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Stern Pinball Update

Pintastic New England·video·43m 39s·analyzed·Feb 27, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Stern Pinball pivots to direct player engagement via Sam Stern Army and Insider Connected features.

Summary

Michael Grant, Senior Manager of Location Entertainment at Sam Stern Pinball, discusses Stern's strategy for expanding pinball through the Sam Stern Army network and Insider Connected platform. He explains how the company is shifting from distributor-filtered feedback to direct player engagement, using tournaments, leaderboards, achievements, and social features to drive location adoption and community growth.

Key Claims

  • Michael Grant has been with Sam Stern Pinball for close to two years in marketing and location entertainment roles

    high confidence · Michael Grant stated directly at Pintastic New England seminar

  • Sam Stern Army operates monthly IFPA-sanctioned tournaments in locations globally as a core growth strategy

    high confidence · Michael Grant explaining Sam Stern Army structure and goals

  • Insider Connected launch party event badges are permanent digital achievements on player profiles

    high confidence · Michael Grant demonstrating launch party badge examples (Foo Fighters, James Bond)

  • Venom features game progress save functionality and speedrun tracking via Insider Connected

    high confidence · Michael Grant crediting Dwight Sullivan and Jim Sullivan team for Venom's XP and speedrun systems

  • Stern is planning exclusive denim member jackets with custom art for Sam Stern Army members at Pinball Expo week

    high confidence · Michael Grant announcing inaugural global member appreciation party at Microphone Brewing Thursday 5-8pm

  • Breweries have been a major venue category for Stern pinball success, alongside traditional arcades, bowling alleys, and restaurants

    high confidence · Michael Grant discussing successful location types

  • Stern is planning significant expansion of Sam Stern Army into Europe and Australia

    medium confidence · Michael Grant mentioning Australian members and stating 'we looking very strongly at expanding Sam Stern Army into Europe'

  • Insider Connected has a much longer feature roadmap than currently implemented, with years of development planned

    high confidence · Michael Grant acknowledging 'ever-growing list of functionality' and no firm timelines on expansions

Notable Quotes

  • “I fell in love with pinball at a pinball tournament, interacting with people just like me who like pinball. I didn't realize there were so many people just like me. I thought I was on an island when I discovered pinball.”

    Michael Grant@ 4:14 — Explains personal motivation for building community-focused Sam Stern Army program

  • “It's more fun to connect. It's twofold—it's more fun to connect together but it's also Insider Connected, which is another really important initiative at Sam Stern Pinball.”

    Michael Grant@ 6:26 — Reframes classic pinball marketing tagline to emphasize connectivity and digital platform integration

  • “Pinball is now brought to the 21st century. It's internet enabled. We're just getting started with Insider Connected and how we can use that to bridge the gaps and connect people all over the world.”

    Michael Grant@ 6:37 — Articulates Stern's vision for digital connectivity as core to modern pinball strategy

  • “My number one priority is expanding the Sam Stern Army network, so more Sam Stern Army members hosting Sam Stern Army tournaments on more, at certain locations on more countries all around the world.”

    Michael Grant@ 5:32 — States explicit primary KPI for Grant's role and Stern's growth strategy

  • “Now we have, on some cases, a direct jump from these Army members who are players all the way straight up to the top, bypassing all these filters that are going to change the message or lose important parts of the message.”

    Host/moderator (Dave)@ 27:09 — Highlights structural shift in how Stern receives feedback, comparing old distributor-filter model to new direct-to-player model

Entities

Michael GrantpersonSam Stern PinballcompanyZach SharpepersonDwight SullivanpersonJim SullivanpersonMitch Chip CurtispersonNoah CrablepersonCherylperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Sam Stern Pinball investing in Sam Stern Army infrastructure including exclusive member jackets with achievement badges, Facebook group for resource sharing, and global appreciation events.

    high · Michael Grant announcing inaugural member appreciation party with exclusive denim jackets and ranking system based on event hosting achievements

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern layering digital connectivity (Insider Connected) onto physical machines to create persistent player progression, achievements, and social features.

    high · Discussion of leaderboards, event badges, save game progress, XP tracking, speedrun competition, and planned expansions like video capture and tournament management tools

  • $

    market_signal: Stern actively positioning pinball across diverse venue types (breweries, restaurants, bowling alleys, laundromats) beyond traditional arcades, framing it as lifestyle/entertainment amenity rather than pure coin-op.

