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The Pinball Show Ep 134 BONUS: Rumors Of An Industry Changing Event & What Is Wrong With Competitive Pinball

Pinball Show Patreon Feed·podcast_episode·15m 44s·analyzed·Aug 1, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Competitive pinball scene divided on tuning philosophy; TPF 2024 status uncertain amid ownership transition.

Summary

The Pinball Show hosts discuss competitive pinball frustrations stemming from Yegpin, including aggressive game tuning that compromises fun and playability, and debate structural issues with tournament organization and IFPA scoring systems. They also rumor that Texas Pinball Festival may not occur in 2024 following Ed and Kim Vander Veen's retirement, though official website posts suggest otherwise.

Key Claims

  • At Yegpin, games were tuned to extreme brutality, with an Attack from Mars machine having misaligned flippers so severe spectators questioned if it was deliberate sabotage or breakage.

    medium confidence · Zach and Dennis discussing tournament setup complaints from Yegpin event

  • Pinberg scientifically tuned games by timing play duration to balance bank completion times, not just making games arbitrarily difficult.

    high confidence · Dennis crediting Bowen Cairns and Pinberg organizers' approach to game tuning

  • Ryan C previously tuned tournament games to extreme brutality on his tournaments and received similar complaints.

    medium confidence · Dennis recalling Head to Head podcast discussions and mentions of Jesse J's podcast

  • IFPA's scoring system (maximizing Whopper Eaters points) is driving tournament organizers to excessive game counts and complex formats.

    medium confidence · Zach discussing min-maxing behavior and Keith Elwin's complaints about seven-strike tournaments

  • Ed and Kim Vander Veen retired from running Texas Pinball Festival last year; Paul McKinney will continue with a new team.

    high confidence · Official TPF website statement cited; Zach and Dennis confirm this is public information

  • Rumors indicate Texas Pinball Festival 2024 may not happen, despite official posts mentioning a 2024 show.

    low confidence · Zach reporting unverified rumors from multiple sources at Southern Fried Gaming Expo; contradicted by recent TPF website activity

  • Most competitive pinball tournament organizers have poor time management and blow schedule estimates.

    medium confidence · Dennis making general observation about tournament organization beyond Pinberg

Notable Quotes

  • “Pinball is not created currently as a competitive device. It's created as a casually competitive device, but not a professionally competitive device. So we're trying to modify a general approached game to fit those needs of a competition sports level professional based system. And it's just not happening.”

    Zach (host) @ mid-episode — Core argument about pinball's fundamental design misalignment with professional competitive sports standards

  • “The only answer is to create pinball machines for the competitive field. Competition series-based pinball machines that I've been preaching for years.”

    Zach (host) @ mid-episode — Zach's long-standing position that purpose-built competitive machines are the solution

  • “In most of these other kind of competitive game types like this, the better you are, the shorter it is. And pinball is the exact opposite. That is why it is an unwatchable, painful, no way able to be mainstream game until they have to do what they did with cricket.”

    Zach (host) @ mid-episode — Identifies fundamental game design problem preventing pinball's mainstream acceptance as a competitive sport

  • “Pinball, the competitive pinball scene, just doesn't know what it wants to be. Like, does it want to make everybody competitive in an association kind of thing, like the IFPA with the Whopper points and maximum? Or does it actually want a professional league?”

    Zach (host) @ late-episode — Identifies strategic identity confusion in competitive pinball community

  • “The problem is, while I enjoy it, I don't like getting home at midnight. I'm like, you know what? We want to play the next title or the future titles rumor game. I'm getting fatigued of that.”

    Dennis (host) @ mid-episode — Casual observation about tournament fatigue and event duration, relates to broader time management issues

  • “Rumors are indicating to me from the sources I'm talking to, and these are not just Reddit people. These are people people, that there will be no TPF in 2024, or it has not been decided that there will be a TPF at all this year.”

