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Scorbit

Pintastic New England·video·35m 44s·analyzed·Jul 12, 2022
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Scorbit co-founders present connected pinball platform roadmap with 1M scores, new manufacturer integrations, and digital payment features.

Summary

Ron Richards and Brian O'Neill from Scorbit presented their connected pinball platform at Pintastic New England, detailing the evolution from 2015 concept to current operation with 1M+ scores logged. They discussed the Scorbitron hardware device, free mobile app with leaderboards and achievements, integrations with manufacturers (Jersey Jack, Spooky, Chicago Gaming, American Pinball, Pinball Brothers), tournament software partnerships, and upcoming features including Op Center for operators and Scorebit Dave Link for digital payments.

Key Claims

  • Scorbit has logged over 1 million scores on the system as of March 2024

    high confidence · Ron Richards, CEO of Scorbit, speaking at Pintastic New England

  • Scorebit app itself is completely free; costs only apply to hardware device for older machines and monthly platform subscription

    high confidence · Ron Richards explicitly stated pricing model during presentation

  • Toy Story 4 machines can now connect to Scorebit and track scores via version 1.05 code update

    high confidence · Ron Richards mentioned latest Jersey Jack Pinball integration

  • Scorebit is currently working on integrations with Chicago Gaming Company, American Pinball, and Pinball Brothers

    high confidence · Ron Richards listed current integration work during presentation

  • Scorebit Dave Link hardware will enable remote admin menu access and digital payment functionality

    high confidence · Ron Richards described upcoming hardware feature with CAD design reference

  • Op Center will be free for all machine owners (home and venue) with free-play machines

    high confidence · Ron Richards answered audience question about Op Center pricing

  • Scorebit cannot currently detect whether pinball glass is on or off during play

    high confidence · Ron Richards answered audience question about cheat detection

  • Jersey Jack Pinball partnership launched shortly after Scorebit's September 2020 app launch

    high confidence · Ron Richards provided timeline of company milestones

Notable Quotes

  • “It was our friend Jay who said that's cool but would be cooler is if you made a piece of hardware that went in the machine and actually captured the score so you didn't have to manually type it in. And at that point, I went, oh, goddammit, we can't not do this.”

    Ron Richards@ 1:44 — Explains the origin story and motivation for founding Scorbit in 2015

  • “We realized that this is only going to work if it works in every machine that it possibly can because if you limit it to just one manufacturer of machines, that's no fun.”

    Brian O'Neill@ 2:49 — Core philosophy explaining Scorbit's cross-manufacturer approach

  • “The first time I saw this video it was just mind blowing the idea that there's something going on in the game that you directly made happen externally to the game code, that integration and how it comes up on the screen just adds that much more magic and wow factor to it when you do get the achievement.”

    Ron Richards@ 11:42 — Reflects emotional impact of Scorebit-Jersey Jack integration on display rendering

  • “I watched people walk up, go 'oh I need a quarter, oh I need a quarter, oh the change machine doesn't work' and then walk out. That just lost revenue for that operator.”

    Ron Richards@ 14:48 — Real-world example motivating Scorebit Dave Link development for digital payments

  • “Pinball is an honorable game and we hope that there aren't cheaters out there.”

    Ron Richards@ 19:03 — Acknowledges current limitations in cheat detection while expressing faith in community

  • “What we want to avoid is we want to avoid someone claiming a player that's not them right? It's similar to taking the digital equivalent of taking the glass off of the machine.”

Entities

ScorbitcompanyRon RichardspersonBrian O'NeillpersonScorbitronproductScorebit AppproductScorebit VisionproductScorebit AchievementsproductOp CenterproductScorebit Dave Linkproduct

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Scorebit actively expanding manufacturer integrations with Chicago Gaming Company, American Pinball, and Pinball Brothers for direct software integration

    high · Ron Richards listed current integration work as next phase for the platform

  • ?

    community_signal: Scorebit launching achievements platform with Jersey Jack Pinball integration, extending gameplay and adding magic/wow factor through display rendering of achievements

    high · Ron Richards detailed achievements rollout and video demonstration of mind-blowing display integration

  • ?

    community_signal: Scorebit integrated into tournament operations at Pintastic New England with Neverdrains and Matchplay, improving scorekeeper workflow with automated score verification

    high · Ron Richards demonstrated tournament integration reducing manual score entry and enabling faster play

  • ?

    community_signal: Scorebit providing developer API access for third-party integrations (streamers, home automation) enabling custom data pulls and ecosystem extensions

    high · Brian O'Neill offered developer API keys via email and discussed cool integrations with streamers using API

  • $

    market_signal: Scorebit reaching 1 million logged scores milestone by March 2024, indicating significant adoption across venues and home players

    high · Ron Richards stated '1 million scores logged on the system by players' in March 2024

  • ?

