The Pinball Network is online. Launching the Pinball Show. Pinball is a game of skill. For some, it's a passion and a lifestyle. It's time for the Pinball Show. It's pinball with personality. that Dennis and I have been working on for the past couple months, I would say. Maybe, well, we were kind of dabbling in the summer a little bit on this. Slowly but surely, we have created a team to help take some of this over to work on this project, the special project that we're about to announce. And then we built up an internal group within TPN to help with the special project that you and I have been working on, and they've been doing a terrific job as well, Dennis. We at TPN have been having fun for, it's going on almost a year now. We've had a lot of success. I really like the direction that this group effort is heading in. A lot of fun. People are really enjoying it. They're enjoying the content. The content providers are really enjoying working on their streams or their respective podcasts, et cetera. And we want to continue to grow and to expand the pinball Industry Arcade. Early on in the TPN creation, we started passing around different ideas of what TPN could bring the Industry Arcade and the community. And we found out that, Dennis, you'd been kind of thinking about a project similar to this for a couple of years now. And I think the community in general has been thinking about something to this extent. And for the last arcade three years or so, the community, as well as myself, has really been enjoying the award show that we have in the Twippies Awards, This Week In Pinball yearly awards. A fun public vote as two favorite pinball machines, designers, podcasters, video recorders, etc., etc., locations. The Twippies has done a lot. But like many industries, there are numerous awards that are given. And usually the format is different, the voting procedures are different, etc. You know Dennis, listener. Dennis is all about objectivity. I'm as well, but, you know, Dennis is our objectivity guy. And we were talking about, I wonder if the same choices would be made if panel of voters were different. Instead of general public, I wonder if the game of the year would be different if it was experts voting or critics voting. And I've seen on threads and on social media many people having the same discussions. So Dennis and I were just doing some exercise. We were like, I wonder what this would look like. I wonder what an additional award ceremony would look like for the pinball Industry Arcade. one that is showcasing all of the hard work and the creation that these manufacturers are putting into pinball each and every year. The design elements, the artistic elements, the technological advances, and elements with different toys, mechanisms, etc. I wonder if critics would pick the same choice as the general public. And that's when the idea of a new awards emerged. Dennis Kriesel and I kind of brainstormed and outlined and worked on the most efficient, objective, and transparent way to add an additional awards to the yearly circuit of the pinball Industry Arcade. After hammering out all the details, we decided to develop and release what will be known as the Pinball Industry Arcade Awards. The Pinball Industry Arcade Awards, we're going to poke fun at ourselves a little bit, the acronyms PIA and oftentimes the media for a lot of these pinball manufacturers are quite a pain in the ass. We believe as pinball media that we can actually give back to the Industry Arcade by recognizing some awards of excellence. The Pinball Industry Arcade awards will be comprised of pinball media voters, a panel of vetted voters that is podcasters, streamers, video creators, writers, etc. that will be coming together and using their experience, their knowledge, their expertise, to not vote for their favorite innovation, their favorite layout, their favorite music and call-out, but their most objective approach to determining excellence for this year and many years to come. Once Dennis and I felt great about the direction that this was heading in and all the pitfalls that we could try to avoid and to really bring another way of celebrating pinball and congratulating and awarding and thanking those that make this Industry Arcade so great, we pitched it to our formal Pinball Network committee that works tirelessly to keep this whole network running. They voiced the same concerns as we did initially, but importantly, they voiced the excitement that we had about the idea of a more objective approach to celebrating the creations of the year. With that group, we worked diligently to, again, try to figure out the best way to go about this, the most respectful way of going about this, and the most entertaining way for you, listener and viewer, of the upcoming Pinball Industry Arcade Awards. So even after the second stage of presenting this to the committee, we wanted feedback, and that's why the TPN group is great. We presented it to our providers to get their feedback. They were equally excited as well. Many of them wanted to be a part of this and to help out with this. So the Pinball Industry Arcade Awards has become a major group effort, which follows the mission statement that we have here at the Pinball Network. Working together to make pinball