    high · Michael Grant explicitly listing successful venue categories and emphasizing 'utility' (social gathering, extended dwell time, food/beverage sales)

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Stern accelerating software feature releases (Venom save progress, speedrun, XP systems) leveraging Insider Connected platform for competitive differentiation.

    high · Venom highlighted as example of multi-layered engagement features; Dwight Sullivan and Jim Sullivan credited as design/programming leads

  • ?

    community_signal: Shift from traditional distributor-mediated feedback to direct player-to-manufacturer communication through Sam Stern Army members and Insider Connected.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.131

0:00
So last hour we had some portrayal of certain manufacturers running their trade ads saying look at how much money you could make by running these games that paid out and that was the old days. So now with a rebuttal, we come to the modern era of pinball. Michael Grant, who has a really interesting job at Stern Pinball now. So he's been here at the show, you know, meeting up with the people who are running the clubs and the co-ops and the new locations and all the stuff going on.
0:59
So tell me just briefly your job. What's the success factor for your job? When you're going to get that big bonus at the end of the year, what did you do that made you a success? Sure, so just a quick brief intro about myself. My name is Michael Grant. I'm from Wakefield, Mass. originally. So this is a hometown show for me. Can everybody hear me okay? Yeah. Okay, great. So thank you for everyone who's coming who attended the show and who attended this seminar. Thank you. Thanks for the show for having me and thank you Dave for inviting me here. So my name is Michael Grant. I'm senior manager of location entertainment for Stern Pinball. I've been with Stern for about close to two years and I'm attending this show. I've made every single fantastic except the first one. So I'm happy to be here. So thank you for everyone. So yeah, so what I do, when I first started with Stern Pinball, I was marketing manager. So I assisted the director of marketing, Zach Sharp, in the sales team in all our initiatives on the sales and marketing side, whether it be supporting photo shoots and video shoots in internal sales flyers, external sales flyers,
2:11
giving my input in the sales meetings. I used to work for different manufacturers. I ran their sales and marketing for a couple years. So that combined with my previous business experience in the wholesale collectibles industry, I used to sell collectibles to retail stores, comic book shops, sports card shops, stuff like that. So what I do now, I've learned everything, I'm applying everything that I've learned in my life into my current role, which is really, I feel like really where I shine and where I'm very comfortable. So as Senior Manager of Location Entertainment, I oversee the Stern Army, which is a global network of brand ambassadors who run Stern Army tournaments all around the world. There are monthly IFPA sanctioned tournaments and it helps build and nourish and enrich local pinball communities while also supporting public locations with incremental sales, food and beverage, and strategically scheduling tournaments on slower nights. A lot of times, the Stern Army members often can be an enthusiast. It might be the pinball operator, it might be the location owner, or it might be someone else who works at the location. So whether it be a bartender, a manager, etc.

  • “We want to give the players more reasons to play, more ways to play. So it's very exciting. We're just getting started.”

    Michael Grant@ 21:24 — Summarizes Stern's philosophy on continuous feature expansion and player engagement

  • “So it's really win-win for everyone. Stern Pinball games are elevating the entertainment experience. We're making it way cooler, way more fun.”

    Michael Grant@ 29:02 — Frames pinball as lifestyle/entertainment amenity rather than pure coin-op revenue generator

    • Jack Jack Danger
    person
    Sam Stern Armyorganization
    Insider Connectedproduct
    Venomgame
    Foo Fightersgame
    James Bondgame
    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtlesgame
    Elvira's House of Horrorsgame
    AC/DCgame
    Microphone Brewingvenue
    Logan Arcadevenue
    Pinball Expoevent
    Pintastic New Englandevent
    Automate Itvenue
    Justin Whitnallperson
    Killer Queengame
    Godzillagame
    Rushgame

    high · Host noting 'direct jump from Army members who are players all the way straight up to the top, bypassing filters' in contrast to old distributor hierarchy

  • ?

    product_launch: Insider Connected platform live with leaderboards, player accounts, operator tech alerts, and launch party badges; significant additional features in planning stages.

    high · Michael Grant demonstrating current functionality (leaderboards, achievements, event badges) and acknowledging long feature backlog with no firm timeline

  • ?

    venue_signal: Sam Stern Army creating tournament infrastructure at non-traditional pinball venues (breweries, restaurants) through ambassador network to drive location adoption.