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.107

0:00
All right, it's time to connect with the connectors. I'm looking right here at the title, Inside Connected Pinball. I've heard those words in some other juxtaposition elsewhere, I think. So here are Ron and Brian from Scorbit to tell us the latest that's going on with the Scorbit system. Thank you. Thanks.
0:36
All right. Thanks. How's everybody doing? Good to see everybody. As mentioned, I'm Ron Richards from Scorbit, and here along with my co-founder, Brian O'Neill. Hey. I'm the CEO of Scorbit. Brian's our CTO. and I don't know if we have the deck.
0:55
Oh yeah, yeah, Brian is New Hampshire from New York. Yeah, here we are, there we go. Yeah, so Brian and I both love playing pinball. My favorite machine is Guns N' Roses Data East, which I'm now a proud owner of thanks to Papa. And Brian, what's your favorite machine? Yeah, Frontier, Valley of Frontier. It's pretty awesome. Cool, and essentially we all became friends playing pinball in San Francisco and it was actually back in 2015 at a show a lot like this a show called California Extreme where myself and Brian and our third co-founder Jay along with Brian's wife Allison and probably our buddy Darren who's here we're talking about hey it'd be really cool if there was a way to kind of keep track of your scores with an app or with your phone as opposed to writing them down by hand and then actually it was our friend Jay who said that's cool but would be cooler is if you made a piece of hardware that went in the machine and actually captured the score so you didn't have to manually type it in. And at that point, I went, oh, goddammit, we can't not do this.

Brian O'Neill@ 26:42 — Addresses security consideration in player identification system design

Jersey Jack Pinball
company
Spooky Pinballcompany
Chicago Gaming Companycompany
American Pinballcompany
Pinball Brotherscompany
Toy Story 4game
Neverdrainsproduct
Matchplayproduct
Insider Connectedproduct
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
California Extremeevent
Pintastic New Englandevent
Frontiergame
Guns N' Rosesgame
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factorygame

product_strategy: Scorebit positioning as free-to-player platform with optional hardware/subscription revenue model, contrasting with potential competitor pricing models

high · Ron Richards explicitly stated app is completely free with only hardware device and monthly subscription costs

  • ?

    product_strategy: Scorebit player claiming UX being refined with auto-claim option for home venues to reduce friction compared to Stern's Insider Connected implementation

    high · Brian O'Neill explained auto-claim settings in player preferences to improve home user experience

  • ?

    product_strategy: Op Center in development as operator/venue management platform with machine data, settings control, promotional messaging, and venue-specific achievements

    high · Ron Richards outlined Op Center features including remote access, analytics, and promotional capabilities

  • ?

    technology_signal: Scorebit currently cannot detect glass-off play; relying on honor system with potential future sensor/hardware solutions acknowledged

    high · Ron Richards answered audience question about cheat detection, admitting current limitation but expressing confidence in community integrity

  • ?

    technology_signal: Scorebit Dave Link emerging as next hardware evolution enabling remote admin access and digital payment capability through coin door integration

    high · Ron Richards presented CAD design and use case motivation for digital payments feature