    Zach (host) @ late-episode — Direct statement of unverified rumor about Texas Pinball Festival status with claim of credible sourcing

Entities

YegpineventZach SharpepersonDennispersonRyan CpersonTexas Pinball FestivaleventEd Vander VeenpersonKim Vander VeenpersonPaul McKinneypersonBowen Cairnsperson

Signals

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Yegpin games tuned to extreme brutality, with Attack from Mars exhibiting misaligned flippers so severe that spectators questioned whether it was intentional sabotage, compromising both fun and competitive integrity.

    high · Direct discussion of community complaints and specific machine examples from Yegpin event

  • ?

    competitive_signal: IFPA's Whopper Eaters scoring system drives organizers to maximize game counts (e.g., seven-strike formats) which extends tournament duration, reduces fun, and hurts mainstream viewability.

    high · Zach and Dennis discuss min-maxing behavior and Keith Elwin's stated frustration with seven-strike tournaments

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Zach advocates for purpose-built competitive pinball machines as the only solution to structural incompatibility between casual game design and professional competitive requirements.

    high · Repeated advocacy for 'competition series-based pinball machines' as foundational fix

  • ?

    industry_signal: Competitive pinball community is fundamentally divided on whether it wants grassroots association play (IFPA-style) or a professional league, creating conflicting optimization pressures.

    high · Extended discussion by both hosts about lack of strategic clarity in competitive pinball direction

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival 2024 status is rumored to be uncertain or cancelled following Ed and Kim Vander Veen's retirement and ownership transition to Paul McKinney, though official website posts suggest otherwise.

    medium · Zach reports unverified rumors from multiple sources, contradicted by July 29 website post mentioning 2024 show and hotel block delays

Topics

Tournament game tuning and difficulty calibrationprimaryCompetitive pinball structure and identity crisisprimaryIFPA scoring system and its effects on tournament organizationprimaryTexas Pinball Festival ownership transition and 2024 statusprimaryPinball as a spectator sport and mainstream viabilitysecondaryTournament event logistics and time managementsecondaryPurpose-built competitive pinball machinessecondaryGaming conventions and industry showsmentioned

Sentiment

negative(-0.68)— Discussion reflects frustration with competitive pinball's structural problems, aggressive game tuning compromising gameplay, and organizational inefficiencies. Uncertainty about Texas Pinball Festival adds concern. Some positive notes about venue selection (Southern Fried) but overall tone is critical and pessimistic about the direction of competitive pinball.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.047

0:00
Warning, the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats. Listener discretion is advised. The Pinball Network is online. Launching the Pinball Show. Thanks again for the ongoing support as a Pinball Show Club member. Enjoy this exclusive TPS content and make sure to visit the Pinball Show Club Discord to chat about the bonus material.
0:30
All right, Dennis, we had Yegpin happen over a little week ago. So all the competitive players, they were happy with that. Well, were they? A lot of discussion, Zach, about how the tournament games were set up. You know, possibly. I fell asleep on every podcast that discussed it. So what were they not happy about? Our TPN Discord had a little bit of discussion about this. Those bore our TPS subscription members. What were they upset about?
1:00
Was it too cold in the room? No, no, no. Nothing that normal human beings identified with. Javier wasn't chilled. No, it was. And this is something that I've heard about happening at a variety of competitive events. They wouldn't turn the lights on. No, that's district. Okay. The games were tuned to a brutality level of 11. Oh, they did discuss this. Yeah. It was so discussed that apparently someone, I think, snapped a photo.
1:32
I think it was of an attack from Mars, and the flippers weren't even aligned, and things had been set up so hard. People weren't sure if that flipper was broken or if that was actually the configuration. That's how bad it was. If people are – and I'd heard later, I read, that no, the flipper had broke, which you would hope would be the case. But that people are at that mind state where they're like someone deliberately misaligning flippers. So one is level and the other isn't actually comes up as a well.

  • “I heard that the plan was to kind of announce that at the end of last year's show, but the new owners preferred not to announce that.”

    Dennis (host) @ late-episode — Suggests ownership transition and management's communication strategy regarding Ed/Kim departure

    • Pinberg
    event
    Southern Fried Gaming Expoevent
    Keith Elwinperson
    IFPAorganization
    Robert Harrisperson
    Attack from Marsgame
    Tom Graffperson
  • ?

    business_signal: Texas Pinball Festival underwent ownership transition with Ed and Kim Vander Veen retiring; Paul McKinney announced as continuing leader with new team, though transition details and new owner identity unclear.

    high · Official TPF website statement confirming Ed/Kim retirement and Paul McKinney's continuation; multi-year venue contracts create financial/contractual complexity

  • ?