    high · Michael Grant explaining Sam Stern Army member roles and outreach process; Microphone Brewing and Logan Arcade cited as tournament hosts

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Stern attempting to shift operator conversation from pure coin-drop ROI to lifestyle amenity and customer dwell-time value proposition.

    medium · Michael Grant emphasizing 'utility' of pinball for food/beverage sales and longer venue stays; contrast with old marketing that focused solely on machine earnings

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Michael Grant promoted from Marketing Manager to Senior Manager of Location Entertainment, reflecting expansion of location support function at Stern.

    high · Grant describing his evolution from marketing role under Zach Sharpe to dedicated location entertainment oversight

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern planning aggressive Sam Stern Army expansion into Europe and Australia with dedicated outreach to existing members in those regions.

    medium · Michael Grant mentioning Australian members (Justin Whitnall) requesting visits and stating 'we looking very strongly at expanding Sam Stern Army into Europe'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Community requesting real-time game state capture and tournament streaming features similar to arcade games like Killer Queen; Stern acknowledging as valuable feedback.

    medium · Operator at event describing Killer Queen's networked tournament feature and requesting similar LCD/game state export capabilities for pinball streaming

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Stern designing Venom with persistent progression (save state XP, speedrun tracking, unlockable hosts) to provide long-term engagement for home and location players.

    high · Michael Grant explaining how save game progress and speedrun features allow casual players like 'Grandpa and little Johnny' to eventually unlock all hosts; speedrun as replay incentive