    • 1:57
    And so all of us worked at internet companies in the San Francisco Bay Area, and so this was the kind of thing that we were like, all right, let's see if we can figure this out.
    2:04
    And so that was 2015, and then what happened was we went through a bunch of years of prototypes and testing and trying to figure out how pinball machines work. and we settled on building our device that's called the Scorbitron, which was the idea was that we'll put this device inside of a pinball machine and then through the other little boards at the bottom, plug it into other spots in the machine to pull data out of it and see what we can do with it. We didn't know if we could do it. It took a lot of work. It took a lot of bugging people who knew about the insides of pinball machines to figure it out, but then we got it working. But also, yeah, a lot of pinball machines are different, And so there's a lot of different types of parts that we needed to develop to make it work because we want to make it work with every game. Yeah. We realized that this is only going to work if it works in every machine that it possibly can because if you limit it to just one manufacturer of machines, that's no fun. So we wanted to make it work for everybody. So once we had a prototype in place, we got to work. And so this is just kind of a quick history of what we've been doing with Scorbit now going on seven years. had the idea in 2015 we formed the company in 2016 we started testing at tournaments in 2018 in san francisco city champ and indisc in southern california 2019 we did a kind of a beta program with some uh some folks to you know get some real field testing with operators and things like that and in september 2020 we finally launched um the app and started selling scorbatrons we had planned to launch earlier but a little thing called covid got in the way and quickly kind of changed our plans, we're going to actually launch a TPF in March of 2020, but as we all know what happened. But we're super excited to finally get it out in the world in September 2020. And then shortly after that, we launched our partnership with Jersey Jack Pinball, which we're immensely proud and thankful of. And thank you, Jack, here in the audience. We appreciate it. And what we did with Jersey Jack Pinball was enabled it so that a hardware device was not needed. Thanks to the innovation by the folks at Jersey Jack, we're able to work with them on the software level and have the machines that are connected to the internet automatically connect to the Scorebit platform, which then led to launching our achievements platform this past September. And then a major milestone earlier this year in March, we had one million scores logged on the system by players, which we're immensely proud of. So that's just kind of a quick background on how we got here and where we are today. Here's a photo of us at InDisc and CityChamp testing the system. But for those who aren't familiar with Scorebit, just a quick kind of high level on how it all works. Brian, do you want to walk them through this complicated design? Sure. I mean, it's hard to see the color there.
    4:45
    And I can't see it. Yeah. It's very dark. There we go. It's all right. It's all the other. Yeah, so.
    4:55
    Yeah, it's fine. Yeah, there's Scorbit in the cloud. Oh, that's perfect. And then, yeah, so basically we have the Scorbitron in the pinball machine. it communicates via an API to our platform in the cloud and then from there they can it communicates with handheld devices like iPhone and Android and things like that so you can keep track of your scores and things like that and it's built to be scalable so that not just one machine, one user but rather clusters of machines like at a venue or at a bar, at an arcade, at a show like this, could potentially all connect to the platform and then go up to the cloud and then down to users on the mobile app on their handheld.
    5:44
    A lot more technical stuff in there, and we're going to save time for questions, so if people want to know actually how it works under the hood, I'm happy to answer any, but I wanted to keep it kind of simple for this talk.
    5:54
    So with that, we've built a bunch of applications that enable us to leverage the data from the Pitbull machine. So obviously there's a Scorbit app that's available for Android and iOS users. That allows you to connect to your friends, track your scores, play head-to-head challenges so I can get a score and then challenge Brian to try to beat it. And then also keep track of how your friends are doing, kind of similar social network kind of stuff where you can see what activity is going on. If you have a high score on a machine and somebody beats your high score, you get a notification. So it keeps you kind of engaged with it.
    6:26
    And that all is done thanks to the ScoreBitron, on the hardware device or the direct kind of software connections that we have with machines like Jersey Jack.
    6:35
