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Festivals, Operators & Transformers | Ep. 4

Erika's Pinball Journey·video·55m 40s·analyzed·Jun 27, 2026
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Home vs. operator buyer dynamics and pinball show experiences reveal design philosophy tensions.

Summary

Erica and Manu discuss their experiences at Golden State Pinball Festival and Fanime, highlighting community-driven event organization and the successful exhibition of Erica's Multimorphic Weird Al machine. They then analyze the distinction between home buyers and operators as distinct customer segments with different priorities—home buyers valuing aesthetics, deep rule sets, and wow factor, while operators prioritize serviceability, software stability, and uptime-to-revenue ratios. They use Beetlejuice and Harry Potter as case studies to illustrate how design choices impact operator experience.

Key Claims

  • Approximately 70% of Stern's games go into home use, with only 30% going to arcades

    medium confidence · Manu cites statistics about Stern's market shift: 'I think the stats someone had said was like 70% of like Stern's games go into the home now.'

  • Beetlejuice has serviceability challenges, particularly underneath the playfield with dense wiring and difficult access to components like the drop target

    high confidence · Manu describes hands-on experience: 'one issue that we had on Beetlejuice, it was very difficult for us to navigate the underneath of the play field... There are wires everywhere.'

  • Harry Potter is designed for operator serviceability with clear, accessible playfield layout

    high confidence · Manu contrasts: 'when I lift the play field on a Harry Potter, it clearly looks like a former operator has devised it so that everything is serviceable.'

  • Multimorphic machines weigh approximately 400 pounds

    high confidence · Erica states: 'this game, a multi-morphic is heavy. They're like 400 pounds.'

  • Multimorphic parts can be 3D printed, enabling quick repairs at shows

    high confidence · Erica describes emergency flipper bushing repair: 'some of Multimorphic's parts are actually like 3D printed... Nick watched someone's walkthrough... there's a 3D printer there.'

  • Pokemon Pinball received approximately 900+ plays at Fanime; Dungeons & Dragons received fewer due to downtime

    high confidence · Erica reports: 'Pokemon were at 900 something plays each. And Dungeons and Dragons probably be because it was down for like that amount of time.'

  • Mark Seiden (Stern) stated that 'everything is going to break' on pinball machines due to steel ball damage

    high confidence · Manu recalls: 'I literally asked Mark Seiden about... he goes... what's going to break first? And he said, well, everything is going to break.'

  • Golden State Pinball Festival sold new in-box Labyrinth inventory at the show

Notable Quotes

  • “She is, she's a treasure for pinball. We are so lucky to have her.”

    Erica@ 5:41 — Expresses deep appreciation for Emoto's community contributions and industry impact

  • “I need to get strong for pinball. I need to lift and get more muscles than whatever this is to get the machine off the ground.”

    Erica@ 11:57 — Highlights the physical demands of transporting heavy machines to shows, with humorous self-awareness

  • “nah, dog, I'm just here to watch the Pikachu play the Pokemon pinball.”

    [name withheld pending review] @ Fanime section — Illustrates the appeal of the cosplay-pinball integration and community engagement at a non-pinball event

  • “Everything is going to break. You're dealing with a steel ball running around damaging your game every play.”

    Mark Seiden@ 40:39 — Establishes the inevitability of machine degradation and reframes maintenance as a design challenge

  • “When I lift the play field on a Harry Potter, it clearly looks like a former operator has devised it so that everything is serviceable.”

    Manu@ 41:26 — Highlights design philosophy difference—Harry Potter prioritizes operator accessibility vs. Beetlejuice's aesthetic/feature density

  • “It's the cleanest, most accessible thing I've ever seen in my life. And I was like, this is going to be a pleasure to work on.”

    Manu@ 42:05 — Praises Turner Pinball's operator-focused design approach and sets benchmark for ideal serviceability

Entities

EmotopersonEricapersonManupersonGolden State Pinball FestivaleventFanimeeventRewind PinballcompanyPinball Traderscompany

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Golden State Pinball Festival praised for community-driven organization, volunteer effort, and successful machine exhibition; represents gold standard for event execution and attendee experience

    high · Erica: 'the show was so fun. You guys run this so well... these shows are really all about... community driven.'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Fanime (anime convention) successfully integrated pinball with ~900+ plays per game over weekend; demonstrated new audience acquisition pathway for pinball through adjacent culture communities

    high · Pokemon Pinball received 900+ plays; D&D received fewer due to downtime; new players engaging for first time via cosplay integration

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Clear design philosophy split between manufacturers prioritizing home aesthetics (Stern) vs. operator serviceability (Turner, Spooky); tension between wow factor and maintenance accessibility

    high · Manu contrasts Beetlejuice (difficult access, dense wiring) with Harry Potter and Turner games (operator-optimized layouts)

  • ?

    product_concern: Beetlejuice experiences serviceability challenges including difficult playfield access, dense wiring, and component fragility despite aesthetic/feature quality; impacts operator economics

    high · Manu: 'extremely difficult to navigate the underneath... wires everywhere... They use so many components... they're all easily fixable, but they're all very easily breakable'

