All right, welcome back everybody to another episode of a pinball podcast. I hope everybody here had a great weekend. I know here at my place, it was actually in the 80s. It was awesome. Got to hang out on the porch for a little while, did some yard work, and I continue to have all my allergies in case you guys can't tell on the mic. It is hell. I'm ready for this to be over, let me tell you. Anyway, so if you're listening to this on any type of podcast app, if you don't realize already, I do have a YouTube channel and this podcast is actually in video format on there. You can find me at Marv Loco on YouTube. I really don't advertise that too much, but just in case you don't realize it, there might be one or two of you out there. Come on over to the YouTube channel, comment on the video if you'd like, if you want to engage in conversation dealing with the content of this podcast. If you're watching on YouTube, I definitely appreciate you guys being here. Be sure and leave a like i would definitely appreciate it would really help me out or even subscribe if you want to just hit that little a little button down below anyhow all right so let's get to the news or at least somewhat of the news a big thing coming out today obviously is stern is pumping out the avengers infinity quest les i believe late last week they showed uh some of the pens getting shipped or boxed already that were headed overseas. And so from what I'm hearing right now is that starting today, they're going to start boxing and shipping domestic orders. That's what I understand. Don't hold me to it until they officially announce it, but I'm pretty sure that's what's happening. I've heard from very reliable sources on that. So I'm very excited about that simply because I have an LE on order. Hopefully it's in by the end of the week and I can tell you guys what I think about it. I figure most likely it'll be a great game simply because everybody that's been playing the pro has said nothing but great things about it. I haven't heard anything negative said about it yet. Now, I'm sure there might be somebody out there that doesn't like it in particular. But overall, the reviews are overwhelmingly positive, which is great. So be looking for that as well. Moving ahead. We're going to talk a lot today about the Stern event for the Heads Up Pinball Invitational that they had with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In case you guys weren't aware of this, there was a mini pinball competition that happened, I believe, last Wednesday, which today is Monday the 28th. So that would have been the 23rd of last week. And they had eight players on there, four men, four women, all competing in a Heads Up format to where they had to achieve certain objectives. and it was time-based where they were going up against each other, and whoever got it done first was the winner. And they played the best out of three, so you had to win two. And whoever won that tournament would end up winning a brand-new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pinball machine, which is awesome. Now, of course, the winner ended up being Escher Levkov. He is a monster of a player, a world champion at 13. Very difficult to beat. I believe he's 17 now and only getting better. There's no way that he's even hit his prime yet, which is scary to think about, especially with all these young players. Here I am, my mid-30s, still trying to figure it out. These young guys with their reflexes, they're just, it's crazy. It's crazy what they can do. Anyways, so the show, it was, I really did enjoy it. I did watch it as soon as it started. It was pre-produced. And things to consider with this is that I've been talking about this all along. I know Zach Minney from Pinball Network and Flip N Out Pinball, sponsor of the show, by the way. He's been talking about it a lot, too, in terms of what he would like to see competitive pinball go to. And I know a lot of people that I talk to, they're really interested in the pre-produced pinball format as well or the content there. And I've had lengthy discussions with other tournament directors that either stream or they're thinking about streaming. And we've been going back and forth with ideas on how to really present this content and what would be the easiest way to do it. Now, quite frankly, the reason why we don't see it happen too often is because it is very difficult to edit down even just one hour of content, let alone eight to 12 hours of live content. That is very difficult to do. I'm just here to let you know I've done my share of editing. It's not easy at all. So keep that in mind with everything. You know, it's just it's one thing to produce something live, which has its limitations and has its pros and cons and has its difficulties as well. The whole other thing to take that many hours and try to watch it all continuously, like you have to go back and forth multiple times just to edit it down. So keep that in mind. Now, I would like to see something like that in the future. And the reason being is because this type of content is easy to digest for people, even if it's new people, even if it's people that are early into pinball. And I'm not saying for sure you do not get rid of the live format. Keep the live format. There's nothing wrong with that. But I think you can edit this down and produce it in such a way to where the viewer is fully engaged. Now there will be some people that will say, hey, you know, it wouldn't be as fun to watch this