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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Ep 36: Josh Hates Tom

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·2h 8m·analyzed·May 6, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Josh Sharp defends WPPR system changes addressing geographic tournament inequality and play-volume inflation.

Summary

Triple Drain Podcast Ep 36 features Josh Sharp (Stern Pinball staff, IFPA founder) defending proposed changes to the World Pinball Player Rankings (WPPR) system against host Tom's criticism. The discussion covers the history of the IFPA, the Whopper point system created in 2006, and upcoming efficiency-based ranking adjustments designed to address geographic inequality in tournament access and prevent over-play inflation. The hosts explore how the new system will impact players differently based on play volume and opponent strength.

Key Claims

  • Josh Sharp founded the IFPA rankings in 2006 as a spreadsheet project to compare players who never met each other competitively

    high confidence · Josh directly states he created the rankings in 2006 and his father helped negotiate the rights to the dormant IFPA association

  • The new WPPR system (version 5.8+/6.0) will use efficiency percentage and penalty scaling for over-play to equalize ranking opportunities across geographically disparate players

    high confidence · Josh explains the new system penalizes excessive play after a 'reasonableness threshold' (e.g., 80% scoring after 1,500 attempts) while keeping the system additive for good play

  • The ranking system change was prompted by COVID-era lockdowns making Josh unqualified for the 2022 World Championship despite being able to recover from 200th to top 25 after lockdowns ended

    high confidence · Josh states: 'coming out of COVID, the rankings all look crazy' and describes being able to recover rank due to access to District 82 tournaments

  • District 82 in Fox Cities, Wisconsin is positioned as the epicenter of competitive pinball in North America with frequent high-level tournaments

    high confidence · Multiple hosts confirm District 82's importance; Josh notes it's 240 miles from Chicago and draws top Stern staff players like Raymond Davidson and Keith Elwin

  • Top overseas players like Johannes struggle to compete internationally due to limited tournament access in their regions, while American players in key locations have disproportionate ranking advantages

    medium confidence · Hosts discuss Johannes being 'really, really, really good' but rarely playing in US tournaments, comparing him to fictional 'Ivan Drago' of pinball

  • Tom dropped significantly in proposed rankings due to playing 870+ events while maintaining top-20 results inconsistently with his overall play efficiency

    high confidence · Josh explicitly states Tom has 'top 20 events, and then he has his other 870 events' and efficiency rating is lower due to volume

  • The top-ranked players (Escher, Ray Day, Keith Elwin) will not be significantly affected by the new system because their top-20 results are representative of their overall play quality across hundreds of events

Notable Quotes

  • “I wanted to find a way to declare that I was better than Jorgen Schmorgen from Sweden who I never met”

    Josh Sharp — Explains the core motivation behind creating WPPR rankings in 2006—vanity project to compare geographically isolated top players

  • “It would be like you challenging Travis to Godzilla. He gets to play it once, and you get to play it 4,000 times. Who's going to win?... That's a shitty system.”

    Joel / Tom — Illustrates the fundamental problem the new WPPR changes attempt to solve: excessive play volume advantage

  • “the opportunities that I had to compete through my ability to take time off, my ability to live pretty close to District 82... I was able to go from 200th in the world back to the top 25 relatively easily”

    Josh Sharp — Demonstrates geographic privilege in US tournament landscape and motivation for systemic change

  • “Americans do not understand how good we have it”

    Joel — Meta-commentary on US tournament infrastructure advantage vs. international players facing limited events

  • “you go to 200 events, you will find your way to having 20 good ones... the current system goes, 20 good events, Joel, you're fucking great”

    Josh Sharp — Explains how old system rewarded lucky players with excessive play volume vs. truly skilled players

  • “I think it's one of those things that it's hard to judge something until you see an actual sample size come out of it”

    Travis — Hosts' cautious optimism about new system pending real-world testing

Entities

Josh SharppersonIFPAorganizationWPPR / WhopperproductDistrict 82organizationRaymond DavidsonpersonEscherpersonTomperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: IFPA/WPPR system fundamentally struggling with fairness due to variable tournament access across geographic regions; international players at severe disadvantage

    high · Josh details international disparities; hosts cite examples of elite European players unable to compete; acknowledges 'best we can do with time and data available'

  • ?

    community_signal: Tournament players concerned that new negative-weighting system will discourage participation; fear of ranking drops from poor performances

    medium · Joel mentions 'fear of I don't know if I want to play in this tournament because if I do bad, that hurts' and references Discord/forum discussion

  • ?

    event_signal: District 82 has emerged as primary North American competitive pinball hub with frequent high-level tournaments; significant geographic advantage for players within 240-mile Chicago radius

    high · Multiple references to District 82 accessibility; Josh cites 240-mile distance; mentions regular Fox Cities streaming events

  • ?

    community_signal: WPPR administrators attempting to balance competing demands: preventing over-play inflation while maintaining tournament participation incentives; acknowledging limitations of current data available

    medium · Josh acknowledges efficiency system doesn't account for opponent strength; states 'we do the best we can with the time we have' and notes future opponent-strength weighting not yet possible

  • ?

    competitive_signal: WPPR rankings system undergoing significant overhaul for 2024-2025 season to address geographic inequality and over-play inflation; new efficiency-based scaling system penalizes excessive tournament participation after threshold

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.386

0:00
the pinball network is online launching triple drain pinball podcast tom are you ready yes wonderful travis you look great are you feeling good you ready you ready to go yep i'm pretty good thank you and josh welcome are you ready for this thanks man i'm Always ready for this shit. All right, here we go.
0:32
That is not at all the right button. That was not. Crap. All right, we've got to start over. That's the first time. That's the first time that's ever happened. Roll with it. All right, we're rolling with that. You don't do this in post. That's kind of awesome. Yeah, clearly not doing it in post is working well for us. So here we go with this. That's not it either. Nope. Dude, we don't have the actual. It's gone. I told you it was all yours. This is so embarrassing. Josh, I am so sorry. Apparently we don't have our theme song. No, it sure wouldn't. They don't. You guys are making less progress than I am on Cactus.
1:16
Oh. Do we not have. I don't know what happened to the trip. Whatever. Okay. I'm playing Russian. I think I have it here. And, yeah.
1:28
Oh, God. We're three guys who like a talking ball. So we came up with a cloud-like name. We're going drag-and-drop on the talking ball. And we call ourselves Triple Train. We're Triple, Triple Train. Okay, I apparently wasn't ready. No, I wasn't. That was the way to start the night. That was shit, Sherlock.
1:57
That was, what are we, episode 36? That shows 35 episodes of experience at least. I mean. We were all waiting for Joel. That was the freaking problem. So, you know, nobody wants to hear about Zencaster at the beginning of the episode, but Zencaster here, you just put your soundboard at the top, and I start on the left and click to the right. And Triple Drain Intro was not there. But TPN Triple Drain Intro, well, whatever. Nobody cares. Good story, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So apparently the listeners want us to put in time stamps of when our pinball conversation starts. No.

high confidence · Josh states 'top few positions didn't change' and explains that truly skilled players maintain consistency across event volume

  • A new rule was implemented for 2024+ that prevents top-250 ranked players from dropping out of tournaments once they begin play

    medium confidence · Josh mentions 'a new rule that was put in place this year that I think it's if you're inside the top 250, right? You cannot drop out of a tournament'

    • Joel
    person
    Travisperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    Neil Graffperson
    Roger Sharpperson
    Johannesperson
    Ray Dayperson
    Zach Sharpperson
    Adam Beckerperson
    Tim Sextonperson
    Steve Bowenperson
    Texas Pinball Festival (TPF)event
    World Championship Germany 2022event
    InDESCevent
    Godzillagame
    Brianperson
    Shepardperson

    high · Josh Sharp confirms version 5.8/6.0 changes; explains efficiency percentage metric and penalty structure

  • $

    market_signal: Competitive pinball tournament accessibility creating measurable rank advantage; travel/financial ability to participate in District 82 directly correlates with ranking recovery speed

    high · Josh documents his 200th-to-top-25 recovery enabled by proximity and time-off ability; contrasts with Adam Becker's inability to qualify despite skill

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Stern Pinball has multiple tournament-experienced staff (Josh Sharp, Zach Sharp, Raymond Davidson, Tim Sexton, Keith Elwin) embedded in ranking system administration and code design

    high · Josh notes these staff contribute to code decisions; physically participate in District 82 tournaments

  • ?

    product_strategy: WPPR system continues annual iteration; version 6.0 planned as attempted solution to opponent-strength weighting (not yet implemented); further refinements possible if 6.0 insufficient

    medium · Josh states 'if Brian doesn't kill me, and this 6.0 doesn't do a good enough job' and references possibility of future opponent-strength factoring

  • ?

    regulatory_signal: New WPPR rule implemented that top-250 ranked players cannot drop out of tournaments once started; prevents strategic tournament avoidance

    medium · Josh states 'new rule that was put in place this year that I think it's if you're inside the top 250, right? You cannot drop out of a tournament'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Host Travis moving from initial disagreement with new WPPR system to cautious acceptance after detailed explanation; recognizes need for real-world sample size before judgment

    high · Travis states 'went from when I first heard it announced to not agreeing... to seeing Josh explain it... being like, okay, I'm starting to understand'