    operational_signal: Most competitive pinball tournament organizers (outside Pinberg) exhibit poor time management and significantly overrun schedule estimates, affecting event quality and spectator experience.

    medium · Dennis's observation that Pinberg is exceptional; implied poor practices elsewhere; discussion of tournament length affecting spectator entertainment value

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Pinball's fundamental design—where better play extends game duration—is the opposite of mainstream competitive sports and creates unwatchability, preventing mainstream acceptance without structural game redesign.

    high · Zach articulates this as core unfixable problem; compares to cricket and baseball reforms

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Growing frustration among competitive players (e.g., Keith Elwin) with tournament format complexity and game tuning extremes, indicating potential backlash against current IFPA-driven direction.

    medium · References to Keith Elwin's complaints; Yegpin community feedback about game setup; broader discussion of player dissatisfaction

  • ?

    content_signal: The Pinball Show Patreon exclusive bonus episode format allows extended critical discussion of industry issues not covered in main feed, suggesting deeper subscriber engagement and controversy-friendly content strategy.

    high · Episode framed as 'exclusive TPS Club membership discussion'; cover note indicates adult language and unfiltered discussion

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Unverified rumors circulating at Southern Fried Gaming Expo suggest Texas Pinball Festival 2024 may be cancelled or on indefinite hold, though recent official website activity contradicts this.

    low · Zach cites multiple sources ('people people') but acknowledges rumor status; official July 29 post and hotel block delays suggest operation continuity; possible explanation: new management communication delays or attendee speculation filling information gaps

  • ?

    venue_signal: Texas Pinball Festival hotel block traditionally released by this time of year with rooms typically sold out; delayed announcement unusual but explained by ownership transition and new organizer's processes.

    medium · Dennis notes typical hotel block release pattern; Zach confirms atypical delay this year; correlates with Ed/Kim retirement and Paul McKinney's transition