    And with that data, we built an application called Scorbit Vision, which is specifically catered to streamers and folks with, you know, home arcades in their basements with displays. A lot of people kind of want leaderboards and scoreboards up on a TV. So you're able to take all of the data that the Scorbitron and the Scorbit app is tracking and render it in a screen so that you can have, you know, all the top scores for the day of your machine or if you're streaming you can pull out the live score um and put it directly onto your stream so you don't need to have a camera on the dmd to track the score um it's for you know yeah it's very cool yeah enables that and then lastly our most recent product that we launched was achievements which really extends the life of the game you know we we you know we all know we've been playing all these games for years you get multi-ball you get different modes you you've achieved that once you do that once you get the wizard mode what what else can you do So with the achievements platform, we're able to unlock even more that you can do with the pinball machine. And what's great, because Scorbert works on all machines going back to solid states, we're going to be rolling out achievements for pretty much every game that there is so you can extend to life. So, Brian, you can play Frontier and have even more kind of things to unlock. Yeah, I'm really excited about doing some of the DMD achievements too because we can actually, the way we work with the DMD games is that we can actually write on the screen, like you've achieved this achievement, and you can even, when you sign into the game, it shows your name and things like that. By having the Scorbatron device in the machine, that allows us to connect directly to the display, so we can render messages and things like that, which are great for, as Brian mentioned, when you claim on player one, it says player one is Ron, or when you get an achievement, but also for venue owners and operators, there's going to be an opportunity to run promotional messages in the DMD directly that you can then control. It really unlocks a ton of opportunity and a ton of potential with these machines that were built 30 years ago and were never even connected to the Internet.
    8:37
    So in addition to that, by connecting the machines to the cloud, we're able to gather data and analytics about the gameplay itself. So if you you know really want to know how you playing on a game you can see a graph that shows the duration of your game every ball So on this chart here the different colors are ball one ball two ball three red green blue You can see when you started a mode, how long that mode lasted for, how many points you got it, and basically the progression of your game. So for really hardcore players who really want to analyze how they're doing or how a game is working, all that data is available and can be accessed and kind of help you become a better player.
    9:20
    So currently we work with all manufacturers going back to solid states and most modern manufacturers here. That was like Brian mentioned, one thing that was a goal of ours because, I mean, we've got tons of machines in our respective collections. We want it to work on everything, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
    9:38
    And we don't work in EMs for obvious reasons, although it's possible. And we've discussed how we can make it work with EMs a bunch of different ways. but we focused on the ones that actually have the electronics that we could tap into and pull data out. We don't get too down that rabbit hole of hobby, you know, kind of figuring stuff out, you know, given that the limited inventory of EMs that are actually out on locations. Yeah.
    10:05
    So in terms of what's coming up from Scorbit and what we're excited about, you know, of course, you know, we work with a ton of great manufacturers like Spooky and Jersey Jack, but we're also working currently with the folks at Chicago Gaming and American Pinball and Pinball Brothers to work to build integration directly into Scorbit from these newer machines. So very excited about that. I recently just bought a Cactus Canyon, so I selfishly want Scorbit to work in it. And then here we're at a great event with awesome tournaments.
    10:39
    We've worked to integrate Scorbit in with not only Neverdrains, which is a software that's running the tournament here, but also with Matchplay. which is a popular tournament software and this is just a post from Andreas the programmer of my match play where he's kind of bragging about what he's doing with scorebit we actually have a video here that shows what he's able to do when a machine is connected to scorebit instead of having a scorekeeper having to manually type in the score and show it to the player and say you're right with the press of a button you can pull in the final score and have it load into the system directly so you've got verified scores it helps scorekeeping go faster and just all in all makes tournament play that much better it's going to make everything faster and better and then as mentioned with our achievement system one thing that we're really proud of is the partnership with Jersey Jack when we rolled it out last fall the ability to see the achievements on the display the first time I saw this video it was just mind blowing the idea that there's something going on in the game that you directly made happen externally to the game code, that integration and how it comes up on the screen just adds that much more magic and wow factor to it when you do get the achievement.
    12:00
    And with that, we're growing our relationship with Jersey Jack. We're excited that with our latest code update for version 1.05 for Toy Story 4, those machines can now get connected to Scorebit and be able to track scores, earn those achievements. The game is great. If you haven't played it, I recommend it. I played it this morning.
    12:18
    And, you know, we're super excited to be there right at the launch. And mind you, this is all free. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, the Scorbit app itself is completely free.
    12:27
    The connecting it from a Jersey Jack machine is free. The only cost that comes in is when, you know, the hardware device to go into older machines. Obviously, it's a piece of hardware. We charge for that. And we also have a small monthly subscription for the use of the platform for the use of the devices.
