Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 65 - Strong takes on Harry Potter!!!

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 47m·analyzed·Jun 13, 2025
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Triple Drain breaks down Harry Potter Pinball mechanics, difficulty, and layout with owner Tom Cox's 16-point analysis.

Summary

Triple Drain Podcast discusses their return after hiatus and dives deep into Harry Potter Pinball, featuring Tom Cox's initial impressions as a new owner. The hosts explore gameplay mechanics, difficulty settings via QR codes, layout challenges for casual players, and compare it favorably to other Jersey Jack games. They also discuss King Kong Pro and tournament strategy.

Key Claims

  • King Kong is 'the best game Stern has done since Jaws'

    high confidence · Tom Cox, King Kong Pro owner, direct statement during 'Tom Talks' segment

  • Harry Potter's layout is 'their most enjoyable shooting game' at Jersey Jack

    high confidence · Joel, host, after playing Harry Potter for ~3 hours pre-stream

  • Easy mode on Harry Potter automatically lights Explore Hogwarts multiball instead of requiring three shots

    high confidence · Joel explains QR code difficulty settings feature in detail with specific example

  • Harry Potter's ball feeds on far left/right lanes create challenging, fast feeds to flippers with no wire form safety

    high confidence · Joel describes layout challenge requiring adjustment; identifies as potential casual player issue

  • Jack Guarneri (Jersey Jack founder) messaged Triple Drain to clear Harry Potter discussion

    high confidence · Joel recounts direct Facebook message from Jack Guarneri saying 'if you guys are still in the podcast business we can talk about Harry Potter now'

  • NYC Events mode in King Kong is 'a placeholder' with minimal point rewards despite 5+ minutes of gameplay

    high confidence · Tom Cox notes tournament players 'dumping that mode because it was completely worthless' and describes placeholder mechanics

  • King Kong's gong and spider mech present aftermarket opportunity for modders

    medium confidence · Tom predicts 'whoever is going to be the first to market to have a good gong mod and a good spider mod...is going to do well'

  • Virtual locks are standard tournament setting for King Kong due to mechanical lock issues

    high confidence · Tom confirms 'in tournaments, you see virtual locks more times than not' and references 2023 Texas Pinball Festival Godzilla finals incident

  • Joel's wife played Harry Potter multiple times unprompted, marking first Stern game she independently played

Notable Quotes

  • “I really don't [feel like I'm missing anything with Pro]. I mean, it would have been cool to have the gong and the King Kong in the back, like swinging his arms and flicking me off and hitting the glass. But I just go pro on this one.”

    Tom Cox @ ~8:00 — King Kong Pro vs LE purchasing rationale; indicates satisfied Pro buyer despite LE perks

  • “This is the best game Stern has done since Jaws.”

    Tom Cox @ ~8:30 — Highest praise for King Kong from experienced player/owner; major quality endorsement

  • “I personally find it to be their most enjoyable shooting game. Some of the decisions Eric's made in this game, there are some very fun shots.”

    Joel @ ~30:00 — High praise for Harry Potter's layout and design from JJP comparison standpoint

  • “See, this is all you need. You just need to get a good theme.”

    Joel's wife @ ~25:00 — Casual player comment on Harry Potter's theme appeal; suggests IP licensing critical to home market

  • “There's too much stuff. There's too much going on. What am I supposed to do?”

    Jared (via Joel's report) @ ~28:00 — Identifies Harry Potter's overwhelming complexity for experienced but non-expert player; casual difficulty concern

  • “Your strategy is just to play the game? Yeah. I want to get through the game. I want to see the game.”

    Joel @ ~20:00 — Reveals Joel's tournament strategy philosophy: progression-focused, theme experience over optimization

  • “If you have a wife and you're trying to figure out the end to have pinball in your house or to enjoy a hobby together, buy her a game that she likes. That's the easiest way.”

    Travis @ ~27:00 — Social commentary on home pinball collecting and couple gameplay; theme resonance critical

  • “I'm glad you like [King Kong], I mean, it shoots amazing like I said I think it's an awesome game yeah um I'm glad I got it uh I think I'll definitely keep it for a long time so I'm looking forward to some code updates”

Entities

Triple Drain PodcastorganizationHarry Potter PinballgameKing Kong PinballgameJoelpersonTom CoxpersonTravispersonJack GuarneripersonEric (Designer)personKeith Elwinperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Jersey Jack restricting media interviews to specific outlets; Retro Ralph identified as having 'cornered the market completely' on JJP content access

    medium · Joel: 'every podcast. It's nothing but JJP everywhere' and 'Retro Ralph cornered the market completely' on interviews; implies limited access strategy by JJP

  • ?

    community_signal: Insider Connect leaderboard system drives location arcade engagement; cross-location social discovery through username tracking validates design approach

    high · Joel's Belgium story: 'once I got home I got two different Facebook messages' from people who saw his name; Buck Rogers reached out after seeing username on boards

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Undiscovered King Kong tournament strategy exists involving timer manipulation and repeated combos; high-level players withholding strategy from media

    medium · Joel: 'I have one strategy, which I have not seen anybody do, and I'm not going to share that here because I need to use that at some launch parties'; Neil credited with non-obvious 'Neil strat' approach

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Harry Potter layout creates accessibility gap between expert and casual players; no wire form feeds and fast ball delivery to flippers requires significant adjustment period

    high · Joel: 'even somebody like my brother, who I would consider an experienced player...It is challenging' and identifies 'the ball flies down the far left lane or the far right lane...and it goes fast' as core difficulty

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Harry Potter features intentionally complex overlapping rule layout with challenging ball feeds; causes overwhelm for experienced casual players but satisfies expert players

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.323

0:00
We, we, we're three guys who like a talking ball. So we came up with the clever name. The clever name. Joe and Travis down the talking ball. And we call ourselves Triple Train. That's right. Triple Train. That's right. Triple Train. That's right. Triple, Triple Train. Train, train, train. Every podcast, I end up having to edit out because I play the theme song live for us, and I end up editing that out and replacing it with a clean version of the audio. But I don't think I'm doing that this episode. Because normally somebody burps or says something, but no, you guys were singing along. Sometimes you have to pass gas. We do. So we'll start off with a huge shout to Raymond Davidson, who messaged us yesterday and said, where the heck is Triple Drain? So here we are. Here we are. We've been on hiatus. We have. This is where we do the first five minutes to where we apologize for not apologizing for nothing. Oh, Joel finally learned. Hell yeah. There we go. Um, this is the challenge when you create something like this, because the moment, for example, predator is going to be revealed in what, like a day or two. Yeah. And we've been pins and needles. That's why we haven't podcast yet. When you have the three sexiest men in pinball and they all have things to do. Yeah. Like people just don't understand pinball fame. Like, Oh wow. Yeah. Well, we got to talk to our agents. We got to get them to pencil it in. Yeah, yeah. Quote, unquote, pinball famous is what we are. No, I will not be on the box of Wheaties. Yeah. Oh, my God. For the record, we're just like, we're just kicking shit right now. We don't care anything about that. Except for Joel. He is a prima donna. No. No light brown M&Ms. No. I don't know. Rolling around in his golf cart and everything. Yep, yep, yep. We, yes, we shoot for, I don't know. I mean, when you release the episode and then there's something that happens the very next week and you're like, well, should we record again? It's like it's been a week. It's been a week. We should probably leave it. So I don't three weeks, four weeks. We're waiting on Harry Potter. Harry Potter's here. Joel, we started this. You remember why we started this podcast, right? Just to have we ever told people why we started it? It was for the very beginning. It was. Of course. That's it. do you remember out of the three of us one of us was talking about starting their own solo podcast tom tom we stole this from tom and i don't even talk so well man it's like i'm gonna do my own podcast and we're like that sounds cool tom do not do that we uh you're gonna create career suicide by doing that and i'm like you're right no this was an excuse for the three of us to move our Facebook conversations into an audible form that we just happen to share with other people. And we're having a blast doing it. Why do we need news to talk then, Joel? Have you gotten so big that you only talk to Tom and I? I mean, we do like talk every day, just not on the podcast. Tom, do you remember what's happened here since we first started? I don't remember. Our good old boy Joel had like eight viewers on Twitch. And we were there for him at the very beginning. three more than that okay sorry 10 i forgot sorry i forgot he probably logged his kids in just had the ipad just sitting there but then then he's gone to where we're like okay i think there's going to be like 500 tonight watching him or something like that and then he's gotten so big tom that now we can talk in his chat he doesn't say shit to us he doesn't even realize we're there why why do i not say anything okay just just a thought why do you this is our time to talk Why do you think I've said less in the chat recently? Is there any particular thing or naming that may have changed in our chat that's caused me to type in? Oh, I'm talking about the public stuff on Flippin' Out. I'm not talking about our Facebook. Oh, you're talking about Flippin' Out with Friends. We're doing less of that. Okay, fine. I'll tell everybody what your name is in the chat. I'll tell them. It's Ass Flames. Why? Why is that my name in the chat? Because you said it. When did I say that? Search it up. You can see it. Just look up ass flames on our search history on the chat. You'll see it. And just make the shit up. I thought you did. I need to figure that out because I'm not that creative, Joel.

high confidence · Joel describes wife turning on game downstairs to play by herself; 'first game that my wife...legitimately excited' about

  • Insider Connect leaderboard system motivated location play; Joel got on boards at Belgium arcade on Jaws, Godzilla (4th place), Turtles, X-Men, Metallica, Stranger Things, Jurassic Park

    high confidence · Joel's extended Belgium travel story; verified by Buck Rogers Facebook outreach and photo documentation at 'Comic Sans Brussels'

    • Tom Cox @ ~13:00 — Long-term ownership optimism pending code updates; indicates early code state acceptable with future improvement expectation

  • “I have one strategy, which I have not seen anybody do, and I'm not going to share that here because I need to use that at some launch parties.”

    Joel @ ~21:00 — Competitive advantage withholding; suggests undiscovered King Kong meta strategy exists

  • “The layout is also very challenging, and I'm okay with that, but that is something that ate Jared alive Wednesday night when he played.”