    • 2:04
    Maybe they did decide to do that. What do you think about bastardizing games to make them difficult? All up in Burke kind of stuff. I mean, the thing with Pinberg is I want to I kind of want to set that to the side. All right. Well, no, you ask the questions. I do want to be fair about it. I agree with the Pinberg approach. But Pinnberg did it scientifically. They, according to the people who worked on those games, like Bowen Cairns and stuff, they timed how long it took to play games to balance out the time.
    2:34
    So they were striving for each bank to end at approximately the same time. They didn't make things hard just to be hard. They made things so that the bank as a whole would play the proper time period, and they measured it. Okay. I do not agree with – and I know like Ryan C, I remember in the past, would talk about – back on Head to Head, I remember he would talk. I think he did a little bit on Jesse J's podcast as well, discuss how on his tournaments he would tune the games like up to extreme brutality, and then he'd get a lot of complaints too.
    3:05
    And that's the thing. I get it because I've, you know, having played in a lot of local tournaments, I get very frustrated with how long they go when really good players are on games that are basically at stock settings. It is frustrating. So I do think adjustments make sense. But it is possible, and I thought we kind of saw that in the discussions from some at Yegpin, that you tune things so much to keep the game short that all of the fun is sapped out of playing the game. Because you can't play the game like the game's meant to be played anymore. It's just set up to drain and destroy.
    3:38
    No one makes any progress. And, I mean, like if push comes to shove, you need things to run on time. I'm a big on-time sort of person. So if you have to pick I do say make things go more efficiently But if you have it set up to the degree that everyone like making fun of how hard these things are you didn pick the right games You needed to just pick harder games from the get than whatever you went with No, I'd go further and say that it's pretty sad when they're doing this.
    4:11
    Because in what other sport do you do this? Oh, we're going to spread the goals even further on this course. No, we're going to make the hole in golf smaller, and it's going to move. The hole's going to move because the players are too. No, that's not what actual true sports do. That's why it's hard to ever argue that pinball is a sport. It just doesn't feel like that. Now, here's the problem, Dennis. Pinball is not created currently as a competitive device.
    4:42
    I take that back. It's created as a casually competitive device, but not a professionally competitive device. So we're trying to modify a general approached game to fit those needs of a competition sports level professional based system. And it's just not happening. And it's fucking sad seeing it, seeing them try to try to do this. If you guys want to take yourself seriously, make better decisions to do so.
    5:15
    You know where I'm going with this, Dennis. I'm afraid I know. The only answer is to create pinball machines for the competitive field. The competition series-based pinball machines that I've been preaching for years. No, that is not the only option. Even Roger Sharp, the father of pinball himself, would possibly agree with. Not after he heard your take on how much it's okay to spend on Harry Potter's license. Look, I get where you come from with this.
    5:46
    I don't want to rehash the whole thing. We don't need to. That's right. I don't think that's the fundamental issue. I think the fundamental issue is, especially when you think of all the other bar games, because that's what pinball basically is, like a bar arcade game, even other arcade games. Oh, how dare you? It's like darts or anything else. People point to the people watching darts. This is what everyone who wants pinball to be a sport points to is bar games. Yeah, they point to billiards and everything. Here's the difference. Here's the fundamental difference. It is not that we don't have these competitive series games, which I get where that solves some of the current issues we have with setup and all of that to a degree.
    6:23
    The problem is as the game moves around, everything – anyway, I'm not going to go into that. Here's the thing. In most of these other kind of competitive game types like this, the better you are, the shorter it is. And pinball is the exact opposite. That is why it is an unwatchable, painful, no way able to be mainstream game until they have to do what they did with cricket. You can't be the traditional. Traditional, like casual competitive can always exist, but professional pinball would have to be a different game.
    6:58
    Timed or something. It just has to be set up in a way that it doesn't take forever. What was the biggest complaint about baseball? It takes too long. and they've made more and more steps to make it shorter because people won't watch. Well, and they're shooting themselves in the foot. They're complaining that they, meaning the competitive pinball group, they're shooting themselves in the foot by, like, do some things that are easy. Like, instead of playing 16 rounds, seven games apiece to try. No, just reduce the number of games you're playing.
    7:29
    I think Keith Elwin was even saying, like, enough is enough. Why do we have to have a seven-strike tournament? That's the IFPA's fault. Like, come on, Wobber Eaters. That's the IFPA's fault. Shit. And that because everyone is it all in the video game space we call this min where you play like an RPG and you be like all right what is the proper way to configure my character And you min Having a jack skill set isn usually the best way to play an RPG The best way is to have minimized certain stats and maximize others because it better to be great at a few things than good at everything
    8:05
    But my point is that IFPA's decision on how they want to rank people is driving all of this stuff. And everyone wants to maximize the whoppers. All the tournament organizers do. And so they go through all of these steps, and they put in these excessive numbers of game plays because they needed – they went 100%. They went 100%. And the other problem is, Pinberg aside, Pinberg was like the poster child for a proper way to try and do all of that. In most of these events, I think it's become very clear that time management is not a strong suit of most tournament organizers, and they completely blow their estimates.
    8:40
    Yeah, you're right. You're right. And Pinberg, for non-pinball people, Pinberg is only digestible and consumable to an entertaining degree in the finals. The other days are just non-surgical. Most of the people consuming pinball tournaments are tournament players who just languish in chat all day, keeping the numbers relatively high. And then when the streams get like on the front page of Twitch, everyone gets excited because a few thousand people stayed for 20 seconds. Yeah, and they say, oh, there's still a thing. But, yeah, don't play seven knockout.
