Hello, my name is Jamie Burchill and you are listening to and or watching our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents. Wormhole Pinball Presents. Wormhole Pinball Presents. Today I'm very, very excited to be joined by two great individuals. Today I'm really excited to be joined by a very special guest. And today I'm very excited to be joined by two awesome guests all the way from Arizona. Hello and welcome to the Wormhole, Wormhole Pinball... No, you've done up right off the bat, you dumbass. All right. Hello and welcome to Wormhole Pinball Presents, a podcast we created to highlight those in pinball and arcades. My name is Jamie Birchall, and today, ladies and gentlemen, we have a big announcement for episode 48. And to make this announcement with me, welcome back to the podcast from the Kineticist and This Week in Pinball, Colin Altschreiber. Hi, Jamie. Excellent to be here. Glad to be back. I'm excited to have you back on the podcast, sir, but we have business to attend to, Colin. You. You are here for a major announcement and the floor is yours. Awesome. So, yeah, we're bringing back the Twippies. Technically, I guess we're kind of calling them the pinball community awards where people can win a Twippy award, sort of a similar setup as the Academy Awards to the Oscars, which is a change that we're making to sort of bring the concept of the show more in line with what I think that it's always been, which is kind of a show about and for the pinball community that's organized by the pinball community. So we put together what I think is a really strong team, Jamie included here, to try to help us pull off this kind of ambitious concept in a pretty short time frame. But, you know, I'm pretty excited for a soft refresh of the Twippies. And a lot of ways, I think it will be just like what people know and love and remember of the show with some new tweaks and opportunities to bring it um in some fun new directions before we get in the details of voting rules and the show itself right let's talk about the wormhole on the twippies like why the wormhole how did this happen uh so i mean you you've kind of been been in in my ear a little bit uh a lot of most of the year yeah maybe maybe since our first uh our first podcast together i think so i have But you were not the only one who has been. But when we started talking about it, I think that we're pretty aligned in the way that we see pinball and the pinball community and sort of what the kinds of things that we want to see in it. So I think in a lot of ways that made a ton of sense to bring the Twippies to the warm hole. I also like aesthetically, I love your building. Yeah. Like I've, I've, I've never been to it. So like selfishly, um, it's a little bit of, of an excuse to come party at the wormhole too. Right. Uh, but like, I, I love just even seeing what I'm seeing now, like it's going to be so much fun to shoot this event there. It's going to be fantastic on February 22nd at 7 p.m. EST or CDT if you're not in the States. We'll bring you live from the wormhole and live on YouTube the 2024 Pinball Community Awards. All right. So before we get into details, let's do a little disclaimer. OK, I wrote a disclaimer. Perfect. All right. This is the first time most of us have done anything like this. OK, so bear with us. We're going to make a few mistakes. right we're going to learn and we're going to grow from it right our biggest goal is to lay the foundation for the pinball community awards you know that nods a legacy of the twippies right so and we're going to build something new that we can improve upon year in year out so you know we're excited for this to grow in the future wormhole pinball museum building so uh yeah no that's uh that's very exciting um i think there's there's a lot of potential there. Oh my gosh, we're pumped. So can we give a shout out to the other individuals who are donating their time minus the host of the show? We're going to save them. So I think this is one of the things that probably excites me the most is the team that we've been able to bring together. I think it's going to be a lot of familiar names to most people who will be listening. Obviously, myself and you. We have Erica from Erica's Pinball Journey, helping out as the director of partnerships. Erin Seiden, who's written for Kineticist and Nudge and done a lot of bells and chimes and tournament events. She's going to be our director of operations. We've got Rob Jim Raff from The Electric Playground. He's on the nominating committee, as is Aaron Davis from Fast Pinball. Ryan Gratzer from Pinball Map. And Will Edding is returning in his webmaster voting security role. So it's a really strong team from pretty much every corner of the pinball community. And I'm excited for everyone to sort of bring their knowledge and expertise to the table and help us produce a really awesome event. Wow. A couple of shout-outs on my end, Colin, if you don't mind. Glenn Glenn Waechter is going to be producing and writing music for the show. That's awesome. He's going to be doing live music for the show. Really excited to have Glenn on board. And my IT support guy, Brendan Martin, you're about to be really busy dude so uh and our editor ryan greg of course and my twitch co-host uh donovan uh wade for all the video production he's agreed to take on which is a lot so yeah it's uh it's no small undertaking so uh thank you to