppy. I disagree.
    38:52
    Okay. And end of debate. Anything else? Yeah. So, no. I mean, it's not like you're hitting the same shot eight times in a row.
    39:04
    That's woodchopping. Sandman? It's the same shot. He's just getting a multi-ball and ripped the shit out of it. I mean, it's not like you do it in single ball play.
    39:18
    Trap a ball, Joel. Okay, so that was the other thing. In this game, there are two main multi-balls. The Doc Ock one, to battle Doc Ock, you're doing a multi-ball. And then the other one is the black suit multi-ball. Wait, Joel, have you taken out the center post yet? No. That was in there. I left it in there. I'm just the problem then is what frustrates me in this game is it's a lot of work to start a mode it's a lot of work to start a mode so of course you want to get a mode started before you get into a multi-ball but then like once you're in one multi-ball there's nothing stopping you from getting into the other multi-ball and there's nothing stopping you from having multiple villains go all at one time you are the only thing Yeah, it's not accuracy. But that's accuracy I don't have. So if my goal – You're going to get it playing that game. I get it. If that's the goal, then yes. And I understand that it's like the key – this is a game that would teach you or force you to play more controlled when you're in a multiball. But the other side of me is like if you just start a mode, get into one multiball, and just go to town, there's a good chance you're going to end up fighting all four villains during that multiball and potentially start the next multiball. And if you just, like, all of a sudden, boom, once you get out of two multiballs, it's like, what have I done? Well, apparently I've done two levels of Sandman. I've done one level of Venom. It's like I've already progressed through all this, but then I'm stuck. I'm at that point where it's going to be a lot for me to get my next multiball going or I'm going to have to, like, be – that's when I would trap up and actually be, like, cautious of, like, backhanding Doc Ock shots to get that multiball going. Oh, multiple started again. Okay, now I can, like, go to town and try to accomplish more. I feel like this is turning into a triple combo.
    41:13
    But this isn't the right way to play it. I'm just saying this is what I do, and then what happens is it's like, oh, great, I got to Battle Royale, but I've only done one mode, so I am so far away from getting to the final wizard mode because I still have four modes to go to. Yeah, but how many people think of it like that, though, Joel? What do you mean? I've never seen anybody get to Battle Royale and be like, oh, crap, I've only played one mode. Because that's as far as, like, the next step is.
    41:41
    The man gets $300 million on Godfather. I'm just saying the difference between Battle Royale and then getting to the end of the game is there's a lot left for me to achieve or accomplish. Getting the superhero is insane. No, it's insanely difficult. It's not easy to do. So that's what I was saying earlier. If I look at games from a progression standpoint, it's like, okay, I've technically seen everything in the game except for the final wizard mode. And that last step is such a big step for me that in the idea of like, well, what do I have to do between each one? It's like I don't I'm not excited to do a level three venom because I've already seen them twice. Like, I don't feel like I'm missing things. But it's harder to do. You have to hit the side ramp. I mean, I have no doubt. If you get to superhero, it's probably a very rewarding and gratifying. Mixer Tuna on the Buffalo channel, he's really good, like a very good player of streaming these deeper wizard modes. So when I saw he had a stream of getting to superhero, like that's a big deal. That's not a normal stream. So I get it. And just for maybe a player like yourself, Tom, a controlled player where you're having to think through that idea of, you know, okay, and I know Bowen did it during his tutorial, like make sure you're using one multi-ball to pick through the dangerous shots, but also to prep your next one so that when you get out of it, then you can start your next one. While I'm just drooling out, I'm just flailing, and I'm starting everything all at once. So when it's all over, I'm stuck, and I feel like I've been in the same spot in Godfather, where it's like everything's going, I'm going, and I'm trying to work on a job, and I want to make sure I cash out when I got my 10X, but at the same time, I got multi-ball, after multi-ball after multi-ball. So then it's all over, and it's like, well, I just played four multi-balls in a row, so I'm the furthest away from all four of those that I can possibly be right now. And you just kind of feel, while I wish it was the opposite where it's like. You got to dock-ock out. Exactly, yeah. But if you don't stack, though, then it's like, okay, I finished that multi-ball, but luckily I can get to the other one. You don't necessarily want to stack. And, like, Bowen's whole tutorial was about that. Like, you necessarily don't want to stack those multi-balls. You actually, you know, I was telling you this before off the podcast, you actually want to help progress towards your next one and then not take it. It's almost like you start both of them, you're like, crap, I screwed up. But maybe that's just the level of play that I don't have yet. The playing in control in a multi-ball is a challenge. And a lot of it is self-control.
    44:32
    Don't be a honey badger. Relaxing yourself is like, I know I have two balls in my left flipper. I want to flip them so bad, but just leave them there and try to work with the right for a while.
    44:45
    It's hard. I'm going to give you three things to work on on Spider-Man. I'm ready. One is post-pass. Trapping up and doing a post-pass. Number two is doing like a ski jump. So like you hit the ramp, ball comes down, you lift up your flipper, let it go to the other flipper and catch it. Stop it.
    45:08
    And then the other thing is to try and actually do like a, I think you could do like a post-catch on it. so like when the ball's coming down, you can like fling it up into the post and get it to die down. So luckily, Doc Ock shot and that works pretty well, where I can actually backhand Doc Ock. It'll feed the right flipper again, but then if you flip at the right time, you can keep that ball on the right flipper and you can do it again. Those are all skills that I understand. Where I struggle is implementing any of that during multi-ball because it's just so much chaos. I swear you do it in the single ball. play. Yeah, I understand. But the problem is once that's what I that's why I voiced this idea of like, I don't know how much I actually like stacking because I don't want a second multi ball to start at the same time. I already have a multi ball going like I don't I don't want that. And stop doing it, which I OK. So let's talk about Godzilla. We always come back to Godzilla, If I'm in building multiball, if I'm in the main building multiball, you can start bridge multiball at the same time. Correct or no? No. That's what I'm talking about. I like that you can't. So you need Keith Elwin to hold your hand and make sure that you don't accidentally stack everything. But I tank multiball. Yeah, I can't be in the middle of building multiball and then start tank. I think I prefer games like that, and I understand that's the exact opposite of Kiefer Code, where that's why people complain about GNR. All of a sudden, you're just multi-ball all the time. Well, there's other things to GNR. But that's my thing about this is you can plunge. If you pick the right skill shot, you can plunge into a multi-ball, and while that multi-ball is going, you can accidentally lock enough balls to start another multi-ball. and then while that's going, all of a sudden, it's just my opinion. I just don't think I love it. Well, it just comes down to preference, too. Like, what did you think about Avengers? Because all the multiballs can pretty much stack together on that one. True.
    47:19
    Maybe it was just because some of them were harder to start than others. Like, I know Iron Man multiball, that shot is, I mean, you can mistakenly hit that shot. Thor, I mean, you're going to hit that kept the ball a lot. We can't stack those two. Did it bother you that everything was together?
    47:40
    What can you stack? What are you asking them? The portal and the Thor. I don't... Maybe that's the thing. The portal with Iron Man. I look at multi-ball as an opportunity to help me progress whatever I'm doing. Like, I just... I'm not looking at it as points. I'm looking at it as a progression thing. So this is security. That's why we're telling you not to stack the two multiballs.