    • 2:34
    That'd be nice. Honestly, that'd be pretty nice. Josh, you want to skip forward through, you know, this, the whatever you call this? It's nice watching each of your guys' faces when you're listening to your own intro song. There's, like, a version of, like, love it. like I've heard it a lot embarrassment there's all your guys faces there's so many emotions well it's a good song and somebody made a video for us so I just I feel like we can't cut it out it's too good but it is it's really nice alright well this is this has started off so well we have a guest tonight we have a guest tonight Josh Sharp the one and only he is here I'm glad you're here and you're here because Tom is mad at you, and you need to defend some of the decisions that you have made. There's a single tear coming down my eye right now. Yes. So we're not going to put timestamps on pinball talk, but maybe I'll put a timestamp on tournament talk because we're going to dive right into some tournament talk. And I know some people genuinely don't care. But what I will say is I used to be one of those people. I used to not care. But obviously doing the podcast with these two people. guys, but is a big part of it. But also I didn't realize actually how important like the tournament scene is. And I just, and what I mean by that is like a lot of the rules, a lot of the rules in modern code are as good as they are because of the tournament scene. We have amazing players that have stepped into different roles in pool in pinball companies like yourself, Josh, that are bringing experience and, and they want to make the code as polished and as great as it possibly can be. And obviously you see that with like Tim Sexton, Ray Day. You see that with Keith. I know JJP has their Keith and their Joe cat, like tournament players that are very good. I probably forgot somebody and I'm sorry, Martin Roberts, he's a tournament player. Like people that are, that, that are really experienced in that and understand we need to account for this in modern code. And we need to make sure that that modern code is fun for me, the novice and also fun for the U3 for the tournament players. So, yes, tournament talk is important. That's what I'm saying is if you're not – even though you don't play tournaments, I still think it's important to, like, I don't know, respect them. I don't know. I'm pretty sure – You break, like, 13,000. You're making it sound more important than I think I even think it is.
    5:06
    I don't know. I got sucked into it, and I've played in one tournament. That 89th place, Joel, that got you hooked, didn't it? Yeah, it was higher than Monica, remember? That is true. You were all over that. I remember. I had one goal. I think she had stopped playing. Like, I think she had stopped. It was a pump and dump, and she had stopped. She discovered the bar in her girlfriend. This is what happens. Yeah.
    5:30
    Okay. Well, what are we talking about? So, Josh, apparently in the world of tournaments, in pinball tournaments, you're kind of a big deal, right? I mean, you're at the top. You are the top of the food chain. Is that right? How would you describe yourself? That is incorrect. Don't let Tom explain it. No, I'm not explaining it.
    5:56
    I've been playing competitively since I was 13 years old. So my first event ever was 1993. So I've been in this scene a long time for two-thirds of my life, more than a long time. Holy moly. and even before that with the stuff that my dad and Steve Epstein were doing with Papa in the early 80s for league play before they kind of moved on to international level tournaments it's a side of pinball that I have always been extremely passionate about and as I've gotten older and more in the scene like doing starting the rankings back in 2006 was just a way for me to express my love for the game and something that I felt could add to the entertainment value for, at least back then, trying to indirectly compare players to one another who never got to play against each other. I mean, back then it was like Expo, Papa, see you next Expo. It was kind of the whole tournament calendar besides local leagues and stuff. But, I mean, outside of the few Europeans that would come over for Papa or for Expo, you'd never see any of those people. And that's changed now, you know, 30 years later. But in the 90s and 2000s, there was no real good way of comparing yourself to your peers outside of, like, the people I played in Chicago or the random people that showed up to the two tournaments a year that I went to. Yeah. So you created or founded the IFPA, right? I did not. No. So the IFPA was an industry association in the 90s. My dad actually helped found it back then. And your dad is Roger Sharp. He is Roger. The one shot, that whole guy. Yep, big deal. The mustache, the dude. And all due respect, I actually respect that guy, but everybody, yeah, Roger Sharp, yeah, yeah. Okay, sorry, go ahead. So the IFPA went defunct when pinball was crashing, 95, 96, as stuff started to peter out. And I started the rankings as its own separate fun spreadsheet while I was out of college, not working in a cube, staring at the same spreadsheet for days on end. And my dad had reached out to the association that owned the IFPA that was just sitting dormant for a decade. And we negotiated the rights for us to take it over. Nice. Nice. So when did, maybe explain it, but what is a Whopper and when did the Whopper enter into the scene? February 2006 was the first Whopper standings that were created. So it's a ranking point. It's a point of currency with respect to the more events you play in, the more Whoppers you earn. And it's World Pinball Player Rankings. Whopper. Got it. Whopper for short. Okay. How many do you have, Joel? I got all the Whoppers. Almost one. Almost a full Whopper, right? Yeah, suck back traps. I think 1.6. There you go. Crushing it. There we go. So, okay, Whoppers. Got it. So you said 2006, and explain the significance of it, or why is it that Ray Day lays awake at night just dreaming of the Whoppers, all the Whoppers? Because of his ego. I mean that's really it he'll tell you that the reason why I mean 2006 I wanted to find a way to declare that I was better than Jorgen Schmorgen from Sweden who I never met so developing a point structure where I can play what I play in and Jorgen Schmorgen can play what he plays in. I'm not a real guy, right? I'm not laughing at a real guy. Jorgen Holm is a real guy, but I didn't want to call him out. We had such a great opportunity. Jorgen Schmorgan. He won't be playing in Germany or else I probably would have now called him Jorgen Schmorgan all weekend. He'd have no idea why. Jorgen Schmorgan. It all stems from my ego back in the mid-2000s of feeling like I was pretty good. Not Keith Elwin good back then, but, like, I'd be willing to fight anyone on a game of pinball anytime, anywhere. Like, let's go. So, you know, it was a vanity project for me. It continues to be for me. I mean, there's a really large, selfish nature to this whole thing because the number of hours that I put in, certainly back when it started and without the volunteers that I have now, too many life hours to not be getting something out of this for myself. Okay. So it really is a way for people to show how good they are among a sea of very good players. So, okay, so I'm going to do something that's probably dumb. But this is after, so listening to all the podcasts and participating in this, I've never read, and there goes Travis. I don't give a first of many. First of many. I tried fixing it, I swear. Go ahead, Joel. Okay, so this is what I've learned, or I think I know. So a whopper is gained at a tournament. So you're playing a tournament, and a whopper is all about, like, if I went to my local tournament and I'm the best guy there and I win, that doesn't mean nearly as much as Tom going to District 82 and winning his Tuesday night league because the competitiveness or the quality of players at a place like District 82 is higher than potentially the quality of players at my local tournament. So there's like a waiting system of you, like a first place at one person's Tuesday night league may be worth way more whoppers than a first place at somebody else's league. So it's so, but there's math behind all that. There's a lot of math and a lot of trying to figure out, well, how is it? how do you value one person's or what? And it all depends on, well, how many high-ranking players are playing in that same tournament as you are? Because, sure, if I host a tournament with 20 of my family members, I don't know, there's probably a limited number of people that participate, a limited number of games. But if nobody there plays pinball and I win, I can't just be like, boom, I just won 100 Whoppers. You know, praise me, because the other 19 people suck. but if you do a tournament with 20 top ranked players, then yeah, winning that tournament's a big deal. That actually deserves Whoppers. Is that, is that, is that at all accurate? Like, does that make sense? It is. Yeah. So quality of players and quantity of players, both feed the value of the event along with like the quality of the tournament with respect to, are we playing one ball on your Godzilla and that's deciding the winner? or are we playing a best of 100 on Godzilla?
    13:29
    Okay, so there's a lot of math. There's a lot of math here, and we don't have to dive into too much of the specifics, but it seems like the – and this came up in jest when we were talking about TPF because Travis participated in Classics, and he bombed? Is that the right word? Just sucked? Was that – I'm right? Yeah. Yeah, that's fairly accurate. The way to describe it. Very accurate way. Apparently somebody's reached out to Travis and says, what's up with this Joel guy? He keeps picking on Travis. We're just going to lay into it. Hey, I have white nights out there. I'm fine with that.
    14:08
    Send all the spam to Joel, please. Travis did not do particularly well. But my question at the time was, does that matter? Why would you not just play? It doesn't matter if you're first or last. Like, I assumed there was no negative, like, you earn Whoppers, you're not losing Whoppers. Like, is there a negative side of this? There is not a negative side to this. Yes. So, but what I'm hearing is that may be changing, and that's why, Josh, I think you're here to explain that, defend that. I don't know. What's the thought behind that? I think for me, so the changes that are still proposed, we don't know if we're going to actually make Tom unhappy or not. We're still waiting to decide if we're going to do it.
    14:56
    But I, you know, coming out of COVID, the rankings all look crazy. And I find myself not qualified for Germany. That's three weeks away.
    15:10
    Always about John. I mean, really, really. I know. Did you qualify? Did your brother qualify? No, we were both locked in our houses for far too long. And we are both extremely competitive people. And the idea of flying to Germany and hosting a world championship and I have to sit in a freaking chair and watch 80 other people play in this high-level event, like I'd rather get some cavities filled because that would just kill me. Yeah. So I was able to, and upon now reflection of how my 2022 went, the opportunities that I had to compete through my ability to take time off, my ability to live pretty close to District 82, my ability to have the means to, you know, stay at a hotel, travel, do whatever.
    16:11
    Like, I was able to go from 200th in the world back to the top 25 relatively easily. And I saw some of my peers, like Adam Becker, who's on our staff, that didn't have the same opportunities that I had. and he will be going to Germany and not playing. And I feel really bad for him. And I know that he tried to scrap together what he could in 2022, but there was just no way when compared to someone like myself who was able to play at an unreasonable level, that there was action that we are looking to take that allows someone like Adam to still be able to compete and prove that he is just as good as I am at playing pinball without needing to take 35 days off away from his family to go compete at an insane level. Okay. So, yes, what I've learned, once again, by doing this podcast with these guys, they're traveling all the time. They're traveling all the time. They're traveling all over the U.S., and they're playing in some amazing tournaments. And not only that, they're doing well at it. They're doing well at it. Not only that, but Travis, when he was in Oklahoma, it looked like there was a pretty good Oklahoma scene, so he was in a pretty competitive league night there. And then Tom, he's in tournaments all the time at a very well-known— I'm in the utopia of pinball. Yes, District 82, which has awesome tournaments rather frequently in Fox City's pinball streams, almost every one of them, if not every one of them. And some people may not know this, but District 82 is a whopping, what, three hours from Chicago? Yeah, like 240 for me. Yeah, so all the people in Chicago, you know, you and your brother, you got Raymond Davidson, you got Keith Owen, you got other Stern staff, Tim Sexton, Steve Bowen at American Pinball. You got these people. That's a quick and easy drive up from Chicago to play at these high-end tournaments. So, yes, if Tom is in the mecca of pinball, he's in a location where, once again, the Whopper is all valued about how good your competition is. Well, if there happens to be a whole lot of really good competitors all in one place that can participate in a lot of pinball tournaments, yeah, I could understand how those people have an opportunity to get a lot of Whoppers that other people, what's Smorgasborgen or whatever it was, out in the middle of nowhere, he may not. He may only be able to participate in five or six tournaments a year. And for most, like, we have that data, and for most of the world, and I feel bad because, like, Americans do not understand how good we have it. I mean, even if you're within a stone's throw of District 82, you're on, like, another universe. But, like, there's pockets in America that countries dream of having, you know, a fraction of the events per year that they can plan. And what happens is you end up with a ranking system that doesn't really do an accurate job because the inputs are so variable from player to player. It would be like you challenging Travis to Godzilla. He gets to play it once, and you get to play it 4,000 times. Who's going to win? I'd probably pick you, Joel. Like, getting you 4,000 attempts to beat Travis's one attempt. And if our system is saying, well, Joel's better than Travis. I mean, math doesn't lie, right? Wow, that's a shitty system. You put it that way. So, obviously, that's an extreme take on it, but it really is kind of how we're looking to possibly balance the system for next year, which is, hey, Joe, we're going to give you those 4,000 attempts. That's still cool, man. You go nuts. But we're going to start to, like, maybe after 1,500 attempts, anything after that, you might get to keep 80% of your score. You might still beat Travis, and you still have a ton of plays that you can do, But at some point, your overplaying, your excess playing against Travis won't be as advantageous as it is just taken in the raw form. So you can't limit, like what I'm thinking here is if that guy in the middle of nowhere can only play five tournaments, you can't just limit everybody to five entries. Correct. You can't limit the number of plays. That would be silly. so what you're saying is we're setting a reasonableness level so there's plenty of people that are playing not enough and at some point we're saying sorry dude I know you only play three tournaments a year it's not enough you need to play more because in order to be to fairly compare yourself to your peers there is some amount of data you have to put in you can't play once and then expect everyone else to be compared to your one attempt. Yeah, that's fair. I know when we had Neil McRae on, that was something that he was talking about, just over there, like the amount of tournaments that are so few, and they don't get this, and that's why you see Neil get on a plane and fly over here. Or with Neil, I mean, him running stuff now over there is helping the scene a ton. I mean, without Neil, it's like they have the U.K. Open and the pinball league, and that was like it. And the U.K. is huge. They got like nothing. So I know this was something that kind of boggled my mind, but it's like Escher, right? So Escher's out there in Colorado. I thought I heard that he doesn't play in league. And my thought was like, why would you not? Because he'd get first every time. And basically what they said is because it's not worth it. Like it's not worth his time because his skill level compared to his peers or something, it's like he doesn't get many whoppers from it. That was something that I heard. So at some point, and this is the change for 5.8 this year. I can't even remember anymore.