  • $

    market_signal: Stern reportedly selling 70% of games into home market vs. 30% to arcade/location operators; represents major market shift since 1990s and affects design priorities

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.167

0:00
What is up everybody? This is the Pinball Minority Report. I'm Erica. And I'm Manu. And we're two pinball addicts that are bringing you real stories, interviews, crazy pinball talk, everything that has to do with the world of pinball. Honestly, it's just a lot of fun. So, what are we talking about today? I'm glad you asked. We have talked about Golden State and Fanime, which we both attended. I'm going to talk a little bit about operators versus homebuyers for pinball purchases. Just some some stuff I have on my mind. And the Transformers. I mean, that just came out. Erica was doing the robot, which is good.
0:49
But your noise was just not the noise Transformers make. Thank you for watching. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for watching. I love her too. She's my treasure.
2:56
I mean, you have to share sometimes when I come over. Fair enough. Just so I can talk to her because she's just amazing too as a woman. I'm really in awe of her. And she does a job that is so important and means a lot to me as a woman.
3:13
She's an OB, by the way, for the audience who's keeping track, OBGYN. Yeah, so she takes care of the ladies. She can cut you and then she can heal you.

high confidence · Erica mentions: 'They opened the new in-box Labyrinth, and so they actually sold it at the show.'

  • “Maybe I'm grumpy old man right now, but I only have but so much time to work on a game in the mornings.”

    Manu@ 42:57 — Articulates the time-constraint reality operators face and the business impact of maintenance burden

    • Nicholas Baldridge
    person
    [name withheld pending review]person
    Christianperson
    Adamperson
    Mark Seidenperson
    Chris Turnerperson
    Insider Connected at Sterncompany
    Marco Specialtiescompany
    Multimorphiccompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Barrels of Funcompany
    Pinball Mapproduct/service
    [name withheld pending review]game
    [name withheld pending review]game
    Indie Darlingcompany
    Lord of the Ringsgame
    Beetlejuicegame
    Harry Pottergame

    medium · Manu cites statistics: 'I think the stats someone had said was like 70% of like Stern's games go into the home now'

  • ?

    community_signal: P3 platform (Multimorphic) demonstrates strong community interest despite rarity; high queue demand at Golden State indicates collector/enthusiast appetite for non-standard machines

    high · Erica: '6 people in line... at least six people in line like waiting to play it... there's very few arcades that like host a P3'

  • ?

    technology_signal: 3D-printed parts enable rapid on-site repair of Multimorphic machines at shows; demonstrates emerging repair methodology reducing downtime and enabling field maintenance

    high · Flipper bushing 3D printed and installed within 30-45 minutes at Golden State; parts available for on-site printing

  • ?

    operational_signal: Availability of on-site technician is critical for machine uptime at expos; machines without tech support experience significant issues and unavailability affecting revenue and reputation

    high · Manu: 'I think bravo for bringing the platform... every expo, you always have to have a tech' and Erica's experience managing Weird Al solo vs. with Manu's support

  • ?

    community_signal: Successful pinball integration into anime/cosplay community (Fanime) demonstrates crossover appeal and new market expansion; significant portion of attendees new to pinball but engaged

    high · Erica's cosplay segment attracted sustained attention; attendees reported 'I think I'm a pinball person now'; 900+ plays weekend

  • ?

    design_innovation: Turner Pinball's approach to playfield design (Yukon Yeti, We Loved Our Kids, Ninja Clips) establishes benchmark for operator-first design with complete accessibility; viewed as exemplary by technicians

    high · Manu: 'cleanest, most accessible thing I've ever seen in my life... this is going to be a pleasure to work on'

  • ?

    content_signal: Pinball Minority Report generating substantive operator/design philosophy content for community; podcast becoming venue for nuanced industry discussion beyond game reviews

    medium · Episode structure discussing event experiences, operator economics, and design philosophy; engaging co-hosts with differentiated perspectives

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Fanime integration showing success in converting non-pinball audiences to interested players; combination of cosplay engagement + accessible gameplay = retention signals

    high · Newsletter signups collected; attendees reporting 'I think I'm a pinball person now'; repeated plays across weekend