    48:02
    We're coaching you, Joel. I just feel like there's the shots that you can hit to progress your multiball. I don't know. At least what I found in Spider-Man, I could probably do it if I really focused on control. But Godfather, there's so many different multiballs and so many different shots. That thing, I don't know. And that's what some people complain about. So and then the other side of that is once you get it, though, once you're stacking so many things, then it becomes even harder to understand what you're actually trying to do, because it's like, OK, in Godfather, if I have three multiballs going and a job, what like all the lights are lit? What should I be focusing on? That's the extreme, though. You know what I mean? Spider-Man is first tier. And what you're describing with Godfather is basically like 11th tier. Got it. You know what I mean? Let's go to 11th. Right, exactly. So Spider-Man, we're really just talking about two multiballs that you happen to stack together. So if anything, this game should be a good training mechanism for you to learn how to get flipper control. Sure. Learn how not to Joel out all the time. It's okay to stay calm during the multi ball. You see the blinky lights. You just hit them. You keep the balls trapped up. Don't flip them at all. Hold on to them till you drain out a one and then try to try to post pass over, try to cradle separate and then go to town again. I, I get it. And that's, maybe that's the thing that it's pointing out. Like I have a lot to learn because, but I think the game also, The other thing that I've learned a lot about Spider-Man is how much I appreciate the uniqueness of modern modes.
    49:49
    And what I mean by that is like, I don't know. Like side quests? No, but it's like Venom. The type stuff that we talked about? Venom on this, what you're doing in Venom is you're either hitting the left ramp or you're hitting the Venom shot. That's all it is. Like, that's what the mode is. That's it. And you compare that to, like, Foo Fighters, where, you know, what is it, Seattle? It's like the two shots and the way they travel across the thing and then the way they travel back. Or Ray Day's really good with, he had a bunch of unique modes in Rush where it's like, you know, what was it, Limelight, where it's like things get dimmer and then you got to do it. Like these modes feel unique. They feel like genuine to that thing that you're doing while this era of game is a little more just hit the blinky light. Like the Green Goblin mode, is there Green Goblin targets on the side? That's all it is. It's just keep hitting those targets. So that's the kind of thing that I'm really, what I'm finding in modern code that I really like is the uniqueness of the mode.
    50:51
    I just think it's a level above. Did you hear that, Travis? Uh-oh. He's saying Lyman is a bad coder.
    50:59
    That's what I'm starting to hear. He's really jogging on this code. I did say that. Did you know you could 2X one of the shots in the game? Yes. Did you know you could 3X? Did you know? That's with the modes. Yeah, if you had the white shots. I watched the whole Bowen tutorial. I saw it. And I see it. I would think you would appreciate a little bit simpler code to where you fully understand what's going on. Because it's the exact opposite of Godfather where you're not sure what's going on. So to me, it's a good game to kind of be able to figure out your skill set and to work on skills and to work on hitting shots. Because you are right. Games of a different era in Spider-Man 2023, obviously, it was from a different era at this point since it's a DMD game. But that's the way a lot of pens that came out around that time is. The rule sets are very linear in that way that you've got to do X, Y, Z in order to do the next thing. And so, yeah, that's kind of what's changed ever since, I guess, gosh, I don't know, maybe ACDC, Metallica, sometime around there. You kind of saw rule sets just start to gradually start changing to collecting a lot more things and making different progressions happen later on deep in the game. Yeah. I mean, this is a game that's easy to explain in a way where it's like, oh, I started Green Goblin. What are you going to hit? same targets you hit to start it you know oh i started like i get that but i think it i also think this makes me somewhat hypocritical because like i'm super stoked to get cactus canyon cactus canyon zach said my su plus is in hopefully i'll be getting that in the next few weeks like i understand that the cactus canyon code is very much like oh i started the mode that's the left orbit guess what shot i'm hitting to keep doing that mode it's the same thing so there's part of that likes that simplicity, but then I'm also really curious to see what Josh does, whether or not they make these modes a little more complex or a little more unique. But really, what it shined after playing, spending time like that on this type of era of game, a DMD game, I do really like the DMD, but I do, I have found myself appreciating the uniqueness or the originality that coders are bringing into modes these days and making these modes seem different. or your kind of their own unique experience, that that mode is just a fun thing to do versus, like, a box you have to check. Is your seedling falling off? I think one of my kids just belly flopped right above me. Did you guys hear that? I heard a plug. I think I did. Well, those were my two comments about my current thing, my current layout. She's not screaming or crying. We're good. Perfect.
    53:52
    So that leads us. I think that's it for normal news. We did actually post both on Facebook and our Patreon. We posted like, hey, we're recording tonight. Is there anything you guys want to talk about? And thank you so much. We had a really great, we had a ton of feedback. Like we had a ton of people comment. And so we're going to work our way through some of these. So, yeah, this is going to be somewhat rapid fire because we've got a lot to go through. So we're going to start with Patreon because these are the people that support us. We really appreciate you guys. Check us out, Triple Drain on Patreon. if you want to support us there, you can. Joe Hills, he actually has a really interesting story here where basically he said he was at a local arcade and he noticed there was a woman next to him with her son, and she pulled out her phone because she saw the QR code on Insider Connected, and you could tell she was trying to pay to play the game because she saw a QR code and assumed that's how it worked. And that's when Joe said he handed her a token, showed her where to buy more, and realized, like, we're in an age now And I'm curious if this is happening at other arcades where people see our QR code and they assume that is a way that you pay to start the game. So his question, and there was some discussion on the Patreon about that. Do you guys think that this is a planned thing for Stern? Because I was trying to think my way through this. and the only incentive I could think of would be like a loyalty program or something where it's like if Stern recognizes oh you played 10 games then we'll give you the the 11th at a discount but then well whose pockets that coming out of because if if um people that are routing the game they don't want to come out of their pocket unless they feel like being able to play or pay digitally is actually incentivizing people to play more than having to go cash another dollar. It's entirely possible. I know that they do this with PGA Golden Tee right now. They have NFC technology in which you can just tap something to it and you can pay. There's transactions there. So, yeah, we know a lot of different operators that will put on cards and stuff like that to where a swipe card goes and you have a credit that goes on the game. And it's been reported plenty of times that those games actually make more in overall revenue just because of that. And it's like anything else. If people just have a card that they have to use or they're putting a credit card swipe or whatever it could be, people tend to spend more money than what they would by handing over actual cash or putting in coins in it. So in theory, it makes sense. I don't know if that's the plan in the future. So Joel, are you talking through like Insider Connect? Yeah. Yeah, that would be because there's a QR code reader there. But if there was, I mean, this was either a podcast or something I saw online, but somebody said, like, well, why do arcades do tokens? Like if tokens are a pain or you realize that people are using tokens, like why do people use them? And somebody made the comment of, like, when you use a token, you know people are going to spend that money versus a quarter, where if somebody gets pissed off and they're like, I have $1.50 in quarters still, There's nothing stopping them from walking out the door with the $1.50. But if they look and they see I got $1.50 worth of tokens, they have to use them. So they end up using them. So if that became like if Stern did something like that where you can buy $20 worth of credit for – you spend $20 to buy credit and you actually get $25 worth, and then they find some way to work with the person that's routing the game. I was just going to say that. How would that work with operators? But, um, I mean, I like, like I said, I don't know. I know Golden Tee does it. Okay. I don't know exactly how that works with operators, though. So the NFC, it stands for near field communication.
    57:43
    And it's basically like Golden Tee. They have something. I think it's the caddy or PGA Tour caddy app to where you can actually just use your phone or use something like that to where you're able to pay based off that. So if everybody goes and looks at what a golden tee is with the PGAs, you'll see it right there, right by the trackball and right above the buttons to where it has like a huge part that says tap here. So the technology is out there. It wouldn't shock me if we see something like that in pinball eventually. And I think it would be pretty cool for operators if stuff like that could get figured out. Yeah. Well, Andrew Doane, D-O-A-N-E, I think, Doane? Anyways he was commenting on this and one of the things that he was asking was what are other potential Insider Connected things that could be used And I know Tom has shared his overall views on Insider Connected a few times And I know, like, local leaderboards are a very common thing, or tracking your home play kind of thing, or head-to-head is something we've talked about a lot.