everyone who has volunteered their support oh we really appreciate it we're on uh all right let's let's get into it let's discuss the categories for the 2024 pinball community awards so do we want to go to categories and individual awards or just go through the categories it's up to you all right so um a lot of familiar categories so we've got the the ever popular content creator awards uh content creator of the year uh breakout content creator uh of the year i thought it was really important to uh acknowledge some of the the newcomers that have come on the scene, the very talented newcomers. Best podcast, best video content creator and streamer, and best publication. We have commercial game awards. This is where you'll probably notice more changes. Game of the Year, Innovation of the Year would be a new award. Returning Lyman F. Sheats Jr., Best Rules in Code, and Best Theme Integration is going to combine art, light, sound, animations and displays, toys and mechs. Best game launch and reveal. And this is another new one, Most Improved Game, which I think will be interesting for those games that, you know, might take a few months to sort of find their ground, but should still be rewarded for it On the homebrew side we have two main awards there Homebrew Game of the Year This encompasses original playfield designs and Custom Game of the Year which is for non playfield designs. So more of your like rethemes, for example. Location Awards, we've blown out a lot. So we have, instead of just one main best location, we have regional best locations. So in the US, at least, it's Northeast, South, Southwest, West. And then internationally, we have best locations for Europe, Australia, and Canada, as well as the best new location of the year. For toppers, mods, and accessories, we have Best OEM Topper, Best Aftermarket Topper, Best Aftermarket Interactive Mod or Accessory, Best Aftermarket Non-Interactive Mod or Accessory, and then some other awards. I think we probably need a better category name than other awards for this, so that will come. But we have best pinball app or service, best convention or show, best tournament, best online community group. And I think the new one that I'm most excited for is the pinball community member of the year. I'm really excited about that as well. Yeah, I think there's a lot of potentially deserving people who are doing a lot of cool work in the community that really deserve it. That deserve to be recognized, Colin. I think that's great. Yeah. So those are our categories and awards. I will say that it's all subject to change, but these have been discussed a lot by the committee. So I think we're pretty good. You want to talk eligibility requirements? Yeah. So we are still finalizing some of those details. But I will say the eligibility, it's going to be very similar to prior years, where if the award is product-related, like a game or a mod, it has to have shipped within the awards year. Like prior Twippies, that runs from 12-1 to 12-1, right? So 12-1 in 2023 to 12-1 in 2024. Makes sense, right? Yep. For other categories, non-product categories, like content creator, for example, basically the creator needs to be sufficiently active within the last awards year. Prior Twippies for content specifically have required releasing at least five new pieces of original content, which I think is something that we're going to keep. and I will say that one of the smaller changes is that we are trying to introduce more subjectivity and curation by the TWIPI committee at least for the nominees so that we're not just dumping a database of names on everyone and expecting them to sort through it on their own and find people but at the same time we're trying to be as inclusive as we possibly can there too. Absolutely. It's a tightrope to walk. It is. And I can promise you this, we're going to do our best. Yeah, absolutely. So how will voting work and when will voting begin and end? Yeah, it's going to be, again, very familiar to prior years. So one vote per person. We're going to use the same kind of rank choice voting system that we've used before. and voting will take place entirely online on twippies.com. And then we're going to open up voting on January 3rd and run it through January 20th. Great. Great. We're going to talk about the live show in a minute, but let's discuss the weekend itself because we're really putting on an incredible weekend of events for those that are going to be traveling to the wormhole here in Houston live and in person. On February 21st, which is Friday, we partnered with Eureka Heights Brewery. It's a fantastic brewery, really located very close to the wormhole. We're going to do a Progressive Strikes tournament at Eureka Heights. It's a Stern Army location and a great partner of the wormhole, so we're real excited to have Eureka Heights on board. On Saturday, February 22nd, the 2024 Twippies will be held at the wormhole. broadcast on the YouTube at 7 p.m. EST or EDT for those outside the U.S. I always get a text to tell me to start doing EDT. Really? I get an IM every time. Interesting. If I say anything time zone related, that's the one I get hammered on. So I'm going to fix that. Doors are going to open at 5 p.m. on Saturday, February 22nd. For more information, it's going to come on that. And, of course, Sunday, February 22nd, We're going to be running a tournament from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Wormhole. More