fun, recognizable, and supportive. So Dennis and I are here to present to you the Pinball Industry Arcade Awards. Dennis, what is the Pinball Industry Arcade awards to you? Well, as you summarize, Zach, I'd say the main thing for me is, in my opinion, the pinball hobby and the Industry Arcade as a whole are large enough at this stage to warrant a Critics' Choice style award to join the mix. I know a lot of – there have been a number of pinball awards over time. The Twippies are the largest and most celebrated awards, and this is not designed to be a new Twippies. I think a lot of people that have had criticisms on how things happen in a People's Choice Award need to understand that those are just inherent issues with the People's Choice Award, just like a Critics' Choice Award like this has its own inherent pitfalls as well. For example, that it's only going to be a much smaller group of people that will be allowed to participate. I do think one of the things that is noteworthy is while We Are Pinball organizing this through the Pinball Network, the selection of these Industry Arcade awards is designed for anyone in pinball media that meets set criteria. It's not just for TPN members. And being a TPN member, if you don't meet the criteria otherwise, like thresholds for number of podcasts or streams, that you don't automatically get a seat at the table. Correct. Yeah. Now, for the award categories, you're going to see a lot of similar categories, whatever breaks down pinball that we can help celebrate. This is not a TPN thing. This is not a Zach thing. This is not a Dennis thing. This is a media thing. The fitting criteria as a media member, as a provider in the Industry Arcade. This will allow you to become part of the judging panel, whether it's this year, next year, etc. You have a voice in this. The audience is going to get to hear, Dennis, what the critics think about the games of this year. Absolutely. This is a multifaceted award show. So we've got the main awards there that will be voted on by the media. The second thing that we're going to do is we want to recognize the excellence of the year from the media, from the content providers, from those streamers that are going above and beyond pushing those markers for pinball. We're going to be congratulating them as well. Now with that we going to be very careful. We going to be very sensitive to the fact that when media votes for media it can get sloppy right. When the public votes for media, what we've witnessed firsthand and experienced, it can get a little messy. Because of that, we decided with this case, in terms of these excellence recognition awards, that this will be a TPN group doing this. It's separate from the main Industry Arcade awards in part because there's not any sort of set requirements here in the sense that there's only one winner. It's not about winning in this. Those streamers who provide this type of content for our Industry Arcade, they're all winners. Podcasters that take all of the time they do to record and edit this content for each of us to listen to week after week, they're all winners. Anybody, and for the most part, nobody's getting paid. Everyone is a winner. So we don't want to showcase a winner. And that's why we're keeping it internal. We want to, as a group, we want to recognize those that maybe we feel don't get the recognition that they might somewhere else. They might not get this popular vote. They're not out there trying to drum up as many votes as possible. We want to objectively as a group look at who has provided exceptional, exceptional work. And Dennis will tell you and the rest of the committee will tell you there's not one winner in these categories. If two awards make sense to showcase excellence, so be it. Three, four, one, none. There's no set amount. We just want to look at those that are standing out above the pack that are really providing exceptional, exceptional work this year. Yes, I view these excellence awards as, in a way, highly experimental. I think it's something that's very different for our hobby. And I don't know how it'll go over, but I think it's interesting to try. So we're going to do it in this model for this year, and we're going to see if it works the way we think it will. And hopefully it will. And if not, we can always make adjustments. We're segregating it out from the Industry Arcade awards because it's not about picking the best. it's about recognition for people that are doing really good work even if not a lot of eyeballs see it and a lot of the listeners right now you guys could even attest to this think about that one streamer that you really watch and you're like man to see the growth over last year to see technologically what they've brought to this Industry Arcade or maybe your favorite photographer wow they never get recognized and this photographer is doing so much work in the Industry Arcade a videographer, a writer. We want to showcase the excellence and appreciation that we have as a community towards them as well. And then finally, Zach, we've got, this is really your brainchild, and this is the part which will involve the public. It's the only people's choice-esque element that we've got, but it's not about picking anything that's going on in the current