    58:48
    One thing I did think, the fact that Stern is XP, XP alone is a brand-new thing that Insider Connect is going to allow you to do. And if we look at Insider Connected purely as the ability to inform the machine who you are, you are playing this game, and it tells the game, like, I've played this. These are my achievements. This is how much time I've spent on it. I would assume at some point in time they will build in some sort of difficulty system where the game will make itself easier or harder based on how much you've played the game. I think that could be kind of cool. And then another thing that I think would be cool would be a way to get to things you've been to. So, like, if you've gotten to a wizard mode, I think it would be cool that once you've been to it once, you can scan in and, like, shortcut. You can, like, shortcut back and be like, hey, I got to this wizard mode, but I want to just practice it so that I can work my way through or show it off to somebody else. Obviously, Insider Connect or some of the new ones with these challenge modes give you that ability. but those are just two thoughts that popped into my head. I don't know if you, any other brainstorms that you guys think heads up heads up. Yeah. Like head to head play. Yep. Yeah. Which, which I know all the heads up tournaments that we've seen, you know, what is it? Ace Yogi or whatever that Carl streams. They just buy two pros and put it. You guys do it. Lumberjack Johnny's. Yep. What was it that Zach called it? Pancake something.
    60:20
    Anyways, You guys all have two of the exact same game, and you put them right next to each other. Pancake? What the hell? Zach mentioned your stuff. This was like a year ago, and I think instead of calling it Lumberjack Johnny's, it was something pancake. Flabjack.
    60:35
    Flabjack. But that's not normal for a bar to have two of the exact same game right next to each other. So really, when you're talking about heads up, that is some sort of like, yeah, non-local heads up play where you log in and wait for somebody else to. What I'm saying is you could probably easily program that to where, you know, player one steps up, you time them, player two steps up their time. They could have the time player one had and you have to beat that time or something like that. I would love the, like races where it's like. Think about that. Yeah. I would love races where you pick something and the moment that that person accomplishes it, it shuts the other person's game, like kills the flippers. Like I think that would be incredible.
    61:20
    What's the turtle shell challenge? Half shell challenge. Half, excuse me. Yeah. So you can both do it at the same time. So, yeah, like we're at a bar and I'm like, all right, Joe, I want to challenge you to this. And I go first and I get like two minutes. Then you got to beat it. No problem. Yeah. That could be cool.
    61:42
    Yeah, that could be cool. I think I really want them to flesh out the social side of Insider Connected more. Like, I wish you could do challenges. Yeah. That was something Scorbit had where you could do, like, a weekend challenge. It's like whoever has the highest score by the end of the weekend, it shows. So you can pick your friend and challenge them on a game. And I just think that could be – I wish that was something – like, I wish it was easier for me to know what achievements you guys have or watch that kind of stuff. So there's a lot more that they can flesh out, for sure. For sure. Travis is shaking. He's basically headbanging over there. He's just agreeing. I'm just agreeing with everything you guys are saying. All right. So this is an interesting one. Tony V, feelings on recent surge of content creators on YouTube who focus on arcade one-ups, new wave toys, et cetera, getting into pinball and engaging, integrating it within their content. Is this good or bad? What does it mean, and what could that do for the hobby? Is it time for some nerd turf wars? Arcade 1-Up. Oh, yeah, it is. So, Arcade 1-Up. No, there's a handful of content creators that actually have a lot of followers, and the majority of what they talk about are they were just video games, and then they got into the Arcade 1-Up scene, buying all the different Arcade 1-Ups, and then kind of pushing this idea of building their own home arcade. But it wasn't real arcade equipment. It was all Arcade 1-Ups. then modding arcade one-ups. And I feel like some of these guys, now that they actually have that vibe or that feel, they're like, what's the next step? And a few of these bigger creators have bought pinball machines. And so they're bringing the idea of having a pinball machine at home to an audience that we aren't. I'll name drop a B from Kong Zaras. He's one of them. Yep. Yeah. So I don't know a ton of them, but I I'm all for it. Anything that can grow this hobby and bring it to the attention and the eyes of more people. I mean, it's amazing how many people I talk to. And when I say pinball is a hobby, they have no idea that it's a modern thing. Like it's still going. So if our king went off. Most people don't. Yeah. And that's totally fine. And I don't care. I don't care what creator. I don't care if you're a makeup tutorial YouTuber. If all of a sudden you get the bug to have a pinball machine and put it in the background of your thing. and, you know, your million followers see a pinball machine in the background while you're doing your makeup tutorial, great. I don't – so I have no – sure. Okay. If at the end of the day, if the Twippies, if the best pinball YouTuber ends up being the makeup tutorial person because, you know, she got her army on voting for it, then, yeah, there's your turf war. But at the same time, good on her. Like, anything to bring more attention to pinball. Absolutely. Yeah, and well, I mean, to be honest with you, this isn't the first time that people kind of from outside of pinball have kind of joined in pinball, too. This has been happening for years and years. I think if anybody's been on Twitch for the past decade, at least, this name might ring a bell. Lethal Frag was one of the first Twitch users to actually stream pinball to where he was. I think he was almost like a role playing game type streamer way back in the day. And he did an endless two-year, like every single day he streamed for two straight years. It was a big deal. And then he wanted to move into pinball. And he actually launched a Kickstarter, and I'm pretty sure you can still find this online, to where he raised anywhere between $15,000 or $20,000 from people that watched him just to be able to build a rig, get a pinball machine. I think he even streamed Star Trek, or Stern Star Trek, I think is the game that he streamed. And this was back in, gosh, 2013, 14, 15. It was a while back. And that was somebody that had a lot of people watching him at the time. So this is kind of the same thing that's been happening a little bit. And we've talked about this before in previous podcasts, that one of the things that really got Stranger Things out there, believe it or not, and this is probably one of the most viewed videos ever for a pinball video, It was a family vlogger that did it. And they had a Stranger Things, and they actually showed themselves playing it. In the background, you could see it in their game room and everything. And I think that video probably has 5, 10, 15 million views on it. I forget who it is off the top of my head, but I know I've seen it. And it's just, yeah, there's crossover like that. And to me, that's a good thing. I don't mind anybody just talking about pinball, discussing pinball, Anything to get people more interested, I'm all for. Oh, it's because you're a shill, right? Because you work for them now? Oh, yeah. I want everybody to buy pinball machines. Well, I think it is funny because the first question I asked was actually from Joe Hills, and Joe Hills is actually a rather big Minecraft streamer. That's what he did. And so for him, as somebody who's pretty big on Twitch, he, for a long time, and he might still do that, I just haven't been on Twitch in a while, he would finish his Minecraft stream with a few hundred people watching, and he would raid a pinball streamer. So he raided my channel multiple times, and he raided Tom's. I mean, it's just like it's awesome that that's his idea. I know his audience is Minecraft, but he's trying to build, you know, bring that in. And I think Joe even streamed some pinball himself. He was just at District 82 not too long ago. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so last question from Patreon. William Moore, appreciate Joel's streaming Godfather. I just received my Godfather CE and was surprised at how difficult it is. But if you take your time to figure it out, it falls into place. But still has wicked outlanes. I can have a 300 million game and then an 800,000 point game back to back. William, I totally relate because I had my 300 million game. And since then, I haven't passed 75 million. So that is a game where there was another joke that came up on stream where somebody said, Godfather is the perfect game to drink whiskey, chew, and smoke a cigar. You know, something that's kind of calm, but you can be precise. You can think through it. It's kind of a problem-solving game if you want it to be. Otherwise, it can be a very relaxing time. And then they're like, Foo Fighters is a game to drink a Mountain Dew and smoke crack. That was, you know, this high-energy kind of crazy fun game. But, I mean, every game is a little different. But I do know that, like, yeah, Godfather, I see why Nick Lane on Buffalo Pinball freaking loves the game. I know the way that Nick talks about the way his mind works and the math. I know Carl is loving – Carl D'Angelo is loving Godfather because of that. Just if that's the way your brain works and you really want to understand and look at the big picture, you can really arrange things in a way that you can just blow it up. But I will say this is not a game that you're going to blow up on accident. Like you really have to do a lot in the right order to put up the big points. And I've only done that once. I've only done that once of all the times I've played it. So I don't know. I mean, Tom, you have one. Do you feel like it's a – are you starting to get a good grasp of it? And is it a game that you – I can't curl it yet. Well, nobody can. you're not a god. Isn't that what you said to me earlier? Yes. Exactly. It's, there are some pinball games that are just fun to step up to and play. And this game, you can, you're just not going to get many points.