    Joel @ ~29:00 — Identifies experienced vs casual difficulty gap on Harry Potter; design creates divergent player experiences

    • Jared
    person
    Zach McCarthyperson
    Andy Bagwellperson
    Buck Rogersperson
    Neilperson
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Insider Connectproduct
    Comic Sans Brusselsorganization
    Retro Ralphperson
    Jurassic Park 30thgame

    high · Joel: 'The layout is also very challenging...that is something that ate Jared alive' but 'I feel comfortable with this layout'; identifies 'no wire form safely feeding the in lanes' as deliberate design choice

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Jersey Jack cleared public discussion of Harry Potter via direct contact to media outlet; indicates IP licensing restrictions on early discussion now lifted

    high · Jack Guarneri message: 'if you guys are still in the podcast business we can talk about Harry Potter now' directly to Triple Drain Facebook

  • $

    market_signal: Travis selling Jurassic Park 30th for $30,000 within couple weeks; indicates collector market appetite for limited/anniversary editions

    medium · Travis: 'I'm going to sell it for $30,000, whoever wants it' planned sale in 'couple weeks'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Eric credited as Harry Potter designer with specific praise for shot design and layout decisions; indicates primary responsibility for game mechanics

    medium · Joel: 'Some of the decisions Eric's made in this game, there are some very fun shots...I see some of that in this'

  • ?

    product_strategy: King Kong Pro features are substantially equivalent to LE with mechanical differences in gong/spider mechs; Pro buyer satisfied with cost savings despite missing ancillary attractions

    high · Tom: 'I really don't [feel like I'm missing anything with Pro]...would have been cool to have the gong' but justified choice by cost savings

  • ?

    product_concern: NYC Events mode in King Kong identified as placeholder with minimal scoring and tournament players avoiding it entirely

    high · Tom: 'I saw tournament players dumping that mode because it was completely worthless to play' and 'I try to play the mode, but...it's a placeholder at this point.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: QR code difficulty settings allow per-player mode adjustments (easy/normal/wizard); early implementation shows software flexibility for balancing

    high · Joel explains QR code feature enables easy mode auto-lighting of Explore Hogwarts multiball; implies broader code adjustments (ball saves, shot lighting) also tied to difficulty

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Harry Potter theme resonates strongly with non-pinball players; wife's unprompted repeated play indicates IP appeal critical to casual home market

    high · Joel's wife: 'see, this is all you need. You just need to get a good theme' and played game multiple times unprompted; described as 'first game that my wife...legitimately excited' about