    22:20
    Yes? Come on, competitive pinball people. Travis is saying yes. What change are you talking about? I'm talking about the Whopper inflation. Oh, yeah. That was 5.8. It was certified. Was that? Okay. So we're in the process of trying to separate out, with respect to value, really big events from really small events. The older versions of the system, and we change every year, so there's been a new system pretty much every year since 2006, that it didn't do a great job of separating out that local league win from a Texas Pinball Festival win. Yeah. And now, you know, to have Asher saying something like that, it means the system's working because he has so many events that are large victories that him having a small victory is meaningless for his card. It won't raise him in the rankings at all. Okay. So, I mean, I would assume your goal, like you don't want people to play less pinball. We don't. We don't want people to play less pinball, but is there now going to be a potential, like, fear of, like, I don't know if I want to play in this tournament because if I do bad, that hurts. I think that's my big question. Like, you know, we've seen some people on the Discord and, like, to the forums, and they're just like, oh, now it's like you don't want to play. and you were telling me privately, Josh, and you were like, no, actually you want to play because your rank would have dropped significantly more had I not played. So, Joel, the metric that we're using to sort of equalize people with high variable amounts of play is a stat that we call efficiency percentage, which is if an event is worth 100 whoppers and you get 10, you're batting 10%. Okay. So if you are getting better at pinball, the more you play, regardless of whether an event is worth enough to hit your card or not or whatever, the more you play well, you can raise that percentage, and it will impact you in a positive way. So, you know, offline and share, you know, running through Tom's model of like, what if I never played at District 82? And it's like, well, you'd be worse. Okay, well, what if I only played at District 82? Well, you'd be worse. That it's still an additive thing if you are playing well. And, I mean, ultimately it comes down to, well, what if I remove all the events I played poorly in? And it's like, well, then you're Keith Allen. And playing poorly is a part of, you know, someone's whole journey as a pinball player. And it's representative of their true skill.
    25:28
    So what about, okay, so back to Travis's TPF experience in Classics. He's got, what is it, you had like eight games you had to play to get your positioning. If you got seven games in and you realize this isn't looking good, And if you would have just stopped or no, as soon as you start, you're done. As soon as I played ball one, game one, I'm in. We call that an exploit, Joel.
    25:54
    Well, there was a new rule that was put in place this year that I think it's if you're inside the top 250, right? You cannot drop out of a tournament. You just got to, as soon as you start, you're all in, which I like that rule personally. Okay. Yeah. So what I will say is when I I heard I heard this buzz. Right. And it was in one of our Facebook chats. And I don't I don't remember who it was, but some misinformation.
    26:22
    It's like, oh, we got it. We got something stirring the pot here in the tournament world. Let me let me try to look at this. And I know this isn't my place, but let me see what's going on here. And I ended up looking at an Excel sheet and it showed current rankings versus proposed change. and it was interesting to see because like the top few positions didn't change. Escher is still Escher. Like Ray Day was still Ray Day. They're still there. And they play a lot. They do, and they're very good. And then I know, what is it, is Johannes, is that his name? Yeah. Is that the guy that's like unbelievable overseas? I think when Avengers came out, he like beat it the very first time he touched the game.
    27:04
    I'm talking about the right guy. He's in my APC group. I'm looking forward to kicking his ass. Yeah. So he's – I've heard that he's, like, really, really, really good, but yet I've never seen him over here. Really, really, really good is an understatement. Yeah. But you hear that, right? That it's like – he's this mythical creature across the land. It's like Yvonne Drago overseas for pinball. That's the way I think of him. But he doesn't play that – like, he doesn't play in all the tournaments over here. So all of a sudden, boom, he's up in the top ten. I'm like, well, I've heard about that guy, but he wasn't there before. He's still, but, like, boom in the top ten from what is he's, like, top 25 now. But, yeah, but I'm like, okay, now for this guy to be what you're describing him as is really, really, really good. Like, well, where is he then? Like, okay, so I see some adjustments here, and then I'm looking at names. I saw there was some slight change with Travis. Neil Graff, Tom's son, still there. But, unfortunately, I had to scroll down a decent bit, and then I see Tom, and I'm like, oh, Tom, what's going on? And this is why. I was like, I'm going to put them both. No. This is why. But this is, like, interesting. Okay, so this is actually affecting somebody, somebody that I know. So what's the – so the thought here is it all comes down to the efficiency rating. So because Tom plays so much, he has to be – Not so much. Okay, so explain this to me, please. Because he – so Tom has his top 20 events, and then he has his other 870 events. that he's played.
    28:36
    The closer that your top 20 is representative of your overall play, you will not change. And I think the best example that people have told me to use when explaining this is if, Joel, you go to 10 events and you get lucky in one of them, and you're like, yeah, I'm okay, I can play. And sometimes, you know, things work out for me, balls bounce the right way. I played well. I had a good tournament. Sweet. Good job, man. you go to 10 more, you have another good one. You go to 10 more, you have another good one. You go to 200 events, you will find your way to having 20 good ones. Good job, man. And the current system goes, 20 good events, Joel, you're fucking great. Congratulations. Because the system, however, doesn't look at the 180 events that you played as a way to generate those 20 good events, right? Okay. So this new system is doing exactly that. Interesting. We're going to look at your 180. And for a lot of people, you know, if someone is truly, like, not a good player that is lucky in their way, one out of ten, your 180 will not be anywhere near representative of your good 20. So the reality is you're looking at all 200. We will fuck you up if that's your situation. So someone like Raymond, though, or Escher, or Gookie, like Travis, Neil, they have 200 events. They have their best 20. their next 50 are still really good their next 50 after that are pretty good at some point they're like 20 of them are bad their adjustment isn't as much what about i'm headed to joel's division dude there's a lot of fun going on this vision let me tell you a lot less stress a lot less stress but so travis here's one thing though yeah like so here's one thing i see like And I agree with that, but the system's also not seeing who I'm playing. So, like, in a lot of those events, I'm playing Escher and Jason Zoller and Raymond Davidson and Josh Sharp, Zach Sharp, Neil Graff, Keith Elwin, you know. So how do you, I guess, rate that? Is that just by the opportunity? I mean, that's the, and I think. As for the person who's going to do the plan. Well, Shepard on Telforms today kind of put things into perspective, which is, you know, we do the best we can with the time we have to do it and the data we have available. The next level of this, if Brian doesn't kill me, and this 6.0 doesn't do a good enough job, I think it will do a good enough job to not have to worry about it. But it's really nobody's efficiency percentage is the same for exactly the reason you mentioned, Tom, right? Like having an efficiency percentage of 20% when you're playing great people is different than 20% when you're playing a bunch of average casual people. And we are not judging that yet.
    31:56
    There probably is a way for us to be able to do that, but it is not in the cards yet. So and maybe I not grasping it but it so if Tom got 20th place at Indisc would that 20th place be considered the same as 20th place at I don know like at a small tournament that's not nearly – like the Whopper-tunities are higher at Indisc, right? Yes. But he's saying just the – And he'll earn more Whoppers for 20th at InDesk than he would for 20th somewhere else. And so, I mean, there's a benefit to that. If Tom plays well at events where I'm there, Ray's there, Escher's there, everybody's there, there's so many more points available in those evenings or weekends than a Tilton Tuesday or whatever. Okay. And then the other thing is because now negative games come into play, like what's interesting is listening to these guys when they go to a tournament, as soon as the tournament's over, they're like, well, what did that do to my ranking? So my thought here is if Travis wants to get a TPF, and I'm sorry if I'm just bringing this up over and over again, but because Classics wasn't great for him, but yet the mains, he got fourth place. Is there any way that he would come out of that weekend like a wash? Like is there any way that that would just equal, like, because in my mind, that seems like just a bad eight games of pinball versus like a really impressive feat of what he did in mains. I think the main event is worth far more Whoppers. So if you do your blended efficiency for that weekend, if I, I mean, shit, man, we have computers. Let's see. Oh, doing some, Travis, you've been quiet. Is this the, what are your thoughts? Do you, do you agree with this? I'm taking it all in. I went from when I first heard it announced to not agreeing with it. to seeing Josh explain it, to further not agreeing with it, but then seeing him explain it for more, and then being like, okay, I'm starting to understand what he's meaning here. So I'm like, I'm just, I'm indifferent to it, because I think it's an evolving process. I think it's one of those things that it's hard to judge something until you see an actual sample size come out of it. Because otherwise, it's like we talked about before, it's all in theory right now. Like, what will the rankings look like next year? what will it look like two years from now. And I do hope that something is addressed with, in terms of, I guess, the strength of opponent. Because obviously, like, to me personally, I think going up to District A2, and people talk about this all the time, like, oh, somebody just travels for their Whoppers or they do this to do that. And, like, I tell those people, it's like, well, we're not just traveling to play nobodies. It's literally world-class players everywhere, like in every single group. So I remember there was one tournament in which one of my last groups I had like Haley George and Zach Sharp. And guess what? I still took like 21st in that tournament. So the competition is just so high level that honestly I think for people that haven't been there, I can say that if I finish in the top 20 there, like I feel like I did pretty good. And I value that more than even finishing at like a huge event here in the St. Louis area and finishing first. But that's just something, obviously, that I think it'll have to be judged later on or adjusted later on if we come to that. Because my only concern is it's not for the top tier players and it's not for the players that are like ranked 10,000 or switching from 800 to 500. Right. Those are just the rankings are what they are. But it's seeing how the people that are on the cusp of IFBA that are going for that, that want to qualify for something like that. That might be that's what I'm interested in seeing how that affects something like that. So, I don't know. I'm indifferent to it all. For those that know ahead of time that they're going to play poorly and can stop themselves,
    36:04
    they're going to be great because they'll know when to not play because they know they're going to play bad. I always think I'm going to win, so my mental state is never great. I'm never going to stop because I think I'm going to win everything I play. I think judging it, I think personally because we've seen people talk about, well, I'm not going to play in this event. I'm not going to play in that event. and I feel the same way, but not because I'm worried about it necessarily hurting my efficiency or anything like that. I've just decided that I only want to play in events and formats that I think is going to be fun. That's one of the main reasons why I set out State this year, because heads up, I just don't have fun with it, but of course now I'm traveling across the world to potentially play in events. The positive possible consequence here, too, is if there are enough people that don't want to play in, let's call them high-variance events that seem more coin-flipping, does that motivate tournament directors to run better events where skill is more fairly judged? And if that happens, that's great. because there is right now, you know, a trend of getting stuff to be worth as much as it can, as quickly as you can. That's the number one question I get into the IFPA's inbox is, I'm running an event for three hours on Tuesday. I want the most whoppers I can in three hours. What do I do, Josh? And my answer to them is always, if there was an answer to that, we'd change it so it was no longer the answer. because that's not what it's supposed to be about. And that's when you get into people that are like, you know, playing on all classics, playing on, you know, like setting games up so hard that it's not fun because they want to overvalue their tournament. And this brings a balance to that because if you're going to make something that is not fun and seems very luck boxy, there is now a reason for players to not support that behavior from a tournament director.
    38:06
    That's a good point. But, yeah, I don't know. This is the more, like I said earlier, the more that I learn about tournaments, there's just so much to this. There's so much to this. And this is an interesting question. I don't know. Maybe it's an unfair question. But, like, Travis, when I look at your screen, you know, you've got a bunch of trophies behind you. So, at the end of the day, like I said, this may be unfair, but is getting, like, one big trophy, do you value that more or do you value your top 20 positioning in Worlds? Like, which one are you more proud of? So honestly, I'm a weird player because I come from Oklahoma, in which there was like at that time when I started, there was no Whopper points there, right? So basically in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and some of the players in Texas, the main thing that everybody talked about was, well, you have to go to Stern Pro Circuit events, and you have to go to those places to find the points. And that was true because that's where all the best players were. There was no way I was going to get to top 100 playing my weeklies in Oklahoma City. It just was not going to happen. So the way that I look at it is I just like playing pinball because it's fun. I like finding formats that are fun. And I'm probably one of those that when I go to District 82, I honestly don't take every tournament dead serious. Otherwise, you would not see me with a spotted cow at a time like hanging out in the parking lot, right? But the main events, I do take serious. The Stern Pro Circuit events, I do take serious. And hopefully my results in that for the past couple of years kind of show that. You're half, man. Holy moly. Those numbers are off the charts. But the thing is, is that that may not be the experience for somebody else. Like, I think everybody plays competitive pinball for whatever reason they want to, and that's completely valid, right? So when it comes to my ranking, I just wanted to qualify for IPPA. If I won some tournaments along the way, awesome. If I had fun along the way, even more awesome. And then the next step was, is, well, I wanted to try to be top 10 because I didn't realize I would get close to it, right? So, you know, it's one of those things, and I've told Tom this, that with the new system in place, I honestly, I don't think I have a chance at Top 10 anytime soon. It would be a massive grind, and I'm okay with that. Like, I'm okay with still going to tournaments and just playing to have fun in certain spots, and then other spots I'll still play to have fun, but I might take it a little bit more serious. You won't find me with a spotted cow waiting to play my next turn or something like that, you know. So, I mean, people play it for different reasons and people value, you know, different things. And right now, I will say the most number one thing I value right now currently is my children that are starting to want to play in tournaments. So that's something that I'm trying to foster for them and trying to encourage them to do to learn rule sets and stuff like that. You have a wife too at this point?