    69:21
    That game to really, every pinball game you can step up to and play. Yeah. But like, but are you having fun?
    69:29
    Good. Okay. Yeah. That's what, what's level of fun, you know? Okay. Do you smoke and crack fun? Or the, yeah. So, I don't know. I think it's cool. I do think, I mean, if this is a game, I love right now because right now I have TNA, so I got a spooky game. I got an older DMD game with Stern, and then I got Godfather, and I have Godzilla. And just seeing how different the four of them are, it's just, it's really cool to see how different. And I love seeing how different they are. Travis is out.
    70:04
    It's just they're all so unique. but I will tell you, Godfather, this game is gorgeous. This game, Christopher French, he killed the art package. J.J.P. knows how to make a beautiful, beautiful freaking game. There's no denying that. And if you like a game like that, that you can really dive in, get your notepad out, and learn the rules, there's a ton there. There's absolutely a ton there. Every time Joel says Spider-Man's this old game, I feel like my armor is just going to fall right fucking off. It's the oldest game in this collection, But I understand in the realm of pinball, it is an infant. I get it. So that was Patreon. Patreon, thank you so much for... Honey, can you get my walker out?
    70:46
    Thank you so much for everybody that reached out to us on that. Joel, when did the original Spider-Man come out? The pinball machine, that is, for Stern. I don't know. I'm curious. Early 2000s? Was it 2008?
    71:01
    Well, I thought the vault was 2007. 2007? I thought I saw. No, the original was 2007. The Vault came out in 2016? Yeah, so it's super old.
    71:16
    No, I, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it. We're just hammering through these questions. I'm glad we're speed running this.
    71:24
    All right, so that was Patreon. We had five. Facebook, we have 42. All right, let's do it. Don's Pitbull Podcast. I heard the Don Pitbull Podcast guy is pretty great. Talk about him. He is. He's a nice guy. He's been showing up in stream. Appreciate you, Don. Thanks for saying hi.
    71:38
    Let's hear about how unfortunate Joel is for only being able to stream pro Venom. Thank you, Steven. Yeah, I feel bad for me. Yep. We need the Sarah McLachlan song.
    71:51
    Daniel Costa, when will Joel sell his TMNT to buy Venom? I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think that's going to happen, but we'll have to play one and wait and see there.
    72:00
    Rick Quick. If that's his real name, that's incredible. Rick Quick. I can confirm. That's a real name. That's awesome. How about thoughts on the best way to spread pinball to the massive? Maybe a televised tournament with a million-dollar payout, celebrity tournaments which turn out local media, or college tournaments to get the next wave of players at least familiar with the sports. Any idea how to bump the numbers?
    72:23
    A million-dollar tournament would be awesome. Ray Day or, you know, Escher would love that million dollars. Right. Or Zach McCartney. Who's the big one right now? Is it Zach? Who's number one right now? Well, Escher. Escher's number two. Jason's always right. That's not great, but that's not – I don't – So are we talking about just spreading pinball as in just pinball itself, or are we talking about spreading tournament pinball? Those are two different things. I think it's just growing, but that's the idea of how do you televise? How do you convince people to get into this without bringing money into it? Like several major ways. Got it. either contact a massive YouTuber such as Mr. Beast or somebody like that. You offer up your pinball machines for a challenge or you contact CBS. You try to get the pinball machines into the Big Brother house or something like that. You say, hey, we'll offer you one or two. So that way it's always shown on live streams. It's always shown during the actual, I don't know, during the actual broadcast. Who knows about licensing rights or stuff like that. But I think any way that you could get it seen based off that. I think if you contact family vloggers, just like we talked about earlier, there's a lot of them that get millions upon millions of views. And you say, hey, we'll give you one in your game room. And all you got to do is just talk about it every now and again. To me, that's an easy ask right there, considering you're just offering up a few thousand dollars for a pinball machine in turn to have millions of eyeballs on it. And it might not necessarily be the majority of people are in a position to buy pinball, but people are seeing pinball, people are discovering it, and you kind of plant that seed a little bit. I agree. I think one of the best things, shortly after King Cromwell started at JJP, I think he was involved in the marketing campaign to get one, they got Willy Wonka to the slow-mo guys and to have Gavin make a slow-mo guy video. I mean, that video got, I think it was over a million views. I mean, that was like some of the best advertising you could ever do. And I never thought about Big Brother House. That makes total sense. There's a lot of gamer challenges going on right now. I think State Farm just had a gamer challenge where they got all these big Twitch streamers to compete. But the idea was like, let's have them compete on Super Mario and then compete on Call of Duty and then compete on this and then compete on that. Well, they do that with chess, too. I think it's called Pog Champs or something like that, where they get the biggest Twitch streamers and the biggest content creators to do something like that. So to me, I don't see why Stern couldn't do something like that because they have the shoopies or whatever that's called. Instead of getting us pinball players to be on it, why not just get some major content creators to come all play in a tournament? Because they're going to tell their audience about it. As competitive as these people are. Sounds like you should start working for Stern. No, they work for him, Tom. Remember we talked about this earlier? They work for me. That would be a good idea. I personally think I've always wondered why that hasn't been done. Maybe they've attempted before and it's just hard to put together.
    75:31
    Who knows? If Stern sent, whatever, a Foo Fighters to like six big Twitch streamers, as competitive as they are, right? They sent one and they're like, here, we're going to put this in your home, and then they're all out in L.A., and then we're going to come out and we'll film and you can do a local tournament where you all compete on Foo Fighters. Like, you give them the game early for them to learn it or play it a little bit? I don't know. I think that could be really cool. You could do that. Okay, here's what you do. You would contact eight big content creators. You would have them all come to Stern. I'm in Chicago. They would all do the shooties like that. We're huge. You would let them all film behind-the-scenes stuff so they could create their own content. Okay. So they would get it out, a different video, the way that they would do it. You would be able to have the content for you. That way you spread out over at least eight different YouTube channels. And we're not even counting all the Facebook. We're not counting all the Twitter. We're not counting all the Instagram, all the TikTok, all that. You'll spread it around a ton. It would get millions upon millions upon millions of views. That's the easiest way to spread pinball out, by far more than anything else we could do. Well, Rick, quick, there's your answer.
    76:40
    What goes in below? Mountain Dew and crack. Yeah. So carry over topper modes being active even in competition mode on Stern Gaze. Travis, what's the story? Well, Stern Insider stuff when it comes to So I'm guessing This is a guess But I'm guessing Jurassic Park T-Rex Or Goat Mania mode was lit And that somehow got played No, it wasn't that Although I have seen that happen At a tournament here in St. Louis And I don't think anybody even realized it was happening I was just watching it off to the side And I was like, hmm, that's funny That's a lot of goes I just skipped on. But, no, this one actually happened in the St. Louis Spinball Championships with the tiebreaker going on, and it was the Mando topper. Is this how you won? Is this what I'm about to hear? That this is how you won your big trophy?