    • 3:42
    So it's a great place for me because I'm a pinball fan first and foremost. Before I worked in this business, I discovered pinball on location, like probably many of you here. Who here discovered pinball on location?
    3:59
    Who discovered pinball in people's homes? Well, in a way, I guess I could claim that. Okay, so it looked like about 75% of you discovered pinball on location. That's true for me, too. But I fell in love with pinball at a pinball tournament, interacting with people just like me who like pinball. I didn't realize there were so many people just like me. I thought I was on an island when I discovered pinball. I had no idea there were so many people with the same interest. So I think that's a good introduction that we can... Yeah, imagine me doing that in the 60s when there was a discount department store near me. You know, they had a game room in it. And so there were just some, I would say, 12 pieces of which nine were pinball. so that operator was trying pretty hard to push pinball uh but they were just sort of sitting there like there was no uh sense of anybody being a spark plug trying to stimulate play or anything like that they were just kind of uh you know those old magazine ads that say get rich quick whether it's vending or laundromats or amusement games, pinball.
    5:19
    You set the machines out, and they're automated, and money just comes in, and it's so easy. So I can build off that. Your original question was, how's my success gauge? My number one priority is expanding the Stern Army network, so more Stern Army members hosting Stern Army tournaments in more, at certain locations in more countries all around the world. So that's my number one goal. Underneath that is you know enriching and in growing the community. So to your point you know you were referring to statements on on you know in you know sales flyers to operators talking about earnings and I you know you do another saying that we're on the on those flyers and actually continued through the 90s was it's more fun to compete now I've actually taken that tagline and I've modified it if you see a next time you're at a Stern Army location or tournament look at the banner that we have there's a tagline that says it's more fun to connect so that's twofold it's more fun to connect together but it's also insider connected which is another it's a very important initiative at Stern Pinball, which we can discuss further. Pinball is now brought to the 21st century. It's internet enabled. We're just getting started with Insider Connected and how we can use that to bridge the gaps and connect people all over the world.
    6:52
    It's a really exciting opportunity for us. How many people in the room have pinball on location where you're trying to make money by setting your machines out? one operator here.
    7:09
    Yeah, so you're trying to get, even if the operator is not all that enthusiastic about pinball, if there's somebody, player, whatever,
    7:23
    just putting that idea together that here's a pinball on location and somebody is glad it's there. Typically it starts with a location that either is interested in pinball or has recently installed pinball and they want to see how can this be successful. So they'll reach out to sternarmy at sternpinball.com, send me an email, and I will respond to you with some information on how I can help. What I encourage people to do is leverage a local, an enthusiast customer, maybe, or ideally someone who works at the business, but it typically ends up being either a customer or the operator. But sometimes the operators, they have so many locations, it's hard for them to really take ownership of planning, coordinating, and executing these tournaments. It's a good amount of work, but we do it for the love of pinball. That's why we do it. to help build the community and simultaneously we're helping the location. Because while we help the location, it gives us more places to play pinball. Which again, continues the cycle. A lot of us, like myself, we discover pinball on location. I ended up buying a game. I bought another game. And I bought another game. And before I knew it, I was out of space. Now I didn't make the jump that someone like Mitch Curtis, who is a Stern Army tournament, Stern Army member and tournament director here in the Boston area, many of you have probably been to his tournament, he ran out of space and decided, well maybe I'll put a game at this location here and maybe he'll earn some money. And before he knew it he was doing this full-time. That's his full-time job. And then that plants the seeds for, develops the next enthusiast, who becomes the next collector because the next operator in the cycle continues. So that's what we've been seeing.
    9:22
    Now do you have anything like a non-tournament type of play stimulator? So you like to compete and it's more fun to compete? Yeah, so I mean, so you can run some, okay, so some locations. Well, I know one, launch parties. You coordinate launch parties, right? I do, yes. So when a new game comes out, we always do a launch party. We always do a launch party. So our tournaments are IFPA-sanctioned, but I also encourage people, they should be doing IFPA-sanctioned tournaments. That's a requirement. But for those who are new to pinball,
    10:02
    some locations will do a monthly IFPA-sanctioned tournament, but they'll also do a tournament that isn't IFPA-sanctioned, where they feel like there is fewer ringers, more experienced players. My dear friend Cheryl, she hosts a non-IFBA sanctioned tournament at Logan Arcade once a week, once a month? I think it's once a month for new pinball players. And many of those players are now playing in the IFBA sanctioned tournaments and so forth. to speak to launch party. So whenever we introduce a new PMO machine, the latest and greatest game is Venom. Hopefully everyone's tried to play it at the automated booth here. Yes? Thumbs up All right So when a new game comes out Stern Army members and Stern Army locations can host a Stern Army launch party Where So we prioritize Stern Army locations public locations to receive the new game first We want players to discover the new game on location. We want to support these locations in with that effort and that's actually starting with I believe it was Turtles during COVID before I joined Stern. So with launch parties, it's a featured game of the party. A lot of locations