    40:55
    You're pretty lucky, dude. My wife wants no part of my travels. But that's my motivation. So people are going to have different motivations for why they do what they do. And I personally, I don't get anything out of going to, like, a weekly tournament and just going hard in the paint the entire time. Like, I don't get anything out of that. But I'm not going to fault somebody if they do get something out of it, because everybody plays for their reasons, and they have fun for the reasons that they have fun. And just to clarify, the trophy you are most proud of behind you is the Pinball Degenerates Award, right, for the – No, no. No, that is cool. No, no, no. Josh knows this one.
    41:32
    Oklahoma. Careful, I'll send you another corrected one. Well, I don't know. I mean, boom, there's 42 minutes of conversation. Wait, hold on. I have Travis's Texas tale of the tape.
    41:48
    And Travis's left. He's got his cameras out. So Travis's efficiency percentage overall is 36. His Texas main event was 72%. His Texas classics event was shitty, 3%. His overall, when you mix the two from that weekend, 49%. So he raised his overall. Okay. Interesting. He helped himself. Look at that, Travis. So lesson learned. Do not play classics tournaments in which you only have eight plays and you've had three beers. Lessons, everybody. Just do all final fours and you'll be fine. Yeah, it's crazy. Apparently an inconvenience, right? Well, Tom, was there anything else? I mean, any other questions or comments or feelings that you have in regards to this? It was just more, do you think this is going to affect, I guess,
    42:45
    how tournament directors are going to run things and how do you think we're going to see a shift towards maybe people not running events or smaller events?
    43:03
    I think it really depends on, I mean, every event that gets organized is through the love of volunteer work to get that done and that tournament director's own motivations, right? Like, I used to run my monthly out here, and thank God for Andy Bagwell. I've been, like, had him run it a couple of times and then slowly just kept moving away. And now he's done it. I think it was right when Evan was being born, so four years ago. It was like, oh, man, my wife's due. Can you run it this month? And it's like, oh, she's, you know, we have a baby at home. Can you run it, like, the next three months? And now it's four years later and he's still doing it. which is doing well from what I've seen he's taken it to I was joking with him the other day back years and years ago we would that month we had like 9 people 4 of them were members of my family and one of them was my old boss from work who I dragged along so that was like 5 out of the 9 so now he gets 60, 70, 80 players it's kind of like you're tilting Tuesdays discredited too. Like player counts that blow my mind. That's awesome. And that'll continue because of the reasons why Andy enjoys running it. So I think it all comes down to the person that's willing to put the time in to do it. Clearly there are people that are in rage mode that are now no longer running anything ever. And that is a response.
    44:38
    Yeah. I feel like Marty and Jeff. That is a pinball game that exists. So is there anything, yeah, anything else you want to clarify or just, I don't know, any other thoughts, Josh? Because I'm assuming this comes out and some people were elated to see, like, awesome, yes, they're taking it, like, boom, and then other people are, like you're saying, in rage mode. But obviously you can only type so much. Is there anything else you want to clarify or say about this? Yeah, I mean, most, nobody thinks about this shit more than I do. And the private feedback I've gotten has been that this proposed list looks way more accurate than the current list. And a lot of the things that we do, you know, have to – we're not just math people. We're math and reasoning people. It's really easy to be like, well, that's what the formula says, so fuck off. So, like, if something doesn't pass our smell test, and we used to call it, like, we've run so many simulations over the last 15 years. And back in the day, you know, we called it the Keith test. You know, we make some changes that we thought in theory were good changes. You run it, and Keith is ranked 13th. Yeah. That does not work. So those theoretical great decisions go in the garbage because the list has to reflect reality. And for me, reality is discussing with my peers who are the best in the world at this based on what they've seen from people and who they've played against. it's sort of just a rational test of people that I've seen play, people that I've played against people that I think I'm better than people that I think might be better than me at this point in my life and yeah, I do think it's a better move for accuracy and I apologize to people like Tom who take it on the chin a little harder than others I'll always have state Oh, that's right. That's right, man. That was going to be my last question. Can you confirm or deny that the proposed plan when you were writing this, that it was not saved as screw you, Tom Graff? Because that's what I thought the document, I thought that there was a leaked document at some point that that was the title. I mean, I feel bad for Tom because most of the, because we get a lot of, not anonymous to me, but a lot of people that complain about things anonymously And the number of times that Neil's name was used was far more than I would care to admit. And it's been great to see Neil, like, earn where he is. Yeah. I was just going to say, has that died down a little bit? Yeah, of course. Because he's, I mean, he's shown, like, besides you're obviously, you know, the stuff that you're streaming at District 82, he's now no longer just playing that local crowd, right? We're having, you know, major events up there, and he's swinging, man. He's swinging with the rest of us. And you go from a random name on a spreadsheet that doesn't belong to a bunch of people that don't know shit. They don't know anybody. You know, they just see a name, and I've never played against that person. I've never seen them play. They suck. And that's everyone's, like, default mechanism. Like, prove to me that you're good, because I've never heard of you. and he has proved to a lot of people that he's good. I just remember before I got into this and I would watch, you know, you guys at Papa, which I thought was amazing, you know, I'd see people on the forums like, well, they're only getting $200 million on Twilight Zone. And it's like, well, yeah, you're not playing in your basement where, you know, You know, you have your posts all the way down and, you know, the game's set up easy. It's set up hard as balls, you know.
    48:40
    It's a different universe. It's a different universe out there. Well, cool. Well, good. I know that was – I knew we wanted to talk about this and kind of try to clarify all that. So I feel like I understand it a little bit. I don't know what I'm talking about at all. So I think that was good. Shockingly, Josh has me kind of seeing it from his point of view now. I don't know what it is. He's always, he's good at doing that.
    49:05
    I don't know what it is. He's good at a lot of things. There's your transition. He's good at a lot of things. That's how I keep my wife to stick around here. I just keep talking until she's like, fuck, fine, whatever.
    49:16
    So, transition here, what do we got? We're at 49 minutes. So, here's your number. Why do you keep saying that? I'm saying that because people want to know when pinball talk happens. If we were talking about toppers, you'd be all fucking excited. Joel, that was actually probably the most exciting segment we've had since the freaking Magic Stick stuff. So I enjoyed that. Good. I agree with that. Well, okay. So another thing we all enjoy here, which is sitting right behind Josh, sitting right behind Josh. And no, it's not Avengers. I see Avengers behind him. Pulp Fiction. Josh, you've been all over. I know you've been on multiple other podcasts about this. And you are lead rules designer, correct? Is that an appropriate term for you? How cool is that? Yeah. So cool. Yeah. So first, here's a question. You said, and I don't know if you can answer this or not, but you said you have been essentially providing rules or feedback on anything and everything that you can. Apparently you're emailing people and bothering people with all your rules thoughts for years and years. Since I was a kid. Is there any particular rule in a game that you feel that somebody implemented because of you. Like, that you're, like, yeah, I did, that was my idea. Is there anything like that? Sure, sure. And Zack, too, over the years. My favorite that Zack came up with was Avatar during Final Battle, during the Wizard Mode.
    50:50
    I think, like, me, Zack, and Lyman were talking, and there was some, you know, you build up your switches or whatever, then the jackpot is lit. And Zach was like, it could be cool, the outlanes say unobtainium, which is like the currency in the avatar universe that is worth more than anything. And Zach's like, if you can intentionally drain out the outlanes, it ended up like increasing the kill shot for your jackpot when it was ready to be lit. So you had to like sacrifice your ball in play and then hope to hit it quick enough. to be able to, like, re-trigger launching the balls back into play. But, like, that was really cool. Interesting. Yeah. Have you done that one before, Joel? Have I done that one on TNA?
    51:37
    TNA, didn't you? Oh, yeah. I threw some multi-ball rules at Scott that he thought was pretty cool. I think it was, like, the timing of the targets before they reset. So you could go, like, single, double, triple. But if you didn't do it fast enough, you'd come back up. So was that actually you that came up with that? Yeah. Or any concept of that? Yeah. That's like literally my favorite part of that game. Good. Okay. Iron Man, do or die time. Yeah. That was you. And that was because there was nothing there.
    52:10
    And back, those were some not great Stern days. Those were like they needed a game on the line in six weeks, and Lyman and Lonnie were throwing anything they could into a game to get it chippable. and I remember I think I was hanging out in Lonnie's office and they had the instruction cards printed and it said something about like do or die time and they had plans for do or die multiball which is like the ultimate wizard mode that wasn't in yet and they knew they had to get it done but they were like fuck like we can't ship a game with an instruction card has a rule and the instruction cards back then have like six things on it yeah you can't ship a game that doesn't have one of these six major things on the card and i said guys it doesn't say do or die multi-ball it says do or die time and i came up with this like one one shot idea to do everything on one ball and then it lights this thing for like it's do or die time man do it or you get nothing and they threw that in there and it worked nice nice yeah i made my comment about avatar that was actually the first pinball game I owned, and it took me off because it kicked my butt, and the fact that you would lose progress on everything after ball one, I was like, well, I suck at pinball. Come on. I want a three-ball game, not a one-ball game. I did the Kiss Army, the hurry-ups for the Lonnie. Lonnie was struggling to find out what to do with the target banks, but he had a dedicated insert that was already in the play field, and that's what I mean. I feel so bad for those guys because we're pretty, at least through the Pulp Fiction design process, we had more than enough time to figure out what we wanted to do before, like, play fields were printed. So, you know, the play fields get printed, and Lonnie's like, I have an army insert on the center ramp that's just there, and I have the KISS insert that's on the left orbit that's just there. It's like, any ideas? And I wrote him some long email about, like, you know, what if you do a hurry-up between the two that you can keep building throughout the game, blah, blah, blah. It's like, sounds great. That's it. Let's go. That's great. It's past review. Yeah, that's awesome. How many ideas have you thrown at Keith Elwin that he has completely ignored?
    54:29
    Man, I just sit back and enjoy his stuff. Okay. There's not much to throw at him. Yeah. No, that's awesome. Well, that's really cool. I think it's, you know, a lot of people have known your name from a tournament standpoint, but I think that was something you had mentioned before, and I was like, I wonder if he has examples. And, yes, you've got a lot of examples there. Yeah, man. I have more email. I mean, I have e-mails to Lonnie that I'm sure at some point gets mostly – I had a bunch of Aerosmith stuff because I was a huge fan of the band that I'm sure he was like, fuck off.
    55:02
    That all got ignored. But, yeah, man, it's my hobby. It's my creative outlet. So what about this? So Pulp Fiction, well, first off, awesome game. I played it at TPF. I had a blast on it. And that's coming from the guy that's not that great at pinball or decent maybe. But still, I really enjoyed the game. And I will give you credit that it is one thing that I find incredibly challenging the more that I get into these modern games is it doesn't – like communicating what you need to do to the player is very challenging. And you have things all the way from a JJP game that has literally 1,000 lights and a 27-inch screen or whatever all the way to your game, which has four alphanumeric displays and just lit inserts, and yet they both need to communicate what to do, and there's challenges there. And I will tell you, just watching, we couldn't hear the audio. We could not hear the audio, but yet still through your displays and the colored inserts, the choreography was good enough to kind of carry the player through and kind of show you what to do. So I don't know. I give you credit for that. Is that something that, I mean, it's one thing to establish a rule, but is that something you're getting into as well? Or is that more the coder to have to take that responsibility of colors and choreography and all that? No, I mean, I think at least for the Pulp Fiction team, you know, we all worked together because we're all pinball players at various levels of skill and whatnot. But, I mean, Mark and George have done this before, right? Yeah. So I think, and believe me, there's plenty of rules vomit that I sent to them as I was getting involved in this stuff that was way too complicated. And, you know, their question to me is just like, how do you plan on explaining this to the point, you know, this is the medium we have. And it's like, oh, yeah, I have no idea. You know, I would know what to do. So, like, isn't that good enough? Well, there aren't custom call-outs, right? Like, there aren't, what I mean, like, nobody's saying, like, shoot the left, you know, in-line drops. No, there's not. And I think at least from a creative, like, I find, and this has nothing to do with, like, tournament play. This has to do with, like, world under glass pinball experience for me as a person is I don't like breaking the fourth wall that you're playing a pinball machine. so I think if you know play Adam's Family it doesn't like Seance doesn't tell you to shoot the ramp there's no instructional speech that talks about hitting pinball things and I think that charm of that Williams era like hits me really in a great place and it's a place that Now, you know, having some influence at least on the stuff that I'm Pulp Fiction, like I fought pretty hardly for like, I don't need someone to tell me to shoot the left orbit. We're not shooting a left orbit. We're driving a car. Mr. Wolf is driving a car. We're not shooting a spinner. So hearing somebody say shoot the wamps in Godzilla doesn't give you the charm. But, you know, it works in that game because of the campiness. It has to work or it has to not work. And I find there are plenty of examples of games where, like, I don't think it works well at all. It just immediately takes me out. Interesting. Is it like when you hear in Stranger Things, freaking Hopper, he feels like he's half asleep and he's like, outlaying Ball Save. So I'm guessing that doesn't work.