    77:32
    By using the Mando? No, no, no. No, no. I already did my exploit on Mando at Expo against Andy Bagwell. Love you, Andy. but but yeah it's just so without going too in-depth basically it caused a major advantage for somebody so it just kind of made it to where the whole game had to kind of be restarted with scores being counted so on and so forth so yeah that's carmania yes ah yeah yeah and it was one of those things the game was actually set on competition mode too and we were debating about that at the beginning of the tournament and we were looking at we were just like we can't see it we can't tell like i don't think it would be on but nope surprise it still happened on competition mode so yeah and it was chaos women and children screaming mass hysteria interesting okay yep so hopefully i i would say if there if there is a mode attached to a topper I would hope that competition mode could turn it off immediately. The same way that competition mode is going to turn off the XP. Everything else. Yeah. So it just makes sense. It makes sense. Uh, Joshua cloud, hopefully some new food code updates. We, we talked about this a little earlier. Yeah. Hopefully something, but we, but this food need more code. Did we talk about, or was this the first time before I hit record? We didn't talk about that. That must've been your other podcast. That was before I hit recording. I said, It's more important podcast. Yeah, evidently. I said with Foo Fighters, we talked about it before we started. Just another handball podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Foo Fighters. Joel and friends. Maybe we'll talk about it over there. We haven't. There hasn't been a little update in a while, and I know we're at a point where Final Wizard mode needs to come into the game, but I had brought up the idea of the Combatron. I know if we compare this to the other Tanya code, which was Deadpool, there was a big step. I think it was .96 code when Deadpool introduced mech suit multiball. And that was a multiball that was based on combos. That's kind of a progressive thing throughout the game. And that really changed how people address the game. So I'm curious. I don't think there's anything currently going on with the combos.
    79:55
    And I don't know. That's the question. Is there a chance that I'm getting some squints? Maybe there is a little bit going on with the combos. I mean, you have to, like, do a bunch of combos to get a body part on the Fubot. I've been to Fubot Multi-Ball. Did I tell you that? I got to that. I did it. I conned Ray into five gift subs. Why?
    80:20
    He bet me five gift subs to get to... Fubot? Yeah. Yeah, he suckered him in. He gave me nothing for getting a Fubot. No, I was proud of that. I was proud of that because that's a progressive thing. And what was lucky was he showed up in my chat and he's like, you only have to. He was basically like aim at the radio, sonic, whatever, because I didn't even realize like that was one that I hadn't done. And then as soon as I got out of that, there was like one other thing I had to do real quick that I was close to. But I didn't know. Like, I wasn't aware. But he kind of he's like, you're close to who the football multiball like do this and do that. And we got her done. Yeah, you have to hit a certain number of combos to like the combo tron.
    81:06
    But, like, I think if you get it to where the value is $10 million, you lock it in for the rest of the game. I think that's correct, but it could be wrong. Well, I know some people want more call-outs. I know I think it's been said very clearly. I think Jack Danger actually said it somewhere. Like, out of respect for Taylor's death, I don't think there are going to be any – No band members. No, nothing from band members. So if there's more call-outs, it's going to be the voice actor or another one. But I don't know. We'll see.
    81:40
    Kineticist, he's an awesome supporter. He supports us on Patreon as well. How do you make competitive pinball more accessible and appealing to new casual players? And should that be a focus on the IFPA or a different entity? I know we kind of talked about this a little bit already, but how do you make it more appealing to more players?
    82:00
    I don't know if you're at a bar, the best way to draw somebody over to that table or pinball machine, besides theme. That's the only thing I can think of. If we're going to get some crazy, if somebody releases Super Mario Brothers or Pokemon or something like that, that's going to get some more people playing a pinball machine that don't normally play a pinball machine. but what's going to get them to keep playing it and coming back to it or buy, want to put it in their house.
    82:29
    I think it boils down to community. It really boils down to the community. I think that the best way to do it, if you want to build up your tournament scene and you want to build up your community scene, I think the most important part for player retention is making people feel welcomed. And an easy way to do that is you hold pinball socials. So what you do is what I would recommend everybody to do if you want to build up your community is get your established players, right? Have them have a big pinball social to where you invite new players out, people, you might be at a bar, you might be at an arcade, whatever, bring them in. But you put them in a situation to where they don't know what's going on each pinball machine, right? But you just give them maybe 10, 15 minutes on each pin, put everything on preplay, have the players that are in the community explain one or two things about the machine to them and let them try to do that. Let them try to start a multi-ball. Then when they're done, say your goodbyes, rotate to the next pin, introduce yourselves, you meet somebody new, then you learn something new on another pinball machine. You just keep repeating that for an hour, hour and a half. You just get people involved that way. And I think that's the easiest way to kind of build up the community. It's not necessarily about being ultra competitive or anything like that. It's more about your community, making people feel at ease and making people enjoy what you just enjoy coming to it. It's the same way for everybody out there that does a bowling league for everybody out there that does beer league softball. Yeah, that's fun to do, but it's also fun to be around friends as well. So I think that's the way that you package this and that's the way you get more attention to your league or to your your monthly tournaments over time. And it just takes time to build up, to have 20, 30, 40, 50 people there. It's not going to happen overnight. Sure. I think it's, like, I know Electric Bat Arcade. I follow them on Instagram and whatnot. Like, it just looks like they're having a blast. So whatever they're doing, they're doing it right. And it just looks like, even if, I guarantee there are people. Well, look at District 82. He doesn't want to talk about me. Well, for instance, like the $5 volley. That's taken a thing of its own or a life of its own. So stuff like that. I think that's important. What I was saying, though, with electric bat is, like, I guarantee there are people that go just to drink and hang out, and they don't actually play, just because it looks like the environment is a fun time. Now, Ditching 82 is a step up when it comes to, like, the actual competitiveness and what all you're going to experience with the number of machines and the quality of the machines and all that. I mean, maybe not. There's still a lot of excellent players out there. Absolutely.