    • 3:24
    All right, that's enough. All right, well, I think that's enough about that. Let's get into what we were going to talk about. So our first topic we wanted to talk about was we went to two pinball events. We went to Golden State Pinball Festival, which was in Lodi, California. And then the weekend after that, we went to Fanime, which is in San Jose, California. Now, two very different events. One event is solely about pinball. The other event is about anime. For those of you that got a chance to go to Golden State, I hope you had the most fun time. I know I had a great time. There's definitely a lot of involvement from the community. And I just want to give a shout out to like the whole Golden State team because like, honestly, the show was so fun. You guys run this so well. And I don't know, I had a blast. I just think that it's such a great thing what you do for the community. And that's what these shows are really all about, right? Like, it's their community driven. And I feel I feel so strongly about that. Because it's just like, these people are putting in a lot of time and effort and volunteering when they could also be playing, they could also be doing things, but like, they want to make sure other people are having just an amazing amount of time and getting the opportunity to play games you might not get to play, because you don't live somewhere. Thank you for watching. They opened the new in-box Labyrinth, and so they actually sold it at the show. So that was very cool, too, for them. I was glad that they were able to get that inventory moving. And yeah, just like a fun time. I did Pinball University with Emoto and freaking Emoto is such a, she's such an inspiration and she really, she works so hard, like in the pinball world. Marco Pinball. Marco Pinball, Emoto.
    5:41
    She is, she's a treasure for pinball. We are so lucky to have her. She wants so much for people to love pinball and to be aware of the history and how to fix your game. And she just wants to bring people into this community so bad. And I hope to be able to emulate even half of what she does because I'm always in awe. Honestly, I was a fan when I met Emoto at the show, actually. Oh, really? At Golden State? Yeah, at Golden State. And I remember like when I was first getting into pinball, so here's a little story then I guess. When I was first getting into pinball, I had no, I didn't know anything. I didn't know there were leagues, right? I didn't know there were events. And I bought my Lord of the Rings pinball machine with like absolutely like no knowledge besides watching a few YouTube videos. Thank you for watching. I saw a moto and Kyle there and I was like, Dad, she's the girl from the video. That's a moto. Oh my God. You look down and you saw a moto. I just remember that it was, we love her. We love her so much. And it's like, I remember like, I was so shy. I like I've, I've worked on movies and TV shows. Right. And I talked to celebrities like they're like my neighbor or something. Right. Thank you for watching. Thank you. Sending up some cameras and bringing some people along. And yeah, it's fun. And then you, Manu, when it came to Golden State, were super helpful because I brought my multimorphic Weird Al. That's right. Yeah. I wish I could have been more helpful, but how was it? This is the third Golden State that your particular pin has seen, right? Yeah. So it's the third time this machine has been at Golden State. The first time was when I wasn't the owner of it. It just was debuting Weird Al as a pinball machine for the first time at this event. So if you played it then, you played my machine. And then the second time was last year where I brought my Weird Al pinball machine when also Portal was there brought by someone else by the Spinner's Lit crew. I know one of the guys I can't his name escapes me at the moment, but I remember that he brought Portal and then it came this year and it had a few things that happened. But for the most part, my game played the whole show when it came to bringing my Multimorphic to the show. It's a lot to bring a game to a show. Like this game, I say it all the time, this game, a multi-morphic is heavy. They're like 400 pounds. They're heavy. And so I moved this game. I'm so grateful with my assistant and my roommate helped me take this game out of our garage so that I could like bring it to the show. And so we like take it. The good thing is the multi-morphic kind of comes apart, right? So I take the module out, I take the monitor out, and then the game is slightly lighter to put into a vehicle. And then from there, we put it in the truck, take it out of the truck, set it up at the show. And I mean, it worked almost the entire weekend. It was just very few things that went wrong, and they were all very fixable problems. And some of them were so... Some of them where I felt like were almost silly. I'm like, oh, this is just random ball stuck, which is why this is happening. So it was nothing that wasn't – I'm glad it was nothing that wasn't not repairable during the show. Because you helped me with the first thing, which was my hamster wheel. Something with the hamster wheel and Weird Al stopped working, so balls would get stuck there. Yeah, and I'm probably going to talk about this in topic too a little bit, but it's very important to – And it's not just a multimodal thing. It's very important to have text available for every game at any expo.
    11:14
    Right. So let's just put it out there right there. Yeah. All games have issues and problems. And so it is. Especially at an expo, though. Yeah. Just nonstop. But it's like a line of people. Erica, before we even had the game set up, there was a line. It was like four people waiting in line to just hammer on the game. Yeah, and so it felt really cool though because I was just so excited and I had so many people thank me for bringing the game because like these games, the P3 platform isn't as common, you know, like there are very few, there's very few arcades that like host a P3 and most of the time you'll only find it in someone's home. Now, I do understand. Like I said, this machine was like, it's a big feat to move. It's not easy. I'm literally like, I need to get strong for pinball. I need to lift and get more muscles than whatever this is to get the machine off the ground. I should do a whole miniseries on getting buff for pinball. Like, jeez.