    12:49
    And then we're also working on what we call Op Center, which is going to be the next kind of iteration of our support for venue owners and operators, which will allow more direct control over their machines. so being able to access data being able to understand what's going on with the machines get history to see how a game is performing you might see if you have a line of if you're an operator and you have a line of 20 machines and you see one game isn't getting as much gameplay you might want to pull it out and swap in another one controls over the various game settings and game states and then we're also looking to extend achievements to be local venue achievements so imagine in addition to getting the achievements for the game you could be the person who's gotten multiball 10 times at that venue and be able to get a badge and do venue-specific achievements, which could be super powerful in terms of running promotions or driving more gameplay.
    13:44
    And we're also working in terms of the next phase for us for hardware, something that we call Scorebit Link, which is an extended board. This is kind of the CAD design of it that connects to the coin door that would enable remote access to the admin menu. So imagine not having to be at the machine to be able to adjust the price or adjust the settings. Or even like operator alerts if something's broken or, yeah, basically change stuff on the fly. But the real magic is that that would enable digital payments. So imagine being able to purchase credits on your app and then put them in the machine without actually needing quarters or anything like that. And that all stems from a couple of years ago. I was in San Francisco, and we were at one of the bars that we play pinball at a lot, and they did not have any machines with bill changers. It was all quarters, and there was one small change box, and that change box was empty. And so I watched people walk up, go to one and play pinball. Oh, I need a quarter. Oh, the change machine doesn't work, and then walk out. That just lost revenue for that operator. So the idea is that if we can build digital payments within Scorebit and enable people to purchase credits via their app and then be able to insert those credits into the game. You know, you don't have to worry about having a change machine.
    15:12
    And that's kind of it. That's the world of Scorbit as we're at right now. We've been working really, really hard and diligently to get the platform as stable as possible and to make updates to the application. Our next kind of phase for us is really working closely with operators and venue owners to help extend how scoreboard can drive gameplay while continuing to make pinball more fun for players through connected pinball.
    15:42
    People have questions? Come on up here. okay uh for an older game like frontier uh i think an achievement would be something like lighting the 5x multiplier or something like that is that an idea of what you could do with an old game like it could be or it could be well i don't know frontier as well as you do but uh but for but for like a a um like a dmd game it could be the sort of thing where okay we know dmd What achievements would you load for Frontier then, Brian? For Frontier, yeah.
    16:20
    Definitely maybe the bonus collect scoop at the top of the play field. Maybe do it at 5x or collect it. So you would know all the light bulbs, anything that lights up, you could intercept that, the fact that the light was lit, and that could be. Right. Whatever pulse that happens to trigger the switch mechanism of the light to light up or this amount of score or stuff, that all comes back up to the system. We can track and then attach logic to award the achievement from. So if it's a matter of hitting the 5x multiplier and you've done that 10 times, there's an achievement.
    17:02
    Okay. Other questions? Yeah. Hi, I have a Wonka and a Guns N' Roses score bit. I love playing both of them and the score bit. I wondered if you considered, I love when they take pictures when you get a score. Do you consider pulling the photos up into the cloud and having that be part of the?
    17:24
    Yeah, so I've actually brought this up to the guys already. And so, yeah, either being your profile picture in the score bit app could just show up on the screen or vice versa so that if the game takes your picture, that can be right there in the app with your score. So yeah, we have a lot of ideas around the camera. And so yeah that a great idea And we definitely want to do that I mean essentially any of the data that flowing in the game is accessible to us So it just a matter of prioritizing and working with the JJP team to do it Yeah, you could probably ship that out. Software update, I'm guessing? Yeah. Do you have a developer API or kit or something? If I want to pull scores in my house and have my own local... Yeah, so we have documentation. and we have a developer API key that's separate than the other stuff. So yeah, email brian at scorebit.io and I can hook you up. Thank you. Yeah, part of the hope is to take that API and make it available to folks at home to either access the data on their machines to do what they want with it. We've seen some really cool integrations with folks from streamers and things like that who have used the API to plug into their stream so when a mode starts, the lights change in the house or something. Yeah, like there's really kind of cool stuff that you can do. We definitely would want to, you know, we're working on, you know, kind of formally making like a developer API spot where you can come and sign up and get your key. But for now, email Brian and we'll hook you up. We'll do. Thank you. I think my last question would be how can you tell if people are playing with the glass on or off?