    85:05
    But they don't have time. No, they don't have time. Well, Electric Bat has Mark and Roland. And you have Sex Appeal, so, you know. Well, thank you. You need a tripod. Good job, buddy. There's clearly, yeah, I mean, the fact that I know about, and I'm not, but it's like the fact that I know about District 82, I've never been there. You guys are doing something right. The fact that I know about Electric Bat Arcade out in Arizona. We're trying to keep you out. No, I'm just kidding. They're clearly doing something right when you know about these things. So I think that I really like what you're talking about, though. And I think the key there is it's a community. Everybody wants to be accepted into something, and everybody has some hobby or interest. And if you make people feel accepted, that's the best way to bring them into whatever community you're trying to do. Well, pinball is the common ground, too. And that's important. You find the common ground, and you go from there. Yeah. This is going to kick my butt and yours. Let's do it together. That kind of thing. I think the hard thing is to make competitive pinball fun for everybody, you know, which if you can do that, that would drive people to it. You know, earlier on, like I'll give the Expo tournament as an example. So, like, early on when Expo used to happen, everybody used to be waiting in a line to go up to a pin. And, you know, for a competitive player, that's not such a bad thing. But to maybe somebody like you, Joel, you'd be like, wow, there's a line of 40 people. I don't want to wait in line to play one pin, you know. so um i i think doing some of like the match play tournaments and the knockout tournaments uh if you can do some of that stuff on in like your local scene and get a social aspect going because you're in you're playing groups of four or three and uh you're interacting with people I think that's a key yeah good point that and attitudes of course that's the biggest thing too and I gotta work on my attitude because when I don't play well I have a bad attitude right well it comes down to also everybody knows District 82 competitive players that's what it's known for right but then let's consider the other leagues or the other communities that are around that might have eight to 15 players right If you have four players out of that group 25 30 that are just completely batshit crazy throwing their hat around stomping around screaming out cuss words, it's going to be awfully hard to build up your community. You get somebody brand new to that and they see that, they may not want to be a part of that. That makes things awfully difficult. It's not to say, hey, don't be competitive, but that's kind of where competitive pinball or tournament pinball is just in this weird space to where you could have people competing for three Whoppers. And it would be just like the world championships. It's game nine of every single time. And that's, that's fine. But then at the same time, if you have somebody else that's playing, it just happens to be a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night for them. They just want a beer after work. They just want to hang out. You have those two competing ideas. So I think a lot of it is finding that equilibrium, finding that way to introduce people, to ease them into it, because their idea of competitive pinball might be a lot different than our idea of competitive pinball. Like, my true idea of it is we're going to Indisc, right, and we're doing a Papa card, and we're playing against the world's best players from everywhere. Like, to me, that's competitive pinball. If I'm doing a local event or if I'm doing local league, I'm not taking it serious at all, and I'm certainly not going to sweat not doing well. I just want to talk to people. I just want to have fun. So I think that's important, too, is to figure out what direction are you taking the community? What's your endgame goal with everything? Yeah. No, I think that makes total sense. I don't have any experience in it, but I do know, well, my one tournament I played at Cleveland, it's like, yeah, The best part of that was hanging out, talking to the other people while you're waiting. Yeah. And then it's like, wow, I just got repped on that game. And then you share that. Oh, yeah. Or focus on it. I mean, it's, yeah. It's part of the fun. The important thing is, is you finished ahead of Monica. Sure did. I hope she, I hope that bothers her. I don't think she knows, but. It does. No, she knows. She's out for blood next time you guys play. I mean, there is a big part. I mean, the social aspect is a big part of the competitive pinball community. I think it's a very good part of it. For sure.
    90:06
    Next question, Brian Cosner. When are we getting a Bluey pin? I'd be all for it. Bluey's an awesome show. If you haven't seen it, check it out.
    90:15
    Neil McRae, the one, the only. The UK Open and its amazing buildup. Are either of you guys planning on going to that? UK Open? Flying over? Oh, Travis is going. I wish I was. Yeah. Neil, there's no way that won't be fun. There's no way that won't be fun. Carl, Carl DeAngelo, keep the multi-balls above the flippers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Chris Wombat, the rumored to be upcoming Jaws from Keith Owen, would like to see what you guys think will be in the game or your ideas of how this game will be another Elwynn home run since they likely won't have full assets similar to Jurassic Park. Jaws is one of the last string teams for me, So I'm ready for others to chum up the excitement like myself.
    90:59
    I have no doubt it'll shoot well. After interviewing Keith, I mean, his goal is to make the funnest shooting whitewood possible. So that's one thing that I think Keith does incredibly well, is he actually doesn't rely on the theme to make it fun. So I have no doubt that it's going to be a fun shooting game. second to that though is I do know that he's going to make a very balanced and enjoyable rule set I have no idea what that's going to look like I have no idea how you take Jaws the movie or if they don't have those assets how you just take the idea of like modes or if it's all type some of an escape I have no idea what the progression is I mean I have no idea. I have no idea what they're going to do with that. But I know it's going to shoot really well. I mean, do you guys, have you guys brainstormed at all on what you could possibly do? I would do a game about a dishwasher, and I'd probably buy it.
    92:05
    I don't know. I would. What's your question? Have we brainstormed? Yeah, he's saying Jaws is a dream team. So if he's playing the game of what it's going to possibly be, like, how do you picture it? Like, I'm not talking about shots. I mean, maybe like a mech. What kind of mech do you think would be in it? Or how do you think the code would potentially lay out? What's a mode look like in Jaws? I mean, it depends the direction they're going. If you have assets, then I guess the modes would be based on different scenes of the movies, possibly. But I think if it's Jaws, let's just say if it is, that you don't – I personally don't think you need a bunch of assets. You just need a shark You just need water You know I don't think anybody's watching it Because of the human characters Or going to play it because of the human characters I don't think this is a Jurassic Park situation Where you have like Jeff Goldblum You know what I mean I think it could just be Very shark centric Now of course unless they do the one With Dennis Quaid and SeaWorld And all that terrible Puppeteer stuff or whatever it was But yeah I think you could just simply just have the shark, I think you probably have some type of mech with a shark cage. I think that's a given because that's, you know, you just look at the motifs of dealing with a great white shark. Right? So maybe you have some type of, I don't know,
    93:31
    magnet that gets caught and it's in the shark cage and it goes under and maybe that has some type of mode to where it changes the play field to where you're underwater, you're the shark, you're hunting stuff. Maybe you have a shark that eats a ball. It is an interesting thing. I mean, even just that point alone, are you the shark? Is it you versus the boats? Is it you versus the people? Or is it the opposite? Are you a fisherman and you're trying to survive being attacked? Well, just like you said there, you could have a boat mechanism in it too, a buoy somewhere. I would love if we were the shark. I would love that.
    94:11
    Right? I would rather be a shark than anything. That's true. That would be interesting if you are Jaws.
    94:18
    And then the shots are like you're chomping on things and all that. You're taking bites out of things, and that's how you collect your different power-ups. You eat so many other tiger sharks or something like that. You eat so much squid. You fight an orca. You get to fight a megalodon. How have you not? It's not going to be that? It's not going to be what? How many innocent swimmers did you like? Oh, everything. Joel, I would sit there on my ass playing Maneater, and I would just go after the humans. No cares at all. I don't have a good answer, but I have faith in Elwin. And Elwin we trust, right? Isn't that the – yeah. And I know Elwin's the first to say it's not him. It's the team. His team knows how to – they'll be fun mechs. Rick Nagel's going to do something crazy with the mechs. And then what's his code? The coder.
    95:11
    There's Rick Nagel, the coder. Rick Nagel's the coder. So who's this? No, he's the artist. Bombay Yeti is the coder. You're talking.
    95:19
    Who's his mechanical engineer? It's not Nagel. Harrison? It's on the Harrison Drake. That's what it is. There you go. I just think, you know, instead of just – I'll help you. I'll hold your hand with this dirty doll. I just need a little bit of assistance. Instead of you sitting there throwing out names. Oh, Cletus? I don't know. Is it Philip?
    95:38
    Well, hey, we do know. It is confirmed, though. Zombie Yeti confirmed that Keith Elwin's putting out 18 games next year. Yeah. I think that's what it is. Probably 22 games. 18 LEs maybe. Yeah. 22 games total. Yeah. Separate games. It's coming. All right. We got so many more of these. Let's go through them. Let's go. Yeah. Adam Gross, I'm curious what you think about the state of Stern code updates. People are getting antsy in the Foo Fighters owners. There's no next question. What do you want to see from the future updates to the newer games you own? So I will say, Adam, first off, I think it's hilarious because I've been watching the Cactus Canyon thread for a long time. And a number of people are one that they're one upset that they don't have their LE yet. Remember, Cactus Canyon LEs were ordered not last October, but the October before. And people are like, where's the Lyman code? Where's the Lyman code? It's like that is a level of impatience compared to Foo Fighters. It's been, what, a month? Like, that's what is kind of crazy that it really depends on where you're at. Code that I'm waiting for in newer games.