    58:59
    It's like when Whirlwind yells at you to head for the cellar, it doesn't go, head for the cellar. That's the scoop on the left side of the plane.
    59:08
    Yeah. I've been on a Stranger Things kick lately, and I cannot get over the call-outs. Like, everything else in the game is fine. Like, I like the UV kit and all that and just the way the game progresses. But, yeah, the call-outs, I don't know. Like, what did he do with those call-outs? Because obviously it's the ass-girly bit of them. He read them. That's all he did was just read them, you know. All say, like, okay, yeah. Extra ball. Like, yeah. Well, if you're looking for voice actors, I don't know if you heard, but on our last episode, we all learned that Tom has a soundboard now. So if you need some voices, he's ready to go. Does it do a Sam Jackson?
    59:49
    You know what? I thought about putting some stuff in here, but I didn't have time. Oh, man. If Tom, I don't want to hear. There's so many Samuel L. Jackson lines I would love to hear, Tom. but for the sake of our podcast not getting canceled in some form, you probably shouldn't say it's up. So I got a question, though, because I didn't watch the Pulp Fiction game reveal on the network, just because I'm kind of wanting to be able to experience as many, I guess, movie quotes that are in the game. But how many movie quotes are in the game? I think there were like 300, 400. There was 250 by the time we had to, like, print the flyer. But we're, I mean, it's well north of 300 now, and I think today Thiel packaged a bunch of alternate outlane ball save quotes that are really good. And sort of those frustrating, it's sort of what I always found that Lyman did really well, is very specific game situations, holding back a specific call out for like draining with a wizard mode foot on your last ball or, you know, draining when something that was available that's worth a lot is going away at end of ball. Like having the situations where the game recognizes, like, you're probably pretty pissed off right now. You were one shot away from X and now it's gone. This drain is way more significant than all your others. So we're kind of, we're sprinkling in that stuff now. What about, and this is, yeah, so I realized I thought about this a while ago, but now Now that this game has been played at all these different shows, and I know you've had people there, and you've probably been able to look at audits and stuff like that, are there any particular rule changes that you guys are planning? Like, is there anything you're seeing where, oh, it looks like nobody, this mode is rarely done, so maybe we should do nothing like that, or you're pretty happy with what you're seeing? It's on point. There you go. I mean, I have played a shit ton of Pulp Fiction over the last four years. Yeah. Like, so many games. And I feel like I'm pretty good at recognizing, and, like, my four-year-old plays it a lot, my other kids play it. Like, people of various skill level have played it. Okay. For the design team, I mean, having someone like me play it, someone like Mark, who is, like, a B-level solid player, and someone like George, who's a C-level player, like, it's important that all three of us have fun. while we're experiencing the game. And all three of us are game guys. That's all. We represented the groups that we knew were going to play it, and we played it a lot. And that was something like Lyman played it a lot while we had it in development. And, you know, for him, he was always just like, you've got to play it. And I think Keith talks about it too, you know, that once his game shifts, he's like he doesn't want to play it because he's just been playing it so much that, like, there is a lot of truth to that. In order to gain the confidence that what you're putting out there is good, you've got to eat your cooking. So I think you've done an exceptional job talking about this game on a lot of other podcasts that I would assume a lot of our listeners have listened to. Is there any particular thing that you haven't talked about or haven't had a chance to talk about? And if not, do you have any particular updates? I know Q3 is still what we're hearing, but I know CGC is not particularly known for, like, speed. So I think most people have a realistic expectation of, like, hopefully by the end of the year. I don't know. Is there anything, yeah, is there anything you haven't talked about yet about Pulp Fiction that you want to? Not really. I mean, we have weekly meetings with CGC, and I'm with you. I wish that they built 1,000 games a day, but they don't. They focus on, you know, sort of that three-legged stool of good, fast, and cheap. They focus on good to the point of painfully excruciating great. And they focus on cheap.
    64:04
    Yeah. Because, you know, they're very bond conscientious. At Raw Thrills, we can respect that. We're very, you know, fiscally responsible as a company of not wanting to waste dollars in a game. if there's a way to do something like we redesigned our spinner mechs that we think are higher quality and lower cost So you find ways to solve problems that work better for the product and better for the bill of materials. So it's a painstaking process, but as – and we've been through very – I mean, this game was supposed to be out, I don't know, probably Texas the year before. Who knows? Certainly, like, we were trying for Expo of last year. and just not being able to get things where we wanted it.
    64:51
    The attention to detail is something I can respect because at the end of the day, whether someone gets it 2023, 2024, 2025, if they're going to own it for the next 20 years, they will have it for either 18, 19, or 20 years. It's like long-term, I'd much rather have a quality product that took an extra year to come out. Yeah, and I respect that. One thing that I think we actually discussed this before it happened, but so Bond 60th came out, and it's single-level play field. And people are like, what? Single-level play field. And then shortly thereafter, boom, Pulp Fixing comes out. Single-level play field. And now Punny Factory. I know it's kind of weird to put that in the same group, but single-level play field. Wait, wait, wait. Joel. Yes, Travis. Stop.
    65:43
    Okay. TNA, single-level play field. Go ahead. You got us back. Okay, go ahead. But is this when, because your game has been done for so long, when you saw that the Bond 60th came out, did you feel like that was good or bad? Like, okay, let's see how this single-level play feels received by the community because that's what's coming with our game, or did you feel like they stole your thunder because that's unique to you, or not, like this is good overall? I don't know. Any thoughts that are always single-level games? Good pinball is good pinball. I think, I mean, I knew what the selling price was going to be, so we weren't worried about much of anything. And the fact that it's a limited run, like, it is what it is. And, I mean, Keith joked with me because I have all of Keith's games, you know, a while ago. It's like, you have all of them until the next one. It just sort of poked me. I was like, I'm not you guys. I don't have one on order. Yeah, there's all of us guys, you know, that just have them in their basement. But I think. Are you flipping out? The single level of coincidence, I think, like the Bond licensors had that option for them to pursue. And for us, that wasn't the game we wanted to make, right? I think Mark has talked about that, that like circumstance for us turned this into this. And for us, it was like, well, this is what we're faced to do. And this was all before I was involved. For Mark and George, it was like, well, these are our options. We can tell them to go pound sand and have a nice day, or we can take this on and see if we can spend a couple of million bucks to make a couple million bucks and have some fun along the way.
    67:25
    And for them, it was like, yeah, let's do it. Let's see what we can do here. And I'm glad we did. No, that's awesome. I know Tom has one on order, unless you canceled it because Josh changed all the rules. All right. I'll bring it back, Tom. I'll appreciate it.
    67:42
    No, I still have it on order. Yeah. No, it's an awesome game. I think it's funny coming away. To be honest, coming off of TPF, I think that was the one that kind of surprised me the most. Almost it may have won the show in my mind. It surprised me a lot as well, Joel, for sure. I've probably been the most pessimistic person on the team. I think everyone sort of guessed how many we would sell, and I think I had the lowest number by a lot. I was like, if we could do like 50 more than TNA, which I think is a great game, I feel like we did a good job, guys. That's cool. And you had mentioned the fact that CGC, their quality, to be honest, the lines were constant on those four games, and I never warned Saul the glass off. Like, the games just worked. So really impressive stuff. I don't know. The two of you, I feel like I'm probably asking too many questions. Is there anything you guys want to talk about with Pulp Fiction or, you know, real talk for a second? You want me to take the glass off? It hasn't been off.
    68:41
    I mean, Pulp Fiction to me is the perfect storm because, I mean, Joel, Tom, we talk about this a lot off podcast that I think that the pinball industry in general has just criminally underrated the value of 90s themes, I think, at this point. And kind of just because I see what the demographic has become just from where I work right now and everything. And I see what people that are casual, very much casual to pinball, that's getting into pinball, starting to buy pinball, what they value and what they like. And Pulp Fiction is one of those that hits like a lot of marks around with it. It's the same thing I've told you guys before. Like if somebody redid South Park, my God, it would just absolutely crush. I'm with you on that. There's certain themes that I think that there's a lot of the buyer base right now that's 35 and above that are very familiar with late 80s, mid-90s themes. And that's like the wheelhouse right now. And I think that's why we're seeing Foo Fighters do pretty well, too. I mean, obviously, it is an excellent design, excellent artwork. But at the same time, too, it's like, yeah, you look online, you see people saying, oh, another dad rock theme or something like that. But there's certain themes that they just hit right with the current demographic. And I think I would like to see more companies go towards something like Pulp Fiction or towards something that's just kind of off the beaten path a little bit. And I think that to me is exciting about pinball is seeing stuff like that. And hopefully this starts a trend of that because I think it will benefit pinball. And I do love the fact that single level games are coming back and they're kind of there. they obviously have staying power. And Pulp Fiction is a very good example of this. The fact that you can do something that is very much the quote-unquote world under glass. And I love the idea that Josh alluded to earlier that there's call-outs in the game that are very much associated with the theme. And it's not making you think, oh, I'm playing a pinball machine. So that to me is more of the experience like I know I want to have as a player. And I love single-level games. So seeing a modern single-level game with a modern theme that's as close to being modern as possible. But I think that themes like those would do gangbusters. They really would. And I think Pulp Fiction is just that should be a lead indicator for a lot of people of what's possible. And at the same time, this is going to sound like I'm just kissing Josh's ass right now. But the fact is that I really do enjoy playing the games too that have high-level players behind the rule sets. Because for me personally, the rule sets make sense. And I feel like I'm encouraged to explore the whole entire play field. And I feel like there's a lot more points in the game that matter. So hopefully a lot of people will kind of see this and kind of realize, okay, this is what the perfect storm in pinball looks like. And maybe we need to kind of aim towards that. That doesn't mean we have to direct copy it, But that gives you the framework that works, that hits with the consumer base. I think that's the most important takeaway from what Pulp Fiction is doing right now.
    71:56
    And my TED Talk. Travis, scary enough. Hi, Travis. Good to see you. So one thing that I have learned, first off, Travis, that was very well said. That was well said. Nice job. But what I've learned is apparently the pinball demographic is Tom Graff because he's bought every new release from every company in the last year. So it's like they're hitting you, apparently, from all angles, Tom. Selling a lot of cavities in the garage household.
    72:27
    Well, he's selling games. He's flipping stuff. But apparently right now it seems like. This is my first CGC made game. Yeah, but you got this. You got Godfather. You got Foo Fighters LE.
    72:40
    You bought a Bonpro. I had to sell games. You did. I mean, money doesn't grow on trees. I don't have a fucking money tree outside.
    72:49
    He has an obsession, Joel. I know he does, but I'm saying, like, clearly they're doing something right. A lot of these companies are doing something right with picking good, relevant licenses and good, relevant themes. And then on top of that, actually making really good games. There's a lot of good pinball out there. It's a pretty good time to be in the hobby. Certainly if you've been around as long as I have and experienced some of the darker years, it's like don't take this era for granted because it takes a lot of good people to make a lot of good games. So fantastic transition because one era that I take for granted, like when I got, I've been in the hobby, I don't know, six years at this point, and like I am all in on modern games. Let's bring you back to the 90s, Joe. Let's do it. I was all in on modern games, and most people know, but Zach at Flippin' Out lets me borrow games to stream. No way. No way, yeah. Yeah. I did not. I don't own this game right there. I don't own that. Yeah. Or this.
    73:50