    • 4:44
    That's what I deal with. I'll make a random comment in Facebook or on the Facebook Messenger. And then just Travis screenshots the notification or whatever. And he's like, man, really coming from ass flames. That's a bold statement or something. It's like, why is that my nickname? Why did that? I don't know. I don't know why that. But I already had to explain to my wife why my notification says, Ask Flame to send you a video. And your name's been Big Papa for a long time. Long time. I love it when you call me Big Papa. And also in that chat, if we type Tom, it displays a cucumber, not a cucumber, an eggplant emoji across the whole thing. It's great. All right. Anyways, this is what people tune in for, right? So we got our five minutes of nonsense in.
    5:33
    Oh, yeah. Serious podcast now. This is what everybody skips through. So here we are. Here we are. Let's talk about Harry Potter. We went through our show notes right before. We're like, what are we going to talk about? It's just Harry Potter. Harry Potter is the only thing we got. You got to talk about who contacted us.
    5:51
    Oh, yes. Jack Guarneri contacted us. I we've never he messaged the triple drain uh Facebook messenger and he just Jack Guarneri out of nowhere he's never done that before and he just said uh we can talk about Harry Potter now and we're like no he said if you guys are still in the podcast business we can talk about Harry Potter now and we're like what and then he goes we can talk about episode I think it was 35 and we're like we're 65 right we're 65 now so I looked it up it was 37 35 What did we talk about then? Just the title was Harry Potter Holy Crap. That's all it was. That was the title. So we're like, all right, so Jack Winery's listened to one episode of our show.
    6:36
    Or maybe we just haven't talked about Jersey Jack enough. Well, I don't think that's it. We've talked about everything. Avatar. Everybody loves Avatar takes. I don't know what you guys are talking about. So, yes, we had an opportunity to have Jack Winery on. I just don't think he knows what he would have signed up for if that was the case. And yeah, when it comes to interviews, we typically does a great job with that. It's not that we don't want anybody on. Obviously, like our dumb asses were at Stern for hours on end, like talking to everybody. True, true. But at this point, you look on every podcast. It's nothing but JJP everywhere. And where are we going to talk about anyway? That's what we're doing. I don't know what they're going to say to us that they haven't said to everybody else. Like Retro Ralph cornered the market completely. So I don't even know what we're going to talk about. Yeah, we can't talk about anything now. Yeah. Like what do we do? Well, one thing we can talk about, Tom got his King Kong Pro. So just I'm going to give you – you know what? Let me cue this up. I would love to hear. Are we doing Tom Talks this early? I think we're doing Tom Talks. Tom, I would love to hear everything, all your initial impressions, everything. Tell us everything you think of of your King Kong. Here we go. Oh. Tom Talks. He's got something to say, Tom Cox. He's got nothing to say, Tom Cox.
    7:56
    Tom Cox. I got nothing. Are we going to talk about my actual game or the hour-long stream I did of it with Zach McCarthy and Andy Bagwell destroying it? You got the floor. Okay.
    8:14
    Well, where do I begin? I have 16 points to go through here. It's a great game. It shoots great. Obviously, it's early code. Joel, you know that.
    8:34
    I want to play Harry Potter, though. Keith Elwin listens to this podcast. He's probably sitting there just, what? Okay, here, let me feed you some questions here. First off, are you happy you got the Pro and not the LE?
    8:54
    Yes. Why? Because I like money in my pocket, Joel. Okay, so you feel like the money, it would have cost for more LE. You don't feel like you're missing anything with the Pro. Is that what I'm hearing? I really don't. I mean, it would have been cool to have the gong and the, you know, King Kong in the back, like swinging his arms and flicking me off and hitting the glass. And I did really contemplate for a long time. I was going to get the LE, and I was just like, maybe I just go pro on this one. Yeah, yeah. That's what I did. I think whoever is going to be the first to market to have a good gong mod and a good spider mod, I think is going to do well. They're going to make bank. Because I do think, I mean, the way there's holes, There's spots in the play field for that mech that would fit perfectly. Do you like, though, the way... Let me put it this way, Joel. This is the best game Stern has done since Jaws. That's awesome. Yes, and I would agree. And it's like .81 code or something. And where's the WIC code? .82. .82 code.
    10:08
    That's a good point, Tom. Let me get back to it. Sorry, Abdul. I got the floor here. Oh, yes, this is the floor. I got to feed you the question. Do you like how the difference between the LE and the Pro, the LE to start a mode, you have to hit the gong, I think, twice, and then the next time it goes under it. On the Pro, it's different, right? It's lit. How does that work on the Pro? You have to hit basically the lit arrows to light your mode. I think it's – and then go to the gong shot. I think it's maybe a little easier on the pro because you're not fighting the gong. Yep.
    10:46
    But I don't know. I tend to enjoy that a little more, I guess. Yeah. But besides that, the gameplay is identical, right? I mean, it's pretty much. I mean, the King Kong multiball is a little different. I think that's actually a little harder to start because you have to hit that right orbit that goes to the kicker. Oh, that's how you start it. You don't start it in the center ramp? That is correct. You have to lock the balls on the center ramp. So you have to lock three balls, and then you have to hit the shot on the right. Like all the lights will kind of point you in that direction. Which is also virtual locks, too. Correct. So I think the other thing that's different, too, is the multi-ball, King Kong multi-ball, kind of how it works with the re-lock, because I think that's virtual as well. So you hit like the three green arrows on it to light the center ramp. And originally on the premium and LE, it goes back into the train. It's like 15, 20 seconds of 2X scoring. Yeah, it holds it for you. Right. On this, I don't think it does. I think it's virtual. And I've said this before. I'm not a huge fan of virtual lock. Or excuse me, I'm not a huge fan of mechanical locks.
    12:00
    I was going to ask that. So from a tournament standpoint, if you were to do a tournament on an LE right now. Get off. You would turn virtual locks on for the train, right? I would. Yeah? Okay. Usually in tournaments, you see virtual locks more times than not. Otherwise, you might get a situation like, oh, I don't know, 2023 Texas Pinball Festival finals on Godzilla. But yeah. Who did that happen to? I don't remember. That was real unfortunate. That was super unfortunate. That was poor design, right? Isn't that what we came to?
    12:33
    Yeah, it definitely wasn't my fault. I know that. um that sucks me you travis uh so yeah that's i i'm glad i'm glad you like no i i think it shoots amazing like like i said i think it's i think it's an awesome game yeah um i'm glad i got it uh i think i'll definitely keep it for a long time so i'm looking forward to some code updates round out tom talks um you know he though when he's considered uh probably the greatest designer you know current pinball designer but uh we all know he makes mistakes he's flawed um he's not perfect wow so what's your uh what is what did he do wrong or what does he need to change or fix in in king kong according to you oh the design of it uh i don't i don't think anything okay what about code yeah that needs to change i'm being serious i just wanted to leave it on on what's wrong with the code and you saying it needs to change that's all i wanted i just wanted that but i couldn't find the bottom it's it's early code I mean, for what's there, it's great, but you can, I mean, there's certain things, like the New York City events. Yeah. Are you meaning it needs to change or it needs to be enhanced? It needs to be enhanced. Okay. Yeah, I agree. There needs to be more. I just saw tournament players dumping that mode because it was completely worthless to play. Or is it? Well, I mean, I'm just. You could use it to sweep. There's no points there. No, no, no. I mean, you could use it to, like, play other things, I guess. Like, do the sweep to targets. Yeah, I got to where I was doing that and just spamming the drop targets the whole time. Because those are bonus X, too. And you can, like, and you've seen what some of the bonus can get up to if you're playing forever. Right. But when you come out of that mode, like, you've hit, like, 15 shots and you have, like, 4 million points. It's like, what did I just do for five minutes? Yeah. Because that mode, I look at it as, I try to play the mode, but once you hit different areas of the play field to break his chains, but once he's out, it just starts over. So I was looking at it as like, I want to tweak the mode. You can tell it's a placeholder at this point. Got it. I mean, to me, anyways, if that's the intended. I think it pretty much is a placeholder because there's supposed to be other stuff that we know is coming down the line for the New York City events. Keith, you can talk to me if you need any help with the game. Yeah, if you need to know what to do. Yeah, you're good with the computers and typing in the ones and the zeros.
    15:35
    The only thing on Kong that I'm really waiting for outside of that is I want to know the power-ups. Because I see those, but because it has a target for that, like a little stand-up target. We were talking about that last night. I was at a tournament. It was a King Kong launch party, which I didn't do well at. Oh, did you do the strategy, Tom? I'm in the middle of editing that video and releasing it today or tomorrow, so I'm super slow. I don't know what the strategy is. It's the not-drained strategy. What was the first mode you picked? I do have one strategy, which I have not seen anybody do, and I'm not going to share that here because I need to use that at some launch parties. I might accidentally ruin his strategy Joel He might I'm looking at it differently than Joel Joel's strategy is to Experience the game But you know At a launch party You want to score points Experiencing the game doesn't equal a win Joel Let's just say Neil has done things that No human should be able to do up like you neil mccray right yeah um does it involve stopping a timer and hitting a combo over and over and over again no i'm not saying what it is he's got the neil strat well that's a that's a tease that's a tease okay i can't wait for you to use that strat and blow it up joel what's your strat you did a tutorial on it. What's your strat? I'm all about progression. All about progression all the time. I don't care. Multipliers, don't care. Just progression. So your strategy is just to play the game? Yeah. I want to get through the game. I want to see the game. I don't really try to ever live in a mode. I want to get through the game. Your two-minute tutorials would be badass to where you're just in front of the pin, and then somebody clicks on there. They're like, okay, what's Joel's quick strategy? And you just look at the camera, and you're just like, play the game. yeah yeah well roll credits that becomes hard to do when you have a game like uh harry potter yes i do i do want to talk about potter i just want to make one side comment because i actually played for points the other day and what i mean by this no you did i did i did what i what tilted away 270 or 90 million happens life happens okay that's not playing for points what I want to say was a few weeks back I had to travel for work. I went to Europe and I was in, I was in Belgium for work and I just wanted to mention the power of insider connect, the power of insider connect for two reasons. One, I went to a pinball bar with some coworkers. They sold the display and they're like, wait, what's that? I was like, Oh, it's tracks the high scores. They're like, can you get on that board? I'll try. And that's all we did all night was I was playing games to try to get my name on the board. I will tell you, I successfully got my name on the board on every game I played. Was it number one? It was not number one. Shout out to Buck Rogers is his name. Buck Rogers. He was number one on every game. Every game. Another weird thing, which you're going to laugh at. This sounds like such a made-up story, Tom. No, no, no. This is not. Is that your own porn name? Buck Rogers. I was in a television with coworkers, and I'm putting up scores for Buck Rogers. Check it out. You can check it out because Comic Sans Brussels, They actually took a picture of me and put it on Facebook. Anyways, Buck Rogers, they won. Every game was five ball. That was weird. That was weird to me. Five ball. Okay, now we're getting into it. On location going to five ball? What? That was strange to me. But I got on the board. How many dollars does it cost to play the game? It was one and a half euro. Oh. Yeah. You were in Europe. I was in Belgium. How many dollars is that? I don't know. I thought it was Belgium, Indiana. No, no, no, no. The reason I wanted to bring this up, which blew my mind, was one, it was really fun. It was a fun way to play the game. I wasn't trying to play for progression. I was just trying to teach my coworkers how to play and get high scores. And actually changing my brain on not trying to focus on things and just try to focus on points was a fun change. It was a fun change of pace. the second thing that I thought was really cool was once I got home I got two different Facebook messages and it was people that happened to play at those bars see my name Joel Bob and message me like were you in Belgium and I was like I was and I just think that's that's a really neat I don't know I just think that's really kind of a crazy experience and and long story short the guy Buck Rogers was one of the guys that reached out to me because he's like hey I saw your username I don't know. I just thought that was it was one of those things. I'm assuming every arcade owner loves Insider Connected just because it motivated us to keep playing just to get our name on that board. Absolutely. That was something that's that's different than I've experienced. I don't know. It's really cool. It's really cool. That's my side story.
    20:49
    OK, Potter, we're how many 20 minutes in. Perfect. This is what everybody clicked on. Everybody wants everybody's ready to do. I love the side tangent or the side story about going to Europe, trying to get on leaderboards on five-ball stern pinball machines. And I did it. Be proud of me. You did it, buddy. I did it. I want you to be proud. I want you to say it, please. Okay, what games did you play before we move on? It's just I'm proud of you, Joel. That's it. I can't be proud until I know what games you played. What did you get scores on? I played Turtles. I played Godzilla. I played Jaws. I played Stranger Things. I played X-Men, Metallica, Jurassic Park. What did you get on the board of?
    21:26
    I don't have to share my numbers, right? Well, no, you don't. No. I got on the board for all those. I played every game until I was on the board. My highest two were Jaws and Godzilla. I got fourth on those boards. Did this place just open last week? How is this possible? How did you get on the board? Well, I don't know. I would say, so Godzilla, I remember the Godzilla board. Did they reset the leaderboards for the beginning of the month? Buck Rogers, feel free to write in to TripleTrain.gmail.com. Let us know because he had the high scores. The Godzilla number one was two point something billion. That's pretty good. Which is good. But to me, I ended up with fourth. I only played it one time, but my final score was, I think it was like 700 million was my final score. I was happy with that. Yeah, that's a good score. That's a good score on location. What was crazy to me, though, was X-Men. To get on the board, it's very clear X-Men eats people alive. Because to get on the board, it was like 15 million points or something. It was crazy low. Is it a premium? It was.
    22:34