    96:46
    I mean, I know Keith Owen, when I interviewed him, said that Godzilla is going to have another challenge mode. That looks cool. Can't wait for that. That'll be fun. That's exactly what I was going to say. I just want challenge modes in any updates. That's what I would prefer. That's by far my most favorite thing is to be able to do the challenge mode. And actually, I introduced Battle Royale to one of my sons on Avengers. He didn't realize it was there, and he rarely plays Spinball. He's been playing it all weekend long. Oh, they're a blast. It's an easy way to get hooked. Yeah. So I wish everything would have challenge modes.
    97:22
    I've played almost nothing but King of Monsters Time Attack since I got the topper. And, Tom, have you played it yet? Yeah, I've played it. Have you beat it? Yes. God. Of course you have. How much time did you have left? I don't remember. Well, like, Carl had like three minutes left. I did it like on the second try, and then I was like, okay, I'm good. Well, Joel's on his like 97th try. I'll tell you. The XP I have going on that game. You're ready for that venom just to show up. No, I just get so frustrated because it's the stupid left spinner or the left ramp is what kills me. It's always this. I just can't wait. But you need to do, the first time you get Venom, you do not stop the stream until you beat Noel. You're going to be the second ever Noel on stream defeat.
    98:13
    Derek Carmanian, why hasn't competitive pinball gained sponsorships? It seems like IFP is more concerned about growing, which seems as self-sustainable at this point. But things such as league dues or prize pools are funded by players themselves. I just, I, I think they've tried. I think it's not an easy thing to do. Kineticist said the little to no business value for those who would be in the position of the sponsor. I would love to sponsor more things, but my limited funds. I mean, I think your best, the best thing to sponsor a pinball company sponsors a super series. I mean, it would be awesome if like, I, this is, I eat Pringles a lot on my stream. It would be awesome if Pringles sponsored an event or something. It's like I'm talking to air. But that – I don't want you to feel like I'm not listening. Yes, pinball companies sponsor tournaments. You are correct. He should have said precision flippers. He would have stopped immediately. I – we – yes, pinball-related companies will sponsor tournaments. But I feel like the question is – You're talking about like outside? Yeah, if you're playing in a pinball tournament, you know who American Pinball is. So how much marketing is it really doing? That's what I'm saying. Here's how it happens. Yes. You don't sponsor the pinball itself. You sponsor what the event is and how many eyeballs are going to be there. If Stern does the full-on content creator invitational, guess what? You'll have sponsors. No doubt in my mind. Because there will be plenty of eyeballs. The sponsors will go where the eyeballs are. Let's face facts. The people that do it in pinball, it's more or less a goodwill gesture. I mean, you're only getting so many eyeballs on there. But if you truly want to get a bunch of sponsors, you need to have people on there that are going to drive the views. And all of us in pinball, we all know each other within our ecosystem. Let's face facts. You get outside of our ecosystem just like that. It's very hard to tell. That was one of the questions, why isn't Travis bought a new camera?
    100:24
    Really? Yeah. Well, this is awkward. I would say my wife hates me, probably. I've asked her. She keeps saying no. But, yeah, I don't know. Joel, why haven't I got a new webcam yet? I think you like the attention. I think you just like that we. You think that's what it is? I think that's what it is. No, I will be perfectly honest. That's the reason why Elgato No Signal happens all the time, because I'm supposed to have something on my computer that stops this happening, and it doesn't work. So my options are I either take my camera completely apart and put on a different camera, or I keep trying to figure it out. And I swear, I keep trying to figure it out every single week, and it does not work. It's so hard to take you seriously when it's still off right now. Like your signal is still off.
    101:18
    Well, we've got a handful of questions left, and thank you so much for the people that wrote them, but we are running a little low on time. There was one other topic that I did want to – well, I'll let you guys pick. Do you guys want to talk about tournament difficulty, or do you want to talk the current state of pinball sales?
    101:40
    Tournament difficulty. I don't want to talk about sales. I'm going to cry. Tournament difficulty. Recently, I have witnessed or watched two big tournaments in the last, I don't know, a few weeks. One was Yagpin. Yagpin was up in Canada. Shout out to Mike and the Pinballers for streaming it. Also, shout out to Jackson Gee for doing the art. It's real quality stuff.
    102:04
    Yagpin, it sounds like they set up their games to be very difficult. Very difficult. To the point where almost every modern game had lightning flippers on it. They had precision flippers, which a lot of people weren't used to, but they did, like, just crazy stuff with way beyond the norm of, you know, removing the outposts and removing a few rubbers. They had precision lightning flippers. Yes.
    102:29
    So big, massive changes to make the games more difficult. That was Yagpin, and I know Yagpin, the tournament director, they're clearly trying to be the next Papa, and Papa was known for having difficult games. Like, that's something that I read or heard, but I feel like he's taken it to a whole other level of difficulty. So that's one end of the spectrum, Yankman tournament. The other end of the spectrum was the Beast that was just put on by Jeff Teolis up in, I think it was Buffalo, where it sounds like a lot of those games were actually incredibly forgiving or stock or close to stock. So you guys are both high-end tournament players. When you guys are at a tournament, what's the balance there? Do you prefer games that are, I know you guys have talked like Pinball Expo in Chicago, those games are stock. So it's like it allows these tournament players to get to wizard modes or the opposite end of that where it's like you're just trying to survive. And if you can put up a two million point game on whatever, that's something to be proud of. So I don't know, what are your thoughts on that? Where do you fall on what you prefer to play? Or at what point does the game get too difficult that it's not even fun? Like, I don't know, thoughts on that? Travis? Oh, go first. Why not? I think, well, it just depends on the type of tournament. But, yeah, I mean, I'd rather play a tournament where it's kind of like a medium-ish level. Like some of the games are tough, but fair, I guess. You know, I don't necessarily like when, you know, things are, you know, you take out a whole mechanism on a game because otherwise it would play too long sort of thing. But, for instance, I guess they used to take out the whole lock mechanism on Sorcerer because it was just, you could just hit that thing all day long. But now they have updated code, so, like, you have to drop targets to lock a ball. So it makes it more appealing, I guess, to have in the tournament. I would say I think it just needs to be an equilibrium I think Yagpen we could all Agree and I know a lot of tournament players were talking About it that weren't there we were All just like this is Insanity but at the same Time it was entertaining to watch because You were just like who's going to Survive this how's this going to go Down Personally I would much rather I gravitate towards a tournament such as the beast that Teal was put on. I thought the game setups there were very fair. They weren't super easy, but they weren't super difficult either. It was that happy equilibrium to where I was more than happy to keep doing the entries, keep playing. In comparison, Expo, I don't think I'll ever play that tournament again. It's not necessarily because I'm like, oh, I just hate it. It's just, it was so exhausting knowing that you need to score one to two to three billion points on modern sterns every single time just to have a chance. I mean, it takes a lot of brain power. It takes a lot of stamina just to do something like that. So I see it on both ends. I personally, I wouldn't want to play in a tournament in which I just felt like I was just getting my teeth kicked in every single game. I don't necessarily like those types of tournaments, and I don't necessarily want to play in something in which I'm there all day long experiencing that. I think that's the other part to it, too, that I just wouldn't enjoy personally. But I can see why there are people out there that do enjoy that type of challenge. I don't mind setting up my games super hard at home. But the caveat is, is after I'm done getting my teeth kicked in within 15, 20 minutes, I can be done with it and I don't have to do anything else. So, no, I think there's pros and cons to it, but I think it's important to find an equilibrium to make it to where the games are playable, make it to where it's fun. And I want competitive pinball to be competitive. That's the main thing. Well, that's at least from the outside looking in. The two main reasons they make the game hard is, one, it actually makes you really good players. It gives you a challenge for you really good players. And then, two, time. Because it sounds like just the game, if every round is going to take an hour and a half or something, it's just, you know, when you're doing four players per game, and if you have a stock game, one round could take a long time. So if that idea of, you know, being able to achieve a round in a certain amount of time, then that's more people that can play, the tournament can go a little faster, you can do more. So clearly a balance, but I just, some of the feedback I heard from Yagvin is it's like some of the people that went have no interest in going again because it just was too brutal. And then there's other people that had heard about that and just, you know, high-end players that are like, I'm not going to that because I'm not going to, it's not fun for me. I don't want to get my teeth caked in the whole time I'm there and feel like I'm not even having fun.