likely a progressive strikes. More info to come on that, Colin. Or maybe a 3X. But we'll come with that shortly. Are we ready to go and discuss ticketing information? Yeah. So, familiar phrase. We're still finalizing some of those details. there's a small chance the ticketing site will be live by the time this podcast goes out but I will say don't hold me to that we do know that tickets are going to be limited maybe around 40 in total for the show itself and we're also trying to include a bunch of other benefits and perks like discounted tournament tickets swag and some other things to really make that ticket a little bit more appealing so look for those details in the This Week in Pinball newsletter on twippies.com once everything opens up you'll know about it for sure absolutely we could tease one thing we're working on a taco truck that's delicious I'll tell you that right now and I can guarantee you we will be sponsored by a brewery so there's that beer and pinball is such a wonderful combination It's perfect. It works very, very well. So when will the new and updated website be live? Yeah, so we've made some small changes already. We're I don't think this year we're going to do like a massive visual overhaul or anything. So it's more going to be small kind of iterative changes. Adjusting information is it's finalized. I mean, right now you can go there and check out the 2024 Twippies page and see the information on the committee members and the hosts. And we'll add some more information for the rest of the show there as well. Perfect. Yeah. What am I missing? I mean, that's most of the major details. Like, I'm hoping that people can come out and join us live. I think that's going to be the most fun way to experience the event. But we definitely focusing pretty heavily on the the live stream component to on YouTube So if you can join us live in person plan to join us virtually and we have just as much fun in chat as I think we would at the Wormhole itself. Absolutely. And coming to the Wormhole is an experience. So if you do have a chance to get one of these tickets, I would highly recommend coming to the Wormhole. I'm looking forward to it. We're going to put on a show and it's going to continue to grow and grow What we are missing is the hosts. So let's get the hosts in here and we'll discuss a little more about the live show in a minute. All right, Colin, I've been joined by our hosts and I'm going to introduce them one by one. Please say hello to Erin Winnick-Anthony, known for a series called Learning to Flip. Welcome to the podcast again. Hello. And the Pinball Community Awards. Aaron. Hi. How are you? Good to be here again. And I think it was just on the last episode, too. So you just can't get rid of me. No, you're regular. It's awesome. Joining us live is one of the coolest guys I've ever met. Ralph Ronzio, Retro Ralph. Welcome to the show and the Twippies. Wow, thank you. I'm very happy to be here. That was a good intro right there. And last but not least, our sideline reporter from Nudge Magazine, Ian Jacoby. Welcome back to the podcast and the Twippies, my friend, Ian Jacoby. I'm not one of the coolest guys you've ever met. No. Okay, cool. He is. No, I got it. No, totally. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm going to switch the view to gallery here. I think you're cool, Ian. Great. Thanks. we all love you i have been buzzing since uh colin asked the wormhole to partner with the award show right and what i was essentially pitching colin on my idea of the show i wanted to put together was i immediately went to these three individuals and said would you work with me on the show and they said yes so thank you guys for taking this journey with us we really appreciate it no this is gonna be a blast i've been fortunate to share the mic with four of all four of them so i feel very comfortable that we're gonna have a lot of fun and put on a good show colin speaking of this show we and him have been hard at work at putting a format trying to keep this show under 90 minutes right which is not going to be easy especially with me as one of your hosts but aaron is going to work very hard to keep us on task my job on stream a lot keep jamie on track Cool. A tangent every once in a while. Bring it right back. All good. So we're working with IT support. And one of the trickiest things I got to figure out is the sideline reporter. So Ian Jacoby, I'm a little freaked out. How do I make sure I don't screw this up, dude? Yeah, I don't know. And it's, it really falls on your shoulders to figure that out. The success of the Twippies is, yeah, it's all up to you, man. And this is the future of pinball we're talking about. I mean, This is the premier award show of pinball and has been. So yeah, pressure's on friend. I hope you figure it out. No, it's going to be great. I've got it support working on it. Are you, do you want to be sideline reporter? What's your title here? Yeah, I think that's good. I kind of want to be, I think the best use of me, right. Is like Ian and small doses. Like I think Aaron, yeah. Aaron and Ralph are the people that you really want to like carry the day. Yes. Like cheery, bright. Some people have called them the coolest guy they've ever met. But for me, smaller doses, I would say. And so it's like, we're going to go to me and I can ask who Steve Ritchie is wearing or whoever, that