    Yeah. It eats people. It was one of the stranger things, too. Just to get 10th or 8th place, 10th, 9th place, very low. Very low score. so you can but also you assume a lot of actual casuals probably don't have an insider connect log in and are just actually not logging in um but yeah maybe or maybe the games are just hard to play for casuals that don't play pinball very often at all but like once every couple of months turtles was easy to get on the board my god will you get to potter and yes you know he's asking these questions okay let's talk about potter what do you want i've had potter now in the house for a few days i will say lucky bastard this is the first game this is the first game that my wife when she heard i was getting harry potter was legitimately excited this is also the only game i've ever borrowed from zach that she played by herself uh that's not true she played jaws once by herself okay um otherwise like she was down here with the kids and next thing i hear i was upstairs i heard pinball noises and it's like she turned on the game to play it by herself because she loves Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a theme that she resonates with. When I stood next to her when she played her first game, she's like, see, this is all you need. You just need to get a good theme. That was her thought of like, that's why she wanted to play. Tell the rest of the pinball industry. That Harry Potter is a good theme. Did she have any idea what she was doing? No, but she was just playing the game and having a good time.
    24:05
    I played this game a bunch. I got it on Tuesday. I probably played it three hours on Tuesday just because I was just, I wanted to understand the game before I streamed it. That was my entire goal. And this was one of the, one of the first times I had to actually take the glass off and throw the ball around to really try to understand the rules because of all the overlapping. Travis has raising his hand, which is a polite way to say, shut up, Joel. I have a question. No, we have a good followup question. Did your wife play a second game? Cause if she played the first game on her own, okay, there you go. So she kept wanting to play. She kept, she came, but that's where, that's what I meant by she played by herself. Like the, it was later that day or the next day she went downstairs when she was downstairs, turned on the games and played them by herself. Um, I think that's cool. Cause my wife would not do that. It's a rare, this is weird. This is a rarity and I'm, I'm really, I'm pumped. She did. So because of that, now part of me is like, crap is Harry Potter going to be a game that I have to own? Cause it's the first game that like she's excited about a thousand percent. I can tell you from experience, If you have a wife and you're trying to figure out the end to have pinball in your house or to enjoy a hobby together, buy her a game that she likes. That's the easiest way. That's why you bought Princess Bride?
    25:24
    Stern pinball pirates. No, she does not want to get Princess Bride. Oh, okay. Yeah, I've talked to her about it. I asked her about it. and the idea of hauling a big-ass machine down these stairs when we're trying to remodel. It's pretty heavy. It's super heavy. Well, plus, too, I'm trying to sell machines, too. I'm selling this pretty soon, in a couple weeks. You're in a unique position because you go to work every day. The Jurassic Park 30th. Oh, nice. I'm going to sell it for $30,000, whoever wants it. Wow.
    26:00
    You go to work every day and can play every game as much as you want, which I understand your home collection. Kind of. I mean, I still have to actually work, Joel. I can't just show up and tell everybody, hey, I'm just playing pinball today. I'm tired when I get home. Yeah. I get pinballed out after working in it all day long and then just sitting. It's like sitting on my butt. Okay, so Harry Potter. You got to get it. You got to get it, right? Well, I don't know. I would say my initial impression coming away Tuesday night, I was very – like I really enjoy this game. I came away Tuesday night before I streamed it Wednesday. I came away Tuesday. I was like, this game is really good. What I can say confidently, I think it's their – I personally find it to be their most enjoyable shooting game.
    26:46
    Elton John is very good but Elton John layout is just it safe Not safe It like it comfortable Like Elton Elton John layout people know that layout People have experienced that layout
    27:00
    Some of the decisions Eric's made in this game, there are some very fun shots. I think the way, like there's a shot under the left ramp that whips around to feed the left side. That's a cool little loop. The diverters and everything, it has curvy ramps, kind of like what J-Pop is known for. like the ball pass that he has. I see some of that in this.
    27:24
    Yeah, I mean, honestly, I don't have any complaints with the layout. With that said, though, the layout is also very challenging, and I'm okay with that, but that is something that ate Jared alive Wednesday night when he played.
    27:38
    He's more worried about the Pacers game, let's be honest. He was locked into the Pacers game, but even after the Pacers game, where Jared was Jared's takeaway with, with Harry Potter was he was overwhelmed. He basically is like, there's too much stuff. There's too much going on. He's overwhelmed by trying to just, you know, when, when he steps up to the game and he goes, what are you, what am I, what do you want me to do? What am I supposed to do? And when that question isn't a simple answer, he was overwhelmed and because there's a lot going on, it's all overlapping. There's a lot going on. And then you throw on top of that, the layout, the lower layout, the fact that there's no wire form safely feeding the in lanes to feed your flippers is challenging. The ball flies down the far left lane or the far right lane to feed the flippers and it goes fast. And that's something that you really have to adjust to. I adjusted to it playing Tuesday night, had a great time. I feel comfortable with this layout. I feel comfortable with the speed of the game. But for even somebody like my brother, who I would consider an experienced player at this point. It is challenging. And I know that's something that Travis noticed the moment the game was announced and was making comments about how challenging that was for casual. So I don't know my initial impression. What are your thoughts? I mean, what are you with hearing all that? What do you guys think? Thoughts? Questions? You know, I think like some of your things I think could be controlled with the code. um you you i know we've talked about this privately but like the shot on the left that comes back to the flipper and it like flies sure there's a post there so like an up post so like initially it stops the ball the first time so you know it's coming and then after that It's like gloves are off, you know? Yeah. Good luck. Yeah. So I, I think, you know, maybe some of that could be controlled if, if people think it's, it's too hard. Well, let me talk about that for a second. Sure. Attached to the keys. What do they call this? Hashtag game changer, I think, or hashtag something. I forget, but it's, there are three QR codes. There's an easy, a normal and a wizard. So the thought is when you hit start and it's ball one, if you hold up a QR code, if I hold up easy in front of the camera, it just changes for that individual player. It changes the code to easy settings. So how does that make the design easier to shoot? Well, what it did do. So Jared actually played in easy mode the latter half of the stream the other night. Does it roll the ball for you, Joe? No.
    30:29
    How does it make the design easier to shoot? Well, it doesn't. Oh, okay. It doesn't. So we can go ahead then.
    30:38
    So like explore Hogwarts multiball. To do that, you have the main ramp in the middle, and then you have the staircase mech on the right. You have to collect the different school colors, so the inserts in front of them change colors. So, you know, if yellow and green are already collected at the beginning of the game, you need to know, okay, I need to hit a blue and a red shot. Once you've done that, you've qualified Explore Hogwarts multiball, and then you start the multiball at the stairs on the right. So it's minimum three shots to start multiball. If it's in easy mode, it's already lit. All you have to do is hit the stairs one time. Boom, you're in multiball. So there are things like that, and I think I need to pay attention more to see the differences. But I think even when you're playing the modes or the modes are running in the background, I think more shots are lit or maybe it gives you more time. I don't know. but they've adjusted all the software. But you're right. They could, in easy mode, they could have it where that up post stops the ball every time or something so that it's a slower feed to the left flipper. They could have ball saves be longer. They could have the spell on the right that protects you from the out lane. That could be lit twice as much. I don't know. I mean, there's stuff that they could do, but you still have to hit the shot, right? I mean, is that what you're getting at, Travis? you still have to hit the shot even in most games we're talking yeah we're talking about two different things though we're talking about software accessibility and play field design like physical design accessibility and that's only going to be relative to whatever the end user what their skill set is right like you like it doesn't matter it could be the easiest coded game in the world but if somebody doesn't have the flipper skills or understand how to do anything right with their flippers, it's not going to matter. So I think it's just two separate things, but the last thing you want to do is design a game to where it's so overwhelming that you have to have software compensating for multiple things. You're always going to have it compensating for a few things. That's natural. That happens. It's a physical game. But if you're trying to compensate for so many things, to me, it's just game theory-wise and game design-wise, you've got to be careful of that. But it's understandable why you would have to do that. though sometimes it just is what it is eric mentioned in the uh eric minyer designer of the game he mentioned this in the loser kid podcast that um almost every shot on the game can be diverted or stopped and so his thought was if you make the layout challenging but yet you make the layout where it could be diverted or the ball could be stopped or you can change it in software to make that aspect easier, then you have the ability to make the game easier. While, I mean, we've all played pinball machines where the layout itself is super easy and you really can't do anything to make the game harder unless you start pulling out posts, removing ball gates, making physical altercations. So I think I understand the design mentality of if you make the design a little harder But what customers at scale are not buying a modern machine because they think it's too easy?
    33:49
    Like that customer base does not exist. There's too many times we see people on Facebook and everything. They have freaking rubber bands on their outlanes, like trying to prevent the ball from draining. They're trying just to figure out how to stay alive. You can go across any location that has Stern pinball machines there, and you can look at the scores. And these are default setups. It's not like every single location has scores that are just elite world-class scores. Like this doesn't exist. We were talking about this, Joel. Like I was honest with you. Like I give you shit all the time because we're buddies. But honestly, you're above average for what a pinball player is. Like if you go out and you see people play that are super casual, I'm telling you, it's not the people that listen to this podcast. It's not the people that watch pinball a ton. Like there's a lot of players that just aren't very good. And that happens. That's fine. We all can be great at everything. That's fine. They're probably having a great time. Exactly. But with that being said, it's just like those types of players, especially if they are buying machines, right? You have somebody who just loves buying a ton of machines, and they just love playing whenever they get a chance. They don't have to be great at the game.
    35:01
    Players at scale just are not saying games are too easy, so I just won't get it. If it's too easy for them, they'll just move on. but they've already bought it. They're already a customer. They've already converted. Like, you know what I mean? We'd be talking about people. We'd be talking about people not buying a game at the very beginning because they're like, okay, it's just too easy. Like, I don't want to buy it because of that. So we just, we just don't see that happen often at all. Like, I can't recall. I mean, there might be, hopefully somebody knows, maybe you guys know, has there been any game in recent memory that has come out to where it goes on location and everything. And everybody's like, this game is just too easy to play i'm not gonna buy it like i can't recall any game it's the only game i can think of that comes to mind is cactus canyon i think a lot of i heard from a lot of people before i bought this game that people were like that game's easy you're gonna see the end of it you will get bored of it right but you still bought it right i did okay so you're still a customer yeah i mean it's like people are gonna get games for different reasons i i think we just I think we just got to be careful of creating a reality that doesn't actually exist. Oh, somebody just died in Travis's house? That would be CJ. But creating a reality that doesn't exist for the buyer base. You know what I mean? Like it's just – That's your dog? That's his dog, yes. I will say – so Travis, being that you work for the pinball company, you see a side of the industry that I think a lot of us pinball enthusiasts don't recognize or see. And that's something that you have educated us on many times in our Facebook chat. It's just, honestly, the vast majority of pinball buyers in this hobby don't listen to podcasts, don't watch streams, don't consume pinball content. The vast majority are very casual players. It's much different than what all of us in our little bubble believe it is. It is much different. And I mean, it's but we see it like Tom and I get to see it from both sides, too. It's like I get to see it from the high end tournament point of view, which is, you know, why we can look at Potter and see like any type of intricate detail, like see the geometry of it, try to figure out a rule to it, try to figure out a ball path to it. Like that's the type of mindset. But, yeah, I think it's also important that when you look at machines is you kind of consider it from the person that doesn't know pinball yet. That's just now at the baseline discovery of it because they're going to act much different. I mean, I've gone to homes before with Rush LEs there and they played it for a year. Didn't even know the diverter was on there. They didn't know to use the action button for it. Yeah. You know, I've met people that own Godzillas that have never even seen Mechagodzilla multiball. They had no idea. Like things that we take for granted. Trust me. There's a lot of people that just haven't seen it. Like it's the same way. I ran into somebody the other day that's owned a Turtles for three years, and they still don't know how to relight their Turtle van logs. Like, they never knew how. And it's because they never got halfway through the game. They didn't realize. Right. They never have seen it. In three-plus years, thousands of plays. It happens. The person that never saw Mechagodzilla, had that person experienced a battle in Godzilla? I mean, yeah, I would assume so. It was just us talking about, because I have a lot of conversations with people, and it's us talking about the different parts of the game, right? And we can circle this back to Harry Potter, and this is what happens when so much is in the game. I think we take it for granted of what people actually see in the game. That's why we talk about how the first 10 minutes are so important, because that's what everybody's going to see, right? Even the first five minutes, even the first three minutes. And that's why I've told you guys, like, my non-negotiable or especially high-end themes for rules is what? I've told you this, Joel, constantly. Yeah, what is it, Joel? What is it? Don't put a mode start on a scoop or put a mode start on a hard shot. Like, you want a mode start to be selectable.
    39:11