    11:28
    will do a high score tournament, but they can really run whatever tournament, whatever format they want, as long as it's IFBA sanctioned, that's what we request. Insider Connected now has made launch parties even better. So everyone who plays in a launch party, they They log in, they have their QR code on their phone, or in the future in their Stern Insider Connector app, which is coming soon, they log in, play a complete game on the featured game, and you will earn an Insider Connected launch party event badge that will live forever on your player profile on Insider Connected. So when I look at my phone, I went to two different, I went to James Bond and Microphone home brewing where I host monthly launch party, excuse me, monthly Stern Army tournaments. I have a Foo Fighters event launch party badge and I have a James Bond launch party badge and two or three other locations in Periam. I have a couple there and I also have a Foo Fighters badge at Noon Whistle Brewing local to me in Chicago where I now live working at Stern. Okay, so this is Insider Connected.
    12:44
    We've been hearing that there's a lot more coming. Do you think that the list of things yet to do is like ten times as long as what we've seen so far? Is it really a lot, years and years of work? I'll answer this in two ways. First, I'd like to talk about what we have, what we're offering now. But yes, the Insider Connected platform will continue to grow and evolve. And we're always listening. We want everyone's feedback, both players, locations, operators. We want to know what you want. So please keep the feedback coming. We listen to everyone. And we have an ever-growing list of functionality that we hope to implement at some point. So we appreciate everyone's feedback. So thank you for everyone who's given us feedback. Current functionality. So there's twofold. There are three. There's the home users. We have locations and operators. So operators are interested in how is this going to enhance their business? How is this going to enhance cash earnings, coin drop? How is this going to make my job easier? So we have something called tech alerts, where there's a stuck switch or your coin door is open or what have you, some sort of issue with the game. The operator will be alerted with whatever the issue is, so they can look on their Insider Connected pro operator account.
    14:15
    And you can go to insider.cernpenball.com and scroll all the way down. if you're an operator and you want to sign up for a pro account and you have games on the public location just say commercial operated the very bottom you click that it'll take you to another landing page and you apply click that and that that's how you can apply for a pro operator so so tech alerts is a big thing you can see earnings and data from that in in that area that's something else that we're looking to also further expand what data the operators see, exporting data. But again, it's a long list of features we hope to implement, so no firm timeline on any of that stuff. But another thing that's really great for both operators and locations is leaderboards, high score leaderboards. So what locations are doing, and we encourage all locations who have Pinball, you should be operating Stern Pinball games. They should connected to the insider connected and you have a leaderboard basically what it is for every title that you have Foo Fighters, Venom, Godzilla, Rush, James Bond you name it any spike to game Eastern pinball game with an LCD screen you can connect it insider connected and what a high score leaderboard does it will show you the top 10 scores of what people have logged in and played a game at that location. So it's each, on each game, you can have your high score on there once. So you won't see the, you know, the best players in the location have all the top scorers. We don't want that. More and more and more and more. Exactly. And then the operator can also see like the full list of everyone on the back end of his pro account. So that really enhances the coin drop as well as adoption. We want everyone to sign up for an Insider Connect account. If you haven't, go to insider.starnpimble.com and create a free player account. It is free to join. So leaderboards have been really, really instrumental in getting players to sign up. Now here's another thing that players real, I'll speak to what the player's like. So it tracks your scores, your high scores, over pro, premium, and LE models of your game. You also earn achievements, very similar to what has been done in the past with video games, Xbox Live, and so forth. So you can, there's, when you achieve certain game objectives in a game, whether it's start this multiball, or complete this task X amount of times. Each game has their own unique achievement that you can earn. And there's numerous, numerous ones. There's achievements for beginner players, there's achievements for moderate players, and even the expert level players who know the way around each and every rule, there's achievements for them. So it's basically a game within a game. And the players really like that. that in addition to in addition to that similar to the launch party event badges at certain certain shows in certain other events you can earn an event badge so we have any here we don't at this one unfortunately but the next one I believe will be pinball Expo in Chicago there'll be a will be an event badge for that show and various other ones coming up but it's something that the you know I'm I'll make sure we yeah but yeah so that gives you a good overview some of the benefits of the CIDR connected again it's continuing to evolve there's there's a lot more we could do as far as you know you can also track your friends and see what they're doing. And sort of bragging rights is a big part of it. I had a friend, Noah Crable, who was so excited to see me and share with me that he defeated Null on Venom and he unlocked a new host. In Venom, you start with four hosts. And if beat Null you can unlock there's up to you can unlock a new host you can unlock Venomize Wolverine, Venomize Hulk, and Venomize Captain America each time you beat Null which is like the the grand wizard mode there are multiple mini wizard modes along the way and if you beat Null you unlock a new host and on the topic of instead of connected in Venom another thing we've introduced with Venom is save game progress. I give credit to Dwight Sullivan and his team. It's a little bit, Venom is a little bit different in that yes there are modes in the game but you earn experience points or what we call XP as you play the game and score points and achieve certain objectives you earn progress XP points towards the game and over time you can get