kind of stuff. And I'm assuming it's going to be like Levi's, but we'll see. You never know. You never know. Aaron, one of the things I discussed with you is the vibe of the show itself. More MTV Music Awards than the Oscars. what do you think about that idea yeah i feel like trying to make it more wormhole which is i don't know just chill hanging out have a good time and make it as fun as possible which is like get feel help everyone out there experience what the wormhole experience is like uh and i think that's going to be key and it's going to be fun to have all of these people i think in that environment play some crazy old games and make make all of these people who are designing all of these modern pinball machines play some weird Zachariah locomotion or something like that on stream. That's a goal for me. Awesome. Ralph, video production is one of your hallmarks of your content. I can't promise that something won't crash, but I can promise we're going to look good. I'm already pretty disappointed, to be honest, but I'm sure we're going to go up from here. It's going to get better, right? Oh, yeah. No, this will be my first time in the wormhole. So I'm actually, this is exciting for me, because I'm going to be there. Yeah. There, right there. I'm very excited about it. Yeah. So I'll get to meet Eric for the first time, who's over here on my screen, but could be anywhere when you're watching her. I don't know where she is, but she's right here. And Ian is down there. The coolest guy in all of pinball. Thanks. So, I mean, our goal is if we're kind of going through panel of what the show is going to be, obviously I'll be producing kind of on the side with Ian and Ralph doing most of the heavy lifting. with my friend Ian Jacoby as a sideline reporter. We will then go into the award itself. The award itself will show you a nice video of the top four finalists. And then Aaron and Ralph will open the envelope. And we will move forward with our 28,000 awards that we are giving away this year. A lot of awards. It's a lot of awards. Will we have a physical envelope to open up? We will. I will. I'll get that for you. Oh, so I can be like, Aaron, look, do you believe who just won? and we can kind of be like, No, you don't need no envelope mix-ups, though. Okay. Or unless you all play a trick on us with that. Yeah. We'll make it right. I won't screw this up. Okay. I won't screw this up. That's going to be the... I'll be like, Game of the Year, Punny Factory. It's like... How did that get in there? Different year? Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. So we're also going to be giving you... The most trustworthy person to hold the envelopes is going to be Ian by far. Like, he's the one I would trust this this responsibility to yeah cheers man yeah no i i feel like i'll rise to the occasion absolutely we're also going to be giving away prizes putting the streaming rig over a few pins i think zachary is a locomotion would be hilarious and maybe playing a dollar game or two for those in attendance if you want to be in attendance tickets are going to be going on sale relatively soon, right, Colin? Yep, that is correct. Twippies.com, and we'll blast it everywhere. Absolutely. All right, any questions for me, panel, and Colin? Yes. Jamie, are you nervous about any part of the show in particular, about pulling it off? Yeah, I'm freaking out. Definite major anxiety attack. I called Ian today, said, what the hell am I doing, and he talked me off the ledge. Thank you, my friend Ian Jacoby. No, we're okay. We're going to be fine. It's going to be great. It is going to be And I think the idea that you even worried about it means that you the right person for it Because it means that you care about it and you want it to go well you know And so like that a good sign to be nervous about it It means you taking it seriously. So I think like people who hear that should be like, hell yeah. I'm glad he's nervous. I hope he gets even more nervous. His guts are churning. Trust me. I'm sure Jamie is 19 times more nervous than he's saying right now. So please don't wish that on him. I think god i'm sure i'm sure his diet of just 12 diet cokes and zin will calm it will help yeah yeah i am sponsored by their butterflies a little bit speaking of sponsors we are currently soliciting sponsors so zin and diet coke if you are listening uh please feel free to reach out direct it just to be look out for reach when i reach out to you zen and say would you like to sponsors i feel like you should go to colin for sponsors because i'm like envious of colin i can go to the website and there's like every sponsor under the sun i don't know colin you've got some magic i need some help with that we're working on it yeah uh me and uh and erica from from erica's pinball journey she's she's kind of leading up the sponsorship side of things so very cool we've uh we're exploring some some ideas but uh for anyone else who is listening to this and is interested in potentially sponsoring the event uh definitely get in touch touch with me um and we can explore ideas where where would they get in touch with you uh you can email me colin at kineticist.co uh is probably the easiest way uh on any single social media platform you can reach out via dm he's really good he should start a podcast don't you think ian jacoby should start a podcast what is this just that we're going to talk about ian