    And if anything, a mode start at the plunge. And when does that mode need to start? Yes. At the plunge. 100%. It needs to start at the plunge. So, let's talk about that. So, question for you. Go ahead. Why is Godzilla so popular when you have to hit two ramps and then a scoop? That's easy. Because Godzilla was not a huge IP at the beginning. I'm talking about IPs at the very beginning that you know are going to sell gangbusters, that you know is so unique that it's going to go. Godzilla didn't do that because it was Godzilla. Godzilla was a slow seller, like first week. A lot of people forget that. We were all talking about how the play field art was and all that. And Joel and I even had a podcast about it live that I was like, I think this is going to be the sleeper like number one. Yeah, I'm looking at it. I can see how it's going to develop. So a lot of that we're talking about like two different things. I think the design and the rules and what Godzilla is pulled it, not the theme. Now, Harry Potter, that theme is going to lead it. It's going to get people like Joel's wife to come up and want to play it. It's going to get a lot of people to want to play it. Now, the problem is that means you're going to introduce so many people that haven't played pinball consistently, have never played pinball. And if they step up to a Harry Potter and they're not even in a movie yet and they have no idea how to start a movie like you've lost, you've lost the hook. Yeah, you've lost the hook. So what you're saying is have have that movie mode start at the plunge at the couch. Oh, yeah. A thousand percent. Select your movie mode.
    40:44
    Everybody's going to have their opinions. And we talk like Tom and I talked about this before, that we always create something in our minds. It's always better in our minds besides the actual reality. That's just creativity right there. But if I was in the room there at JJP and we're going over the rules and somebody said, we're going to start the movies at the scoop. That's on the right hand side. That's already a difficult shot for even experienced world class players. And I promise you it is. It can disappear for a lot of people, even people that are world champions or people are top 50. True. How is a casual going to handle that? And now we are automatically putting up a barrier unnecessarily in front of the meat and potatoes of a game to get people into the experience immediately. Like if I have a game and I want people to experience that world, I want to thrust them into that world. Otherwise, it's like riding a roller coaster and not getting to your first drop until like five minutes of just going around. Like I might do it. Nope, I'm waiting. I'm still going. Like you get them into it. Or listening to a podcast. So listening to a podcast and not getting to the actual meat of the podcast till five minutes in. Right. You know, you're just waiting. Hey, it's all about hooks. We should all know that. Everything's about hooks. You got to hook a player in. You got to give them a reason to keep playing. And simplest way, if somebody's playing Harry Potter. I play Harry Potter. I have a lot of thoughts on that.
    42:07
    One side comment was Tom had asked why is Godzilla? Because we've talked before that, unfortunately, the scoop, you have to hit ramp, ramp, and then you have to hit the scoop. And the scoop is so hard to hit on Godzilla for casual players that a lot of them don't experience battle. But I remember asking my dad, who played Godzilla, I was like, why did you enjoy that so much? He goes, well, I didn't know what I was doing, but every shot I was hitting made me feel like I was accomplishing something. They've designed it well. There's other stuff going on. He could fumble his way into Godzilla multi-ball or maybe even hit the mech. He doesn't need the battle. It doesn't feel like you're in a waiting room waiting for something to start because you haven't started. Like, there's – yes. Has he played Harry Potter yet? My dad has not played Harry Potter. Well, let's also not get it twisted either. They did have to adjust Godzilla afterwards to make it easier. To two ramps. Yeah. Well, you could hit the same ramp twice instead of alternating the ramps. So you get done with your stream on Wednesday night. Yep. How did Jared feel? Like, honestly. Honestly, that's what he said. He goes, that's a good game. He goes, I enjoyed that game. I look forward to playing that game more. That's a good game. He goes, there's just so much going on. There's so much going on. I don't quite understand what's going on. And that led us to a very interesting conversation about, I mean, long story short, I said, if I had to buy a game right now, Would you rather me buy Kong, Harry Potter, or Evil Dead? And he, without hesitation, said Evil Dead. Like Evil Dead really, he loved Evil Dead. And that's because I think Evil Dead does mechs and moments very well. Then that's what he enjoys in pinball is mechs and moments.
    43:47
    So Harry Potter, I agree. Everything you said, Travis, I completely agree because that was the frustration I had on my first few games. was if you're playing Harry Potter, you want to see the movie. I don't want to sit there and watch it. I'm not going to, don't misconceive what I'm saying here. I don't want to sit there and watch the movie. I know a lot of people are bent up about the sound balancing, which is, I do agree, needs a little bit of work. There's a lot of Mark Silk, like you, his call-outs are loud and clear. The music's great. David Thiel did a great job with the music in the fanfare. But there's some audio dipping to make Mark Silk loud and clear. but the movie clips are very quiet in the back. Well, here's the easiest question to ask, because you guys all know how I feel about LCDs and all that. We don't even have to go over that. Jared doesn't like it, by the way. But what I'm asking is, since you guys have played it, you've started a movie, you're in the lessons, because the way it works is, I guess, it's lessons for 30 seconds, and the timer goes, it rotates to the next lesson, regardless of if you complete it or not, you just get the points for whatever you've done at that point. My question is, does it feel like you're actually playing that movie? Do you feel like, do you realize what scene of that movie you're playing and you're going? Because if I take it to Rush, which is Tom's baby, that is very well integrated to where I feel like the modes actually are what they are. I will say yes and no. And what I mean is when I took the glass off. Let's go. No, no, no. When I took the glass off and started throwing the ball around, and what that allowed me to do was focus. So it's like I want to understand this multi-ball. So all I did, I never started a movie. I just had the multi-ball. So only the multi-ball is being displayed. It's very easy to see what you're saying. So if you're only playing a movie and only the movie shots are lit, yes, they actually did a decent job of like, oh, this movie is with Ron, so the Ron targets are lit. Joel, you're saying that in order to understand what's going on, you have to have the glass off and just use your hands. No. I think the modes themselves, they – just like – that's something I think Simpsons does well where the modes, you know, Homer's Day, you're hitting the areas of the play field that are Homer's Day. They made that mode immersive. I think there are modes in Harry Potter, as in the lessons, that if you can focus on just the lit shots, they do correspond to what's going on in the scene. Well, yeah, well, of course they will. But it's about the totality of the package, not the individuality of everything. Because if you take the glass off, of course you can isolate anything. Yeah. Nobody's going to go on location and say, hey, hey, if glass off, I want to experience this right now. Like, you know, I have a lesson going and then start a Quidditch match. So that's the the snitch is writing is flying all over the screen. Right. And then accidentally start a multi ball. And then while you're doing that, hit a Death Eater shot, and you got all that going all over each other. Yeah, at that point, you have no idea. Everything's lit, but then you have to teach yourself, okay, red and gold, that color's for that. This is for this. Oh, this is for this. Right. But, yes, you're not experiencing a moment at that point. You're experiencing all of it. You're experiencing Skittles thrown in your face. You're going to get all of it. I mean, it's fine, and here's why it's fine. Okay. Some parts it's okay, some parts it's not. Tom will fully understand this because we have to do this all the time in tournament play when we try to stack things together and get the perfect stack. It's natural in pinball to have overlap of certain features going, but at some point you do have to have certain features that are priority. Right. Right? And so that's the main thing is that you're going to always have background stuff, like side features. That's what makes the game very accessible. But if everything tries to be like the number one, that's when it gets like super confusing. And this isn't just a JJP. I've seen this across every manufacturer. It's not just like this isn't just pick on JJP. That's what happens. That's what makes it overwhelming. Even in King Kong, if you if you're in the middle of a scene, a movie scene, and then you start King Kong multiball, you're going to have those two things overlap. The colors are going to overlap, but that's just two items. And that's the issue that I see. And that's what Jared was voicing. That's the challenge with Harry Potter. Two items would be great. You could have four different things all running at one time. And then, oh, I hit the potion shop. So now my next shot will set a potion on that thing. Like there's so much that can happen. And this is my main takeaway was honestly one of my favorite JJP games is The Hobbit. I had The Hobbit for a long time. The reason I loved, loved The Hobbit was I think it's one of the most cinematic, immersive pinball experiences out there. The sound package, the design, the sure they have they have a guy, you know, super jackpot, but it sounds like Gandalf. Like it really it's so good. But when I remember when I had Hobbit, one of Jerry's complaint was it's too much. It's too much. There's too much going on. And what you need to understand with Hobbit is there's five sections. One's the mode. One's the orbits. One's hitting all the drops. But the orbits and the drops just kind of happen in the background. They never take priority. It's just kind of there. And then you have two multiballs, beast and smaug. You can set it so that you can't overlap beast and smaug, smaug multiball, which I highly suggest people do. so then at that point all you have possible overlap is mode and multi-ball just two things and the modes they did a very good job to make the modes unique and immersive but the biggest reason i loved hobbit was once you've done all five things that unlocks the wizard mode the out of the fire into the fire and that mini wizard mode dominates it shuts everything else off you're only experiencing that mode it goes full screen it's all movie clips it's a multi-ball it's high energy it's such an amazing i mean you guys have played it that those mini wizard modes there's three of them just boom that that turns out goes on and it just takes over the game and it's so much fun to play did you get that feeling on potter it's like you got to the final exam okay i never got it and now i could have not have gotten it because maybe There's certain modes. I think we were talking to Carl D'Angelo and he got to a mode. I had to look at the rule sheet because I was like, I haven't seen that mode. And I looked, it's like, oh, he played four multi balls, which got him. I think it's called Battle of Hogwarts. He got to something and he said that mode was really good. So it's like, OK, there might be experiences like that, but they look pretty deep into the game. To me, yes. If we're talking about logistically, if the thought of a mode is a mode is a movie, you would think the pinnacle, the end of that movie should be something epic. Yeah, kind of like the planet modes on Star Wars or something like that, right? Sure, yes, yes, yes, yes. Once you've done the three parts of the episode, when you get to the main part, it should be something epic. And unfortunately, the way it's presented right now, to start the final exam, you have to hit the scoop. So it is one. It doesn't just roll into final exam. You actually have to hit a shot. Okay. But once you've started final exam, it's just one more thing going.
    51:21
    Stack on everything else. So what you're saying, the final exam should be the headpiece or the... It should be a moment, a standalone priority. Exactly. I would rather, if the thought is, well, we allow you to overlap, that way you could bring a multiball into it and help get rid of it. It's like, no, no, no. If you think that's an important enough piece that you want a multiball, then just make it a multiball. Start it as a two-ball multiball, but turn off Quidditch, turn off Explore Hogwarts, turn off the Golden Trio multiball. Just let me live in that mode then until I either fail it or beat it.
    51:58
    That's to me. And that's what a lot of the feedback is on Facebook and Pinside is like, I read it, you know, Joel got the final exam and it just, it was just happening. And then I even beat one and I beat it. I didn't even know I beat it. Like, because it just ended, you know? So those are, well, and hopefully that's just something with early code that they're going to, I would, sure but i don't know we don't know we don't know we don't know so i mean do you do you think it's one of those things guys that maybe because the rule or the design is going to be a little bit tougher for players to play that there's just a focused effort to try to get to try to cram as much as possible like we talked about into that first 10 minutes so it's like i think everything to go i think that's generally what happens in jersey jack games i mean you're talking you're Wizard of Oz, Hobbit, maybe Wonka. Yeah. I think the only one I've never felt that on is Dialed In. That's the only one. Maybe Elton John, too. Elton John was good. Yeah, Elton John lets you breathe a little bit. I mean, you can start stacking a lot, but it lets you breathe and set up things. Yeah, but it doesn't feel like you're stacking nine things together, let's put it that way. You're not getting hit over the head with it. Right. I don't mind having everything available right at the beginning. Like, I don't mind the overlap, but I do mind. I mean, it kind of sounds like you do, Joel. Well, no. It does sound like you do. I don't want it all the time. I want final exam. I want the final exams to be a moment. And right now they're not. I also want I find it frustrating if somehow I got through ball one and never started a mode Like the fact that it that scoop is harder to hit than I think it should be There going to be people going a full game without playing Absolutely Casuals will never see a movie clip. I guarantee you. They will never.
    53:55