    18:58
    It's a great question. And right now we can't. Right now we're working on the honor system in terms of, you know, pinball is an honorable game and we hope that there aren't cheaters out there. Well, in video games. Yeah. But down the road, there are different ways to, you know, whether it's a sensor in the game or some other piece of hardware to detect the air pressure in the play field or something like that to detect it. You know, we've – like the EMs, we've explored how we could do that. Luckily, I think that's a bit of an edge case in that, you know, hopefully there aren't that many cheaters out there. Yeah, I mean one thing that I've argued – yeah, like one thing I've argued is that, you know, like you could take the glass off now even on a non-Scorbit-enabled game. and put up the GC. But what's the fun in that? People come over, they're like, look at my awesome score. It's like, yeah, okay. I'm sorry this came down. If I keep my games on free play, will I be able to use OpCenter for free? Yep, yep. That's just the setting of how you want to... I didn't know what the digital payments of OpCenter would become, a pay platform or... Right. No, yeah, no. The idea is that the OpCenter is for anybody who owns a machine. So if you're home use or venue,
    20:05
    when you define, like when you look at a machine in a score, but there's the information similar to pinball map where like how much does a play cost at home, it's just free, right? So, yeah. Cool. Thank you very much. No problem. So this is just thinking about what you're talking about, the location, grand champion, things like that. Each table plays differently in the same type, right? So have you thought about going down that route and saying, well, this three-point score is okay, right? They all play differently. They'll play differently from each other. I think that's an opportunity for the operators, for one, to look at their games, maybe the location. Why aren't they getting Grand Champion? Or why aren't they getting this? All that kind of stuff. To help them diagnose things, potentially. So I don't know if that's the route you guys are going to go down, or what? I mean, another thing, yeah, we've definitely thought about that. and how to sort of standardize gameplay between games of the same title. One thing we could do is keep track of all the settings in the game, right? So that's one very easy way, making sure that they're standard across games or maybe different high scores for, like, five ball versus three ball, things like that, or extra balls turned on and off.
    21:25
    Do you have anything there? Yeah, I was going to say similar to the public settings. I mean, potentially we've talked about modeling it so you can say like tilt sensitivity and that sort of thing. But you're right. A game could be poorly set up and have a bad lean to the left, and that affects scores and that sort of thing. Or it could be set super easy, and that's why the scores get super high. But at some base level, the game plays like this. This is the scoring system, and scores are generally in this range about that, and we're just kind of accepting it from a more macro standpoint. But another thing we want to do that kind of reminded me of this is that all the data we're getting out of the game is really useful for the manufacturers too. So that they can keep track of, oh, are people getting these achievements or are people getting to this wizard mode? Like only two people on the planet have gotten to this wizard mode. Maybe we should make it easier or maybe we should do something different.
    22:16
    We want to help our data to help drive sort of the development process as well. Yeah, that was the next thing I was going to talk about. Depending on what that data is worth to people. If the operators want to give it to Jack, for example. Well, yeah, and the game length of play is a key metric both for the manufacturers as well as a venue operator.
    22:43
    I imagine pinball manufacturers probably want people to have a sense of how long a game should last. venue operators. You want people to play long enough to be engaged but short enough that you play more games. So trying to find that balance between making the game challenging but then also making it to continue coin dropping. It is great to have, right? Yeah, exactly. I have a few questions actually. What can you describe what the user experience is on a scorebit-enabled machine and how they're logging in to the machine and playing? Yeah, totally. So when you open up the app and when a game is connected to scorebit, basically when you open up the app, we use the location of your phone to zero in on where you are. So the idea being that if I'm in your bar, I'll know that, oh, I'm at solid state. Here's the list of games at solid state to make it easier to find them. We also have a function so that you're able to favorite locations. So, for example, my home garage with my pinball machines is the first screen that opens up when I open the app because those are the games I play the most. Once you choose the game you're going to play, you tap on the app and you get information about the game in terms of leaderboards, like what the high scores are for this game at this location, this game across the world. And there's also kind of a bar there that says waiting to start. when you press start on the pinball machine then