    But Zach let me borrow Cactus Canyon, and I will tell you, when I put it in the back of the car, I was just like, whatever. This will fill the gap for the next month or two. Like, I just, I was, I wasn't expecting much because it's a, in my mind, it's a rather simple, basic game. And I have people telling me it's too easy. It's too easy. So, I will tell you, and most people know this, they've heard me gush on it for the last, I don't know, many months. I loved it. I absolutely loved the game, had a blast with the game. And just to clarify, that game was unfinished when it was originally made. CGC has remade the game, and they did finish the code, as in there is a wizard mode in the game. There are a few other little things, like they've completed the code. technically. But Josh, you and Lyman were put in a position where you've had the opportunity to go farther. Is there, I mean, is there a particular reason that they picked Cactus Canyon to do this? Or have they thought about doing this with other games in the past? Or is it just... I mean, I think Doug sorted, I mean, what he did is he did the big three remakes first, which was, you know, hey, just make Lyman games, you'll be fine. And then he ran out of that. And I think he sorted his spreadsheet by market value rather than by quality of game. Okay. And quickly realized that. And I told him, I'm like, yeah, Cactus goes for way too much money because it's rare, not because it's good. And, you know, an opportunity came along for, even before Lyman and I were involved, the CGC team did a whole lot of due diligence to try to finish the game because I think everyone quickly realized it was not a shippable product. And they were too far into it before they realized it wasn't a really great game. And they still would have done fine selling 90s Cactus to enough people probably, but that same thing, focusing on quality product and trying to sell a lot of units of one investment in the development of a game is, you know, they've taken the time and resources to try and finish that. And the ability for Lyman to become available after Elvira was wrapping up over on the stern side and the ability for me to be around and help, whether I'm asked to help or not, I just help. That hasn't changed in 30 years. I keep doing it. But the, yeah, man, I mean, they took the task of trying to finish the game. And Lyman and I had an even more entertaining task of trying to make the best version of Cactus that could ever be made if you had all the time and resources to do it. Yeah, which is really interesting because it's kind of what you were saying before. You've been in a situation where a designer had an insert on a play field that was empty, and they're looking at you as go, oh, yeah. Well, technically. The number of inserts we wanted to change on this thing. Holy moly. Technically, Cactus, every insert does something. I mean, technically, it's done, but you guys have sat down and brainstormed how much further you want to take it. And I know you've said before, like, you have beta code on your game, so you already have stuff on yours that's different than others. Yeah, I think that was probably the biggest, like, the misinformation that I've been hearing is, you know, nothing's done. And obviously, like, yes, there were words that I said about stuff not being done. But, like, if any of you guys came over and played this right now, I have no doubt you'd love it already. the things that I mean the core at least for Travis and Tom where the points come from in the game are radically different than the game that is available to play right now and a lot of that came from Lyman and I wanting to since the 90s I mean I kind of pin it at ACDC Lyman kind of revolutionized pinball software into risk and reward being the primary focus of playing a ball. And, you know, something as simple as song, jackpot, and ACDC, where everything you did, you know, there weren't modes in the game the way that if you grew up in the 90s, there was a known understanding of what modes were in pinball. and ACDC it's like well yeah there's songs it's like well are they modes not really they're shots and it's like it all feeds this one thing and it's like you know when that thing came out and you're just like well you build it as long as you want man go crazy if you drain it's gone but you know go with the flow and it's like oh my god this is awesome you know So the intensity, as you keep going, the intensity ratchets up. Things get more exciting because the numbers are getting bigger, and the pain of failure increases when things don't go your way. And Cactus had none of that, and the Cactus that exists right now has none of that. My Cactus has all of that. Well, that's something that I think people have always said the game's easy. I know they say it's easy from a shallow standpoint, Like the modes, you start a mode, it's like two shots, you're done with the mode. But I also know it is a very forgiving layout. I mean, what can you – is there anything you can do about the layout besides just jack up the back more and open up your outlanes? I mean, is there anything that – you can make it physically more difficult. Turn off the ball save, raise your outlane. I mean, mine plays like a bitch.
    79:53
    Sensitive swings. If you take those needle nose pliers and get them so they're just like that far apart.
    80:03
    If you do that, Joel, that will rock your world. My world is already being rocked, Travis. Okay. Sensitive slings are the worst out of everything. I would deal with open out lanes. I don't mind like a high pitch. But if you have sensitive slings and you're expecting the ball to not like zing this way, that's like, yeah, it's a mind up. Oh, it zanged. It zinged and zanged. It does a lot of stuff, doesn't it? What else? So with this code that you are – so first off, you had made a Pinside post saying, unfortunately, after Lyman's passing, there really hasn't been any progress. But CGC is still, like, I know you are absolutely planning on pushing for this to happen. You are still reassuring that this is a priority. Yes, and that post is now old news because we've had some progress this week. Oh, that's awesome. Stuff's happening. Okay, that's really exciting. Is the plan when that's released, is the plan going to be like when you push the start button you get a pick? Or is it something you do in the settings of the game? Like it'll always be one way or always be the other? So I think right now everyone has two settings, which is OG 90s Cactus and whatever.
    81:13
    I mean, what is the app? Like completed Cactus. And then I think ours is called Extended Cactus or something. that my game has three settings. Everyone, your game has two. Yeah, well, fancy you.
    81:29
    That's why they gave me the big bus, Joel. Last question, and maybe you can or cannot answer this, but rumors are that there's a hardware component. There's a new hardware component in this game. If there is, hypothetically, how would that impact the current version of the code? Or does it? I mean, like if I want to switch between current and your extended, am I going to have to physically remove something from the game or is it I think and I have not actually seen any hardware yet myself I've seen drawings of stuff but I haven't seen nothing's in my game and I know that in code for at least whatever the completed and the extended versions will both be able to handle this hardware Okay. The OG, that's a great question, Joel. I have to email. Nobody wants to play that anymore. The OG one, yeah. I have a feeling it would freak out at having additional components on it, trying to live that code. Just to confirm, the additional hardware is a third flipper, right? We're just – I don't know where you're going. First-person flipper. There we go. That's right. Well, cool. Well, I know I am in on an SE+. I'm very much looking forward to it. And I know there was a time where Tom was in on one, and I know at the time, Tom, you said your biggest push for that was this extended code. We'll get you back, Tom. Yeah, I have no doubt that when this code comes out, and that will be an interesting thing to see how CGC handles that, because if now all of a sudden this code comes out and only the current owners have a chance to experience it and then all these other people experience it and go, well, holy crap, this game's incredible, but CGKids isn't making them anymore. Like, I hope – I'll be curious to see how they handle that, which is actually – They'll build more, man. They'll build more. Good, because – so that's – it's an interesting transition because – and this is the point in the podcast where, Josh, feel free to contribute as much or as little as you want because I don't want you to be in any sort of uncomfortable situation with the words that you say, but you seem like you're one of those guys that you're going to say it regardless. There's nothing – I'll say it to whoever says it. So that doesn't bother me. So what I'm transitioning to is Haggis. Haggis Pinball. Haggis had, they were at TPF, and there was a chance that people played Fathom. People played Fathom, and this is a game that very few people had played over here in the U.S., and TPS all of a sudden, people loved it. TPF, TPF. I was like, I'm saying that wrong. People loved it. People had a really, really good, they really enjoyed it, myself included. Well, Damien actually put out a video early this week where he basically said, hey, guess what? All the Mermaid editions are sold out. But now that people have had a chance to try the 2.0 code, Marty's code, they've gotten a lot of feedback of people being upset that they can't buy it. And some people would say, snooze, you lose. But what's interesting is Haggis is saying, okay, we're going to open it up. We're going to open up the books again, and we're going to allow people to buy a classic version with the 2.0 code.
    84:48
    And when I read that, or when I saw the video, I was like, that's cool. To me, I actually thought of Cactus Canyon, the SE+. To me, the topper is incredible. It's an added mode to the game. Like, it's a unique experience. I missed out on the LE. but you know what? I'm happy to pay more for that. And that's what I'm seeing in Haggis. So people are buying the classic plus, which has the 2.0 code. But to my surprise, like everything else in pinball, there are people that are upset about this, about this idea. So the three of you, any thoughts when you read that, were you upset? Were you, Oh boy, you got the lawn chair out. You're ready to see how this can unfold. I don't know. What were your thoughts when you saw that announcement? I knew people were going to be upset, but I didn't really give a shit. There you go. That a boy, Tom. Travis is shaking his head. Good night, everybody. Yeah.
    85:44
    I don't know. Thoughts on that? I just – I thought it was ballsy. I mean, at the end of the day, it's like – I kind of forget how they initially said what the Mermaid Edition was going to be, whether or not this rule set was supposed to be exclusive. It wasn't. So, okay. You had to go mermaid if you wanted to. Right, right. So judging by that, I mean, honestly, if it was my decision, I would be like, no, don't do it. We don't need to piss off, like, our most valued customers. Because let's face facts. Like, of course, every customer, you know, is valued. But the reality is if somebody is willing to buy your top-tier machine or your top-tier product, they're showing that they're basically, like, the super fan of that particular product. So I would think the last thing you want to do, especially if your intentions is to have additional games coming out in the future, you don't want to necessarily anger those people. Because at the same time that you're doing that, you might be accidentally devaluing the, I guess, the allure or the, I guess, just making somebody want to have that machine. Like, you have to have a big difference in it. And you'll have certain people that the big differences that they see might be cosmetic, but you do have a lot of people that the big differences that they see is software.
    87:06
    So when you remove that exclusiveness to it, you're basically indicating to your customer base, like, hey, this is what we're going to do now, which means we're probably going to do that in the future, too. So if I'm in on a fathom, right, like a main LE, why do I want to turn around? if I'm motivated by additional code and I'm motivated by those things, why would I want to spend money again in the future? So that's my biggest concern with it. I don't know if that juice was worth the squeeze, but they've decided to do that. But I think didn't they decide that it was only going to be available for, like, two or three weeks? For two weeks. Yeah. So it's basically still limited. It is. In a way, yeah. But you're also paying more. Like, at least so many. It doesn't matter. Like it doesn't, the people they buy, they don't buy it off the mat. They don't think of it that way. It's emotion. Like anytime that you're buying pinball, right? Yeah. Or any high value product that's a luxury item, you're buying it off emotion. You're buying it off the flex. You're not thinking, oh, I'm saving $200 here. Oh, I'm saving $300 here. Oh, I have $2,000 more value than this person. You might be thinking that if you're trying to resell it or if you plan on selling it. But, you know, overall, I think a lot of people, the buyer base, they buy luxury items based off the emotion of it, not necessarily like how much money they might be saving. Like there's just a lot of people not motivated by that. So, of course, when you have a product like this that only has so many units available, that's the way that they're going to be looking at it. Like the vast majority are going to be looking at that. Plus, too, consider this, Joel. There's a lot of people that bought this game day one, and they had to wait a long time. Now all of a sudden they say, wait, the one thing, the number one thing I valued the most out of this product, I could have got it anyways for less, and I could have had that money doing something else with it. So, I mean, yeah, it's just a risk. It's a massive risk, and I don't know if that's necessarily worth it, and I don't know what the motivation is. But let's face facts. When you're running a business, your motivation isn't just always, well, I just want to please the customer. Like, you have to hit bottom lines. You have to build revenue. You have to hit margins. That's just the reality of it because you have to have healthy cash flow. If you don't have that, well, you don't have a business, right? That's just business 101. So, I mean, it's – I don't know. It's not something that I would have recommended them doing, just knowing just the emotional part of it. But if they find that it's successful for them, then I don't know. maybe they're onto something, but at least now moving forward, people know that, hey, this could potentially happen, that you could get a top tier version that has something that's exclusive, but that exclusive is actually a window. Like it's not going to be exclusive in perpetuity. It's going to be exclusive up to a certain timeframe. And then something's released to everybody else. I think if they show that their rule sets, that they're going to do something like that in the future, that might be how they get some people back. But it's just, It's dangerous. You've got to be careful angering your super fans. I mean, and people that buy your top-tier product, that is your super fan. Yeah. It's a risk. And you don't know if the risk was worth it until it's later, right? And I think we dealt with that. You know how many people want an SE Plus for Pulp Fiction so they can get the topper? That's, like, the most popular email that we get. and there was this expectation of like this is going to happen right because it just happened with Cactus and I have been a very strong proponent of like we at least in discussing with the team before we launched I was of the fear of like we're not going to even sell out of L.E.S. this thing's going to be a fucking disaster that was where my headspace was and if we can use that exclusivity that Travis was talking about when it comes to the features that the LE has to create that FOMO to be able to tell me that we sold out of our LEs, I'm good.
    91:22
    And telling the rest of the team, like, that's good enough for me. Could we have done 2,000 LEs? Probably. But, like, for me, it needed to be a number that was enough to get people to act because that's the only way that for us the project's profitable so it's finding that balance of you know if you have 10,000 le's it's not an le and and people will not worry about getting their order in right away so it's like where's that line to make sure that there's a run on the bank in that moment because you're able through your marketing materials or whatever generate that excitement for someone to make an emotional purchase in a moment in time and that's just how the market is now like I don't outside of Keith Allen games I don't buy anything unless I've played it I'm like old school I need to know that I like the game before I'm willing to invest my dollars in it and And for me, that means I never get an LE because those are sold on FOMO instantly, and that's something that I am okay with based on my buying personality. But recognizing that there's a large enough market that doesn't have my buying personality, you've got to take advantage of that. And how far can you push that without alienating that group? I think Travis kind of nailed it. Like, clearly, Chicago Gaming did it with Cactus, took some shit, took some people that were happy.
    92:57
    It didn't affect Pulp. And whether that happened to be because of our involvement on the Raw Thrills Play Mechanics side, I don't know. But for, I mean, Chicago Gaming's building and selling the game to their customers, their dealers. It's all going through them that they're kind of coming out of the cactus situation with maybe some pissed off people, but unscathed. So, you know, it's maybe hopefully for the Haggis guys. You know, I like what those guys are doing. I've not played Fathom yet. I look forward to doing it. But hopefully it's a lot of chirping of people that wanted to be the coolest person and nobody else can be cool. and for them, those people will get over it and move on or they won't. Do you think, though, that it, like, when I think about Stern, I think of the difference between an LE and a premium. And the truth is the difference between an LE and a premium is cosmetic. It's just cosmetic. And as of right now, the difference between a Cactus Canyon LE or a standard edition is cosmetic. It's just cosmetic. So that's not exactly true, which was actually the decision point that Doug at Chicago Gaming,