    Even the multiballs, some of them are challenging unless they put it in easy mode. But like Golden Trio multiball, there's a lot you have to do to start that multiball. There will be casuals that may never see a movie clip because if they don't start a mode or don't start a multi-ball, then they're playing in this limbo world for all three balls. So just like most JJP games, there's a lot of skill shots, and you can select them with the button. Even if they give us that option of, like, you give up your skill shot to just get into a mode, that would be great. Now, I don't know. For a casual, they may not understand that they can, you know, like it would need to be communicated in a good way. for easy mode i absolutely expected when jared scanned that easy mode thing that it would like give him in the mode just something i put him in a mode immediately he still has to hit the scoop and so that's these are these are things that i'm not i'm not here venting about like sure the the feed on the right side can be a little wonky that screwed me like two or three times over the last three days um and it is super fast i think some of the shots are challenging, the under the flipper shot, but it's the more that I play, I will get better at those shots. But the experience that I want out of Harry Potter, I think, I think currently is going to be hard for a casual player to, to really experience because hitting the scoop to get into a movie is a hard task. I don't think my wife experienced, I don't know if she's experienced a movie yet, um, out of the two or three games she's played. So I absolutely agree with you. I think they should allow you to select the movie right at the beginning, or make it more than if, if Eric's saying they've designed it where almost every shot in the game will divert the ball, then, then make it lit at the beginning where advanced term, all the advanced term shots are lit. And if they hit any of them, it stops the ball and allows them to select a movie in that moment. Like, go ahead, Joe. But that's what I'm saying. Just allow somebody to get into a movie as soon as possible because there's six movies. So if I was a casual and I select movie number one and I drain, they're going to go, I want to see what the other five movies are. They're going to play that game five more times to see all six movies or start all six movies. But right now, if somebody walks into the game and doesn't experience anything, oh, that was Harry Potter, they move on. I mean, I think the other part is, too, is like if everything's going at the same time, my concern is, is that somebody that's playing may not even realize that they are supposed to be experiencing the movie. Right. They might fall into the scoop, like not the side, but the front start, like pick whatever. They're like, OK, I guess I'll go with this. Yeah. But then it's just fighting for dear life. Like they're not going to look up at the LCD and be like, oh, I'm supposed to hit these. It's just trying to figure out, okay, out of everything that's lit, I'm just going to keep flipping and whatever advances, advances. So the mode's going to naturally advance regardless because of the timer, just as long as you stay alive long enough. But I don't know. I think it's kind of like, what do you think, Tom? I feel like we're discussing two or three different things that just fly in together and contradict each other, which is experiencing stuff, right? It's really hard to talk about it because, again, I mean, I haven't touched the game yet, but I was actually going to ask Joel a question. The diverter thing, do you know, like, when you hit a shot, which way it's going to divert the ball? Yes, yes. This is actually something that's really good. If you look at a picture in front of the – so the staircase is the main mech on the right, but then the center ramp is called – I forget what it's called. but in front of it, that center ramp feeds into the top of the staircase mech. So that means the staircase shot is going to be diverted in some direction, and the middle shot is going to be diverted in some direction. In front of it are four inserts. They're four arrows. Yeah, I see that. They're kind of cardinal arrows. Colored yellow, red, blue. Exactly. So let's say the center ramp, the yellow arrow is lit. That's the top arrow. What that signifies to me is the ball is going to be spit out up. It's going to go up out of that mech into the pops. Versus if the green arrow is lit, that's telling me, hey, that ball is going to go up the ramp and come right back at me because it's pointed at me. While to the right will feed to the right, to the left will feed over to the left. So, yes, they actually do. It did a good job on those two mechs to tell you where the ball is coming out or where it's going to come out when you hit that shot. you're talking about the four inserts that make a diamond together in front of both and those are also the like hogwart banners correct yeah so by default you start with two hogwart colors so um you can see that at the top middle of the screen and then you want to find the other color like like i said if if you already have green and yellow then you need to you know, I just need to hit a red and a blue shot. Um, and so if a red and a green shot happens to be lit red on the center ramp and green on the stairs, I would prioritize the red shot. Cause I don't have that yet. I would shoot up the middle instead. So there's, there's stuff like that where I think everything's here. I don't, I don't think, um, I mean my, my, I, to be positive, like I really do enjoy this game. I enjoy the layout. I, I, I've really loved the way this shoots um this the they got from a licensing standpoint it's all here it's all here it's not like they're tiptoeing around stuff or i mean everybody's face is there everybody's voice is there they've got so many different moments from the different movies when you're playing the different mode i mean it's all there i just think from a code standpoint you know maybe some audio balancing maybe some uh maybe bringing the movie like maybe more center And so the maybe make some how do you make those moments more impactful or bring out the final exam, adjust overlap? Like, I don't know. And I don't know what I think you can you can overlap Golden Trio multiball and explore the Hogwarts multiball. I would preferably I would not want those to overlap. Same thing with, you know, like I think they if they could tone that back a little bit on on so that you can't do it all at once. And maybe that's just personal preference of the coders, that idea of like, oh, you can get Carl D'Angelo to step up there and he can literally get everything going all at once and get the 11 trillion game, you know. But to enable it for Carl D'Angelo, but make it really, really difficult for the novice. Sorry, Carl, I feel like we should probably prioritize the novice, you know, like I don't I'm not a game designer. I'm not a code designer. No, 1,000%. You design games and design code for pinball players, but you can't do everything just geared towards elite players. If you do that, you're going to lose 99% of everybody else. You've got to be very careful of that. You've got to have accessibility. So I think, to me, what's the number one thing I told you, Joel? As soon as we saw this game reveal, I said, I'm excited to play it because I thought it's going to be a challenging layout. Like I don't look at it and like, this is going to be a cakewalk at all. And I mean, and it's exclusively because not because of all the diversions and all that, that's kind of like just whatever, you know, from a design standpoint, but it's not having a traditional return back to the in lanes. Like everything is just going to be dump it out on the waterfalls, bring it to, you might have the up post that comes up. You might have, you know, whatever it could be like ski jumps trying, or then you just got to send it. Like there's that makes it difficult and having the inverted out lanes have a degree of difficulty, too. I like it. We're all used to something slightly different. So, I mean, from a layout perspective, it looks intriguing to me. And I do like how the upper play field works. I like the little whip around on the ramp and you can just that's great. And there's a shot off to the you can there's like a 180 ramp up there. There's a loop up there. But then if you shoot it right on the tip of the flipper, it actually can shoot off the right side of the upper play field and feed the ramp, like the center ramp and feeds the mech. Like it's really, I have zero complaints with the design of the game. Eric Menier, I think the physical design of the game, I'm really, I'm very happy with that. I just think, if they asked me, okay, Joel, what's the one thing you would change in Harry Potter right now? I would say make it easier to get into a movie. And if that means off the plunge, you just select a movie, great. Eric's rebuttal is going to be it's one shot like it's lit by default all you have to do is hit the scoop it's one shot to get into a movie but unfortunately they made it a difficult shot if if it was shoot the center ramp shoot the center ramp to start a movie okay I could maybe see that that's one it's it's right up the middle it's the one the easiest shot in the game okay I could see that um well I mean it's it's kind of like why even have it like that though because at least in other games like in tom you could probably notice this like on godzilla for instance right even though it's at the scoop you still got to hit a few other shots to get it going but you're making progress elsewhere i can hit a ramp and get that ball to a flipper on this game there's no wire form to a flipper yeah right so it's automatically yeah it's going to automatically be tougher for anybody you have to get under control right you got to get under control I mean, how do you do that? I mean, it's almost like an early solid state, right? I mean, a thousand percent. That's the number one thing I noticed, a thousand percent. I mean, it's honestly, I view it the same way as like, you know, if you're playing World Cup soccer and you can't start a match, you can't start a match until you hit the final scoop, you know, the scoop. Like that, it's a challenging scoop, which seems somewhat centered. Like it's not the far right. It's not like the, that's pretty far right. but it's not like it's the Metallica scoop or the guardians of the galaxy scoop. We'll just imagine that. Imagine guardians of the galaxy, but you can't, you will not experience any character mode until you hit the scoop on the right. And you can't backhand that scoop. You cannot backhand the scoop. And here's the fun. Here's the hilarious part with guardians of the galaxy for high level tournaments. There's a setting there where you make it to where you can't have your modes at the plunge where you have to qualify it into the scoop, which that's like because that makes it more difficult so if we're talking about pure accessibility here's the difficulty things if they did that for easy okay i would be okay with it make it easy make you you log in with easy great you log in with normal no but to me i would say for all locations it should default to you start in a mode if they want to do these rules for the wizard key fine now here's a hit 18 shots before you start a mode for the wizard key like no don't do that don't do it no no no but but here's a question though um is there a setting to where you can get it to where you don't have to start it at the scoop to where you could start it talk amongst yourselves let me click let me i don't think so i don't click so i mean what do you talk amongst yourselves because tom you're going to get a wizard edition right so it's like what about this like obviously nostalgia theme and all that but what else outside of that intrigues you the most about this pinball machine uh the diverter basically all the i mean i do like that there's stackable elements to the game i think that's cool i mean i like joel was saying i mean the design looks great it's just you know i i'm buying this solely on theme i like the harry potter theme uh but i also know it's going to be fun to play and shoot and stuff yeah yeah and you've had jjps in the past like you had a wonka i've owned a godfather i've on most JJPs. What's the one that you haven't had? Elton John. I haven't owned it. Did you have an Avatar? No, I didn't own that either. Oh, so too. Elton John, I'm actually surprised you didn't get that. That's an excellent shooter. Yeah, it's just space. Yeah, kind of theme, I guess. But I mean, I do like Elton John's music, but I'm kind of keeping my eye out for one, honestly. so I might buy a used one the answer is maybe and I might have to start and what I mean is if I get to school year modes selection screen yes so that's one thing is by default you can select your movie if not they were going to have it where you the movie is picked based on your flipper like how many every time you hit your flipper it changes movie but um qualifying difficulty by default it's medium but there's an option for extra easy. So I could set it to extra easy and see what it does. Let's see what that does. Put that on immediately.
    67:28
    Tom, I feel like we need to invoice JJP for this episode. We need some music or something now. There we go.
    67:39
    We're just doing research for JJP software. What I just saw is there's an update available. So if one of you wants to Google, maybe they've updated, like, see what they added in the update, which I just see is available right now.
    67:54
    It's got to be the shut up, Joel. Okay, so I have it on extra easy. I started a game and I can't pick them up. So I bet I still have to hit the scoop. Really? Are you serious?
    68:08
    Oh, could be a placeholder. Okay, what's great is I just immediately hit the scoop like it was nothing. It was, I mean, so obviously extra easy made it easier. Of course. Well, Joel's proving this.
    68:20
    Yeah, I literally plunged the flippers and just drilled the scoop like it was nothing. But let me see if hitting a ramp or something. I will say, I know people are probably listening to this and there's other people out there like, it's just a scoop. Like, why should it matter? It's trivial. But I promise you, there is so many people that play pinball that either are not on pin side, they're not on Facebook. They don't watch YouTube. They don't listen to this. They just play. They have no idea to look up stuff. And those are the people like you want to reach. That's how you grow an industry. That's how you get people fully involved is you make them have fun. You hook them to it. And, you know, there's just having somebody play a game and never start a mode from a massive IP. I think you just got to be super careful about that.
    69:06
    So here's a question. Mm hmm. Where do I find... The code on Jersey Jacks. Support center? Oh, here it is. Okay. So the new release as of today added QR difficulty attract mode page. I don't know. Oh, QR code. Updated Death Eater multiball rules. Increased Nocturne alley scoring. Updated status report and fixed a bug.
    69:35
    Corrected an issue with the QR. No. So no. No. They didn't. They're not fixing it. They didn't add it on on Plunge. or anything. No.
    69:44
    It's okay. I doubt anybody else is really going to be talking about this issue. But overall, I can guarantee you more people would buy this game and more people would be involved in this game if they felt like they were making actual progression towards movies early on. This is a shout out to Elizabeth Gieske. She said one thing, when you read feedback like this, you don't necessarily have to give them the feature, but maybe give them the option to turn it on or off. Like all they have to do is make that a setting in the, in the game. If, if, if, if Eric's vision is no, you need to hit the scoop to start a mode. Well, if they just add it, if they made right there, the, the starting difficulty, if extra easy is start on plunge, then just add it in the code. And then people at home or operators can decide whether or not they want to turn it on. That's what Elizabeth's main quote was. she goes, don't ever remove something from the game. Just make it a rule that you can adjust. Make it an adjustment. So I think that would be a huge thing that they could do to make this game even more. Because it's all here. It's all there. It's a single rule change. And I don't want to come off like I'm not enjoying this game. Honestly, I'm really enjoying this game. I'm just trying to wrap my head around it. It doesn't sound like it. Well, I mean, it's just true, though, because even if you go look at the video, Joel, we were talking about this. It was like three plus minutes to where you're trying to hit the scoop. And, you know, shit just happens sometimes. The shot leaves all of us. I mean, I guarantee you I'm going to play a few games of Harry Potter and probably not start a movie either. I might have to figure out the scoop as well. I like we've all been there. I'm just looking at it from the perspective of, well, players should just be able just to hit it. more or less i'm just looking at it from everybody should have access to okay i'm a sporting part i'm looking at the pinball rules flow sheet and it's uh it's time turner spinner to light start term hit scoop and then so you actually have to hit the spinner first no i think that's on harder settings or i think that's once you've finished a term to start the next one you have to hit that shot, um, which should not happen either. It should automatically be lit. We have, um, I mean, there's somebody we chat with who's a very good player that their, their response after playing the game was scoop is stupid. So they, they just, even, even a good player that we know, I've heard it from multiple people. I'm not, not just one. If, if Eric, if you're listening to this, I, I honestly, I'm, I don't mind. Like, I don't think that the design of the scoop is bad. Like it's, it's just, yeah, he does. Eric, Joel's been shitting on it all podcast. You need to rewind this episode. There are times when you're playing modes where you have to either hit under the flipper on the right or you have to hit the scoop. And sure, when those shots are lit, to me, I'm like, oh, this is going to be a challenge. But I'm okay with that. I'm okay with having spots on a play field be challenging. I'm okay with that. But don't make that the, like, if Jared says, what am I supposed to do when he steps into the game? the first thing he should do is hit the scoop and yet the very first thing you should do in that game is the most challenging shot on the game in my opinion or one of them um that's that's that's hard that's that's a hard thing to get around because also you know you're trying to lead somebody to get to a multi-ball okay now i can explain the diverters oh you want to get the color so hit this and this golden trio to start golden trio multi-ball you have to spell hermione That's two stand-up targets that you have to hit to spell her name. And where are those stand-up targets at? By the left ramp? By the left ramp, yep. Okay. So you kind of have to spell her name. You have to spell Ron. That's three letters. And you have to spell Harry, so they have to go through the in-lane, out-lanes to spell Harry. You can move it with your flippers. And you have to lock three balls. That's a lot of individual things you have to do to get to that multi-ball. Tough. I don't think my wife will ever see that multi-ball, ever.