    12:22
    But yeah, I had like five little issues that happened that the hamster wheel and then I had a random screw like show ups in the there's a tube. There's like a PVC pipe that like the balls when they go out down the when they fall down the drain, they go down a thing and they go down a tube. And that tube was blocked by a random screw, which I don't know where it's from, but I'll find out. I think it was fine. Mostly because you didn't have a tech specifically. I wasn't available for the weekend. And even when we did Fanime, which we'll talk about in a second, I was hired to be a tech on Stern Games. And there was an issue on a Stern Games. So anytime you have an expo, you always have to have a tech. But I think bravo for bringing the platform. The reason there was a line was because not a lot of people get to play multi-part with P3s, like you said. So bravo once again for bringing it to just let people play for free. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm so glad I get that opportunity. I definitely know that I would probably highly recommend, like, if you are bringing a game to the show and you don't plan to supervise it for most of the time or, like, Thank you for watching games of pinball the entire weekend so like I was doing everything I could to just keep making sure and I kept checking on it like it was I was like this is my baby I kept like going back and I have to give a shout out to Rad Junk. Rad Junk showed up to the show and I'm a big fan of Sam and like what she does with her channel and like it was so cool to have her and her husband play my game. I also have to give a big shout out to Nick Amusement. Nick Baldridge. Yeah Nick He's the senior tech at Multimorphic. He saved me of the issues that happened. It was mainly just ball stucks, right? Then once I fixed the ball stuck situation, the start launch button wasn't working on Weird Al. So the great thing was I brought Heist. I had a second module. So I actually brought two modules because I was going to switch them out through the weekend for people to get to play both. So I switched out. I took out Weird Al, put in Heist. It took me two minutes, which is amazing. It wasn't like a crazy thing. I put Heist in. Start button worked. I was like, cool, I'm going to let that be because I got to go back and record some other stuff. So I do that quick fix and then Heist plays like the rest of Saturday. And then it's like Sunday morning and there's a bunch of balls getting stuck like in the back right orbit. So someone was playing and they're like, there's no balls coming out. And then like I looked at it and it's just like a stack of balls to like in the back orbit. I'm like, oh, they're all getting lost back here for some reason. So I was like, I'm just going to take this module out, put Weird Al in, and hope that the problem with Weird Al fixed itself. And lo and behold, it did. It fixed itself, and I didn't have to do anything.
    15:32
    A game at an expo gets probably more play than the factory puts on it. You have random players lined up nonstop.
    15:44
    Yeah, I have videos. I kept taking pictures and videos. There was always like at least six people in line like waiting to play it. Like it felt for me it was like a cool thing because it was like my machine being played all weekend like people are enjoying it like that felt really good for me to know that people were getting this opportunity to play this game. And the last thing, what happened was the left flipper had like a bushing break and I was like, I don't have a replacement for this. But the thing is, some of Multimorphic's parts are actually like 3D printed. Or can be 3D printed. And so shout out also to Pinball Traders because they had a 3D printer. And what's so crazy is that Nick watched someone's walkthrough. Whoever did that walkthrough, I want to thank you so much. Somebody posted a walkthrough of Golden State Pinball Festival and Nick watched it. And then Nick was like, hey, I saw in a walkthrough, there's a 3D printer there. Can you ask them? And I have like a little bit of a relationship with pinball traders. They are so lovely and they've helped me get into pinball shows in the past. I was so grateful. I was like, hey, if I send you this file, could you print this for me? And they're like, yeah, no problem. It literally takes like five minutes to print that piece too. Yeah. So he like set it up and then he fixed it. And I knew there were only like four hours left in the show. Like this is where I, like the crazy, crazy woman in me was like, I was like, there's four hours left in the show. Is it worth it? And I, I was in the middle of, I feel that Emoto, I'm so sorry. I was in, I was like halfway in the middle of filming something for her and I was like troubleshooting this at the same time. So I mostly got to capture footage from the event we were filming from Pinball University. But I did leave to like go save this machine for those last four hours so that people, I really wanted people to enjoy it. And I didn't want people to be like, oh, the Multimorphic was broken the whole time, so I couldn't play it. Like that was something I really wanted to achieve. I think I would have done the same thing. I would say. Thank you for watching! I could do that! I could do that! So I had that moment when I got this thing 3D printed and I put it in. And Christian from... They haven't opened yet. Indie Darling. Christian from Indie Darling. He came out to help a little bit. And he helped me decipher what Nick told me about how to fix this thing. He has a P3. Everyone came together. The game worked for the last four hours of the show. I got that within 30 minutes, 45 minutes. That whole fiasco of my left flipper like breaking and then people being like, oh, left flipper doesn't work. And I'm like, what do I do? Oh, 3D printed. He 3D printed it. I don't put it in. And I was like, remember stressing. My partner's like, just slow down. Like, you'll fix it. I was like, I need to be up and running for the show. So, yeah, it was really, really great. So that was Golden State. Talk a little bit about Fandomay. That was my first Fandomay. Your first Fandomay. Well, no, no. I want to hear your first impressions, though, before I talk about my Fandomay. Because I've been talking this whole time, let's be honest. We've got to switch to you now because this isn't the Erica show.