    19:40
    you'll eventually, Noah can do it in one game. He's a better pinball player than me, he's a better pinball than a lot of players, but maybe, you know, Grandpa and little Johnny at home or on location want to, they want to experience those modes too, and they want to unlock Wolverine. They'll be able to. It might take a little longer, but they'll, the game with insider connected, as long as your Venom is connected, insider connected, you will, the game will save that progress and you will see those features deep in the game and another great feature for venom is speedrun so this is really exciting this is a new thing that Dwight added to to to venom so speedrun is essentially whenever you're logged in there's a constant there's a constant timer that's tracking how long you play this game and how long it's taken you to defeat Null. So once that happens, that's your speedrun score and then you can try to beat it the next time. So really, a really interesting way to play and again, with Insider Connected, the options are limited. We can really take the game to the next level. And pinball at its core is a game. We're proud to make the best games in the world. Yeah, and I can see how that's particularly interesting to the home player that if they're going to own the game for several years, that new things will be opened up for them, or just having defeated Null five times, and they won't get sick of it if they've got this other thing of how fast did I defeat Null. Absolutely, yeah. We want to give the players more reasons to play, more ways to play, So it's very exciting. We're just getting started. Okay, well let the record show that I did not ask him to reveal any upcoming features of Insider Connected. So he doing his corporate duty of not revealing anything that isn announced yet I like my job Yeah so are they sending you to Europe and things like that We get there My friends in Australia are begging me to come visit my Stern Army members out there Justin Whitnall and others So yeah we just getting started We looking very strongly at expanding Stern Army into Europe So yeah stay tuned Okay, and how about in the swag that Stern produces? New things, new innovations there? Well, I will say, so one of the incentives, thank you, back to Stern Army,
    22:29
    one of the incentives that we provide folks to run Stern Army tournaments and to the locations is we provide prize support. So we recommend that we give them Translight, another smaller giveaway. So what I encourage folks to do is don't give the Translight away to the winner. Raffle off at random. If you want to give the winner something, great. They should get something cool. But give the Translight away at random. That way everyone feels like they have a chance to be a winner and aren't discouraged from coming back to the next tournament. And also social media. We help support, promote their events. Once their events are done, we'll help promote the results. Another thing that amazes me, so I've created a Facebook group for Stern Army members only. So it's a forum for Stern Army members, also operators and locations to share resources, share ideas, and help each other. So we're sharing ways. ways we run tournaments, format, troubleshooting leaderboards,
    23:41
    whatever the problems are, we're all collaborating, we're all sharing information and helping each other. So it's been very well received, and I think the Stern Army members are really excited. That brings me to another thing. So I've actually, I've planned something I'm very excited to, I've already announced, is that I'm hosting the inaugural global Stern Army member appreciation party for official members at Microphone Brewing during Expo Week, Thursday night from 5 to 8 p.m. So I've invited every Stern Army member who can come to RSVP, and we're giving them a really cool exclusive denim member jacket with custom art.
    24:32
    So I've got a lot of things planned for that jacket. So, you know, certain things that the sternum members can have. Are you trying to say they shouldn't sew their own patches on because there might be? They're welcome to, but, yeah, I think we're going to come up with some ways.
    24:48
    State flags, maybe a bottom rocker with your state name, certain achievements. Maybe you host a launch party, you get something cool to put on your jacket. Maybe you've hosted a certain Army event. Every month of the year, you can get something cool. We'll have a ranking system where if you achieve certain things, like you've run enough events, we ask you to do monthly events. We understand that not everybody can do an event each month, but if you can't do it, do what I did this week and have someone else run your event. my friend Cheryl, who I alluded to earlier, who runs the Beginners League, she ran my monthly tournament at Microphone Brewing. So everyone still got to have fun, play the tournament, and all the better for it. So yeah, we're really excited to take Stern Army to the next level. We're really just getting started. And I would like to remind you all of what an important change Now, if you look at the chart here, and Mike, you can see it on screen, in the old days, this distributor level was the total filter. Anything a manufacturer ever heard about what was going on with a game or what players liked or disliked or anything was having to filter all the way up through, and the manufacturer really only got feedback from the distributor. so as a lowly player in that old style hierarchy your chance of saying something to the manufacturer was just uh you know if you were fortunate enough to be able to go to the moa show or some such thing it was just uh all about the money you know what what makes the game earn more money is what the operator might say to the distributor because that's all a distributor was really asking about unless there was a really bad mechanical problem. And anything else about the culture of pinball, about if the operator even knows what's going on on