the machine tells Corbett that the game has now started and that screen in the app changes to show the list of players so if you're playing a four player game you'll see player one, player two, player three, player four and then if I'm player one I tap player one and my name shows up on the app saying that I now claimed the player one slot so it's similar to Stern's taking a similar approach with Insider Connected where you claim which player slot or if you played Rock Band or things like that on Xbox when you choose which player you're going to play once you've claimed that as you play the game you see your score change both in the app mirroring what's happening in the game itself and when the game is done game over, here's your score you can choose to save it or trash it if it's a bad score and if you save it, it saves to that leaderboard and now keeps track of how that score was on that machine in that location so one of the things I find rather annoying about Storm's implementation of this Air Insider Connect is the crossover from playing a single game, playing multiple games, walking off, and holding the flipper button down and timing all that stuff out. It's a presumption now, if I'm understanding you correctly, if I play one game of mouse and around and I use the app and I walk away and move over to Tron,
    25:36
    what happens? Right, what happens? Are you onboarding every single time? Which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing if the app is out. It depends on the situation. So what we've done is when we first started, it wiped out after the game. So you played the game, and then it released you from being in that kind of spot. But if I'm on my home machine and I'm the only person playing it, it's annoying to have to claim it every time. So in the player preferences, we have settings that allow you to, say, auto-claim the slot I'm playing so that it knows. If it's at my home venue. Exactly. Does it assume that there's more credits in the machine before you auto? At this point, we have no connection to the credits as of yet. So we're not aware of how many credits are in the machine and that sort of thing right now.
    26:21
    As we move to payments and as we move to expanding to credits, there might be a way to pair that with players to make sure that I put in a credit and that's me as a player in terms of an identity standpoint. but by doing it wholly within the app and not on the machine itself we're minimizing from the needing to hit the flipper button and scanning and doing all that sort of stuff and basically what we want to avoid is we want to avoid someone claiming a player that not them right It similar to taking it the digital equivalent of taking the glass off of the machine is like, if I just stay logged in, I'm going to get your score, which is dishonest, right? And so, you know, so what we try to do is we're looking for different ways to bridge that gap. So a future enhancement that we're looking at is using NFC so that you can, you know, just tap your phone to the machine and now we know there's a physical connection between your phone and the machine and when that physical connection goes away, you can't claim the player slot. We're looking for ways to keep players honest in terms of claiming their scores but then also not adding confusion to, wait a minute, you're logged into my account and that's your score. I just find that it's an interesting burden on the player to disengage. It's one thing to engage on a machine because that's what you're trying to do, but to say, okay, now I'm moving on. Oh, wait, now I have to disengage with the machine? Yep. I think that's a hump. And if the venue, if it's a venue, right, a public venue, and the venue is crowded at the moment,
    27:57
    then all you're talking about is somebody else claiming a score can happen quite easily because you didn't disengage. Yeah. So we want to minimize that friction as much as possible as we can so to make it so that you're not putting a lot of onus on the user to have to do a lot in order to interact with it, but then also to maintain the accuracy of it. And that's something that we're constantly looking at in terms of the user interface and the way the system works, what happens automatically versus what happens manually.
    28:24
    I've got a lot of questions, but I'll limit them here. The hardware, you know, in my venue, I've got, you know, nine on the floor and four or five in the basement.
    28:36
    You know, the investment in the hardware is not trivial. does it transfer? Can I take the machine off,
    28:46
    strip the hardware, and put it into the next machine I put on rotation? Yeah, so the Scorbitron, that main device, works with all the games. And then those little smaller pieces, the probes, that's where you might need to change that out if you're switching from a DMD to a solid state or something like that.
    29:07