    20:04
    I'll tell you this, though. The air come on in here. I was incredibly impressed at the people who were there. They were absolutely 100% into their costumes. Their cosplay was really important to them. What I thought was cool was that there was an etiquette there of like you go up to someone, you say, hey, I really love your costume. It looks great. They say thank you, whatever. And then if you want to take a picture, you say, do you mind if I take a picture with you? And they'll say yes. There's this whole kind of – there's no creep. I mean every place has a creep, right? There are creepy people everywhere. But the majority of the people that I met there were super cool, super nice, and I felt underdressed after a while. Like Erica got me to wear a stupid Pokemon outfit.
    21:26
    It's not stupid. You dressed like Ash Ketchum. Okay, he's the most important one. But I was, even my own brain went, wait, what am I doing? It was on Sunday and Erica came and had the Pikachu blow up outfit, which was amazing. And then I think Adam was like, hey, Manu, just put the jacket on. And I'm like, all right, just put the hat on. Just the vest and the hat. Just put the gloves on. And I was like, I finally feel better. Like I felt better when I was wearing that.
    21:56
    I don't know, Erica, it was amazing. I loved it. It was terrific. It was terrific. Pinball aside. It was so fun because I remember when I wanted to get some clips of playing Pokemon pinball as the Pikachu with you. We did Split Flipper. We did. And I remember there's this one guy that I could hear and someone's like, oh, are you in line? He's like, nah, dog. I'm actually just here to watch Pikachu play this pinball. For real? Oh, wow. That actually happened? That made me smile so much. I was in the costume and I was just like, oh my god, this is so cool. And his voice was so deep, dude. He was like, nah, dog, I'm just here to watch the Pikachu play the Pokemon pinball. So, so, so you guys know, like, the Rewind brought pinball. I think we mentioned it last, last week, last, last show, but Rewind bought pinball. Two Pokemon pros and a Dungeons and Dragons pro. Yeah, so Rewind Pinball, they are a dealer for Stern and Barrels of Fun. I was so grateful for Adam to agree to doing this for me. It was sort of like a selfish thing too because I was like, how cool will it be to bring an anime game to fanime? Like, Pokemon Pinball is the first and the most, like, correct game to bring. 100% Thank you for watching. You could have logged in on your third ball or afterwards so that you're playing without any stats. Yeah, Dungeons & Dragons, just so people know, will take your current characters and your level progress will affect your score. Yeah, so maybe some people that kept coming back and their scores weren't getting higher and they were like, what the heck, man, just two hours ago I could get this.
    24:41
    So I did realize that later, but people still had such a good time. My favorite thing about doing this was seeing people be so excited for their scores. People were like, oh, I'm on the board. I'm on the board. So we put up these TVs. Yeah, thanks to Insider Connected at Stern. Yeah, thanks to Insider Connected. These people were hooked. There's this huge new shift for some of these people. Like, wow, I think I'm a pinball person now. I really want to do this. And I tell them about Pinball Map. If you don't know about Pinball Map already, this you need in your life. If you are going to be in pinball at all, pinballmap.com is or the app. The app is even better. Like just use the app and then wherever you are, you can find out where there's pinball. Like you can do all sorts of things with pinball map. I highly it is the number one app. I think every pinballer should have like hands down.
    25:32
    And yeah, I just felt it felt so cool to bring pinball to this community because a lot of people talk about how they've never played pinball. Pocono, Jodzilla, Lord of the Rings. Thank you for watching. The washing machine ones. Dance Fusion. Something so hard. Yeah, every single rhythm and cool game ever. And to see the Rewinds booth full and busy nonstop was pretty dang cool. I mean, pinball, right? Yeah. I think Pokemon had 10 seconds of downtime. Yeah, barely. To see people just jamming on that stuff was terrific. It was played all weekend. There was very few times where I saw it with nobody on it. Like it was – I want to say like I never saw it with nobody on it. The only time I saw nobody on something was because when unfortunately Dungeons & Dragons went down from a single court. Yeah, that was a shipping thing. Thank you for joining us For sure Yeah but otherwise like I think Fandomay was really successful Adam did we were selling the games for a show price Adam did end up selling a game So that was also really cool I also had like a newsletter sign up for people So we collected a few emails to see just like hey if you want to learn about pinball releases or if you interested in buying a game it just felt so good Honestly it felt like I was doing something to really bring joy to people Thank you for watching. Definitely, if you're in San Jose and you want to enjoy people and cosplay and I mean the game area. To give perspective though for like the gaming area, the gaming hall is what it's called. It was a whole hall, yeah. It was a whole hall. It had so many other things going on in it as well. Like you could watch from our booth. People were like playing Tekken on this big screen or people were playing Mahjong. Mahjong tournaments. Yeah, there was all sorts of Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering. And so we were actually thinking like how fun it would be to maybe even stream a pinball tournament or maybe make it a bigger, I don't know. We're going to look into what next year looks like for Fanime for us. The games all got almost a thousand plays. Both Pokemon were at 900 something plays each. And Dungeons and Dragons probably be because it was down for like that amount of time.