jacoby we got we got we got lots a guess here i'm sorry more questions please yeah i i wanted to know if you're planning to pull anything new out of the wormhole vault for this uh yeah i'm guessing that'll be a conversation with brian foytick to see it'll be a conversation with elite tech brian foytick uh i was just teasing verne's world a minute ago sure and will you guys talk about that like aaron how much do you know about have you played verne's world i saw it when the glass was broken so no i did not play it. I saw it being worked on a bit, but I have not actually got to play it. But I was helping repair a different machine, Haley Comet, right next to it. But I'm excited to see it actually working now. Burns World is like a wild Spanish game from 1996. We were just like, we just were talking about it before we started recording. And I looked at a picture of it and it is wild. It's crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I really hope it works, Ralph. Because sometimes when they come over and the shipments that we buy, things break. I'll bring my soldering iron. We'll figure it out. Yeah, we will. I'm sure you already have a bunch of them over there. Hosting and repairs, Ralph? We'll have helping hands, yeah. I mean, hey, they said if you sign up for this, you could be signed up for anything. So I'm expecting anything that's needed, we are here for you. You know what I can tease real quick, Colin, is we are looking at some tours, but one of the tours that we're looking at, if you do come live to the wormhole for the Twippies, which you totally should, is a tour of the vault. And we have a building that is, well, we call it the vault. It was an old t-shirt factory. It was an old meat factory, to be honest. And you can get to see all of these old machines and being worked on and by then it'll be really up and running and a true vault for people to come and check it out. We can add it as a final question on the voting form is what game should Wormhole bring out from the vault? Oh, that'd be good. That would be good. I like Verne's world, so I want to pump Verne's. We'll see. Make that one in bold and then the rest. Yeah, the rest. It'll be the first option, yeah. So, Jamie, how many people are you anticipating are going to be here? Like, is this? Yeah, you know, 40 to 50 is our goal. All right. Is our goal. We can definitely fill the wormhole with that. We have all these awesome lawn chairs that we're going to put out, and it's going to be absolutely awesome. We're going to be sponsored by a local brewery. We're going to have a taco truck. Oh, very cool. And we're going to make it an absolute event. doors will open at five o'clock free play let everyone just play while we're uh producing and getting ready for the show and then i don't even mind if people play behind us while uh we're we're doing well well i mean maybe i don't know that i want people playing behind us that sounds they gotta yeah they gotta watch this show but yeah oh that's true don't be a jerk off you know what don't play hurricane but but but you know like i will say this about when i was at houston and the Houston Arcade Expo is like, y'all know how to have fun and hang out. And I'm sure this is going to be like that. Like that is so, this is for people listening to this. I don't think I've said it anywhere yet, but we're actually in our feature for Nudge 5. We're going to heavily kind of talk about the Houston Arcade Expo and how much fun it is and how a lot of people can take a page out of that book of it just being like a really, I call the Houston Arcade Expo like the best senior class party of all time is how it kind of feels. And I think that that's, like, if this is anything like that, like, we're all in, it's like going to be the same people, right? You have to have, is it Keith? Is he the guy who runs? Keith Christensen, yeah. Well, he'll get an invite. He needs to be there. I'm telling him right now, Keith, I think you really like me. You gave me an incredible gift basket. And my biggest desire is for you to be at this event and maybe doing something. I'm going to make it happen now. some ren fair stuff or something i don't know but he's the man keith he's great yeah all right please follow the kineticist this week in pinball ian jacoby of nudge magazine aaron winnick anthony and retro ralph on all the socials visit twippies.com for all information on this year's pinball community awards everyone i'm really excited yeah i'm nervous but we're going to do good it's going to be fantastic you got this man we got it you got a crack team behind you like i know look at everyone this is the best team it's going to be awesome so thank you so much for everyone for tuning in uh hanging us for a few minutes this evening i really appreciate the wormhole is beyond excited to host the twippies not only this year but for the forever we're gonna do this forever i just made that happen till death do us part hey you signed the contract i can promise listeners this i'll tell you what this i'll leave in this we're going to have fun oh my god that's that's definitely that's like the biggest goal right it's just like have fun play pinball celebrate pinball and we're not going to take ourselves too seriously definitely not all right panel thank you so much i appreciate you all very much aaron thanks Thanks, everyone. Me and Colin. Thanks, everybody. Thanks so much. Good work.