knowing who won. And I understand where they're coming from, but the easiest way that I would say then is just watch it when it live Avoid message boards Everybody pretty much knows when these events are especially the major ones the Stern Circuit tournaments, Pinberg, like any NDSC, anything like that. We pretty much all know when it's happening. So I would just say for the ones that don't want it ruined, just avoid message boards if you're not there and watch it as soon as possible. Because if it's live, it's most likely going to be a video on demand shortly thereafter, within 24 hours at least. So that's what I would encourage people to do. Now, going back to thoughts overall on the show, and this is a big reason why I feel like this content would be great, is first and foremost, I thought the commentating was done very well by Tim Sexton and Jack Danger. I like the overall production value in terms of letting us know what's going on. It was crisp. It was clean. It was concise. There wasn't any dead air, which is perfect. That's what you want out of produced content. The only negative on it is obviously, and this is probably due more or less to COVID limitations since people weren't in the same area or even doing it at the same time, obviously, is that it was hard to get a reaction out of the competitors themselves. they didn't know if they were winning, losing, whatever there was just really no way and so I think we were just missing that element the human element which is basically the biggest element there is especially when you're talking about competition thus in the future I'm hoping that in a world to where we're past the COVID stuff hopefully at some point to where we're actually able to all be in the same room together playing these games I hope that in the future they do focus in on that, the human element, the reactions, getting interviews real quick about how they felt about that match, what, uh, what their plan was, what went wrong, what went right. Those are things that I want to hear. Now, overall too, when we look at pre-produced content, I will say that, and everybody needs to keep this in mind, this, this, uh, particular piece of content with the Heads Up Invitational. It literally is, I believe, the second most watched video or piece of content in history for tournament pinball currently. Now, I'm not talking about like any other documentaries or anything like that. I'm talking like just focused on the competition itself. I believe number one is the Papa 20 finals in 2017, which is actually what Escher Lefkoff won. And I think last time I checked, as of this podcast, it has approximately 66,000 views. Now, going through all the views that this had, and Stern did a great job in terms of making sure it's on their YouTube channel, making sure it's on their Facebook page. They did a great job of that. When you look across the board, according to Twitch, Deadflip has about 2,700 views off this video. Stern YouTube channel has approximately 3,060 views currently. and Stern's Facebook channel has right around 21,000 views as of this podcast. Now, granted, the views, the way Twitch reads views is much different than the way YouTube reads views is much different than the way Facebook reads views. But we get a good approximation of who is watching this content and when they're watching this content. And thus, it really strikes back that if you have a clean, precise, very focused piece of content, people will respond to it. Because this wasn't advertised well in advance. It was just advertised a few days in advance. This wasn't like we had a month leading up to it or anything like that. But I was really happy to see Stern starting to utilize their platform because this is something that I've all along and I hope they do in the future because they sponsor the Stern Pro Circuit. You would assume that highlights or at least a condensed finals is shown on their YouTube page that's produced from all these tournaments. I think that there would be a lot of great things coming out of that if they were able to do something like that. Now, in terms of any one complaint that anybody's had, you know, there's really not too many. I think the only thing that you're really seeing people complain about is people were just confused on how the participants were chosen. And namely, I've heard a lot of people mention, and I've read it on a few boards, they were concerned that, you know, they're stern employees in the tournament itself. Me personally, I don't really care either way. It's their invitational. They're the ones getting the sponsors. They're the ones giving away the product. They could stack it up with all Stern employees if they really wanted to. I mean, I don't mind either way. As long as there's world-class pinball players playing, I'll watch. That's, quite frankly, all I care about. Now, I know that there is a lot of people that want to play in this particular tournament. And I've been asked by a couple people, would I want to play in it? And to tell you the truth, I'm not really sure. Just to be flat out honest, the heads up format just never really interested me at all. I mean, I've done a couple of state tournaments. I've done a couple of nationals, which are all best of seven heads up. And it's probably one of my least liked formats total. I mean to the point to where I was really debating about not even playing at state after this year So it just I don know It just something that just doesn interest me at all