    9:13
    No. I think pinball, the competitive pinball scene, just doesn't know what it wants to be. Like, does it want to make everybody competitive in an association kind of thing, like the IFPA with the Whopper points and maximum? Or does it actually want a professional league? Because if we have a professional league, Dennis, we can get rid of so much of this shit. We can get rid of so much of it and just focus on the actual professional pinball players. There can still be the IFA leagues and stuff. You are correct. And the problem is that different people want – well, the problem is different people in the competitive space right now want different things.
    9:50
    Yeah. Nobody knows what they want. It's completely divided. That's a good discussion. We didn't even know we were going to go into that. Yeah. See, Yagpin ended up being really interesting. We also had Southern Fried Gaming Expo this last week. I heard good things about the showing of Venom. I haven't been there in a handful of years to Southern Fried. I've had people pressure me to try and get to that one. I hear it's a really good one. You probably like it because it's mixed. It's not just pinball. It's arcade. It's cosplay. It's video games. And it's been some video game people in particular, I think, that have been like, you know, Southern Fried, you should try and get to Southern Fried.
    10:22
    But I have not done it. I like the ones that focus just on pinball, personally. That's just my style. Speaking of that, you know, Texas Pinball Festival, we were both at that. Oh, yeah. That's considered kind of the go-to one. It's the industry show. I know some people claim Expo, but we know that's not true. Well, that's personal preference more than anything. Did you know this? And I don't know if a lot of these listeners maybe even knew this. Did you know that the showrunners, Ed and Kim Vander Veen, they actually retired from TPF last year?
    10:54
    Sold it all. Right. They're not going to be organizers anymore. If I knew, I had forgotten about it. Same here. I had no clue. Did you also know that I think typically by this time, the rooms are released for the convention center and stuff like that, and people have already fought and they've already sold out? I did not remember that because I usually don't even bother, and I get my rooms usually in December at an adjacent hotel. Okay. Oddly enough, still not up. But here's the thing. I've heard from a couple of people this last week, especially the buzz around the Southern Fried Gaming Expo.
    11:32
    The rumor is that I'm hearing, listener, again, fully rumor, I don't know, but with Ed and Kim gone, the website itself says founding organizer Paul McKinney will continue to carry the TPF torch along with a new team he will introduce soon Ed and Kim will be at TPF 2024 but they going to be playing pinball enjoying the show and visiting with all of you That the official thing on the website Rumors are indicating to me from the sources I'm talking to, and these are not just Reddit people. These are people people, that there will be no TPF in 2024,
    12:04
    or it has not been decided that there will be a TPF at all this year. I don't know if that means for subsequent years as well, but certainly this year is not looking good for a TPF. Whoa. Is TPF dead? My gut instinct is these rumors have to be incorrect. But they don't have to be. I know they don't have to be. But it seemed – all right. The dates are listed on the TPF website.
    12:35
    There was a post on July 29th. As it would be. Why not? About the t-shirt rethreads and that those would be available for pickup at the 2024 show. For rethreads, though. Okay. You can order them online, too, though. Yes, but, I mean, the post is from one day ago. Mm-hmm. So, clearly, Robert Harris, who made that post, is conveying that there's a 2024 show. Why say anything about being able to pick it up at 2024's show if you're not even sure there's going to be a 2024 show?
    13:05
    Why wouldn't you just leave that line out? And normally, as we learned, I mean, I was familiar with this from my own experience with events at one of my prior jobs. But as we had heard from Texas Pinball back when the pandemic was happening, they had multi-year agreements with the embassy suites. So there are penalties for breaking those agreements without an act of God to cite. So if they already had the room reserved for the space reserved for 2024, that's no small thing just to say, I don't feel it.
    13:36
    Where are the new owners at? I mean, it sounds like it's the same owner. The ownership thing is, I'm not entirely clear what that all means, because the whole, I mean, he is a founding organizer of it. I don't know if the ownership is different. The retirement was just that Ed and Kim are running the event. I heard that the plan was to kind of announce that at the end of last year's show, but the new owners preferred not to announce that. Okay, I didn't stay all the way through the very last day. because I get tired of sitting through the awards ceremony and then getting home.
    14:08
    The problem is, while I enjoy it, I don't like getting home at midnight. I'm like, you know what? We want to play the next title or the future titles rumor game. I'm getting fatigued of that. So let's go into the show rumors. And that's what the buzz was. Well, this is interesting. This is the first I've heard of that. So the Southern Fried people are spreading this rumor, huh? Dead this year, if not dead. I should say the attendees of Southern Fried are spreading this rumor. I don't want to cite that the southern fried organizers are.
    14:39
    Well, it's interesting. Who would stand most to gain by spreading a rumor about Texas Pinball Festival being on shaky ground? I would say it had to be Expo. Competitors, yeah. I think so. Well, because those two are seen as the two big main shows for everyone. Yeah, but they're separated with time so much. They are. That's the thing that doesn't make sense. So even that doesn't make sense to me. They're spread about like they're like exactly equidistant from each other. Yeah. So I don't know, and I don't know why this is a thing,
    15:10
    but it's just odd that I heard it from more than one person. That's all. I'm wondering if people are just filling those blanks in because the hotel block's not open and their imaginations are running wild. And that we know that they're our new owner. Yeah, maybe. That's what I'm hearing, people. And that was your exclusive TPS Club membership discussion, which was not only about that, but what is wrong with competitive pinball? Sorry, Eggpin. Tom Graff is flipping tables right now. Sons of bitches, I'm finally partnered.