    29:39
    Manu was not on site yet. Thank you for watching. No, I think so. The one thing I do want to add on about Fandomade, though, is that people, some people didn't know how to play pinball. And I actually had to create, like, I created this, like, visual to tell people, like, how to play pinball. And through the weekend, I, like, kept updating it and changing it. And I got to, like, a solid point towards the end. But it was just kind of interesting to me that people were just, like, pressing that top action button and, like, waiting for the flippers to flip. www.pokemon.com Thank you for watching. You have stuff about pinball to talk about too, right? We're talking about some crazy operator stuff. You were telling me some stories earlier. Well, it's just that I just wanted to bring this up. I thought it would be interesting for people to hear.
    32:24
    I've made an observation that there are two types of buyers for pinball as there are maybe for arcades and stuff like that. It comes down to operators versus home buyers. And what your intent is for your game. Thank you for watching. Now, this doesn't come down to a Beetlejuice issue. It comes down to an operator and a home buyer issue because I took a step back, Erica, and I said, well, why am I being critical? Because I'm about to be critical, but why am I being critical about this particular title? And it's because I'm seeing it from an operator's point of view. Okay, so I felt it was important to make this distinction and some people know this already and so it's nothing new, but there are two types of buyers, right? There's a buyer to own and a buyer to operate and make money. And they are very separate. What do you consider yourself, Erica? You're probably a buyer to own. Buyer to own, because I've thought about operating pinball machines, and I plan to learn how to tech a bit more in the upcoming weeks, actually. I've been given an opportunity to, but at the moment, yeah, I don't plan on operating any games. Right. So I'm a little bit of both. I tend to drift more into the operator right now because I'm being very technical about pinball and I'm fixing pinball and I'm geeking out on homebrew and stuff like that, right? So homebrew is more on the technical operator side because they're literally building a pinball machine. Oh, yeah.
    35:04
    Hopefully they want to build their game so that they last. I'm going to be an operator then because I am planning. I have my kids there. Yeah, so you're drifting into that territory too. Yeah. So I wanted to make a distinction of what owners like and what operators like. So what owners are looking for, owner being a collector, owner being someone who's going to buy the game for their house, which Stern is heavily promoting. I don't know if you've noticed in their marketing or their games, they're heavily promoting buy one for the home, play one on location. Well, the buy one for the home is the first, is the leader line for them. Buy one for the home and play one on location. Mostly probably because the market has shifted since the 90s to, oh, I can own one of these? I'm going to buy it, even though they're $10,000 and $11,000 and $12,000. I think the stats someone had said was like 70% of like Stern's games go into the home now. Isn't that crazy? That feels like crazy numbers. Like 30% are going to arcades, which means like how many?
    36:03
    I'm going to do some math, find out how many arcades there are. Let's go to Pinball Map and see what they can tell us. There you go. Nice callback.
    36:12
    So for owners, I have a list of what owners like. So owners tend to like strong uses of a license. If it is a license, it's usually a licensed game. Strong use of a license, i.e. Beetlejuice. Excellent music and sound and presentation, right? Because they want it to look pretty and nice in their house. They want to be able to impress their guests or whoever. This game is great. I absolutely have a blast playing it. Oh, well, so far, Beetlejuice is checking each one of these boxes very strongly. Deep Rule Set with lots to do. Check.
    36:43
    Okay, and this is anything. This is like Beetlejuice, Harry Potter, Transformers, Pokemon. Maybe not so much Pokemon, but Deep Rule Set. It'll get there.
    36:57
    I believe. Yeah, yeah. Attractive Lighting Package. And then finally, it's like good player appeal and a quote, wow factor.
    37:08
    It's all about art. So pretty. Art? Yeah, art. Franchi's art on it. Oh, Franchi's art on Beetlejuice. So to take Beetlejuice as an example, everything checked on there. A home person would absolutely love this game.
    37:24
    It's a home run. The same way a Harry Potter. I'm going to put both of those. I'm going to put both because I would say I tech both. Yeah. So Harry Potter, once again, same thing. Great use of license, excellent music, sound, deep rule set, attractive lighting package, and a wow factor. So the home user is set. The operator, on the other hand, looks at a different set of checkboxes, one being serviceability.
    37:53
    Okay. How difficult is it for me to fix a problem when I come in in the morning and someone last night found an issue?
    38:04
    There's software stability. Anytime software has a problem, your customer, your paying customer has an issue, whether it be an issue with the game or with an issue with the game rules or something didn't seem fair or whatever. This is affecting your bottom line. Location configuration.
    38:25
    How difficult is it to get this machine around in your, wherever you're putting it? What configuration does it need to be in?
    38:36
    And then there's uptime versus revenue. Am I making enough money to justify the amount of time I am servicing this thing? Thank you for watching. So in my – I'm just putting in random quarters.
    39:25