    94:09
    and believe me, it was painful for him to have to decide what to do. And because of the way that the topper is integrated into gameplay, not the way that like, hey, the things interact as you do things on the play field. Like, no, there is a mode in the game that is directly linked to that experience. that crossed the line for him in terms of wanting to make sure that someone, that they did have a version that was only cosmetically different. That's where he drew the line. I completely agree with it. That's the thing. After borrowing the LE and seeing how involved that topper is in the game, to me it's like if I'm going to own the game, I have to have that topper. And that's the thing, though, that I think is interesting is with Fathom, though, This is a drastically different game, the 2.0 to the classic. I mean, it has displays that are in the apron that have to be there. It's a completely different rule set. So to me, I feel like this is different, though, because, yeah, it's a completely different game that people missed out on the opportunity to buy. I'm just saying, should this be looked at differently because it's code? It's actually a game that people – but if you're saying, Travis, that there's a whole lot of people that bought the Mermaid Edition not because of the shiny print on the side and the chrome metal. They bought it purely because of the 2.0 code, and now you're going to let anybody buy it. I mean, it's just one of those things. If you make decisions in business, you're going to make some people happy. You're going to piss some people off. You just try to find that equilibrium that doesn't hurt you. Business, ranking systems, every decision in life. Everything. Everything, everything. But I will say this, and this is almost, this will be a case study when you look at Fathom, and we can compare it to Pulp Fiction, right?
    96:01
    I can almost guarantee, like I'm pretty close to guaranteeing that if CGC and Josh teamed up for a game again, right, they would probably sell out the LE at a higher price point at this point. And why is that? is because consumer behavior, right, they hit all the emotional parts that they needed to right now. Like they hit a home run with that. And people responded to that in droves And as long as they maintain that trust guess what That like a rocket ship for your next product We saw the same thing happen with Spooky right I mean, dealing with coming out Rick and Morty and then going into Halloween and Ultraman, and then we saw what happened. Consumers kind of lost that trust with Scooby-Doo. So it's just, it's ebbs and flows, and you just got to be careful with that. And there's a lot of decisions that goes into that. But I think this will be an interesting case study that I think the next game that CGC puts out, if they go that route again with Pulp Fiction, along with Josh and everybody else, I think that the price point for that would command much higher, and I think it would still sell out. Now, you compare that now with what Haggis is doing. Let's say that they come out. I don't know what the next game is. Let's say it's Centaur. Do they end up selling out of their main LE of that now, or do people kind of take a step back and they're like, well, wait. You know, is this just cosmetic? Because you're not going to have that trust anymore with saying, I have this extra thing right here for you to buy day one, because you don't know if that extra thing is going to be exclusive. You don't know yet until they come out and they say, hey, this is exclusive. No matter what, we're not going back. But you shouldn't have to put your company in that spot to have to explain that to people. Like, people should be able to have that trust on day one. Because we saw what happened with the whole exclusive thing with the topper that's right behind you on bond, right? Exclusive to this and other bonds, yeah. Yeah, it's just people, when you're spending this type of money, it is an emotional purchase a lot of the time. And so people just got to realize that. They got to be careful with that. Tom, you are the most experienced LE buyer in this group. Do you feel, I don't know, is this when, is the exclusivity part of the LE, like, really important to you? or is it just you just want to have the best version of the game? You don't really care. Like what's – I don't know. If you were in on a fathom right now, would this upset you?
    98:31
    Yeah, maybe a little bit. Yeah, I mean, if I spent all that money thinking that it was going to be exclusive to the LE and then now everybody gets it, you know, yeah. I guess I would be kind of upset about that. Even though the everyone else getting it is actually paying more money than you paid. So what? It's just the fact that, yeah, you thought it was. Yeah. I mean, that's the whole point of it being a limited edition, right? Yeah, good point, yeah. And, you know, I was just looking at their flyer, and it advertises it as, you know, that Mermaid Edition is the only one that has that version so yeah I mean I see why they're doing it but in the same token it's kind of like well we're going to go back on what we said and now we're going to do this kind of like Travis was alluding to well are they going to do that with the next title they're going to release you know and then the title after that it's just I would have gone all in. I would have gone all in with the, we fired the guy that made the flyer because Dave asked out. He just caught it now. This was always the plan. Always the plan. I mean, that would have been smart, right? It'll be anything. You've got to be careful. You've got to be very careful because here's the other thing, guys, and we've talked about this because this is like a mini golden age of pinball. We're going back through. There's tons of other options out there. Yeah. And people can very quickly remove their dollars from this company and apply it to this company. Because that's the way you've got to be. And you've got to be even more careful if you don't have a great cadence of getting out tons of games. Yeah. I mean, if you're putting out one game every three or four years, and meanwhile, Stern has put out 12 at that time. JJP's put out, like, another four or five. Spooky's put out several more. You've got to be careful with that. Yeah. Well, yeah, so fantastic layup here of moving your money from one to another. Clearly everybody's ready to buy a 2.0 kit for their Whirlwind, right? I mean, that's where I'm assuming people are canceling orders right now on whatever they have, and they're prepared to buy the newly announced Pedretti Gaming 2.0 kit for Whirlwind. I watched the video today. I actually had to go into work. I drove into Ohio. I had just a second to watch it. And I don't think I've really been able to digest it yet because it is insanity. Like that video. Were you on Penn State looking for a moment? I was not. That's the problem. I just, I watched the video and I was like, what just happened? Like, what happened? Like, what? Like, Funhouse went, okay, Funhouse was Funhouse, but then it went dark. And it's like, Rudy's Nightmare Castle. Okay, that's, they're trying something. That's a unique thing. It's just like, what is, I don't know. I mean, you guys have seen it. I hope you guys have seen it, this progetti. And tell me now, Josh, that you're somehow involved in this, and I don't want to insult you.
    101:45
    You write the rules. Rules was the first game I ever purchased. And I did still have it. It's here. So did you put in an order for your 2.0 code? I did not. I look at what those guys are doing, and it actually reminds me a lot of the discussions that Lyman and I had trying to tackle sort of our version of Cactus 2.0. Sorry, Travis. Jesus. Yeah, Travis, he's had enough. He's offended. And, you know, for us, for Lyman and I, you know, there's a great thing that comes to mind is all the people, and we had talked to Eric Kripke, who did Cactus Canyon Continued, about, like, using some of his content. And he allowed, we talked with him, and we had his blessing. We could use all of his content. And for Lyman and I, there was something about wanting to stay true to the theme of the game, that the inserts, the artwork, the universe that it creates under glass, trying to squeeze more stuff out of the game, but making sure we were always going back to like the, no matter what new rooms we built onto this house, the foundation of the house was there. And yeah, I mean, the whirlwind just struck me as like, whoa, like there's a lot of stuff and you know, it looks like it's fun, but it like, it wouldn't be a direction that I would go because it, there's so much stuff that has nothing to do with the universe, the cat, the house that is built. It's like having a house and building another house that's over there, but it's on the same lot. That's sort of like how I took it. And, you know, as Lyman has gotten more emails over the years of people that were like, you know what you should do for Batman? You should do this. And a lot of those emails came from me over the last few days. Like, you know what you should do, Lyman? And the joke he always said to me is if you want to do something like that, go be a programmer or a rules designer, and you can do whatever you want, because you're the man. I mean, the game is called Whirlwind Total Chaos, so it's fitting, but I mean, the trailer starts out, and it's like, look at this dude. He really likes donuts and coffee, and I'm like, what are we doing? What is going on here? And then we land on, what, grandmas fighting an actual piece of crap or something like that? And there's, like, Slime Guy, and there's, it's just, like, I don't know. I just, it all happened so fast, I don't really know. I was just, like, but my takeaway coming away from it was, like, what? Like, who, so many people have so much love and respect for Whirlwind, and it seems like such a traditional and classic game that people, I mean, Josh, you say you still have yours. This is just, like, it's one thing to, like, bring new life into a game. Like, oh, let's like, but this is, this isn't new life. This is like kill the old game. And here's something brand new that happens to be the same. It just seems so drastic to me.
    105:03
    I don't know, Tom, do you have a whirlwind? Are you going to go buy one? Are you ready to buy one? I had a whirlwind.
    105:10
    If I still had it, I don't think I would buy it. and I mean, to me, Whirlwind's just this classic game that pretty much does almost everything right, and it's like, why are we changing this?
    105:27
    To make money, Tom. Well, of course. But I could see, like, you know, brand new Tom into the hobby going, well, this is cool. It's got modes. It's got a wizard mode now. like whirlwind doesn't have a wizard mode you know and it doesn't have really modes in it um so i mean so i think like 10 year ago 10 years ago tom 15 years ago tom might have been like oh wow this is cool i gotta get this because it's like every other game that i own Yeah. Whereas, you know, it just to me, it's like not necessary, I guess. So. So, Josh, you're Cactus Canyon Extended Code. You you are introducing some sort of time traveling element and there will be donuts and probably a van and some sort of alien involved. And I'm assuming, I don't know, we'll get some knights, you know, maybe medieval dragon. I think one of the most popular questions we got is, like, is Cowboys vs. Aliens going to be in it from Texas Game and Continue? Yeah, yeah. And, I mean, Liven and I were both like, no, like, show me in this game, like, where these aliens exist. And it's just like, it's a cool mode. I've played it, you know, Eric's version of the game. And for what that is, it's great. And it's just not a creative thing that we wanted to execute on. But I do think, as Tom mentioned, like, it is this current golden age of pinball that, hey, for a couple thousand bucks, I can just give myself a new experience. It's almost like a P3 Lite version of, like, it's a kit.
    107:12
    And if I'm paying four grand for a Whirlwind or whatever they cost these days, and for two grand I can have a completely different experience, fuck it. Sure. Why not? My game room has $300,000 worth of shit in it anyway. What's two grand? I just can't justify it. Like, the art. The art is the thing, though, that it's one thing to have some game mode that you can enable, but it's like, I don't want to change out the Translight. I don't want to change out Artblade. I mean, maybe somebody does, but it's like, so we got Nuke Nick, which looks like he's some goo. The Piggies is a mode. The Scare... Scary Boy. that's a that's a scarecrow uh run run chicken chicken mode some sort of crab mode acid plant I mean area 51 we gotta go aliens we got some sort of oh the donut Donald what I don't I mean I don't know I just it seems so absurd and I will say my other takeaway is uh one game that I absolutely do truly love from that era is taxi and I told myself when they first started making these remakes I was like if they actually did a remake of taxi that like I'm already tempted to buy one. But if you're telling me now I have a chance to take a taxi and make it with deeper code or more modern, that sounds pretty cool. But now seeing that direction, I'm always worried like, what in the world? What are they going to do to the taxi? Are you going to be picking up, I don't know, you're going to go to Mars and pick up a Martian and then dig down and pick up some mole person. I don't know. I mean, it's just... I don't know. I just... I feel like you're describing GTF now. You're just going to lean towards that direction. Then you're going to go save the cows. to save the ice cream.
    108:53
    I don't know, but I do think it's funny is Hottie. He's Frisco Pinball. He's on a bunch of the TV and chats and whatnot.
    109:01
    Whirlwind's his favorite game. And his view is like, more Whirlwind? Why would this be a bad... He's all in.
    109:11
    When you're releasing a kit, you don't have to please everybody. You just gotta please a few hundred people. And it comes with the original game on it anyway, right? So it's like, if you don't like it, play the old game still. It's fine. Well, the displays are totally – so I'm curious. Like, I want to – it would probably benefit them to show what the new code looks like. Or, sorry, what the original, like, game – It emulates the alphanumeric display. Alphanumeric, okay. Yeah.
    109:39
    I don't know. I just – that was it for current news. I – that just took me by complete surprise. Joel, it sounds like you're shitting all over the game. I just, my initial impression was what the heck is, like, it was too much. It was total chaos. I just feel like it just seems so out there. Does Zach sell this kit? Are you going to be out of the gig here soon? I don't think he does. But I know, like, Zach has a super nice condition Whirlwind in his pin barn. So for these people that are all in a Whirlwind, like Hottie, if Hottie owns a Whirlwind, he's getting it. But for other people, I don't, I mean, it doesn't matter if you love the game. That just seems so, I don't know, maybe I'm, if you disagree with us, write in, email us at tripledrain.gmail.com or Facebook us or whatever. But I am, I don't know how to, I just don't know how to take that. It just seems so crazy, just crazy. But, I mean, Josh, you're the only one here that owns one, and you're saying you're not. No, I'm good. But I can respect the effort.
    110:51
    The last thing that I did want to talk about or hint at, not hint at, but Foo Fighters. I have a Foo Fighters that I'm borrowing currently. Tom now has his LE. Travis has put a lot of time on one. Josh, have you played Foo? Have you put time on a Foo Fighters? I played it a very long time ago before it had stuff in it, and I played a game on a show floor. I have not had a chance to dig into it yet, and I live in fear of my first real game on it being at some tournament that I have no idea what to do. It's going to be in Germany.
    111:27
    It's not on the EPC list, right? No, it's on the other game thing. You're probably not playing in those. I'm playing in some before I have to go set up for Worlds, but I'll figure it out. Just stack a mode and a multiball and go to town. Well, actually, it's in German.