    73:56
    And that's okay because difficulty settings, you know, if she plays an easy mode, then more of Hermione's already spelled or more of Harry's already spelled. There are skill shots. That's what I do. I do the Harry skill shot. So you just short plunge and boom, it spells Harry automatically. Or you do the Hermione skill shot where you just have to hit one of her targets one time and it will spell her whole name as a skill shot. There's things you can do to get around it. But these are the things, and this hopefully is taken as constructive criticism, but these are things that could be adjusted or changed to make the game great. Joel, Joel, I promise you, nobody's getting pissed off by us saying the mode should start at the plunge. I promise you. Everybody has thick skin in this industry. What we're looking at here is the rule set overall, what I see on the sheet, what I've watched is generally OK, in my opinion. Like the overlap is whatever. You can always prioritize things. I think the layout is intriguing. I think the way it shoots is intriguing. I'm excited to play it overall. I think more than anything, it's just like our opinions are our opinions and mine's always going to squarely be. I want everybody to experience the first minute or two minutes of the game. And then progressively other features get a little bit more difficult to get to. So that way you have the carrot on the stick for the experienced players. But you need the carrot on the stick for everybody at the very beginning, especially if you're wanting a game to really take off and really have longevity. Because if you don't have that and we've seen it, I'm not going to name games, but we've seen it across every single manufacturer. If you have a game that's not highly accessible to everybody in the first couple of minutes, it's DOA. It's like it just is. And you have a hard time recovering from that. Joel, tell us about your Halloween experience. I know. I'm just kidding.
    75:54
    There you go. But I see it. I'm just – I understand that, yes, if modern pinball is typically wrapped around or, like, focused around modes, and if you make your game if you you make your game so people can't experience a mode they're missing it and and you said something earlier travis about how important the first five or ten minute experience is for a game realistically there are a lot of people that will own this game in the first five ten minutes of the game is all they will ever see ever so if you make these amazing epic things 15 20 25 minutes into the game you're gonna have an entire buyer base that'll never experience it and that's fine for like a wizard mode but when you're just talking about a mode you know like that's that's my one hold up on Godzilla I think there are plenty of people that probably have never experienced a battle and honestly the battles are awesome Luckily, there's plenty of other fun things that they're experiencing.
    76:56
    So this is what I really that's why I have so much respect for game designers and game coders, because trying to balance that something that will keep the two of you guys entertained because you can get 45 minutes deep into a game and yet keep somebody like myself, my brother, my wife entertained to balance that is really, really hard. And you can definitely look at like, why do people gravitate towards certain games? Right. So because there's different ways to start a mode. And to me, I find this conversation like actually very interesting because once you really peel the layers back and you kind of see it, you kind of figure out, OK, there's just different ways to do this. So Jaws, for instance, right, what makes that game so popular at the beginning, because most people realize you have to bash the boat. You have to bash the captain ball, right? You have to hit the shark when it comes up. But then what happens? Every shot gets lit for you to start an encounter. And even a super casual player does not need to know what encounter is what, does not need to know how to play it. But they're going to hit that shot. And what's going to happen with the ball? It's going to stop somewhere. I just want to let you know what? No, no. I'm sorry. You just what? What do you got? I just got a message that Harry Potter's at Lumberjack Johnny's right now. Oh, well, you need to go start. I got to go. Show everybody how to start. No one's going to go stream later. But think about that. There's that, right? Yeah. And then you could start at the plunge. That's another version of it. Or you could start it at a scoop.
    78:30
    Well, that's what I was going to say. There's different versions of it. Is it unfair? here we are critiquing Harry Potter to start a mode. You hit one shot, no qualifying anything. It's one shot. It's the scoop. It's kind of to the front, to the right to start a mode in King Kong.
    78:47
    You have to bash the gong. It's either once or twice. And then you have to hit a scoop. Yep. We're okay with that. Is that just because that scoop happens to be further back? So it's an easier to hit target or why are, why are we okay with Kong's mode start? I can list two reasons for that. One, Let's face facts. Kong is not as strong of an IP as Harry Potter. I say this as working with a company that primarily sells Stern Pinball. If you put King Kong and Harry Potter next to each other, and you bring a family up that knows nothing about Pinball, more than likely they're going to pick Harry Potter. Correct. Just on theme alone. Theme alone. That's another thing. The second part is, like you said, shot location. On a pro, that's super easy to backhand. Super easy to hit. you can get into it pretty good. Obviously, Premium and LE, a little bit more difficult. We've talked about that difficulty. It just is. But there's different versions of this. Elwin's done all kinds of versions. You look at Iron Maiden. It's center ramp.
    79:51
    You hit different shots, you make a progression, you hit the center ramp. That game is squarely designed for pinball players. That was his first design that he had before he even got to start. Right. And so you look at other things like take, for instance, you know, Avengers. It's just spinning a disc and then hitting one ramp. Every Dwight Sullivan game is going to essentially be ramp, ramp, scoop or ramp, ramp. Yeah, it's ramp, ramp and then one other shot. And that's I mean, that's that's Turtles, D&D, Star Wars, which is perfectly fine for pin. So what I don't want to get twisted, it's perfectly fine for pinball players because we all accept that. We're all used to it. That like the baseline foundation for us to understand how to start how to get into it What I looking at is not this demographic here that will do it anyways and be fine doing it I'm looking at this demographic over here that's discovering pinball, figuring it out, and having it be accessible for them. Because if you can have either version of this, because you have the software, you could change the rules up. Why would you not want the most accessible version on locations for players or for people to buy it and play it at home? Like I've talked to too many people that have bought certain games and been so frustrated. They just stopped playing it all together and they just sold it. Tom threw his hands in the air.
    81:17
    It's not even set up yet. He's going to box it. He can do so much. He's ready to wrap it up. He can do all kinds of content on it. We're going to wrap it up in less than 30 minutes. Easy. um but that's just like it's just a game theory i agree like i saw the same thing i'm trying when i played dune you guys started the scoop too yeah right and that's supposed to be a cinematic thing is there a game that you start a mode right when you plunge guardians guardians okay and that and that game still does very well like it crushes on location you have the sounds like i i had a guardians on on route and i love that sucker made like double what it was and this is after it came out too right i mean we can like i still still see people buying pros for eight nine thousand dollars if they can't find one like it's and it's not even it's not like we look at the art and we're just like, okay, it's what it is. So that's not necessarily a big seller. Marvel. Star Trek.
    82:28
    Yeah, Star Trek, you do the same thing. I mean, it happens. It's there. So my question... So Harry Potter, it's arguably one of the... It's probably the biggest... People have said it's the biggest theme for pinball that hasn't already been made into a pinball machine i think i think you could compare that to just star wars like star wars the movie's biggest theme so star wars if if somebody steps up to stern star wars they're expecting to see movie right uh to qualify or to experience i know you select your character leah han whatever but and then you plunge and it goes straight to the left outline then you plunge again and you start to play what is it that you have to do in star wars to start seeing parts of the movie to start a mode it's is it ramp ramp or what what are you no you got to just qualify planets so you could either do or certain features like there's a death star shot you hit that so many times to qualify that indoor at the left ramp so many times to qualify that hop which is the the horseshoe yeah hit that so many times you're gonna flail and it has a scoop on it and there's a scoop with tatooine and nobody really aims after that at the very beginning so imagine star wars if You had to start the modes at that scoop instead. I agree. But I'm saying, do you feel that casual players, just flailing around, hitting random shots, do you feel casual players get to experience Star Wars? Do they get to see the movie? No. It sells a lot on theme, but I've lost track how many people I've talked to that still have no clue how the multipliers work. They've never seen a planet mode, like a final thing. Yeah, hitting three modes. I've talked to people that didn't even know hyperspace multi-ball was a thing. They have no idea what it is. So this comes back to your, you need to design. We're giving passes to King Kong and Godzilla because if somebody steps up to Godzilla, they don't immediately assume I want to battle something. They don't assume that. They see building, they want to break building. King Kong, they step up to King Kong, they may not assume. There's a movie mode, right? They've got to get to a movie mode. They don't assume that. King Kong might be difficult for a casual. I'll admit that because there's nothing that stands out on the pro outside of hitting lit shots to get your scene going, right? It's on the premium. Clearly, the gong stands out the most. And when we look at it, it's very much like shot-based design, right? With the sweeps and all that. So I think for something like Kong, you do have to be like pretty much if you're a pinball player, you're going to appreciate what Kong is. Yes. If you're not a pinball player, it might be a little bit more difficult to make that connection because of that. What am I going to experience? But you're saying that when the IP is a movie, basically spoon feed that movie to the user as quickly as possible. Get that movie because that's what people want to experience. You're pulling the theme into pinball, right? You don't pull the pinball into the theme. So it's like people step up to a machine because they want to play pinball, but they also step up to a machine because they see the theme, they want to experience it, they want to feel like they're in it. And the way you get that is the totality of the package, the lights, the sounds, the shots, and just you want them to experience that as fast as possible. Yeah, take the barriers down as much as you can. And it's like that across the board. And I get it. There's different ways to do that. I won't argue that all day long because there's like Venom, for instance, right? Much different. You're doing XP. Good luck explaining that to a casual like they don't know. Eyes just glaze over after that. But I still think it's a cool thing if you fully understand pinball and you have it at home and you're getting your character going. And it's kind of same thing with Dungeons and Dragons. I don't know any casuals that fully understand what's going on in that game. Like it's not easy to understand all the rules because a lot of people, it's like, uh, it's like drinking out a fire hose when you start getting rules and you're talking to people, you're trying to teach people. So, and that's when you, uh, that's when you steer them to the, uh, flipping out YouTube channel, right? To, uh, all my videos, you just send them the link right to it. I mean, you might as well take the, take the glass off and see. What the hell are you talking about, Joel?
    86:44
    You haven't seen my, you'll love them. You'll love them. They'll teach you so many good things. The glass-off tutorials. I think it just boils down to, guys, it's just – I think it's just game theory, design preference, and rules preference. And there's many ways to do this. Like Evil Dead. Like how do you do it on Evil Dead? You've got to hit the ramps, right?
    87:03
    Evil Dead. In order to qualify a mode. And then you've got to hit underneath the ramp. Well, there's white shots. And once you hit enough white shots, then you hit underneath the ramp. Right. So it changes as the game goes on. But, I mean, same – yeah. And see, nobody complains about that. Nobody's saying modes are too hard to play on that. You know what I mean? Because everything is lit, essentially. And then, yes, the ramp pops up and it's a relatively easy shot. Right. There's just different levels of accessibility. And something that may seem easy to us isn't as easy to somebody else. You can't always assume that. And that's what Jared, the reason he was, I mean, he stayed. Normally, so when we wrap up the stream, it's midnight. Sometimes he's like out and he just leaves. um but he stayed he he didn't leave till after one like because we were just talking we were talking about the game and it got into rules and game theory and all this stuff and and what he loves about evil dead was when you're in a mode that is your focus everything on that screen all the audio you're hearing everything is that mode and you're getting clips and audio and it's full screen and it's huge and um you're in that mode sure you can bring a multi-ball into that mode but I don't necessarily think the multi-ball overpowers the mode. It's prioritizing the mode. So he's loving it. That's what he loved. That's what he loved about Evil Dead, the experience that he had in Evil Dead. And I understand, you know, you talk to different people, and some people, what they don't like in Evil Dead is they see design flaws in the layout, or they're just like, I can't get over this and this and this. But that's what makes pinball fun, right? Everybody can like games for different reasons. Yep. You're not going to please everybody. No. No, but I definitely Tuesday night I came away after playing that game for three hours and learning it and discovering it and starting to really appreciate the different aspects of it. I came away from it going, I might have to own this game one day because I know my wife loves it. But then I was surprised the very next day for Jared to be like, he wasn't in love with it the way I was, which is fine. But he's also not in love with it the way my wife is because it's Harry Potter. He doesn't have that attachment to Harry Potter. So to him, it's like, that's a good game and I'm excited to play it more. But I do think there are limitations right now in the way that the code is structured that is keeping him from potentially enjoying it deeper. I mean, it could very well be isolated, too. I mean, I do believe that they would move more units. The more accessible it is, the more people discover it down the line. Like once retail realizes this machine exists, like a year, two, three years from now. But the game is selling gangbusters right now. That's what I wanted to give you. Yeah, so pinball people are responding to it anyway, so mission accomplished. It's easy. I mean, I respect Tom because look at him. He's a respectful, honorable, amazing human being. It's easy to love and respect Tom. Travis is a challenge, but what I can do, Travis, is I do actually respect your takes from a marketing and sales perspective because this is actually what you do and think about all day, every day.
    90:04