    All games down. Here you go, buddy. I got you. Well, we got the people who go, maybe if I put more quarters in, it'll work. Don't do that. Don't do that, guys. If the first few quarters don't work, stop putting money in. Yeah, stop putting money in. Don't put the wrong quarters in too. If they need tokens, put their tokens in. Don't put the wrong stuff in. Don't screw people over. Don't find your own thing. Yeah. So, Beetlejuice is probably an example of a game that's beautiful, wonderful, everything. As far as serviceability, it's a difficult call for me specifically because I am in every single game. I have had to – we've had Beetlejuice, and this is only indicative of the Beetlejuice that Christian gave us. I said it's the only one right now because I've seen seven of them run at Golden State and they were all fine. But it's not just an issue of if something's going to break because everything is going to break on a pinball machine. I literally asked Mark Seiden about – remember when we were at the Avatar thing and he goes, is there any questions? And I said, yeah, what's going to break first? And he said, well, everything is going to break. Like he wasn't even sugarcoating. He's like, you're dealing with a steel ball running around damaging your game every play.
    40:46
    How easy is it to get to the fixes, though? One thing that I – one issue that we had on Beale Juice, it was very difficult for us to navigate the underneath of the play field. Extremely difficult. There are wires everywhere. There's like rails that don't – you can't – there's some issues. It's not to say that it's a bad thing, but it's a thing that will stand in the way of an operator making money.
    41:14
    As opposed to, say, Harry Potter, where if you look at, if I look at, and once again, I'm saying this is my personal opinion. I'm not trying to cast aspersions on any manufacturer. I think it's a brilliant game, both Beetlejuice and Harry Potter. But when I lift the play field on a Harry Potter, it clearly looks like a former operator has devised it so that everything is serviceable.
    41:36
    Thank you This is not an opinionated thing This is not a subjective idea This is objective I will even give Turner a huge huge thumbs up because you know Chris Turner and the Turner pinball
    42:00
    Yeah. Yukon Yeti. Yep. Yukon Yeti. We Loved Our Kids. Yep. And Ninja Clips. I specifically asked Chris, can I look under the playfield? He said yes. He lifted the playfield and it was the cleanest, most accessible thing I've ever seen in my life. And I was like, this is going to be a pleasure to work on. If everything breaks one day, I can get to everything. Okay. And it means a lot to an operator. So Beetlejuice is amazing. We've had basic pinball issues with it, but a couple of the things I found extremely difficult to get to, like the drop target underneath Beetlejuice himself was a nightmare. And the fact that they use so many components that I don't think they should, but it's not up to me. I'm not the engineer. They're all easily fixable, but they're all very easily breakable. Yeah. So, I'm just, maybe I'm, Erica, maybe I'm grumpy old man right now, but I only have but so much time to work on a game in the mornings.
    43:09
    Some games never give us any issues and they're like Adam's family. That game is what, 40 years old? That game is ridiculously old and it never gives us any issues. I think sometimes manufacturers are getting a little ambitious with their designs.
    43:29
    But on the flip side, you have to wow. You have to wow people. You have to do something different. You have to do something different, yeah. Yeah, I have only lifted up a handful of playfields myself, right? So like lifting up Lord of the Rings, that's something I've done. I've lifted up playfields for these guys. I got some EMs behind me, right? Those are tough. Those are tough too. It's like, woo! But they're just like really mean all together. They had to make sense. They were going down the line. And I mean, for the spooky crew, from my understanding, they've been like constantly improving and working on their designs. Because from my understanding, though, it's like each spooky game, when you lift up a play field, they've been changing out parts. It's like a new thing to learn, almost. But I don't specifically own a spooky game. I haven't. I almost did. I almost owned Halloween at one point. I was very close to trading for Halloween. But yeah, I mean, that does sound frustrating. I do understand. And like, you're just trying to you're trying to operate your business. You're trying to make money. You're not in your home where you'd be like, oh, that can be down. I can work on that this weekend when the kids are doing something, you know, like you're like, hey, you're keeping this up and running. I'd be interested to hear, too, where because I just listened to Electric Bat and Beetlejuice is their top earning game. I wonder if they have any tips or tricks on what they do to keep the maintenance. It's doing fine at the shop. It's not in the best location ever, mostly because we didn't put it in the best location ever because we need to test the waters, right? We need to feel it out and see is this going to be – for the most part, that specific game. And once again, I got to say if anybody from Spooky is listening, your game is amazing. It's amazing. But as an operator, I would like to say, hey, maybe next time put a Molex on this coil so I don't have to – Clip your zip ties, de-solder a thing so I can take a component off and put it on my workbench. Maybe give me a Molex in between those connectors, right? For the price, I feel like you'd be doing the operators a big favor. And the people on Pinside wouldn't be so crazy when they complain because, you know, the complainers love to complain. Yeah.
    45:55
    Some quality of life issues on the under the play field will do operators a lot of good. If you're a homeowner, you're probably playing your game two, three hours a week. So you probably will belay these errors and physical issues for a really long time. But for a place like an expo or a place like Free Gold Watch in San Francisco where they get hammered, We're going to see those and I'm going to feel it as an operator if I have to desolder a thing to move it to the workbench. That's going to affect the bottom line of the entire shop. Plus, if a game is down, it's less about not earning the money. It's more about the people who come in and see a game with an out-of-order sign and they're sad because they can't get to play the game. We had NBA Fast Breakout for one day and I know people felt that. And it's Fastbreak. I know people were like, aw, where's Fastbreak?