    111:44
    One thing that I will say, because I want to I really want to I want Tom to go into. I want him to go hard in the paint on his thoughts on on on food. But I actually streamed it last night with my brother on on on the flipping out YouTube channel. And Ray was actually on stream with me. So I had Ray on with video and was able to ask him a bunch of questions. And I was blown away. This is the third time I've had Ray essentially do this with me. watch me play and answer questions. He did it with Rush. He did it with Led Zeppelin. But this game, the amount of scoring potential that he's put in this game with multipliers and different things that you can attack and bot frenzy, do you want to focus on that? Do you want to focus on the sonic radio mode? Do you want to focus on these modes or maxing out your van? I was just – I'm super impressed. I'm super impressed by the code in this game. And even though I'm not a points guy, I'm having a blast. I'm having a blast playing this game. And this is on the pro, so I don't have the expression lighting that Tom has. I don't have the upper play field. I'm just really enjoying the heck out of this game.
    112:51
    So, Tom, you have your LE, and I think you posted, it was either on Fox Cities or on Triple Drain, you posted on Facebook. You said, I think you said this game has the most flow of any game. It was a bold statement. I said it could have the best flow of, you know, any game. And I do think that. I mean, it's got some awesome, like, you know, I think of like Andre Masson-Coffee just kind of goes to town. And that's how I feel in that game. Like, all the shots are accessible. there's a little bit of stop and go but it's like hit this ramp, hit this ramp, hit that spinner go to the side the ball seems to be constantly moving and yeah I mean for Jack Danger's I guess technically second design it's really good I mean, I'm, you know, the word that I that I use and like Zach and I, my brother to Zach, not flipping out, Zach.
    114:09
    You hear the word thrown around over the years of like designs being uninspired. And like the one word that I would say for Foo Fighters is that it's extremely inspired and and fresh. and it's just, it's cool. It's just, it's a very inspiring thing to look at of that world that's created that, like, is super unique and fresh. You know, in a world where, you know, 10 years ago, there was a lot of, like, oh, it's a Steve Ritchie game. Oh, it's a this game. It's like you sort of get used to it. And even, like, Pulp, it's like, it's a Mark Ritchie game. It's pretty symmetrical. It is what it is. It's certainly, it's not super inspired the way that Foo Fighters is. it does its job for what it has to do, but, you know, Foo is just, yeah, I'm blown away at what Mr. Danger was able to do. Yeah. And I particularly, you know, I've said this before, I particularly don't like many playfields, but this game, like, it does not kill the flow on it.
    115:13
    I like it. I can't say, like, a negative word about it. I think it's that good. That's awesome. Yeah, and you've got something that nobody else has, which is the Expression Light Kit, and that's something that I know how big of an impact that made when I had a Led Zeppelin Pro, putting that in the game, and the fact that you have that in your rush. They're selling that now. I don't know how many have got out, if any, for the premium owners. I've got it right there in my Led Zeppelin, too. But the fact that you have it in Foo Fighters, I mean, I can only imagine that taking it to the next level. So the hype on Foo Fighters, in my opinion, it's real. And that's real. What I'm hearing is it's real from all play levels. I know Travis has really enjoyed it. Tom obviously has it, and he just said he can't say a negative word about it. And here I am at the other end of the play spectrum. I'm having a blast on it. I'm having an absolute blast on it. and I'm not necessarily a Foo Fighters fan. It's not bad music, but it's not my choice of music, but yet I'm still really enjoying the game.
    116:24
    As the code flushes out, are you, like Travis, I know you're all about those points. Are you seeing different strategies now that really get you excited?
    116:37
    Just real quick, Travis, Neil found a bug in it today, and it's like a huge bug that I'll tell you later. I can't say what it is because people would just exploit the shit out of it. And when Ray texts us, let's not tell him what it is either. No, no, he told Ray right away because it is big. Good on your son. That always used to bug Lyman the most because he'd hear about something and it's like these bastards just are like, Why wouldn't you tell me so I could fix it instead of trying to go win a tournament somewhere? I think Raymond's response was, oh, shit, keep that on the down low.
    117:23
    So we'll just throw it on the podcast. If we are talking about bugs, though, I'll just put it out there. I think the wizard mode on Stranger Things is bugged because I keep getting stopped at the – unless I'm doing something wrong. Has everybody here been to the wizard mode on Stranger Things except for Joel? Not for a while. That's pre-COVID, man.
    117:44
    There's a point in it to where you're supposed to hit, like, I guess all the Demodog targets, right? And then the two that are left on the right ramp, I hit them in perpetuity and nothing happens. You sure the switch works? No, it works the whole entire game up until that point. And I've done this three times now, and I'm just like, I don't know what to do. It's really weird because in the past, I've gotten through that and gotten to the end because obviously, you know, from what everybody knows, you beat that wizard mode, there's a secret wizard behind it, but now it's just like bricked. I don't know if anybody realizes that, so just in case, Stern, please check that out. But what was your question earlier, Joel? You think Lonnie made that game, right? You think Lonnie listens to this? No, probably not. No.
    118:24
    Josh emails all of them. Just, yeah. Josh, keep on this. Fix it, please. Next suggestion, have these two targets work. That's it. Deleted. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, what were you saying? Foo Fighter, yeah, it's really good. Like how to get points out of it? Oh, yeah, that's what I'm saying. It looks like Ray is continuing to put in more stuff. And just to clarify, we all know that huge bug is clearly Ray's fault. I mean, it's not Tanya. Like, Tanya doesn't make mistakes. But Ray probably, you know, left out of San Michael, right? I mean, that's just. But anyway, so with the stuff that he's continuing to put in this game, Are you – I just think some of these really cool games, you can just attack them so many different ways, not only from an enjoyability standpoint, but also from a tournament standpoint, so you're not locked out of anything. I don't know. Are you getting more excited with some of these modes that he's putting in or some of these different things that he's sprinkling on top to – Well, yeah. It goes back to what I was talking about earlier, that the mark of a fun game is a rule set that guides you throughout the whole entire play field. It gives you a reason to go for every shot at some point in the game, because the last thing you want is just a woodchopper where you're just repeating the same thing over and over and over again, and you're not going to explore anything. So, yeah, the great thing about this layout is, one, it's a dynamic layout. But along with dynamic layouts, you want to have a rule set that encourages you to explore the entire layout. Like, that's why Elwynn pins crush. And so it's kind of like when I look at Foo Fighters, I think of it this way, that Stern Pinball is very much in the Elwynn era in which he has multiple games that are put out, right? And the entire pinball industry, they might be inspired by something that he's doing with his layouts, with his rule sets, or what have you. It's the same way Lyman inspired a lot of people with how they do their rule sets based off him breaking new ground with stuff. So that's kind of the way that I view Foo Fighters. that it's going more towards that direction, which is a great thing. Like we need more dynamic layouts like that and we need more rule sets that encourages you to basically explore the entire game and not just be like, I'm just going to hit the left ramp a thousand times and that's it. You know, or I'm just going to zero in on area 51 multiball, like all day long and nothing else. You know, I mean, from a tournament standpoint, some games you have to do that, but if you're at home, like you don't necessarily want to do that. And then that's when you get stuck in this, I guess it's just like this death spiral that you want to try to put up a GC and all that. So if you find a way to do it, it's like, well, you're going to be guided that way because, you know, obviously that's where all the points are. But, you know, in terms of Foo Fighters, in terms of like deciding, okay, what's the right way to attack it, it's always hard to say. Because with early code, it changes. Yeah. Right. You're going to have your one roadmap, your one way to attack a game through an opener and mid game. But then if something changes up in future code, like another multiball might be easier to get to or score might be rebalanced or something like that, then you might approach it a little bit differently. So the thing with Raymond codes, it's it's very multiplier heavy. Like we saw what happened with Rush. and I'm kind of, I'm not seeing the same thing with Foo Fighters, but I see things that are interesting when you look at the targets on, you know, in the end lanes, you look at the possibilities of kind of piecing together things. And that's what I enjoy about a rule set. If you have one thing that leads to another and you get rewarded for putting those pieces to the puzzle together in the correct order, I mean, that's what I enjoy about pinball games at the house. So hopefully they keep doing that. I assume they will. I have no reason to think otherwise that they wouldn't. But, you know, I think that that's the fun games to play. I think those are the ones that are long-lasting for a lot of people because even if you're casual and you don't realize that's happening, you're still going to enjoy the journey either way. You know, if it's guiding you to hit this shot because it's on this side, you're not going to care what the score is, but you're still going to, you know, go for that shot. Whereas if you're a tournament player, you might think, well, maybe I might hit this unlit shot here because I'm going to go through an in lane that gives me an X. You know, you might do something like that, kind of like what happens on Walking Dead at times. You know, so there's just there's definitely different ways to approach it. I think there's a way to do a rule set that allows that to where you just kind of maybe expand what a player does a little bit more according to their skill level. But overall, I think it's going to sell a lot of units for a long time. And I think if Jack can keep putting out games like that, if the artwork keeps being what it's being, if the Stern coders, like, keep doing what they're doing, it's, I mean, they're going to keep exploding the popularity of pinball. And the pro is cheaper than a punty factory. It's still a huge value. And if Josh keeps suggesting, you know, all the rules to him, then things are going to keep working out really well. No, that was one thing that Ray was talking about a lot on my stream last night. I didn't realize it, but the right orbit, the way it figure eights back and then fills up the Roc-O-Meter, that's how you can get your two and three times play. Like, I had no idea. You didn't know that? I did, but I don't care. You should have used the short plunge too, Joel. I know. I learned that too. But it's like it's just different, though, when you're playing and you have somebody watching you that knows that stuff because Ray's like, hey, you got this going right now, so go ahead and try to hit this shot now. and it gets all exciting because it's like, oh, that was big points. It's like, here I am just focusing on progressing through the mode. Every game you have to ship with a Ray in the box. It does, yeah. More Coach Ray, sign me up. But, no, it's a really enjoyable game. I'm really enjoying it a lot. So if there are people that have Foo Fighters on order and you don't have it yet, be patient. It's going to be great. You're really going to enjoy it a lot. I'm having a lot of fun with mine. But I think that's it. I think that's roughly it. Tom, was there anything else you wanted to talk about or any other, you know, words of disgust you wanted to direct towards Josh or Travis? I have no further questions, Your Honor.
    124:46
    Perfect. Well, I think we're good. I think we can plug it up. So first, I mean, Josh, go for it. Is there anything you want to plug, mention, anything? You got the floor. Nah, I'm good. Play a Pulp Fiction if you can Nah I hope you like it We've already sold way more than I thought we were going to sell So I've got nothing else to say about it We're good, we're happy That's awesome, that's awesome Travis, plug away man Yeah, you guys can find me here at the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast And you can see me on Tom's stream Fox City's Pinball whenever he's hosting a tournament And then hopefully you guys will see me in a couple of weeks When we're all over in Germany, all jet lag. That's crazy. We're going to have to see how the podcast works over the next month or two. We all have stuff coming up, but we'll make it happen. We'll figure it out. We'll do a live podcast, and Joel, you better get your ass up at 2 in the morning and do it with us. Sure, why not? Why not? I appreciate the show, boys. You guys did a good job. I appreciate that.
    125:56
    Plug away, Tom. Fox News, Stoneball. So, Twitch. Wonderful. You too. Wonderful. Real quick update. Lunchboxes. Oh, boy. Yeah. Triple Drain Lunchboxes. I actually did. We got some really good messages. Josh has kids. Yeah, I know.
    126:13
    The quick update is I caught a bunch of friends. Did he do the artwork for you? No. He did actually reach out to me, though, and ask me who's doing your lunchbox, which I think is hilarious. I did reach out to a few companies, and I have a sample. I have a sample lunchbox coming on order. And we found one that you can actually order one at a time and we'll ship directly to you. So as soon as the sample gets in, if it's good quality, boom, we'll share that link and we'll go down that route. But there were people that were like, I'd buy a coffee mug. Hey, lucky you. It's on Silver Ball Swag now. I'd buy a poster. Lucky you. It's on Silver Ball Swag now. So any other suggestions, stickers, I added those to Silver Ball Swag, anything like that. If you really actually want anything triple drain, let me know. I'll try to make it happen. We'll see. We'll see what I can do. But we love it. We love it that there are people that care enough about this to want to buy our merch. I think that's awesome.
    127:04
    And, yeah, last plug for me would be the Flippin' Out YouTube stream. I do it every Wednesday night from 10 to midnight Eastern Standard Time, Flippin' Out with friends, and then streaming games and whatnot. So it's a blast. Every night? Every Wednesday night. Oh, every Wednesday. I'm like, dang, man. Oh, my gosh. No, every Wednesday night. But that's – That would be nice. He would be. Yeah, I guess.
    127:26
    Yeah. I've got a three and a four and a half year old now, and I would. Oh, yeah. Nope. God bless you. All right. Well, like always, Tom, you get the last words. I got to let Josh have the last word here. What? Okay. All right. Safe travels to Germany, two out of the three of you guys. And Joel, next year, California, IPA 19. Ooh, baby. You got seven months to rack up some whoppers, man. You can get there. Our rules have no coaching. I will make an exception for you. You can bring Raymond along, and I will allow him to stand next to you in every event. You'll coach me? Yeah. It'll take me seven months of permission from my wife to come to California. All of the brownie points I've earned in our 21 years together are about to be spent here in three weeks. Awesome. Oh, my God. I would go to Expo to watch that. If Raymond could actually stand right next to you and try to coach you through those games. Raymond, help me, please.
    128:31
    All right. We need a last word. Anybody? Bye.