year, but rather it's a hall of fame. The third piece of the Pinball Industry Arcade Awards we had, the first being the main game awards recognized and chosen by a vetted pinball panel of media. The second being the excellence awards in pinball content creation voted on by the TPN group. The third is voted on by you. And Dennis said it is a hall of fame. We're presenting to you the Pinball Industry Arcade awards hall of fame, which is voted on by you, the listener, the enthusiast, the lover of pinball. But instead of inducting people into the Hall of Fame, I thought it would be a really fun idea to induct the things We Love Pinball the most, and those are the machines themselves. Instead of inducting into the Pinball Industry Arcade Awards Hall of Fame individuals, we'll be doing that with additional excellence and recognition awards. These are going to be machines. It's going to be up to you, listener, to vote in the best of pinball machines in existence. You, the public, will be voting in, in 2020, an EM machine. A machine from the 70s, that early solid state. A machine from the 1980s. A machine from the 1990s. A machine from the 2000s. And a machine from the 2010s. We thought it would be really fun in the year 2020. Was it centennial number? I don even know. Centennial. Not centennial but you tried. It nice. It's 2020. Let's take a look back and what better time than now in the year 2020 to start inducting games and titles into the Hall of Fame. And we need you. We need your vote. What are you guys going to select for the one machine that will be honored as the 2020 class of the Pinball Industry Arcade Awards Hall of Fame. What 90s game? Is it going to be AIQ or similar complex modern pinball machine game with deep ruleset? Twilight Zone? It's so hard to pick one. But only one gets in from each era. Which one will it be? Those six will go down as the 2020 class. Next year, there will be an additional six. This is a very important vote. And I hope that you guys take the time to really recognize the machine of that particular era. It's going to be a blast. It's going to be a lot of fun there. The format of the Pinball Industry Arcade Awards will be ceremonial. It will be showcased as a media piece. Now, with 2020 being wretched, we think it's best to hold a virtual ceremony for this event. Now, this ceremony is going to be held toward the end of January. And since this is our announcement, voting is now open. You can go to www.thepinballindustryawards.com for further information on voting for the Hall of Fame, putting in your choice of votes for those different eras. For those pinball media providers out there, all the criteria needed to become part of that media panel of the main game awards, all the criteria is available at that website, the pinballindustryawards.com. There you'll find a form to fill out so that we can review your eligibility. And once submitted and approved, you will be sent out a formal single ballot for you to complete. Now, at the start of this announcement, Zach mentioned transparency. So I do want to go ahead and point out that one of the things for those that do choose from media to do these votes will be agreeing to is that their name will be listed publicly available that they did vote so that the public will be able to know who who did votes. We'll have the overall vote totals released. We won't be releasing the individual ballots but we will be stating who all chose to participate and vote because we feel that if people want to judge what went into this sort of critic style media choice award they need to be able to know who were actually those that chose to participate. Absolutely. Transparency has been something of the utmost importance to Dennis Kriesel and myself. All of the details regarding transparency, collection, etc. will be on the website. We're going to try to make this a really big, really fun event each and every year. I cannot wait to share with you the ideas that we have for the live event. That's going to be unbelievable. We're already gearing up for that, but we thought, you know, 2020 is a good year to get a good dry run going to show you guys what this awards is all about, what this group is all about. We also have some fun additional awards in there that we won't, we'll surprise you guys with, but it's going to be recognizing some additional achievements in pinball that we're really, really proud of. In closing, we want to thank all of those who will be supporting and continuing the support of the Pinball Industry Arcade awards. Again, and it is our hope that this is yet another way to showcase excellence, transparency, and objectivity in the hobby that we all love so much. So let's have fun with it, everybody. Go over to the pinballindustryawards.com and start checking out all the information there as well as stay tuned for the dates of the award ceremony, the host that will be presenting the awards, and all of the fun surprises. you may have to tune in live to experience for yourself. Thanks again for the time. For Dennis Kriesel and myself, Zach Meny. And don't worry, everybody. There is no award for toppers. Hold up. We do have an accessory award, I think. There is an award for toppers. Always practice safe pinball voting and vote now. So long, everybody.