compared to if I doing a four match play I find that much more fascinating but that being said I know that there's a lot of people that prefer the heads up. I know that a lot of people prefer to watch heads up over the match play, which is perfectly fine. What I would like to see in the future that I feel like could be done a little bit better. And this is just me, my opinion, my opinion alone. Other people, they might be able to multitask much more efficient than what I'm able to do. But I cannot, for the life of me, keep up with two games going at one time, which a lot of these heads up tournaments, that's what they do. There's two games at the same time. There's so much going on. And I'm having a hard time keeping up. And I know the rule sets very well. I know what they're going to try to do. I know what they're going to do. I'm able to anticipate what they're going to do next. However, I still get behind the action. So in my head, I'm coming to the logical conclusion that somebody that isn't necessarily as knowledgeable on the rule set or doesn't have significant time on a certain pen, are they going to be able to follow along what is happening, even if it's described before? And I think they do. They do to an extent only if they're watching one game. I think if you're going back and forth and you're trying to figure out, okay, where's player two at? Where's player one at? Where are they at compared to each other? It's hard to really know. And so what I would like to see in the future that if anybody else tries this out, I think running it this way might be a little bit easier for the viewer to digest it. Now the event might take a tad bit longer than just, you know, 45 minutes, which I think is, is fine. I think even if we go an hour, an hour and a half, as long as there's no, no need to fill time and you're getting your content, right. I think it works. It goes by quick, but instead of having two games, I would just prefer to have one game going. And I think you can still do objectives, but however, I really feel like some type of horse format would actually be really fun to watch in which you're trying to see competitors pick out a certain objective. Like say there's eight to 10 different objectives you could do on one game and you say to your opponent, I challenge you to get this objective. So you're, you know, you have to try to do it in a certain amount of time and you finish it and then your opponent has to finish it in a quicker time. I think that that adds a little bit more to it in the sense that you see player two or the second person to go. They know what time they need to beat. And so they're able, you see that rush going on. You see that pressure starting to kick in. You can just get a different feel than just somebody just blindly playing and knowing that somebody's playing next to them, but they're just trying to rush against an unknown time. For me, I think it's a lot more interesting when somebody does know the known time and they're trying to go against that. Now, I'm not saying you abandon ship on the other format. I'm just simply saying I feel like this would be more intriguing for me personally. I think it would be more intriguing and, you know, a lot easier to watch as well or a lot easier to digest because then you're just focused on one thing at a time. You've already seen it done once because you had all your focus on. So if it happens again, you know exactly what player to. is trying to accomplish. And you could tell, you know, if he or she gets behind on the time, you know, then they're trying to race against the clock for an epic comeback or something like that. I think that that would be really interesting. I do like the objective of the most score in two minutes. I really do like that one. I feel like that there's some alternate format out there somewhere or even every single different type of pinball skill set. to where you do a two-minute game, and maybe you don't set it for three balls. Maybe you do set it for five or ten balls, because all you're trying to do is, in those two minutes, is just score as many points as possible. I would find that very interesting, simply because it goes against the grain of normal tournaments. Normal high-level tournaments do not have people playing on the fly the entire time. you play on the fly in spots, especially when you're picking out your sequences or you have a particular ball save. Now there are, there are some players that do play on the fly a lot, but most high level players are controlled. So seeing those same types of players having to play a little bit out of their element would be highly interesting to me. I just think something like that could possibly work. Now, obviously in an era where whoppers are still around, that would probably be hell on the, what is it, the TGP. But other than that, when we're talking about just these types of heads-up formats in which something's on the line or even anything that could be happening, I just really feel like these types of formats would be interesting to watch, me personally. And I often wonder, too, when could we really see these formats take place? And I think a great time, and of course it would take some coordination, but a great time to do this would simply be the day before SPC tournaments I mean it doesn have to be every single one but select tournaments That way everybody could do it Everybody could do it Anybody wants to get in you could just simply say anybody that's pre-registered for