    There has been some criticism with Harry Potter and the marketing campaign, the rollout campaign that was Harry Potter. At the same time, I've heard from a lot of distributors. This is the best selling game they've had since like Jaws. It's selling amazingly well. So you, I'm not going to say marketing expert because that's dumb. You with the experience that you have and the job that you do on a daily basis. What are your overall thoughts on the marketing rollout or the overall sales of this game? It's perfectly fine. Like it's, I mean, it's doing what it's doing. I think a lot of people in pinball content, and I'm trying to say this delicately without hurting some feelings, but you only know what you know. And unless you're inside the industry and you're seeing the actual numbers, you're understanding how these games are truly manufactured, how the shipping goes, how the insurance goes, how everything goes to make this whole machine go the direction you want it to go. it's very easy to sit by second guess wonder why didn't somebody do this why didn't somebody do that like we talked about it i think stern kind of laughed about it during kong when it's like people are like why didn't you include the empire state building it's like oh yeah we didn't think about that why why did we totally forget about that yeah so there's just there's lots of parts to this but i think a lot of people when they think of marketing and pinball i think we miss the boat entirely because it's not about marketing one product i truly believe it's about pushing a brand because the product only has so much shelf life. And these companies are producing multiple products. It's not just one pinball machine and that's it. There's merchandise, there's accessories, there's updates that they push out. They push it to locations. They go to expos. Like it's not just the single product itself. And even then you have other products that come. So, I mean, just the true flow of things. And I hope people, if anything, they get out of this, that they understand that the true flow of how these machines go, you don't reach the retail people on day one, right? Like you remember, we talked about John Wick, right? We didn't, and I caught all kinds of flack about that, but it was the truth. We did not sell an LE on day one, but guess what? We made the adjustments. We knew what we had to do because we knew what our target market was, what our avatar looked like, and how to get that to them. And we ended up selling all of them anyways. So I think people just miss the boat that they think, okay, these games have to just fly off the shelf or it's not a success. Or they have to reach retail immediately, day one, within three hours of announcement, or it's a failure. It's like products have a lifetime of them. It takes a while to get noticed and get out there. And I think anybody that's on social, you could look at it, play out on there. You go to YouTube. What happens when you find a random YouTube video with millions of views that you never even seen before? Right. We've all done that. You click on it. You look at their channel and you're like, holy shit, they've been around for 10 years and they have five million subscribers. Never heard of them until now. It's it's like that. You have to reach people over time. And I think when I look at how Jersey Jack did it. Yeah, sure. Their rollout, it was clunky as all hell. Like we were all confused by it, right? They kind of announced it at TPF. I think we even had a podcast right afterwards, right? Where we're kind of just like, what's going on? Yeah. So there was that. But, you know, I think at the end of the day for pinball manufacturers, it's very, very easy to get noticed by the pinball enthusiasts. Because you just put something on socials, content creators roll with it. They disseminate it. You see it on pin side. It gets on Facebook. It spreads like wildfire. That's the easy part, right? The hard part is reaching retail because then that just takes time. A press release won't just do that. There's just no way that it will. But, you know, I think people need to understand how important it is, though, to reach the pinball enthusiasts and crush it those first 30 days because we're the biggest cheerleaders, right? Like, we're the ones rating the game, talking about online. So you get six months down the line, Somebody's just now discovering the game. They look it up and they see just post after post after post just shitting on the game. Why would they want to bother getting it? Social proof is just so powerful. I think that's really where it's at. It's not marketing the product. It's marketing the social proof of something because we're all little apes on this rock, right? And we go towards what looks popular, what every other ape is looking at. We're like, okay, what is he looking at? I want to see it. Like, that's Evil Dead, prime example, right?
    94:55
    Like, think about, like, Spooky has done so well developing their brand. That should be a case study. It is amazing. They start out with a podcast, right? And you look at their first game that they came out with. What was it, like, roughly 10 years ago or so at this point? And you see where they're at today with Evil Dead that people are feeling like this is a game that can compete with everybody else. Like to me, it's it's clear you build brands. You don't worry about marketing products. You worry about marketing brands. And that's why. Like, why do you think Stern calls themselves a lifestyle brand? Yeah. Like, that's how it works. I think I think all that makes sense. I think it's sure it's easy to to nitpick or question, you know. So, well, okay, the one thing we can't question or can't deny is it's selling really well. It's going – It's not just selling really well. It's selling really well. Yeah. I'm never going to get my Harry Potter. If we were to scrutinize, well, if they would have done this, they would sell more. Sure, maybe. But right now, it's going just fine. Like it's going just fine because my bigger question is – it's what Tom just said. I'm never going to get one. Like Eric had mentioned in the Loser Kid podcast, apparently the way their stations are set up, it's right now they have one person doing two stations or one person doing three. So to scale up, they just hire more people so that each person has their own dedicated station and then that will increase throughput. Awesome. I have no idea how if they're prepared to match the throughput needed for the orders coming in right now. I mean, I think they're being flooded with orders, which is a good problem. But we'll have to wait and see whether or not six months down the road they're close to fulfilling those orders or if they're way behind. I don't know. And there is other ways to market your brand out there that's unseen, right? Because if the pinball enthusiast sees your marketing, you've effed it up. Yeah, I don't need the Facebook reel. Right. There you know you exist. Like, why are you spending dollars on your brand for people that know you exist when you already have it organic with all the content creators, everybody else? You're wasting your money. They could purposely be holding back in a way where, you know, let's get the games. Let's make sure we get all the issues out. If there's any, let's get them out to people. Let's get people pumped about it. Let's get it to number three on pin side. Well, what I'm getting at is number three. Well, Jersey, Jersey Jack's already done external marketing. You can like a lot of people don't realize this. You anybody and I'm not going to say how, but anybody can look up Facebook ads and figure out what's going on, where it's targeted to, where it's going. OK, Jersey Jack has like 18 to 20 of them running since March or February sometime around there. I haven't looked recently. It's been a couple of weeks, but those are all things we got to pay attention to. So it's not like sometimes you might see those ads. I'm sure all three of us did. But then there's a lot of them out there that I'm like, OK, I've never seen that one. I wonder who that's geared toward. I wonder who's actually seeing that because it's active. So it's actually being used to be paid for. And that's that's the key. It's like if if we already know people listen to Triple Drain, why do we want to be like, hey, you guys be the only one to see this advertisement for Triple Drain? Like they're like, OK, you three bozos. I already listen. Like, why do I need to, you know, like. You've got to reach other people. If you're listening to this podcast, you've never seen a Triple Drain ad because we're really good with our marketing. We're not going to aim towards you. Maybe we don't have any ads, but still. We did. Yeah.
    98:38
    It's just different strategies, right? Because you've got your organic, you've got your branding. You want to make sure that you're respectful to everybody that's the fandom that just loves pinball or might love your brand or love the IP that you're playing or that you're building. So there's a lot of layers to this. And I mean, it is interesting. But yeah, I think if it were me and I'm building a pinball manufacturer today, I'm never like, of course, I want good themes, but I'm never worried about advertising that theme. I'm more worried about how do I convince people that my brand is good? What associations do I want them to draw about my brand? Because my brand is going to outlast the production of any one model. like it can't be just all about we're just all about like harry potter we're just all about godzilla we're just all about evil dead like it has to be about the manufacturers well let's just hope that you're never the face of a brand and then i already am though thank you so to wrap it all up um tom's gonna play harry potter tom's gonna go play harry potter he's probably gonna stream harry potter today i'm gonna play it today i don't know if i'll stream it today but i'm gonna definitely play it i'm excited for you to play it because maybe he'll come back and be like you guys are all wrong this game's incredible or he may i'll be like i shot the scoop 50 times i don't know what your problem is i canceled my wizard order and i got a ce you know that's what i'm afraid of uh well i mean they're unlimited right i think that's true they're Unlimited, unlimited. I don't know. It's a beautiful game. Well, the bottom line is, I think all three of us can agree, regardless of us analyzing it, being like, okay, what about this? What about that? Only JJP knows why they did what they did. I think all three of us can agree. It looks fun. I'm sure Joel's already played it, so he knows if it's fun or not. It is fun. I'm going to blast. I'm interested to play it. I didn't watch Joel's stream and be like, okay, I don't need to play that game. And there's been tons of games I've seen out there. I'm like, okay, I don't care. I'm waiting for Harry Potter to be around so I can go play it. I will tell you. So, you know, it's awesome. I'm very fortunate. Jared and I have a blast streaming these games. And the fact that people are turning out and the numbers are turning out now to watch them live, it's awesome. I'm never nervous about that. I'm never nervous about, you know, if there's like the other night, there's 500-something people watching. Have 500 people something watch me play. That doesn't make me nervous. What makes me nervous is the day after when I get a message in our Facebook group and from freaking Travis going, all right, time to watch Joel's stream because I know he's not watching it to like, oh, let's laugh and have a good time. He's watching it to like scrutinize it and learn like what's going on here. What's going on here? Wow, you know, Jesus. I get that all the time. You know, you started even for the scoop at 1307, and it wasn't until 1608 that you hit it. What happened? You know, like that's one of those, I'm just getting these messages and it's like, yeah. I honestly, Joel, I will say this. I will say this again. This goes back to like if Tom, if I was the CEO and Tom was co-CEO of our new pinball company, our first mandate would be anybody that ever designs games for us or just does anything, they watch your gameplay. And the reason why I, no, I promise you, The reason why I say this is because you are above average overall compared to everybody. But you're obviously not elite, which is fine. I'm not elite. Tom's not elite. Those are like the top ten. Those are like the Eschers and everybody else that just have like S-tier god blood running through their veins when they flip like Zal or somebody or Johannes. But what I'm saying is, is that when I I'm most excited to see you play and see how you react to these things, because it gives a baseline for what the majority of people are going to do on the game. It's going to give you an idea of what the majority of people will go after. And I think that's just invaluable insight that is readily available for everybody. Five years from now or five years ago, probably not as widely available. Ten years ago, definitely not available. So today seeing that, like, I think that's a good thing. And that's why I always like watching your game play to see it, because I know if I want to watch somebody that might approach it a little bit different in terms of maybe looking at scoring, like I'll watch Tom or I'll watch like a tournament game or I'll watch Carl play because Carl does that. But when I see somebody just trying to experience the game, trying to progress through the game, that is the majority of people. The majority of people just try to stay alive and just see progression. So I'm always curious about that because I want to see those things happen because they're happening. Yeah. Go ahead, Tom. And you want to see the joy on, on Joel and Jared's face as they play a game. Absolutely. Like I get, I gave Joel shit. I gave Joel shit for thinking he completed the Ron targets when he didn't, but you know what? Damn it. He was happy about it. That's all that matters, right? Yeah. No, it's yeah. It's fun. We have a, we have a ton of fun. So, um, thank you. But yeah, we should probably wrap it up. Tom's got to go. Tom's got to go play some Harry Potter.
    103:57
    But yeah, I. What movie are you going to play first, Tom? Sorry, I got to ask him, Joel. I don't know. As soon as I hit the scoop, probably Goblet of Fire. I think that was my. Is that the fourth one? Yes. Yeah, that was that was my favorite movie. So. Yeah.
    104:13
    Why? Was it the Goblet? It's cool. The Fire. Was it the Fire? Yeah. fire wasn't it yeah he um he he lights every drink that he drinks on fire before that's just the world that tom lives in um and it's all goblets he only drinks out of goblets i can identify with this movie i'll have a water but in this thank you this is what octoberfest should have been my god um what i will say if if any listener has a harry potter on order i I think you will enjoy this game. I'm excited for you to get the game. I'm not trying to sway your buying thoughts. It's just I'm really enjoying what's here, but it is .7 whatever, and there's a ton of time for them to tweak and adjust and make it more whatever they want and add this. So I think feedback, constructive criticism is valuable. I hope JJP's listening to this. And if you have more questions, call Tom because he's going to play it in a few hours. And Tom, Tom knows best. So, yeah, let's plug it up. We'll start with you, Tom. Go for it. I am Tom. I run Fox City's pinball and triple drain, sort of. Goodbye. Nice. Fox City's pinball. Check his stuff out on Super Bowl Swag if you want merch or Fox City's on YouTube and Twitch. Travis, plug away. Nice. Well, you can find me here as the face of the Triple Drain Pinball Podcast. And then I'm also part of the pinball company. We do some content there, but we recently just shifted over branding to pinball.com. So you'll see me do pinball.com stuff, going to expos under that banner and all that. That's singular, right? Pinball.com. Pinball. Pinball.com. That's awesome, man. P-I-N-B-A-L-L period C-O-M. You practiced that, didn't you? I did I know it I hope I did I've been looking in the mirror doing that a lot make sure um no and then um I'm Joel I do the flipping out pinball stream every Wednesday night with my brother Jared on the flipping out YouTube channel I also do tutorials um there's a King Kong tutorial up there and then I just filmed a Simpsons tutorial which will hopefully be up soon and then I'll be filming a Harry Potter tutorial before this goes um so those are a ton of fun and um yeah thank you uh thank you so much to the patreon supporters we have you can check us out on patreon i know we don't do a ton like we don't pay it's not like the patreon people get all these exclusives or anything and that's the thing that i'm i'm very i'm very grateful you guys because you support us even though you know we've really only been recording monthly but that financial support has been awesome uh we just had to pay for zencaster the other day and um it's just it's nice to support the podcast. More goblets for Tom and more rims for Joel's golf cards. And silver ball swag. People keep buying the merch, which is awesome. So thank you for all the people that support us here as well. So, yeah, this was fun. And like always, Tom, you get the last words. Go find a Harry Potter. Play it. Cherish it.