location or what motivates players, that was all getting lost in the communication channel. And now we have, in some cases, as you heard him say, a direct jump from these Army members who are players all the way straight up to the top, bypassing all these filters that are going to change the message or lose important parts of the message. Very true. And I'll take this opportunity to plug Stern Army. If anyone wants to run a Stern Army tournament at their local location, please email us at sternarmy at sternpinball.com. We would love to have you be an official brand ambassador of Stern Pinball. Yeah, and while you're here, you can certainly talk to the people in the Vermont club room, or talk to the clubs, talk to people you've seen in the seminars, identify as operators, and get your own sense of what it looks like on the street as really practiced also. Yeah, we had a good discussion with operators yesterday about the realities of the business and how Pinball has to fight for its piece of the pie, as it were, the coin-op pie. Do you have any observations about the kind of location, a game room type location where they're paying by the hour? Yes and no, but this sparked another thing I'd like to talk about. So the different types of locations that we're seeing success in pinball. So of course your traditional arcade, breweries have been huge for us. Oh yeah, I've been hearing that. side arcades, tap houses, but not only that, bowling alleys, restaurants, laundromats. So what some of the benefits to the locations with Stern Pinball Games are the following. Stern Pinball Games are elevating the entertainment experience. We're making it way cooler, way more fun. When you go to a A restaurant or a venue or a brewery with pinball, it's way cooler for the patrons. It's great. And not only that, something that we call utility, seats in the stools. People are going to – I'm guilty of it. We stay longer, we drink, we eat, and we're playing games because the pinball's there. It's just way better. And the locations appreciate that. The operators appreciate that. And the players appreciate it because there's pinball. So it's really win-win for everyone. Okay, so hourly play? Like there's this new place in Norwood, Massachusetts, I don't know if it's on your radar yet, trying to be very family oriented and they're on hourly, you know, play anything in the room? Sure, I mean, I haven't spoke to them directly I don't think, but it sounds like I ought to. So I mean... Because you talked about coin drop, but it's slightly different. Well, it's their business model. It's not something I'm not – I've never run an arcade, so I can't speak to, you know, is that the right business model for that location? I can't really speak to that. That's really – that's a decision for them.
    30:29
    Yeah. I mean, I don't see anything about Insider Connected that would be any worse in an hourly play place. No, no. I mean, if that's what that location wants to do, that's totally up to them. I mean, yeah.
    30:44
    Okay. Did we miss any topics? Anyone want to steer us? I'd be happy to take some questions from the audience.
    30:52
    Any questions? Way in the back there. So, yeah. Yeah. And thank you very much for being here and allowing us to attempt to get you fired from your job.
    31:19
    I'll start off with something you mentioned at the beginning of the talk of what sparked myself, I guess, into pinball. It's a little obscure, so I'm sorry if you might not be aware of this, but I was going through at the time a weird website called Twitch.com, and as I went through, I found this one guy's channel. I know you probably haven't heard about them at Stern Pinball. Jack Danger? Yes, sir. All right. Just say the name Jack Danger and look what happens.
    32:11
    Yeah, he's twitching a lot. Dead flip pinball streamer. Yeah, his name apparently grew up in the show. I'll repeat. I'll summarize and repeat. So go ahead.
    32:47
    Thank you Okay, and I'll actually repackage that. So the general idea, I guess, would be this was such an awesome game I just played. Can I do something like at the end of the game to memorialize it in some way? If not necessarily having all the video, could I have like a sequential list of I did this and I did this and I did this? I think what he's asking is can we provide something that will allow you to record your own game video footage? Is that what you're asking? Video would be like the top of the top. It's like a way to be able to experience the game beyond just, oh, I played it now. I have a number. Yeah. Right? I mean, it's a gadget. Yeah, more than just like the bottom line. We're always listening and asking for feedback. So stay tuned. We have a lot of big things to come. Yeah, you already knew that.
    34:18
    Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I mean... End of Elvira. Yeah, when you finish a game on Elvira, there is a... So he was at... Someone else in the audience, I don't know if the microphone caught it, he mentioned the movie trailers that you get at the end of the game.
    34:33
    That's, you know, just something fun for the player to enjoy. you get a randomized movie trailer each time you finish a game any other? I don't think that's related to Insider Connect yeah any other questions? purple? come on white guy yeah I want to be named white guy next time don't sit right in the very center of the room yeah where are the cameras sorry More of a suggestion than a comment. We operate an arcade, our in-office free arcade. One of the games that they've got there is a video game.
    35:18
    This is, first of all, this is a perfect time for pinball. People are behind screens more often. They want to get away from their desk. This isn't physical. This is it.
    35:28
    We have one game at work called Killer Queen. and they have that at a bunch of locations that also have a lot of Stern games. And it has a really neat feature on it in that the entire, like, everything going on in the game is exported over a network connection. And that makes it really great for, like, tournaments. When we're hosting tournaments or locations like that, you can plug in an external device that annotates the video with everything that's going on. And that would be fabulous for, like, pinball tournaments. So during the entire play of the game, it's running streams. It's showing you the names of the players playing, which you can get from Insider now, or at least their handle, but also, like, what happened? You know, like, oh, scored this objective showing up, you know, their progress on various things to be put on the screen along with everything else. That would be a great thing for Twitch or a tournament. Or even a beginning step at that. but what's the current technology at Stern for tapping into the feed to the LCD screen? Does that still add LVDS instead of... I'm not sure the exact terminology. We have a capture card, I think, that you can use.