    46:57
    When's it going to be back up? Yeah, that's a tough thing. Pinball maintenance, man. It's tough. But I've never thought of it much from that perspective. And I'm really glad we get to talk about it here. You get to bring it up and talk about what it is like teching on games and what you would prefer. I'd be interested to know in the comments, too, if you guys want to. I'd be happy to make some open discussion about what games you feel could be more operator-friendly. I think it's important because if you're going to fix a game and if you're going to make things... I remember Eric when we went to... Eric Mignier. I can't say his last name. He was the lead designer of Harry Potter. Yeah, and so I remember him talking about how he was an operator. Yeah. And that he's like, I can't have something have more than three or four screws. I don't want things to be super crazy to take out. Like I want it to be boop, boop, boop. And like here's this thing that comes out and here's this thing that comes out. So I do – yeah. He wasn't kidding though either. It wasn't just all talk because the first time I lifted the play field and I saw an end of stroke switch on a Molex, I emailed – I texted him at that moment and went, dude, thank you.
    48:12
    Thank you so much. And here's the thing. Spooky will get there. They will get there to the point where their design on top and their design on bottom is going to be spot on. But if you don't mention it, they don't hear it. And sometimes it gets slower to uptake if you don't mention it. Yeah, definitely. The game's great. I absolutely love it. The game is really fun. I hope that these fixing challenges that they – whatever you fixed, you now know how to do it too, and you can just like kind of just go in there and transform.
    48:49
    And transform. Transformers, okay, I think we have – Like our next topic. We have a second to talk about Transformers. We're running pretty long. Yeah, we're getting close here. All right, one out of ten, Transformers. You didn't get to play it though. You didn't even get to go to Stern. I didn't get to go to Stern. We didn't go to Stern. The thing is with going to Stern for these games, the amount of head time I have for them, I do understand that they have their schedule and they can only give us so much time ahead. And me doing these trips, I spend anywhere from $400 to $600 to make these trips out. Yeah, it's a little expensive. It's a bit expensive. I'm now freelancing again, so my finances are very different.
    49:38
    At the stable job I was when I started my channel, I was at my job for three years and got laid off and then found another job and then quit that. Now I'm doing freelance full-time because I'm creative like that. I've been very lucky. I've been getting a lot of work, which has been nice. But yeah, it's tough to make it out to these events. Like I have the time. It's just like the funds. And this time I didn't have the time because it was like right before Fanime. And I was like exhausted from Golden State. And then I'm like, I know it was Transformers. Like I remember hearing rumblings about it. And I was like, you know, as much as I'd love to do it, I'm not a as if you're a fan of my channel, you've been following me. I'm not a very timely releaser of my videos. And so I was like, I'll play Transformers when I play Transformers. I'm I also feel I'm not a Transformers fan. Pokemon, I was like, oh, my God, I got to be there. But like Transformers, I don't have this feeling. The game, though, looks spectacular. And I want to play it 10 out of 10 for sure. I want to play my emotions towards it. I'm super happy for Elizabeth. I'm super happy for the team. And like with Elliot, you know, like that's so cool. Actually, fun fact, I have Elliot's autograph in one of my old phone cases. If you ask me about my phone cases, I now get them signed by designers and things. So I got, yeah, yeah, a little fun, little fun fact about me. I'm a pinball nerd. I'm going to do this just for the folks who may not be keeping score, Erica. Transformers More Than Me CI is Stern's newest game. The game design is by Elliot Eisman, which Erica is best friends with. Software by Elizabeth Gieske. So it's exciting to see – God, I hate saying this, but I feel like I have to say it. I hate saying it. It's exciting to see a woman's work in a pinball machine, which is a shitty thing to say because there always should have been women working on pinball. I think the perspective that Elizabeth – you know what? When I saw – oh, music by Jerry Thompson. When I saw the stream for Transformers, this was one of the first times in a long time for me to look at a Stern and say, holy smokes, that looks fun. I don't even – I'm not – I've never really cared about Transformers. I didn't rush home to see it when I was a kid. I was like an Inspector Gadget kid.
    52:36
    I didn't run home to watch Transformers. Probably Pink Panther too, huh? Yeah, Pink Panther. But watching Jack and Elliot and Elizabeth play Transformers on that stream and the excitement that was in Elizabeth's eyes and the actual proof on the play field, Thank you for watching. www.patreon.com Oh my gosh. Manu, thanks for chatting with me. And thank you guys for listening in. If you guys are enjoying the podcast, thank you for tuning in. And yeah, feel free to let us know too if there's things that you're interested in hearing us talk about. We do have some planned interviews in our near future. And I feel like some more fun pinball things we bring into you guys. So yeah, stay tuned. Is it me or you this time that does the outro?
    55:10
    I'll do it. I think it is me. Okay. I am so professional. Thanks for listening to the Pinball Minority Report. Check out our socials. Search YouTube and Instagram for Erica's with a K.
    55:26
    Erica's Pinball Journey. The Mystery Pinball Theater 3000. Thanks. See you next time.