the tournament, you can pre-register for this. You know, obviously you can have some type of cap, whether it's 32 players, 64, 16, however many you want to do, but give people a chance to play in it because they're going to be there anyways for that particular Stern Pro Circuit tournament. And I think something like that can be done really, really quickly. I mean, I think if you get your format down, it's not going to take but just a few hours to finish that out. And in particular, you just need, in all reality, two machines for that. You don't need a whole row of machines. You could do the same thing on two machines, but obviously you would have to kind of expand it a little bit according to how many people you actually have that is there. But I think if you just keep the lines going, you get them going quick, I think it can be done. There's some logistical hurdles to it that will alter according to obviously how many people are there, but I think it can be done. And it's an interesting format. It is an interesting format. And I think any type of tournament format or competitive format is very important to getting pinball to grow. And I know there's a lot of people in this hobby that are not tournament players, and that's perfectly fine. Everybody can enjoy this hobby any way they want to enjoy it, whether it's restoring, whether it's collecting, whether it's just going to the arcade because you have one pen but you're playing everything else there, or if you like to play tournaments, or if you just like to travel to shows. Everybody enjoys this hobby all kinds of different ways. but the reality is is that the majority of people that will discover pinball won't necessarily discover it at least on an online forum or an online situation they won't discover it simply because somebody's just randomly playing pinball you know oftentimes if somebody does see that they'll kind of get hooked a little bit but when we're looking at what can really hook people in its high level production value. That's what tends to hook somebody in. That's a big reason why you see a lot of these videos on YouTube, the ones that have the most views, typically have the best production value. Now, that's not true across the board. I'm just saying typically, the majority of your videos with the higher end views have higher end production value. And thus, what it really becomes is, is making pinball look as accessible as possible to anybody that's watching it. And I don't think that this is going to be something that will necessarily just blow pinball up completely overnight. It's not going to be an overnight thing. I think you're more or less just looking long-term. You're looking at something that gets people engaged. It makes people understand pinball a little bit better, especially if you're doing a heads-up format that is able to explain, that allows the announcers or just the content itself to easily explain to the viewer what is going on. And I think also, too, having it branded by major pinball manufacturers helps as well because it's not necessarily the tournament itself that is drawing people in. It's just the way the content's being presented, the production value, and slapping names to it, you know, slapping Stern up there, slapping whatever you can. Even if Jersey Jack did something like that, It just raises more awareness for their brand and for their products. So that's a smart way to go about it, especially when you can show that on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, across the board. I think something like that is really cool. And people generally like watching a competition or watching something in which somebody is getting a prize at the end. That tends to up the ante a little bit, and that's why we see on a lot of these reality shows there's always a prize at the end. Even if it's a 30 minute show, there's a prize at the end or there's prizes continuous throughout it. So that would be something for me that I would like to see really start to take hold. And I think that this is something that I would encourage all pinball companies to start to develop more and more. I mean, that's just it's it's not easy to do, but it's not hard to do either. Do anything you can to draw people to pinball, to draw people to your product, to draw people to your brand. So otherwise, I really did enjoy it. But that's all I really wanted to talk about today. We will be back here on Wednesday night at 9 p.m. U.S. Central Standard Time for a live show. I do those every single Wednesday on my YouTube channel at Marv Loco. So feel free to stop by and we'll chat some pinball. And other than that, I have probably have some other content coming up pretty soon to where I'm going to explain basically my Star Wars strategy and my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles strategy on video. I'll show the whole thing. It'll basically just be a roadmap. It won't be a full-blown tutorial because honestly, if you try to do a full-blown game tutorial on Star Wars, it's going to be like a four to six hour video. So we're not going to do that, but I will explain my basic tournament strategies out on that and hopefully people will enjoy that and we'll start doing that a lot more often. But other than that, thank you guys so much for hanging route or hanging route. That ain't making sense. We're hanging out with me until the very end of this. I really do appreciate it. And you guys have a great day and I'll talk to you guys later. Later guys.