    36:43
    But, yeah, to your point, that's great feedback. We're always listening. No, seriously, that's really good feedback.
    36:51
    Another thing people have requested is tournament management. So give us time. Yeah, along with the leaderboard screen, it would be great to be able to walk up to the machine and see your name already on it in the right place. So you don't play the wrong ball. You're not nervous about playing the wrong ball. Good. Thank you. Yeah, so tournament management is another request that would make things a lot easier and help us run tournaments more efficiently.
    37:20
    Yeah. So what do you do now with the player's identity during gameplay? Like, if they make the high score, is their identity from Insider Connected their handle already? So on your Insider Connected player account, you can choose whether you want your scores and information that's on your profile private or not. So the players can decide if they want their scores public or not. That's their choice.
    37:46
    The players can see their high scores, their achievements, and their event badges, and they can choose whether to make that public or private. That's their choice. and we protect everyone's data that way.
    37:59
    Okay. Other questions? All right. Oh, Derek. The speaker is right behind you. Oh, that's okay. Sorry. I'll talk softly.
    38:17
    What's been the growth rate ever since the pandemic of Stern Insider Connected? Is it like exponential of like five or like, you know? I can't speak to that, but I can refer to an article that Zach Sharpe did in The Economist where he, please refer to the article for the official statement, but I believe he said we've seen 15 to 20% growth year over year since about 2016.
    38:48
    So how has it changed since I started connecting? I can't speak to that. But we're continuing to see growth both in sales and Insider Connected adoption. I can say that we're very happy with the amount of users, active users on Insider Connected, and that it's continuing to grow every single day.
    39:12
    Okay. Oh, way back there. Hurry up, light guy. Run faster. Yeah, this is going to have to be the last question because it's taking so long to get to them.
    39:31
    So here at the show, I've noticed a lot of people, you know, trying to get in to the newer Stern machines and sign in. But unfortunately, the next person behind them is really excited because they haven't played and sometimes they're kidnapping other people's accounts. Is there plans in the future to just kind of have like an auto logout or a no continue? Yes, so we do have that. When the games were set up, the insider connected play again timer should have been set to one second. It sounds like some games probably didn't get set to one second and it stayed at the default 20 seconds, so we apologize for that. There is a setting in standard feature game adjustment for the insider connected play log in again timer. Thank you. Good question. Yeah, and drilling down a little bit on that, I first heard about that online. So are you getting, you're monitoring some online discussion about Insider Connected and you're seeing that? Well, I work these shows. I mean, I've done 20 or 30 shows in the last few years, and I always strive to set that.
    40:44
    All right. Yeah, I always try to set to one second. I'm not going to make excuses. I took you about 15 hours to set up day one and three hours before we opened on Friday morning. So between leveling the game, setting up the network, getting the games on lag, setting up the layout, fitting 25 games into a very small space, I failed to make those adjustments on those games. So my sincere apologies to those affected by that. But it's a good question and we always strive. We're not perfect. We always strive to give the best player experience and we'll do better.
    41:21
    Yeah, but I think overall that's a good answer that the feature is already there, it's just this particular time.
    41:29
    But I think that feature, that was feedback from the public back into you. So I'll close with some thoughts. I'm doing the global inaugural certain Army member appreciation party this October and I was preparing a speech which I'm looking forward to giving and one of the
    41:51
    you know that the highlights of that speech that I'll share with you now give you a little sneak preview is you know I've been doing a lot of thinking of pinball and what it means to me what it means to us and you know its place in our lives and and what it does right I mean pinball machine itself it's wood it's metal it's plastic glass it's a bunch of parts but if it's programmed and designed with care and love and thought it's a kinetic world you know it offers a unique world under glass with kinetic satisfaction it's a unique experience and every time you play pinball It's a unique experience. You never play the same game the same way.
    42:37
    And so a pinball machine is greater than the sum of all of its parts. And how that relates to us here, both at this show and at Stern Army events and communities, together we are all as people greater than the sum of our parts. Sure, we're pretty awesome people, but all of us share pinball together, right? It's the one thing that we all agree on. and I think that's really powerful. So I think we should all be grateful that we have pinball, and I'm thankful to be here, and I'm thankful to have this voice and to have everyone's support. The pinball community is amazing, and we're just getting started. There's a lot of big things we can do, and we're looking forward to it.
    43:24
    Yeah, when he gives that speech next time, he's going to say, and that's why I'm running for President of the United States. that's a real rousing speech that's the kind of speech we want to hear right thank you