    And that is sort of like the minimal cost, is these probes. And so basically if you buy one for, you know, Doctor Who, and then say you want to move it to Frontier, you only have one device. You can take the Scorvotron out, you can take the DMD one out, and then buy the solid-state one, and then it will work great. Also, if you already have a DMD one, you can transfer it to any other DMD that you have as well, and it will work. Right. And we recognize that as an operator, spending $300 on a device, you've got to make sure there's a return on investment of that, that it will drive that more play and that sort of thing. We do offer discounts for volume purchases. So the more you buy, the cheaper the individual units get. And if you're interested in getting them for your venue, reach out to me. We can work out to see how we can work with you to best make it to be a success. while the thing with hardware is that it costs us to make it. So to a certain degree, you're balancing how to make it all work, but we don't want to make it cost prohibitive for the operators to invest in it. And that's why when you look at the different mods and things like that you can put on a machine, color DMD is a great kind of comparable thing. It's an external thing that you pay $150 to $300 for, depending on the type, that should enhance play and drive people to want to play more. And that's the same kind of comp that we look at for the Scorbitron and that ideally it will drive more play for an operator, for a venue when you get that flywheel going with lots of users using it. So we definitely want to be as operator-friendly as possible. Sure. Yeah, I know it seems critical to the long-term success, right? Yep, for sure. All right, so final question, and I guess this is sort of the elephant in the room, insider-connected. Are you guys, is Scorbit compatible with the modern STIR machines? can you override Insider Connect? Can it be a scoreboard trial machine and or not an Insider Connect machine? Is that a thing?
    31:11
    My Godzilla out of the box is Insider Connect. Can it also be scorebit? Short answer is yes. It can be both. You don't have to choose one over the other.
    31:23
    Because we believe in choice. We believe that we should work on every game no matter what other manufacturers might be doing. We want to be working with everybody. Very cool. And now, just a quick follow-up.
    31:38
    How has that announcement changed the way you're approaching your business going forward? It's been great. I mean, I think Insider Connected, I think they did a great job on it. It looks great.
    31:49
    And if anything, it's promoting the concept of connected pinball. So I think it's awesome. And we've reached out to Stern quite a bit. We've had conversations with them. We're open to working with them if they ever want to, just like we're open to working with every other manufacturer. Yeah, our door is always open. The ball is in their court. Yeah. But, no, in terms of what our approach is, it hasn't really changed much because we've been doing it since – we've been working on this since 2015. So, like, this is not – you know, they haven't come up with anything that's like, oh, wow, we didn't think of that. You know, it's pretty much, you know, if anything, they've, you know, it seems as if they've been looking at what we've been doing and applying it to their development. Yeah, you think? Yeah. Yeah, maybe. But, which I think is flattery. But, yeah, no, if anything, we're excited for it. So I'm glad that they did it. Cool. No, not at all.
    32:44
    Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. I want to follow up on that. The disengage. Now, where you're working closely with Jersey Jack, would that give you some extra options? I'm thinking in terms of, and the game ends and up on their screen it says, tap start three times in a second to disengage or, you know, something that would make their button make an easy disengage. Potentially, yeah. I mean, like, by having that, by having it at the software level, pretty much we can do anything with that. So currently right now we're still leaving it on the app side of it. But with some work and working with the developers, we could potentially go in that direction. That's one thing. We're constantly tweaking and looking and watching. At events and bars, when people are using the platform, I'm always just watching what they're doing and where they're running into problems. Because you can test in the lab for hours, but it's the real world and actually real users that tell you how your product works and if it's working or needs to be changed. But yeah, at that software level integration like we have with Jersey Jack and hopefully we'll have with other manufacturers, pretty much the pinball machine becomes a data collection and extension of the app. And any sort of stuff that's in there that's happening on the OS level on the pinball machine, we could potentially access and work with. So. Any other questions? Oh, come on up.
    34:14
    privacy if I don't want my machines out there. Yep. Is there a function where... Of course. Okay. Yeah. And then if... I guess you could use this on a map and then figure out what arcades have specific games. Oh, yeah, I'd like to go there. Yeah, so when you open up the app, there's a main kind of search function both by location and by game. So you're like, okay, great, I want to play Toy Story. Where can I find it? Or, hey, I'm in Sturbridge. Where can I play pinball? Yeah. And we actually work with the pinball map guys who have that great app with that location to share our data and make sure that we've got all locations, all machines up to date and that sort of thing. Thanks.
    34:54
    So final question. Is there any particular kind of stakeholder that you would like to find more of to work with, like locations or operators or anything that you're looking specifically for right now? Yeah, I mean, honestly, it's a simple answer, but it's everybody. It's players, operators, venue owners, manufacturers.
    35:17
    We built this out of a love for pinball and wanted to give something to the community to help move pinball into the 21st century. And so for us, it's just like this is something for everybody potentially.
    35:29
    Show organizers? Sure, of course. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, thanks very much for coming today. Thank you, everybody. Thanks.