    107:49
    So hopefully that's feedback that they take and maybe do a little less next year. And then maybe if certain tournaments, it's like, oh, if the Chicago Pinball Expo, if that tournament's too easy and they get that type of feedback, okay, maybe I should pull a few rubbers, you know, do a little bit, make it a little bit harder. Well, I think even at Expo, they kept it easy all the way through until I think the final two or maybe even the final four. Because I know I was – Josh and Brian Dye were starting to make the games harder just to keep things moving. And this was like during finals. Yeah, it got long, super, super long. So I get why you have the games play super hard, especially if you have multiple tournaments going on. You have hundreds of people. You have to keep things moving along. I get that. That's just – that's a tough balancing act. It's not an easy thing to do to time up multiple games across multiple eras and try to time it up according to banks, too. That's insanely difficult to do. So, yeah, I mean, like I said, I see it from both perspectives, but I also respect the process that goes into trying to get the games to play as fair as possible within keeping in a certain time. Yeah. Well, I know Tom has a bedtime. So, Travis, I'm going to point this to you. So I'm going to give you one minute. I'm going to start a timer. You have one minute to tell me about the current state of pinball sales.
    109:16
    Ready, go. This should be fun. I mean, there's some games selling. There's some games not selling. You said you were going to cry.
    109:28
    I want to. We'll just put it this way. There is an obvious lull that's going on. If you're into buying used games, this is your time to strike. Like, this is your time to do the gold rush and all that. New in-box games, it's obviously, there's plenty out there. Across the board, it's very difficult to find a game that's completely sold out, except for maybe Godzilla Premium. That sucker still sells like hotcakes. But outside of that, I think that supply has finally exceeded demand at this point, and that's what we're kind of seeing. And I think we're going to see that now for an extended period of time.
    110:09
    I'm not going to cry, Joel. I'm holding it together. I'm so holding it together. Yeah, it is interesting. There's only a handful of games that, I mean, people are waiting. People are waiting on Galactic Taking Force. People are waiting on Cactus Canyon LE. But other than that, or Deadpool, but those we just heard, apparently those are coming. Venom, people are waiting on that. Otherwise, it just seems like pretty much anything else that you want is available in some capacity. And, yeah, it is what it is. Yeah, I mean, it could somewhat be considered a – Calvin's raising his hand. Tom, do it. Well, once we get off topic, I have something. So go ahead. We are now off topic. Okay.
    110:52
    So I talked about this before off the podcast, but I wanted to ask Travis a tournament director question. Oh, yeah. What call would he make? My great reward, the wrong call. It has to do with the game that is currently to the left of Joel's, Spider-Man. Cool. So you have a player that is playing Spider-Man multiball, one of the multiballs, and he gets a ball locked behind the three bank that moves up and down. Dirty cool. Can you continue playing by IFPA rules, or do you have to trap up and have a TD unstuck that ball?
    111:42
    You have to trap up and have a TD unstick the ball. Final answer. That is correct. So that would be the same as, like, Attack from Mars, anything like that? No. Why? It is not the same. It is not the same because – Because Josh Sharp says so. So on Attack from Mars and actually Jackpot, there are dirty pool rules in that game specifically where you can like gain points by hitting the ball back into like the areas. Like on Attack from Mars, you can hit the ball into the saucer and it would award you a saucer. But on Spider-Man, there is no such thing. so in Spider-Man that is considered a stuck ball and you have to get a TD to unstick that I did actually not know that rule and where I was watching the Batcave pinball stream and and by the way just check that out Eric Stone was playing Spider-Man and that that came up. He had a ball and some people in the chat, actually it was Z-Mac was in there, El Rocco, and they were saying like, oh, that's actually illegal. And Eric Stone was like, no, it's not. And I actually agreed with Eric. I didn't think it was until I actually looked up the rules. And yeah, sure enough, you have to get a TD in that situation. It's considered sorry, Mr. Stone. I would have walked over with the red card and told you there's a plastic over top of that. So how do you even get to the ball to get it out? And that would not be so we're talking about a dirty pool or they're in Spider-Man right in the middle. There's a three bank target that actually goes up and down. It'll go down and then it opens up the shot behind it. Same exact or similar mech as Attack from Mars. Tom, you hear an echo? No. I do.
    113:48
    Did you already say this? It's Joel explaining this mech. Yes, Tom explained this mech. That's okay.
    113:54
    Sorry, Tom. I just want to make sure. I think it is clear that there are all levels of players that listen to this podcast, and some people may not know what we're saying by dirty pool. Since you're watching here, you go ahead and say it, Joel. I'm going to just use my hands to show. My question, though, when you said Attack from Mars has dirty pool rules, Does that mean if the gate is up and a ball is sitting behind it, if you hit that gate, does it kind of like kinetic energy go and bounce that ball back and it can detect that, that there's a moving object with the gate up? It can go in the saucer in the back and it'll give you destroy on the saucer. Oh. So you know how there's – You can skip everything, basically, is what happened.
    114:36
    Interesting. All right. Yep. I did not know that. So, Joel, if you get a ball stuck, they're a multi-ball.
    114:43
    You better call your wife downstairs Take off your glass Put that ball back on a flipper Nah I'll be just focused on Keeping the ball below the flippers That's what I'll be doing Alright well that's all I got We'll plug it up First of all good job Travis on that Second of all I am Fox City's pinball There is no other person You can find me on Fox City's pinball Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. You can see how bad of a player I am. It's great. Just go watch it. Perfect. And then go watch all the tournament streams I have this weekend at District 82, the Summer Pinball Classic, the Beat the Clock, yada, yada, yada. Wonderful. Well, thank you, Tom. Thank you, as always, for being here. Thank you. Travis, plug away.
    115:41
    Yeah. Yeah, you guys can find me right here on the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. And, you know, today that's all I feel like plugging right now. Yeah, that's great. There you go. And I'm Joel. This is, yeah, this is obviously the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. I stream Flippin' Out with Friends. You're on the Flippin' Out YouTube channel every Wednesday, 10 to midnight, Eastern Standard Time. We'll be doing a Flippin' Out with Friends tomorrow. That'll be a chatting stream. Oh, he's showing off the merch and the guns. Yep.
    116:08
    So, yeah, Flippin' Out with Friends. Check that out. Hopefully, I'll have another interview coming up soon. And, yeah, check out our merch on Silver Ball Swag or our lunchboxes on Zazzle. You can support us on Patreon, all the good stuff.
    116:20
    But, yeah, thank you to everybody that supports this channel and that listens to the podcast and all that. And if you're watching this on YouTube, make a comment or write a comment. We try to respond to them. I say we. It's me.
    116:32
    Tom does Facebook. Travis does nothing. I respond to the YouTube stuff. Yeah, you do. That's really nice. Travis, thanks, too. I don't even exist. No, you do. You do, but you do under Fox Cities. Carl, you can take over for me. I'll see you later. Fox Cities, that is Tom Comet. Greg Bone. Yeah.
    116:52
    All right. Like always, Tom, you get the last words. Goodbye.